Holistic Review: A great return for the Weeping Angels, which transforms them from a one-hit wonder into a viable recurring menace.

This two-parter is another very solid pair of episodes from Steven Moffat. It's not as astonishingly wonderful as Blink, but then part of Blink's success lies in the surprise of the Weeping Angels and their unexpected fang-face. Here, the Angels are fang-face almost from the word go, so for scares, we're relying on them doing their old scary tricks really really well, and/or introducing some new tactics to keep us terrified afresh. On both these counts, the episode scores, and as an added bonus, the characters are very well-written, the plot is tightly scripted, there's action aplenty (none of it seeming gratuitous), and the dialogue is whip-smart.

I don't think I've ever wanted a monster to return as badly as the Weeping Angels, even though I didn't realize it at the time (because, as with Anya on Buffy, I didn't really think it was possible). The more I think about it, the more I decide that they're probably the scariest monsters ever in the history of Doctor Who... despite the fact that they don't actually kill you. A rematch didn't seem likely — Blink felt like the sort of story you could only tell once — so I was shocked and delighted to find out that the Angels were going to be making a return appearance this season. They actually get a pretty thorough overhaul here, this group apparently being more powerful and less scavenge-y than the ones we met previously, and their newfound powers include:

• The power to corporealize (or at least create a projection of themselves) through any image of themselves, which explains why nobody seems to want to draw any pretty illustrations of them in the relevant reference books. Up to now, what we knew of the Weeping Angels was all consistent and cohesive; I'm not sure that this is. Why can ancient quantum-locked stone creatures possess images of themselves? It doesn't quite jibe with their modus operandi, particularly when we learn that this also applies to images stored in the human brain (but more on that later). However, disclaimer aside, the visual of an Angel turning around and advancing in what ought to be a looped video image is supremely terrifying, echoing classic sources like The Ring. These scenes, with a wide-eyed and cautious Amy watching it advance, are an exercise in suspense. They also remind me a bit of "The Cemetery", part of the first episode of Night Gallery and one which has stuck with me vividly in the many years since I first watched it. (The plot, if you've never seen it, involves a painting of a cemetery that changes when the house's occupant isn't looking, showing a cadaver rising from the grave outside and advancing on the house.) So, whether or not I buy this new power, the realization is totally worth it.
  
• The power to remotely lock doors and create deadlock seals. So now the Angels can trap their food? Really not sure how this one works.
  
• The power to talk through a stolen cerebral cortex. Not sure I love this either — it seems to weaken their menace a bit (like talking cats, it feels unnatural) and it's also a little too reminiscent of the ghosting in Silence in the Library.
  
• The power to infiltrate your brain if you stare into their eyes. Now this fits well with their overall modus operandi and serves to make them scarier yet. If you can't blink when an Angel is in front of you, then of course your instinct is to stare into its eyes... and if that's exactly what it wants, so that even if you escape, it can take you over later, then you're just dead no matter what. (I guess we can assume that Larry remained safe either because his Angels were weakened scavengers, or because they became permanently quantum-locked and that somehow affected their ability to take him over?)
  
• Once they're in your mind, they have the power to make you see things and they can switch your body off.
  
• They can take over other statues and turn them into Weeping Angels. At least, this seems to be the drift. There's also an implication that the statues are actually the extinct Aplands, slowly dying underground in statue form, but as there doesn't seem to have been a Weeping Angel on the planet until now, it seems unlikely that it caused their deaths. If there is some reason why the Aplands were all turned into statues in the Maze of the Dead, we don't know what it is. So the most palatable explanation is that the statues were pre-existing, and the Angel was able to mold them into its own image.
  
• They sometimes choose to snap your neck instead of hurtling you backward through time. This is perhaps merciful, although somehow less scary than before, maybe because snapping a person's neck is such a mundane sort of thing to do (for Doctor Who monsters, that is!) and a much more instantaneous death (though Bob didn't find it as quick as he would have hoped).
  
• The ability to feed on not just your potential energy, but also your vessels, worlds and stars.
  
• The ability to choose whether or not they want to kill you or drain your potential energy, which means that being touched by an Angel isn't necessarily going to have an immediate effect... in 0.01% of cases. (In Octavian's case, one grabs onto him for quite some time, and if he'd had a hammer and chisel handy, maybe he could have gotten away.)

