IIRC, the Doctor in “Blink” says something like, “You can’t kill a stone.” I assumed at the time that if they were smashed, they’d just reassemble or something, but the zombie angels in this new ep make me think their physical forms are more important.
I loved the new episode, although I have a bunch of quibbles about how the Angels are portrayed. Neck snapping just seems so banal, since the whole “zap them into the past” thing was…cool. And I always assumed the “weeping angel” form itself was actually some sort of camoflage, so it seems a little cheesy to realize they ALWAYS look like that. Lucky for them so many races look like Time Lords, eh? Oh, and where did the wings go on the zombie ones?
That said, I loved it. Moffat made the Angels scary and interesting without the episode feeling like a rehash of Blink at all. It was incredibly cinematic and played excellently with all the timey-wimey issues. And this episode really, really cemented Matt Smith in the role for me. He IS the Doctor. He really brings a lot to the character, and manages to be shockingly convincing in the role of a 900-year-old, cocky, brilliant, eccentric time-travelling faux-reluctant hero.
First, let me make it clear that I loved the episode. This is not a complaint, just an observation.
While it didn’t feel like a rehash of Blink at all, I couldn’t help feeling it was very similar to River Song’s last appearance.
River Song… traveling with a group of redshirts… big empty place… scary things in the dark… stay in the light/don’t turn off the lights/don’t blink… dead guys keep talking… oh no, they’re surrounded… clever escape.
You have a point there - and his bit about “you never put [del]baby in a corner[/del] the Doctor in a trap” sounded suspiciously like “I’m the Doctor, run” to me - he better not go there next week.
Well it didn’t seem like they really had eyes any more. At least that was what I figured the explanation was. Seemed a bit odd to me too. And it really bothered me that the two-heads thing was so obvious. That’s not the sort of thing that would realistically go unnoticed. they should have been expecting to see two-headed statues, and been surprised when they didn’t. And even if it did somehow escape both River and the Doctor, Amy or one of the clerics should have been struck by the oddness of hearing that they had two heads and asked about the statues.
I also didn’t like the thing about images of the angels becoming angels. It struck me as too ad hoc. Nothing had hinted at this ability before and it didn’t seem terribly consistent with what we already knew about them. Moffat just needed an excuse to put Amy in danger, so for one scene the angel suddenly had this extraordinary supernatural ability that had never been mentioned and then wasn’t mentioned again for the rest of the episode.
The looking into the eyes thing was also new and a bit silly, but it was developed gradually and integrated into the plot, so it didn’t come off as quite so ad hoc.
Overall it was a fun episode, but I didn’t like it as much as the Dalek one last week. Guess my tastes are just different.
This was a great episode. I’ve watched this one twice already and loved it both times. It does resemble the library story a lot (complete with dead men talking), but the first episode of the library two-parter is some of my favorite NuWho, so I don’t mind. The opening sequence is wonderfully directed; gripping and cinematic in a way that’s very rare for the show. The rest of the episode doesn’t maintain the same pace but kept my attention just the same and managed to retain the “movie” feel from the intro. The poster who mentioned the sparkling dialogue is exactly right.
River Song continues to annoy me but I didn’t need to like her to appreciate the story, so that’s okay.
P.S. On the matter of the two-headed aliens and the statues, the Doctor mentioned the possibility of a low level perception filter making it harder to realize that there was something wrong.
It’s the same director, Adam Smith, for this two-parter as did The Eleventh Hour. I think he’s done a bang-up job so far - he’s a keeper. I don’t think he did any of the remaining episodes though. Looking at his CV, there’s not a lot on it - some Little Dorrit for the BBC being the main thing. He’s very talented.
She sure is! Of course she told him what coordinates to enter, and she can obviously fly the Tardis a lot better than he can!
Which reminds me, who is River? I’m wondering if she’s a Chameleon Arched Time Lady, maybe the Rani. After all, she said something about being in prison. Could she even be the Doctor? He thought he might be “a girl” when he first regenerated at the end of “The End of Time.” Maybe that was a bit of foreshadowing. . . . She definitely seemed to care about him in the library two parter, so I don’t think she can be a pure villian just manipulating the Doctor. They have some kind of a real relationship, even if it isn’t what it seems.
Could be, but she knows Old High Gallifreyan and pilots the Tardis better than the Doctor and, most importantly, knows the Doctor’s real name.
I was a bit disapointed when he asked how she knows what he looks like and she said she has pictures. Time Lords can usually recognize each other, why couldn’t she? It would have been much more mysterious and interesting if she’d said something like, “You think you can fool me by by getting a new face? Amy, honey, if your mother got a haircut, would you think she was somebody else? There you go.”
I can see why you’d think that, but if you think about it a little deeper I don’t think it plays out that way.
The Doctor always, ALWAYS gives the bad guys an out. He always gives them a chance to change their mind or surrender. But once they’ve got him backed into a corner, well, it’s never actually worked out for any bad guys across a couple billion years, now has it?