Tag: Weeping Angels

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Doctor Who New Series Season 03

Blink

Doctor WhoSally Sparrow’s inquisitive nature, and eye for a good photo, leads her to a creepy abandoned house. Under the house’s peeling wallpaper, Sally discovers a message – written to her by name – containing a warning from someone called the Doctor. When she returns to the house with her best friend, Sally is stunned when her friend vanishes – and then a man claiming to be her friend’s descendant arrives at an appointed time with a letter from his ancestor…in the distant past. Sally goes to share the shocking news with her friend’s brother Larry, and finds him obsessed over several DVD easter eggs, all of them containing cryptic (and occasionally incomprehensible) messages from a man called the Doctor. But the video messages from the Doctor are very clear on one thing: alien killers in the guide of weeping angel statues are stalking the Earth…and if Sally and Larry blink when they encounter the statues, they’re dead. But why isn’t the Doctor on hand to fight the aliens himself?

Download this episodewritten by Steven Moffatt
directed by Hettie MacDonald
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Carey Mulligan (Sally Sparrow), Lucy Gaskell (Kathy Nightingale), Finlay Robertson (Larry Nightingale), Richard Cant (Malcolm Wainwright), Michael Obiora (Billy Shipton), Louis Mahoney (Old Billy), Thomas Nelstrop (Ben Wainwright), Ian Boldsworth (Banto), Ray Sawyer (Desk Sergeant)

Notes: This episode is based in part on Steven Moffat’s short story “What I Did On My Christmas Holidays, By Sally Sparrow”, which appeared in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual as a ninth Doctor story with a much younger Sally – and no weeping angels. The original short story can be read at the BBC’s official Doctor Who site here.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 05

Time Of The Angels

Doctor WhoAn artifact in a museum catches the Doctor’s eye: a message is written in the Old High Gallifreyan language on its surface, a message in an extinct language meant just for him. The message leads him to a set of coordinates in time and space where he has seconds to rescue River Song after she ejects herself from an airlock aboard the starship Byzantium – a ship she still wants to follow. When the TARDIS next materializes, it’s on an alien planet where the Byzantium has crashed, killing all aboard… all except for a lone Weeping Angel. The Doctor only has moments to bring Amy up to speed on the Angel’s deadly abilities, but it’s already wreaking havoc. And as the Doctor and Amy join River’s expedition to board the Byzantium and destroy the Angel, it soon becomes apparent that it is the expedition that’s outnumbered.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Adam Smith
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Alex Kingston (River Song), Simon Dutton (Alistair), Mike Skinner (Security Guard), Iain Glen (Octavian), Mark Springer (Christian), Troy Glasgow (Angelo), David Atkins (Bob), Darren Morfitt (Marco)

Time Of The AngelsNotes: River Song returns in this episode; Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead are still in her future, but have already happened for the Doctor (in his tenth incarnation). She has, however, seen pictures of all of the Doctor’s faces. The Weeping Angels make their first appearance since season 3’s Hugo-winning Blink; along with Silence / Forest, Blink was written by Steven Moffat as a freelance writer during Russell T. Davies’ tenure as showrunner. The Old High Gallifreyan language was first mentioned in 1983’s The Five Doctors; all of the Doctor’s incarnations have been fluent in it, and presumably he passed that knowledge along to River Song; even upon its first mention in 1983, it’s implied that the language had fallen into infrequent use even among the Time Lords themselves.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 05

