Now that might just be one of the best cliffhanger endings that Doctor Who has ever had. With a series where each episode is ending on a cliffhanger, especially ones that seem to be resolved relatively quickly and easily the next episode, I was beginning to worry that they'd start to become stale; but this episode seems to have really pulled out all the stops to deliver a dramatic conclusion that feels like something that's going to be hard to get a positive resolution from. But before we get to the end, the rest of the episode.
Picking up where the previous week's episode left off, a Weeping Angel has the Tardis within their control. As the Doctor and her companions cower in the corner, trying to keep the Angel within sight, it flips switches, uses the controls, and sends the Tardis through space and time to an unknown destination. Whilst the Doctor is able to get the Angel out of the ship they end up unable to use the Tardis for a while, so head out to explore exactly where the Angel brought them.
The where is a small English village in Devon, the when happens to be November 21st 1967. Upon exiting the Tardis the trio come across a couple looking for their missing 10-year-old niece, Peggy. Whilst Yaz and Dan help search for the missing girl the Doctor decides to investigate the strange readings she's detecting from one of the houses. You'd think by now they'd learn not to split the party.
As Dan and Yaz search through the local fields, searching for Peggy, they come across a Weeping Angel, cannily disguised as a scarecrow. This isn't the first time that we've seen the Angels make themselves look different, but their disguises usually end up being other types of statues; and whilst I suppose you could argue that a scarecrow is a very shoddily made statue, it's definitely a surprise to see them looking this way. We've hardly had time to deal with this, however, before the Angel is able to drain their torch and send the two of them back in time to 1901.
Searching through the same village, sixty years earlier, they're shocked to find Peggy there, who reveals to them that the Angels are in this time period too, and that they've made everyone else there vanish. Trying to find a way to escape the village, they learn that the whole place seems to have been removed from regular time, leaving no escape. Eventually they discover a portal back to 1967, though one that they're unable to pass through.
Meanwhile, the Doctor discovers the source of her strange readings is none-other than Claire, who we met briefly in the first episode of the season, who has been living in the 60's for the last couple of years. It turns out that she'd had psychic visions of the Doctor, the Angels, and the village, before she was sent back in time. She's been working with scientist Eustacious Jericho, played wonderfully by Kevin McNally, to try and learn more about her psychic abilities.
No sooner has the Doctor found Claire and Eustacious than the house comes under siege from dozens of Angels. The Doctor learns that there is an Angel inside Claire's mind, thanks to the psychic vision she had, and that the other Angels are trying to retrieve it. The Angel inside Claire reveals to the Doctor that it, and the others, work for Division, and that if the Doctor saves it they'll share with her the memories that she has lost. Thus begins a deadly mission to try and survive the Angels, one that leads to one of the most shocking moments in Doctor Who history.
Weeping Angels are some of the best creatures that Doctor Who has ever created. They're so simple in their concept that it feels shocking that it's never really been done before, and it's lead to some incredibly creative episodes featuring them. This isn't the first episode to have Angels in them since the Matt Smith era, but it is the first time that they've been the main threat of an episode since 'The Angels Take Manhattan', meaning that we've had nearly a decade without them as the big baddies. As such, there was going to be a lot riding on this episode.
Luckily, Chris Chibnall and Maxine Alderton, who wrote the episode, kept to the established rules of the Angels (for the most part at least). With each new episode featuring them the writers have brought in new rules for them, given them new powers to make them more dangerous, and had them try new tricks. This episode doesn't really do that, but does put new twists on these ideas. The Angels have disguised themselves as statues in the past, they look like scarecrows here. The Angels have gotten into people's minds in the past, one hides inside Claire here. An angel came out of a screen in the past, they come out of a screen and a drawing here. The episode adds new dimensions to the established lore without adding more rules or making them even more powerful; plus it does so in interesting ways such as the drawing Angel crumpling as the Doctor balls up the paper.
The biggest additions to the Angels, however, comes in two places. The first is the revelation that the Angels here work for the Division. Now, it's not made clear if that's all of the Weeping Angels, or just this particular grouping of them, so it's not revealing everything about them. It does certainly add more credible weight to the fan theories that the Angels have a connection to the Time Lords, however. The second new addition to their abilities comes with what they do at the end, skip to the next paragraph if you don't want a spoiler. The Angels summon the Doctor back to the Division, turning her into a Weeping Angel. There is a lot to unpack with this, and it's not clear what everything means as we don't know if this is how all the Angels were created, if this is something they themselves did to the Doctor, or if they simply activated some kind of fail-safe the Division put inside her. Hopefully these are answers we will get in the next few episodes, but so far there's still a lot of mystery around the whole thing.
Another highlight of the episode has been the guest cast. We get to see more of Annabel Scholey as Claire here, after her brief appearance in the first episode, and she plays the role really well as someone being pursued by the Angels. You get a sense that this has been something that she's been living with for a long while, that the Angels have been messing with her and interfering in her life. This episode revealed how she knew about the Doctor and the Angels in the first episode, and seems to have proven wrong a lot of fan theories online. I saw a number of people putting forward theories ranging from 'she sends herself a message from the past' to 'she's a version of the Doctor', and theories only got wilder when images of this episode were released and some folks convinced themselves she was either a Time Lord or Clara when she was holding her arm in a photo (they assumed she had just taken her own pulse and had either felt two heart betas, or none). The choice to simply be that the rogue Angel was sending her visions was perfect in its simplicity, and highlighted how complex and odd a lot of the fan theories get in the Doctor Who community.
The best of the guest actors has to be Kevin McNally as Professor Jericho though. he began the episode as an academic trying to research into the existence of psychic phenomena, balking at the idea of the Weeping Angels, to defiantly shouting them down as they assaulted his home. There were scenes in which he played the role with a quiet kindness, and others where you believed he was capable of standing up against these creatures without an ounce of fear. There have been some amazing guest actors in the Weeping Angels episodes, but McNally might be the best so far.
'Village of the Angels' was a definite stand out in a series that's shaping up to be some of the best stuff since the Chibnall era began. This is also the second time that writer Maxine Alderton has taken an existing Doctor Who monster and made them feel fresh and interesting, crafting a wonderfully creepy and dark episode. I don't know where the story is going to go from here, but it's definitely got a lot to try and deal with now thanks to the revelations this episode, and that amazing final scene.
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