Steven Moffat has done a really nice job, particularly with part 2, which features a constant progression of movement and peril, and gives the Weeping Angels much more time in the spotlight. Among my favorite bits of Moffat's writing:

• When Carlos (among other characters) cryptically tells Angelo (over a communications device) that he has to "just come and see it", Angelo shoots back with "It's not a school trip, just tell me!" rather than dumbly trotting along. That earned a cheer from me!
  
• The Doctor drops a couple of hints that the Aplands have two heads, just enough for the penny to drop and us to realize that there's something wrong with the statues. In fact, a friend of mine even sent me a message along the lines of "Why hasn't anybody noticed that — ...oh, never mind, they just did." Personally, I felt very clever for having figured it out just before the Doctor did.
  
• The very unusual — dare I say unique? — cliffhanger to part one, which focuses not on imminent peril, but on imminent hope of rescue. (The only problem is, I had no idea what the Doctor shot. I thought it was some reservoir of radioactive fluid in the belly of the ship.)
  
• The need to turn off the lights in order to have a shot at saving everyone, which is very creepy. (Downside: there's lots of dark time but that Angels barely seem to advance.)
  
• Rendering "don't blink" moot by putting Angels on both sides of the Doctor, so that one group is always out of his line of sight (much like the actual game of Grandmother's Footsteps).
  
• "We stare at them to stop them getting closer. We don't even blink. And that is exactly what they want, 'cause as long as our eyes are open, they can climb inside." Shudder. Brilliant way to take their existing menace and make it even worse.
  
• Taking the whole scenario a step further by putting Amy in a situation where she can't look at the Angels. Brilliant, yet again, and ever so scary. ("You're gonna have to walk like you can see.")
  
• The Doctor's solution to dump the Angels into the maw of the crack, which is both tidy and well-signposted.

Oh, Amy Pond. I had a few revelations about her this week. In The Time of Angels, I actually liked her for the first time. Amy does all the right companionly things in this two-parter: standing up to the Doctor, deflating his temperamental moods, bravely investigating, being willing to sacrifice her life, and showing a bit of fear when she's in life-or-death situations. On the flipside, this is all, yet again, Generic Companion material. So while I felt like I was getting to the point where I could enjoy Amy, I still don't see what makes her special. Still, I could live with that; if I don't stand any chance of comprehending her, I at least want to be able to enjoy her when she's onscreen. However — and you know I'm going to say it — that all changed in the last five minutes. The final scene, with Amy admitting to the Doctor that she's running from her wedding, promised to finally shed some light on Amy's character and motivations, and I guess it sort of did, but it certainly wasn't what I was hoping for. On the plus side, I now have another adjective for Amy in addition to feisty, and that adjective is lusty. Now, I have nothing against this in a companion. While it might not make her the best role model for the kiddies, fine, let Amy go off and seduce a new man on every planet. (After all, it works for Jack.) I do, however, have two problems with it. The fact that she wants to sleep with someone the night before her wedding shows a rather astonishing lack of concern, fidelity and love for her poor fiancé (unless he's going into this relationship with his eyes wide open; perhaps Rory likes the idea of an open marriage?), and might actually finally persuade some members of the viewing audience that I've been right all along: Amy is indeed unlikeable and difficult to relate to. Also: for Pete's sake, does it have to be the Doctor that Amy wants to jump into the sack with?!?! I mean, okay, I suppose at least this is a little different. Amy doesn't love the Doctor, and she's not clingy, she just wants a roll in the hay, and for some reason I find that a little bit less threatening (because at least she's not going to be mooning over him constantly, she just wants to have some fun and get it out of her system). And yet, at the same time, this is the most threatening thing possible, because while at least the Doctor in love has the potential to be sweet, the Doctor having meaningless sex with his companions makes him possibly even worse than James Bond. What is Moffat thinking?!? I've been hearing rumors for a while that the Doctor and Amy were going to have a romantic/flirty relationship, and I was desperately hoping that it wasn't true (particularly in light of The Time of Angels, in which Amy playfully teases the Doctor about River and seems entirely uninterested in him "in that way"), but the moment Amy said "About what I want. About who I want.", I started banging my head against the couch. Isn't this plotline extraordinarily tired and played-out? Grace, Sam, Rose, Martha, Jack, Sarah and Astrid weren't enough, now we have to endure this with Amy too? At this point, honestly? I'm sick of her and I want her off the TARDIS now. Why must I finally get my wish for a consistent TARDIS crew for two seasons in a row, when for the first time I'm actively dissatisfied with said crew? Just feed Amy to the vampires already and bring back Donna. With Rory! I feel sure they'd be a hoot and a half.

