No Turn Unstoned

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels

Airdate: April 24th 2010. UK. BBC1

Well that’s a bit better. Not only do we have the return of those lovable temporal assassins “The Weeping Angels” but also Dr. River Song, the Doctor’s future lover (?) whom I now believe might well be the cause of the Doctor’s death in the future but... well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves... spoilers.

Ok, lets be clear here. This was not a great episode of Doctor Who... but it was certainly on a par with the first 30 minutes or so of The Eleventh Hour so... in my book anyway... that makes this the best episode of the current series so far.

And, yes, there were no bloody twists again. Everything you thought might have been meant to be a reveal seemed to be telegraphed a little beforehand. Oh, right. So the image becomes the angel does it? Yeah, nice of you to tell us but, you know what? It was already bleeding obvious. Oh... the eyes are a doorway to the soul are they. Blimey, we’re pretty stupid if we didn’t already realise that Amy was starting the transformation into an angel even before she left that surveillance room!

But still... I guess it’s a children’s show too so maybe it wasn’t as obvious to their primary target audience. Would have preferred a little more challenge to the story personally.

Still... mustn’t grumble. Just because it wasn’t all twisty, turny, doesn’t make it a bad show. It was quite competent at sustaining the pace and River was a joy to watch. And so was Amy. And once again the Doctor seems to be pushed out of the limelight and ends up playing second, or even third, fiddle to the stronger, dominant personalities of his companions.

Writer Steven Moffet managed to hit the same notes as his Vashta Nerada episodes by having the Weeping Angels “borrow” the vocal chords of their dead victims to communicate after death, as a stand in for the after dead computer loop voices of the space suited victims of the aforementioned “piranhas of the air”.

Probably the first ten minutes of this episode were the best, followed by a switch-your-brain-off, fairly well put together episode. But, you know, did anyone else feel that this episode was just a little bit like the opening episode of Earthshock?

Doesn’t matter. Cliff hanger (ish) ending which kind of gives away the cliffhanger. Stupid BBC ident announcing the next programme over the Doctor’s big soliloquy (stupid BBC idiots - if you want me to continue watching this show live on air - don’t EVER do that again. Anybody reading this should email them to complain RIGHT NOW). If I was Steven Moffett I would be really displeased with this shabby treatment of what is, lets face it, the BBCs flagship show.

Let’s hope the next episode builds on the foundations of this one or at least matches it.

Don’t blink!