Flesh And Stone

Doctor WhoSurrounded by an army of statues – decayed Angels who are reawakening and gathering strength from the leaking radiation of the Byzantium’s main drive – the Doctor has to take drastic measures to keep River Song, Amy and the rest of the expedition alive, and the Angels are never far behind. A crack appears in the wall of the Byzantium’s flight deck – the same crack seen in Amy’s childhood bedroom – and the Doctor suspects that something is going horribly wrong with time itself. Amy begins unconsciously counting down from ten aloud, and the Doctor discovers that she has looked into the eyes of a Weeping Angel long enough for the Angels to use Amy’s eyes to monitor the expedition’s movements; this mental link is also killing Amy slowly, and the Doctor has to ask her to close her eyes and keep them closed, cutting the Angels off from the information they need and prolonging her own life. River Song’s part in the expedition is revealed as well: she’s not the expedition’s leader, but a convicted killer (whose victim was the “best man” she’s ever known) taking on a dangerous assignment to win a pardon from her sentence. The expedition soldiers begin vanishing one by one, consumed by the ever-expanding crack, from which Amy instinctively knows they won’t be coming back. The Doctor fights to come up with a solution that will keep his friends and allies alive, and all the while, the army of Angels closes in…

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Adam Smith
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Alex Kingston (River Song), Iain Glen (Octavian), David Atkins (Bob), Darren Morfitt (Marco), Mark Monero (Pedro), George Russo (Phillip)

Notes: River Song mentions that the Doctor will next see her “when the Pandorica opens” – an event that has already happened in her timeline.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 06

The God Complex

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Amy and Rory to a chintzy hotel, but their destination suddenly seems less relaxing when three people – two humans and one alien – burst into the hotel lounge with warnings about the hotel. No one who goes into a room alone comes out the same – those who survive chant “Praise him” and eventually meet a horrible fate. A monster stalks the halls, seeking its next victim and their worship. The surviving hotel guests warn that to go into a room alone invites one’s worst fears to appear all at once, but what nightmares await time travelers who have survived the worst horrors the universe has to offer… and who demands their praise?

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Toby Whithouse
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Sarah Quintrell (Lucy Hayward), Amara Karan (Rita), Dimitri Leonidas (Howie Spragg), Daniel Pirrie (Joe Buchanan), David Walliams (Gibbis), Dafydd Emyh (P.E. Teacher), Spencer Wilding (The Creature), Rashid Karapiet (Rita’s Father), Caitlin Blackwood (Amelia Pond), Roger Ennals (Gorilla)

Doctor WhoNotes: David Walliams is either making his first or second Doctor Who appearance, depending on how you look at it; he starred alongside writer/actor Mark Gatiss in The Web Of Caves, a spoof of Hartnell-era Who that Walliams co-wrote with Gatiss for BBC2’s Doctor Who Night in 1999. That same year, he and Gatiss also appeared in Gatiss’ first Doctor Who script for Big Finish Productions, Phantasmagoria (the second story produced in Big Finish’s long series of audio plays based on the Doctor’s previous incarnations). With comedy partner Matt Lucas, Walliams is best known as one of the creators and stars of Little Britain.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Angels Take Manhattan

Doctor WhoA visit to modern-day New York City takes an unexpected twist. While Rory goes for lunch, the Doctor and Amy realize that the mystery novel that the Doctor is reading was, in fact, written by River Song, and describes Rory’s sudden abduction through time into the 1920s. The Doctor and Amy follow, discovering that River has become embroiled in shady dealings with a sinister collector of statues who happen to be Weeping Angels. Even the Statue of Liberty stalks the streets of New York at night. After escaping their immediate predicament, they find Rory – in his 80s, dying in a hotel room – even though they’ve rescued the younger Rory. It seems that he is fated to die, the temporal energy from his time travels feeding the Angels of New York. Amy and Rory take drastic steps – and, the Doctor warns, very ill-advised ones – to end the Angels’ reign by creating a dangerous paradox in their personal history. But this time, even the Time Lord can’t help his friends escape their inevitable fate.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Alex Kingston (River Song), Mike McShane (Grayle), Rob David (Sam Garner), Bently Kalu (Hood), Doctor WhoOzzie Yue (Foreman), Burnell Tucker (Old Garner), Zac Fox (Photoshoot PA)

Notes: This episode, featuring the long-anticipated, heavily-hyped exit of Rory and Amy, is the end of “Series 7A” (a term coined by the production team; following the Christmas episode, the remainder of the season aired in 2013). Location filming was done in New York, the second time a Doctor Who film crew, complete with the show’s stars, has filmed on location in the United States.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green