This is a shame, because I'm definitely warming to Karen Gillan. Aside from that final scene when she goes all husky-voiced again, I really enjoyed Gillan's acting this week, which seemed almost totally naturalistic. Amy's excitement to visit a planet (which becomes a clever way to get the Doctor involved in the plot) is relatable, and I enjoyed her delivery of "Ohh, are you all Mr Grumpy-Face today?", "Anybody need me?", her something-in-my-eye acting, and "The other one!" And, despite the deep problems that I continue to have with Amy, I like the fact that her persistence (all those demands of "Explain."), determination (insisting on opening her eyes to get a glimpse of the light, even if it might kill her) and refusal to be coddled ("Doctor? What's it gonna do to me?") is coming through, and her idea to freeze the Angel on a blip in the recording is frankly brilliant. Also, I love her purple nail polish.

Conversely, River Song — yet another in the long line of companions and companion-wannabes who are all hot to trot for our favorite Time Lord — is making me like her more and more. There's still a total air of mystery about her, which is just as it should be, and I find myself thoroughly enjoying her confident, flirty personality. I must admit, I was a little skeptical about her return, but she turned out to be one of the highlights of the story. Alex Kingston is just mesmerizing throughout, and I can't wait to see her come back. Brilliantly, her early scenes with the Doctor very strongly echo the relationship between the fourth Doctor and the first Romana, particularly the way that she flies the TARDIS better than he does, and that she relies on the TARDIS readings while the Doctor relies on instinct and field knowledge. Unfortunately River doesn't get a ton to do in the second part, but it's so action-packed that you don't really have time to notice. Alex Kingston just looks stunning in her first outfit (with the very flattering hairstyle, her slinky dress, and those cool shoes), and I was really surprised when she turned out to be the 1920s-looking woman from the promo! Love "Yes, they're blue! They're the blue stabilizers!", her little curtsey when the Doctor "sonics" her, the eyebrow-lift when Octavian says that they're sort of engaged, and — in a well-directed moment by Adam Smith — her hilarious delivery of "You. Me. Handcuffs."

Partly because of the TARDIS scene with River that I mentioned above, Matt Smith continues to remind me of no-one so much as Tom Baker. Young he may be, but he really does embody the role of the Doctor perfectly. He's even speed-reading books just like the old days ("bit slow in the middle"). I love the way that he's being written as a Doctor who clearly flies by the seat of his pants (as in the exchange "There's a plan?" "I don't know yet, I haven't finished talking."; one of many in this two-parter!). I'm particularly delighted by his attempts to replicate the sound of the TARDIS materializing, and his delivery of "Church has moved on." and "A forest in a bottle in a spaceship in a maze. Have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?". My favorite scene of his, though, is hands-down the moment when he suddenly reappears to comfort an agitated Amy in the forest; it's very sweet, complete with a chaste kiss on the forehead. (But is it just me, or does it sound like Smith has a cold?)

As the other characters go, I liked Iain Glen, who imbues the role of Octavian with just enough wisdom and serenity, and just enough leadership and warrior prowess, to be convincing as a bishop-turned-general. Bob is an incredibly minor character in the scheme of things, but he's written and portrayed so sympathetically by David Atkins that he becomes a major presence in this two-parter, and a person that we're very sad to see fall at the Angels' hands. They're really the only two characters who get enough of a role to be worth discussing, but there's not a bad actor among the bunch.

Oh, Adam Smith! You have let me down slightly! While overall I think Smith does a great job with this two-parter, I do think he kind of lets the ball drop with the Weeping Angels. Two scenes come straight to mind. First: when the Doctor drops the bombshell about the Apland statues, and flicks his torch off, it would be much more effective if the camera stayed on the statues when the Doctor turned out the lights. Cutting back to the Doctor in between gives us a moment of "wait, where are we looking now? and did the statues just move or do they look the same?". Second: when the Doctor is surrounded by Angels on both sides, the camera moves around like the director's watching a tennis match. It makes the scene seem frantic, yes, but it also makes it very difficult to tell whether the Angels are actually moving and getting closer, or not. As with the statues in the maze, it would've helped to be a little more obvious about how they were moving. Likewise, my confusion about the Doctor blowing up the gravity globe could've been resolved with just a slightly longer shot of the intact globe before it exploded. (Perhaps that's the fault of the editor, though.) However, the shot of it exploding is quite pretty (kudos to the effects team there, too). I also really like the shots of the Angels boarding the Byzantium after the Doctor's party, and the creepy shot of Amy in the forest surrounded by Angels. Kudos also for the subtle but clever cut from two guards pursuing the Doctor and Amy to two guards pursuing River.

