Doctor Who: The Time Of Angels – series 31, episode four

SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching Doctor Who on BBC1. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode four. Dan Martin on episode three “I’m nobody’s taxi service and I’m not going to be there to catch you every time you feel like jumping out of a spaceship” Now we’re talking. Weeping Angels, paramilitary priests, and this year’s first visit to an alien planet. From the cinematic pre-title sequence where River Song launches herself through space in an evening gown, this is a story that was always destined to be rubberstamped as a classic. First comes Alex Kingston to continue the Time-Traveller’s-Wife story of the divine Professor Song (this being earlier in her timestream she’s merely a Doctor – spoilers!). Fanboys might have been up in arms at the suggestion of a love interest for the Doctor, but this backwards romance is ingenious. Moffat – who, remember, wrote Coupling – does relationship banter as well as he does scares, and this is played out in the glorious tradition of Spike and Lynda from Press Gang . River blithely plays on the Doctor’s quirks, assumes he’ll come and rescue her, and she’s right – she even criticises his driving. Such audacity from Moff to explain away the Tardis’s 50-year whirring noise as the Doctor not putting the brakes on. Here, he’s reduced to irascible and henpecked. The perfect marriage. Of course, all this is goes with Amy’s theory that she is indeed his wife. We already know how River will die (or at least get saved into a big hard drive for all eternity ) so we must assume she will come good in the end. But what’s she up to? What is she not revealing? And was that injection she gave Amy as innocent as it looked? “I didn’t escape sir, the angel killed me too. It snapped my neck. Sorry for the confusion” Writing a sequel to Blink , the most adored Who story ever, was always going to be a risk. The Weeping Angels were brilliantly effective in that claustrophobic haunted-house setting. Can they work again? Creating the Maze Of The Dead is the logical move: put them in another claustrophobic setting – just a bigger one! As Moffat told Doctor Who Magazine, this is Aliens to Blink’s Alien and the key to writing a sequel is not to write a sequel. The Time of Angels does manage to follow the thread from Moffat’s earlier stories in a way that The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below could not. It’s the “creepy psychological terror one”; an intricate romp jammed with ideas that make a truly cinematic piece of drama. It’s an astonishing achievement, frankly. Given the space of a two-parter, the story feels ponderous compared with Victory Of The Daleks . But it also allows Moffat to wind up the tension. There’s some gorgeous myth and language that will no doubt pay off next week – “what if our dreams no longer needed us?”; “the eyes are not the windows of a soul, they are the doors”. Those angels, then. The Doctor calls them “the most powerful, most malevolent life form that evolution ever produced”, which doesn’t quite square with their depiction in Blink as “the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you kindly – they zap you back in time and let you live to death”. So what’s changed? The angels are snapping people’s necks now, and they need bodies for something or other – so clearly they have a plan. It’s going to be tough waiting a week to see how this one plays out. “I don’t need you to die for me, Doctor – do I look that clingy?” More moments of Pond ingenuity, as she escapes the “image of an angel which becomes an angel” by means of the pause button. So now, as well as the darkness, clocks, cracks in walls and blinking, kids are now going to be scared of TV screens. Inevitably Amy is upstaged by River this week, but that doesn’t mean she’s sidelined. What’s that thing in her eye? And why does she think her hand has turned to stone? Fear factor Ten out of ten, this was absolutely bloody terrifying. With love With River come more echoes of Silence In The Library . The disembodied voice of poor Bob at the end is a riff on the “Data Ghosts” from the victims of the Vashta Nerada. Wibbly-wobbly time This was actually the first episode of the new series to be filmed – the crew going out on the beach to reveal the new costumes and the return of River. Next week! Was anybody else a little flummoxed by that cliffhanger? 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