While My Angel Gently Weeps

Doctor Who:

Flesh and Stone

Airdate: May 1st 2010. UK. BBC1

Woohoo. Okay, first things first. This was another thoroughly entertaining episode of Doctor Who... that’s two in a row now this season. Perhaps the show is finally getting back on track. I do have a bad thing or two to say about it but ultimately, before I do, I just want to go on record by saying that I really enjoyed it... the pacing was good and, for once in this season, the Doctor’s personality was allowed to come to the fore and he was a timelord to reckon with. Hooray.

However... there was some not so good stuff here too. First up... was that really supposed to be a revelation with River Song? I thought we were supposed to know... or at least deduce pretty quickly... that River Song had killed the Doctor off... or at least one of his lives. Thats the only way the narrative structural poetry would best work... surely... if they are both witness to each other’s death. Did they not already say she’d been in prison? And for the Doctor’s death? And here’s one for thought which is probably totally off base but I just want to throw it into the mix and see if it works... assuming that River Song is a time lord (and for the moment I am because, how else are they going to get out of the fact that she needs to get younger every time she meets the Doctor?), then is Amy Pond (which by the way might be a further Duck Pond reference from the first episode of this season) actually a future regeneration of River Song? Just a thought.

Anyway... two big problems I had with this episode and both to do with the way in which the monsters are written and both to do with certain ground rules of physics set up in the David Tennant episode Blink.

1. The human brain contains a memory image of the angels in your head when you look them in the eye... thus turning you, yourself into an angel, right? At least that’s what they’ve implied in this story. Therefore my first question is... how come Sally Sparrow and her friend didn’t turn into angels in the space of time between her meeting the angels and giving the Doctor the transcript of the conversation he needs to have with her in her past in Blink? Don’t be making up new monster rules if you’re going to screw up the past stories!

2. Ok... the angels can’t move when anything sees them because they’re quantum locked to stone when they’re being looked at, right? In fact, that’s how the Doctor defeated the angels in Blink... by dematerialising the Tardis and leaving the four angels that were around it looking at each other and thus trapping themselves, never to move again (without outside interference). Sooo... how can you have a whole army of them moving to grab Amy (moving very slowly considering they’re the fastest things in the universe I might point out) when they can all see each other? That’s rubbish... they would quantum lock each other out.

So those are my two minor gripes... looking forward to next weeks episode a lot but not as much as the one which comes after. Vampires in Venice could be good but Amy’s Choice sounds fabulous.

The Doctor is getting back on course to being essential viewing. Keeping my finger’s crossed that the next two will be really something.