As effects go, I really like the sandstorm-style transportation effect, the sand pouring out of Amy's fingers as she rubs her eyes, the pull-back shot of our heroes standing on the hull upside-down, the Doctor jumping into a different gravity field inside the ship (and Amy looking through the hatch at him), the forest onboard the ship (pleasantly reminiscent of Nightmare of Eden), the insides of the trees (which, with their flexing tubes with blinking lights, just ooze classic Doctor Who), the Angel holding Octavian in a headlock (how did they digitally freeze the Angel without doing the same to Octavian? Amazing.), and the Angels falling into the crack. The shot of the Angels turning their heads to look at Amy shouldn't be that creepy (since, after all, we shouldn't ever see them moving that slowly, but for some reason it really is. The design of the Byzantium is neat, particularly the circular rear end. Top top marks, though, must go to the lighting crew, for making Puzzlewood look like such a believable spaceship-interior set. The lighting is nothing short of brilliant, to the point that I had no idea if I was looking at a real forest or a studio set. It's gorgeous and perfectly done.

For sound effects, I really like the water-dripping cave noises, the sonic-screwdriver-ish bleeping of the communicator as Amy turns around (it sounds like something straight out of the classic series), and the sound of the crack closing. And I do have to give a nod to Murray Gold this week; his score isn't standout, but it's tense and subtle, so it gets a thumbs-up from me! (I'm not quite sure, though, why he goes the Keff McCulloch route of putting sound effects to the Doctor's finger motions (first when he's testing the wind to figure out the direction of the flight deck, and then again when he's pondering the ability of time to be unwritten), as if the Doctor is actually operating an invisible midair device.

Minor points:

• The Time of Angels really scores in the innovation stakes; along with its unusual cliffhanger, it's also got one of the most stunning openings in the history of the series! I love the way River very cleverly uses time travel to her advantage when sending the Doctor a message; there's a pleasantly Blink-like feel to the scene of the Doctor and Amy interacting with a 12,000-year-old recording which, for us, is just now happening; and the idea of River flinging herself out an airlock and into the TARDIS is brilliant and audacious (as is the effects shot used to realize it; don't you love the way that Kingston floats out the door like a dancer being lifted into the rafters during a performance?). It's just a shame that they spoiled that latter shot in the season promo trailer, because it would've been really stunning with no foreknowledge. All in all, what a brilliant way to get rescued, and probably the best pre-credits teaser we've ever had on Doctor Who.

• So I kind of want to figure out what exactly River is doing here. As best as I can figure out, Octavian needs River for a "covert investigation", and gets her released from a stormcage containment facility on the condition that he is responsible for making sure that she's a good girl who does what she's told, and River is likewise kept on a tight leash by the possibility of a pardon if her mission is successful. This investigation apparently pertains to the Byzantium, which River infiltrates in order to confirm that they're carrying a Weeping Angel in the hold. (So possibly this transaction is illegal, or the church has been waiting for the right moment to seize the Angel when it's not under such heavy lock and key as it was in private hands. Their reason for moving the Angel at this particular point in time is left vague.) River manages to pilfer some security footage of the Angel as proof, psychedelic-lipsticking a guard who nearly rumbles her, but gets found out anyway and has to escape the ship. There are clerics waiting in the wings to storm the Byzantium and, presumably, recover the Angel, and they're clearly expecting the ship to make planetfall, but they don't expect it to crash-land. I'm not entirely sure why River specifically is needed for this mission, given that she's an archaeologist, but I guess it all makes sense otherwise. (Octavian later states that their mission is "to make this wreckage safe and neutralize the Angels", but surely that doesn't become their mission until after the Byzantium crashes.

• Cute line, very Doctorly. And how awesome that some of "his things" are actually in the museum! (I wonder what he means? His lost possessions? Or things that he made use of in his crusade against evil? i.e., his striped green sock, or the marbles that he used to deflect a Dominator slave ship?)

  Doctor: "Wrong. Wrong, Bit right, mostly wrong. ...I love museums."

• What exactly do Amy and River mean by "it's how you keep score"? Score of what? All the events he's been involved in?

• It may be a bit upsetting to the purists among us, but this line is such a funny way to shed new light on a series tradition while still being totally faithful to the Doctor's character:

  River: "It's not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on."

• A great exchange, well-played by both Smith and Kingston:

  Amy: "How come you can fly the TARDIS?"
  River: "Oh, I had lessons from the very best."
  Doctor: (smiling proudly) "Well... yeah."
  River: (to the Doctor) "It's a shame you were busy that day."

• I guess we can assume that River's met Amy before this occasion? We never see her acknowledge this, but then we never see her introduce herself to Amy either. Therefore, surely she ought to have known that Amy couldn't possibly die in the forest? Although time is apparently in flux, though I wouldn't expect River to realize that... then again, she can fly the TARDIS, so she probably knows more about it than we do!

• Is it weird that both Matt Smith and Iain Glen say "catacoombs"?

• So now the Weeping Angels have gone from ancient "lonely assassins" who kill you kindly to "the most malevolent life-form ever produced"? Really? Again with the hyperbole, people! I mean, I'm all for amping them up and making them even scarier, but let's not overdo it. (Then again, if ever a monster justified being over-amped, it's the Weeping Angels.)

• Amy is hilariously direct, and the Doctor's response is hilariously misleading:

  Doctor: "Any questions?"
  Amy: "Is River Song your wife? ... She's Mrs Doctor from the future, isn't she? Is she gonna be your wife one day?"
  Doctor: "Yes. You're right. I am definitely Mr Grumpy-Face today."

• I'd be very interested to hear what kind of "private hands" could acquire an Angel from the ruins of Razbahan and hold onto it for a century without getting killed or flung back to the 1980s.

• Ohh, now I get it. River knows what all of the Doctors look like (or, at least, the tenth through... whatever), but she doesn't know what order they're all in. (It's also possible that she's got photos of pre-Tennant Doctors, too, but she never meets them.) That explains why she thought Tennant looked so young, particularly given that she had apparently never met the tenth Doctor before (or we probably would've seen it)... for all she knew, maybe he was a future incarnation that she'd never met, except that she tell from the look in his eyes or something that he was younger. (Makes you wonder what's going to happen to him that would make a 900-year-old man seem dramatically older.)

• "That which holds the image of an Angel," we are told, "becomes itself an Angel." So I guess I'd better watch out for my T-shirt, then.

• Moffat takes good advantage of this opportunity to address a few criticisms that fans raised after Blink, such as: why didn't Larry try blinking one eye at a time? Here, Amy does exactly that, with great success!

• Errr... one minute, the Doctor is braying about how there's no way to get through the mysteriously-appearing deadlock seals, while River's blaster is having no effect whatsoever on the door, and then suddenly, the moment Amy defeats the Angel, the door magically opens and they tumble in. (Oh — is that exactly the point? The Angel was keeping her trapped, with its door-closing deadlock-seal-creating abilities, and once it was essentially disconnected from the room, its effects ceased as well?)

• Hiding a Weeping Angel in what is essentially a statue garden is a clever and creepy move. (And even better when it can turn all the statues into other Angels!)

• I love the Doctor's approach:

  Octavian: "One question. How do we fight it?"
  Doctor: "We find it. And hope."

• After we realized that staring into an Angel's eyes was not a good idea, I was convinced that Amy herself was going to turn into an Angel. (which would also have been a cool idea, and would have neatly resolved the question of how they reproduce — although, in the end, I guess we got an answer to that anyway!) At the time, I also thought her hands were turning into talons, the way she was splaying her fingers after rubbing her eye. Alas, none of this was actually the truth, although Moffat clearly intended for us to get this impression, if the scene of Amy thinking that her hand is turning into stone is any indication. It is interesting, though, that the Angel is just cruelly toying with her mind. I like the way they're being portrayed as malicious for no other purpose than their amusement.

• Ha! After I criticized Martha for exactly this in The Lazarus Experiment, here we get an appropriate comeback. (Between this and the "just come take a look" scenes, it's easy to see why I'm loving the way Moffat writes naturalistic dialogue.)

  River: "The Doctor? Well, the Doctor's the Doctor."
  Amy: "Oh. Well, that's, um... very helpful."

• This week's Line I Just Don't Get (number two, if we're also counting the "keeping score" nonsense). Reason being: if Amy's not necessarily right, why would River be so complimentary about her deductive skills? She's not "very good" if she got it wrong!

  River: "You're good. I'm not saying you're right, but you are very good."

• When Angelo first starts to head in Carlos' direction, he's momentarily startled by a Weeping Angel flapping in his face. Seconds later, after it's flown away, it attacks and kills him. What's up with the wait time? Was it playing cat-and-mouse with him? And why bother using Carlos as a lure if it was all ready to attack him?

• A nice touch: given later events, for all we know, it's entirely possible that Bob's instincts were right and the statue that he fired at did look at him.

• The whole "Sacred Bob" versus "Scared Bob" joke reminds me of Gary Milner, who was cast as an extra in The Stolen Earth and misread his character name as "Sacred Man". Wonder if Moffat was inspired by it?

• A lovely, and very neat, illustration of the way time travel affects your thought patterns:

  Doctor: "Lovely species, the Aplands. We should visit them sometime."
  Amy: "I thought they were all dead?"
  Doctor: "So is Virginia Woolf, I'm on her bowling team."

• And the Aplands snogged themselves? Oh my. I suppose that is the first step on the path to self-marriage! (which, incidentally, is a nice little jab at current laws.)

• It's never explained why the Weeping Angels are killing off the clerics. The Doctor theorizes that they need the bodies for something, but if that's true, we have no evidence of it. We don't ever see any of the dead clerics' bodies lying around, so it's possible that they're turning the corpses into more Angels, but Bob only says that the Angels killed them all and stole his cerebral cortex. No mention of transmogrification.

• Oddly, the Doctor seems to realize from the off that something's wrong with Bob — he asks what seem to be probing questions, and demonstrates impatience with Octavian asking the sort of ordinary questions that one would ask one's underlings, as if he realizes it's useless — but then he tells Bob to keep running away from the Angels and wonders how he escaped, and he seems totally surprised when he learns that Bob is actually dead.

• Great line! (Too bad she didn't tack on something like, oh, I dunno, "horny".)

  Amy: "I don't need you to die for me, Doctor. Do I look that clingy?"

• Why does River think that the Angels are trying to make the Doctor angry? Surely they're taunting him with Bob's death simply because they're cruel. What good would it do them to make the Doctor angry?

• I really like Kingston's delivery here:

  Doctor: "Trust me?"
  River: "Always."

• And one of those ultra-cool lines that probably should feel overwrought, but just makes me grin:

  Doctor: "Didn't anyone ever tell you? There's one thing you never put in a trap, if you're smart. If you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there's one thing you never ever put in a trap."
  Angel-Bob: "And what would that be, sir?"
  Doctor: "Me."

• Another great Moffat line:

  Amy: "So, what if the gravity fails?"
  Doctor: "I've thought about that."
  Amy: "And?"
  Doctor: "And, we'll all plunge to our deaths. See, I've thought about it."

• This was a laugh-out-loud line:

  Octavian: "Doctor Song, I've lost good clerics today. You trust this man?"
  River: "I absolutely trust him."
  Octavian: "He's not some kind of madman, then?"
  River: (pause) "I absolutely trust him."

• This is a little confusing. Octavian threatens River that he'll tell the Doctor who she really is, if she costs him any more men. But he seems to think that the Doctor will only go along with River's advice if he's in the dark about her identity — so what good would telling him do? Then, even more perplexingly, Octavian just decides to spill River's secrets, merely because the Doctor asks, and without her having gotten any more of his men killed. What's up with that? Is there more to her secret identity than we've been told?

• Love the idea of the Angels making Amy count down from 10 to frighten her. Her "ten" totally went past me on first viewing (I mean, I noticed it, but didn't assume it had any significance at all), and "nine" almost did too, until Amy insisted that she hadn't said it. I love the way she so casually fits "eight!" and "seven!" into her ordinary speech, and "Doctor, I'm five!" is a wonderful creepy moment.

• This one made Gray and I both crack up:

  Doctor: "Well, we've got comfy chairs, did I mention?"
  Angel-Bob: (friendly) "We have no need of comfy chairs."

• Wow, a rare Doctor-scream, as he's snagged from behind by an Angel. Although one does wonder why, having finally caught the Doctor, the Angel allows itself to be distracted by the crack before it can finish him off. Unless perhaps it realizes that they're going to need to throw the Doctor into it? (Also, these Angels are remarkably lax about covering their eyes. I didn't see any instances where they for sure should've quantum-locked one another, but this Angel does come dangerously close to staring into its fellows' eyes as it snarls at its friend.)

• Another instance of the cliche-subverting trend that I like so much in Moffat's writing (and another instance of Amy demanding to be told the complete truth):

  Amy: "So what's wrong with me?"
  River: "Nothing, you're fine."
  Doctor: "Everything! You're dying."
  River: "Doctor!"
  Doctor: "Yes, you're right, if we lie to her, she'll get all better."

• Eep. I thought, when the Doctor said that they were going to have to "pull the plug" on Amy's vision centers, that he meant they were going to have to remove her eyes or give her a lobotomy!

• I don't quite understand, though, how closing her eyes shuts off her vision centers. The Angel's not in her field of vision, it's in her memory, and her memory is still active. However, I would've found this more disappointing if it had magically cured Amy. The reality of the situation — that she has to keep her eyes closed — is scary enough to warrant going along with these minor inconsistencies.

• Is the crack really following Amy? That would explain its odd habit of turning up prominently at every location they visit. (Let's hope it didn't expand into a weird time anomaly in all those time zones, or else Churchill's England is going to become a very different place.) However, it does not explain the retcon (which otherwise I love) that the crack is responsible for Victorian London forgetting about the Cyberking, an event at which Amy was not present. Any chance it's also wiped the memory of the Earth after Adelaide Brooks mysteriously committed suicide in her own home? And apparently the duck pond is tied into all this somehow... wonder if the nonexistent ducks are going to turn out to be a crucial plot point?

• "Crispin and who?" says Marco, as if "Phillip" is such a difficult name to remember (compared to "Crispin"!).

• The obvious answer to the question of "who does/did River kill?" is "the Doctor", but they're implying that we'll see River again in the season finale, so either she's not going to kill him on that occasion, or whatever she does doesn't actually cause him to regenerate. Or we're being utterly misled.

• When the Doctor reluctantly abandons Octavian to the Weeping Angel, he really shouldn't have time to get through the hatch before the Angel catches him. Wouldn't it have made more sense to back away from it until he was through the hatch door? Maybe he didn't want to prolong Octavian's agony.

• Amy's moving awfully slow for pretending to be "someone who can see". Especially since she's usually such a self-confident young woman. There is no striding through the forest now!

• If our gang are dangling from guardrails on the control banks at the end of the story, how on earth do they manage to climb out?! One slip and they're dead! This was a very tense scene that we'll never get to see... (however, I applaud Moffat for his storytelling restraint!)

• I really do like that it's being made canonical now that travelling in time adjusts your body in some very fundamental ways, such as your sensitivity to time, your resistance to temporal changes, and your suitability as a snack for chaotic space-time events.

• Well now. If the Pandorica is considered to be nothing more than a fairy tale, then I'm very definitely interested in it.

• I'm kind of astonished that the Doctor actually does get Amy back home five minutes after they left in The Eleventh Hour. Don't you wanna bet she gave him a big slap and said "Why didn't you do that when I was seven!"

• As much as I have a hard time swallowing this whole "Amy-wants-to-do-the-horizontal-tango-with-the-Doctor" thing, I do at least like that he's totally oblivious to her intentions (unlike with Rose or Martha, apparently), and then, once he figures it out, he's totally opposed. (Although why does he let her kiss him? Three times???)

• However, it does at least lead to this brilliant line:

  Doctor: "Quite possibly, the single most important thing in the history of the universe is that I get you sorted out right now."

• As for next week: first off, yay! My wish is coming true and Rory is coming onboard the TARDIS! This has much, much more potential, and gets me more excited for next week. And from the trailer alone, I'm already loving this episode: Rory is hilarious, Amy gets to dress up in period clothing, the vampires look genuinely scary, there are Fenric-y moments... the only downside is that these fanged creatures may not actually be vampires, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

I've used the word "brilliant" a lot in this review, and I think that's as good a description as any: while overall it may not be a ten out of ten, it does have a lot of brilliant ideas and moments throughout. As a sequel to Blink, it's not quite as terrifying, but it's consistently scary and the Weeping Angels are revived with style, even giving the overall season arc a significant boost. Here's hoping we haven't seen the last of them!