History Recap / DoctorWhoS31E04TheTimeOfAngels

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Time_of_the_Angels_3470.jpg]]

->''What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if, one day, our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us: [[TitleDrop the time of Angels]].''

In the 51st Century, [[TimeyWimeyBall Not-Yet-Professor]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E8SilenceInTheLibrary River Song]] carves a message in Old High Gallifreyan onto the "home box" (like a black box) of a starliner, the ''Byzantium''. 12,000 years later the Doctor and Amy come across the message while the Doctor’s 'touring' a museum, "keeping score" by laughing at all the mistakes on the plaques and noting the bits he’s been involved in. It says [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Hello, sweetie"]]. (Although Amy can't read the ancient Gallifreyan it's written in, which will be important later.) They run off with it, and after watching [[TimeyWimeyBall what's happening to River at this exact moment 12,000 years ago]], they travel back just in time to catch River as she [[ThrownOutTheAirlock ejects herself from the starliner via the airlock]]. Before she leaves the ship, she offers those on-board a warning that there’s something in the hold that will make sure the ship never reaches its destination.

To Amy’s curiosity and the Doctor’s slight resentment, River takes control of the TARDIS, having "had lessons from the very best. ". [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler The Doctor was busy that day.]] The team follows the Byzantium to where it has landed -- or, more accurately, crashed. Specifically, on top of an ancient, abandoned temple built on Alfava Metraxis. Not long after they’ve arrived, River is joined by a team of clerics, a [[ChurchMilitant military off-shoot of the Church]] led by a bishop, Father Octavian. They're hunting the creature that caused the ship to crash -- [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E10Blink a Weeping Angel]]. River has promised the Doctor’s help in catching it, as it appears to have escaped into [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "The Maze Of The Dead"]], the catacombs underneath the temple. Also, Amy quickly figures out that River has just ''got'' to be [[ShipTease the Doctor's wife]]. The Doctor honestly doesn't know, and River delights in keeping the answer a secret.

As the clerics work on breaking into the temple, the Doctor and friends work on decoding the mystery of the Angels with a four-second clip of the Angel in the Byzantium. They also use an old Alfava text which, ominously, does not include any images of the Angels. The Doctor and River eventually realise that the text is trying to tell them that any image of the Angels essentially ''becomes'' an Angel, and is imbued with the qualities that make them so dangerous. Something that Amy is well ahead of them in discovering, having become trapped in the room with the recording of the Angel, which is gradually coming out of the screen towards her. Amy manages to defeat it by stopping the looped recording at the exact point where the image of the Angel is glitched out, but not before she looks into the Angel’s eyes despite the Doctor’s instructions. As the clerics manage to access the temple, Amy complains of something in her eye...

It just so happens that the catacombs are filled with statues, amongst which the Angel is hiding. The Doctor begins to explore, Octavian is cryptic, River has a dark secret and the clerics investigating the one clear exit from the catacombs are gradually picked off by the Weeping Angel (as in [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness killed]], even though the Angels only used to send their victim back in time). Also, Amy feels sand pouring out of her eye.

As the party investigates deeper into the temple, the Doctor and River [[FridgeHorror realise something terrible which has been staring them in the face all this time]] -- the Aplans were two-headed beings, whereas the statues in the Maze of the Dead are all humanoid. They’re ''all'' Angels, emaciated and weakened from centuries underground. But the radiation from the crashed ship is giving them strength and reviving them, exactly what the Angel on board had intended. The Doctor has unwittingly led everyone into danger. At the same time, the voice of a dead cleric with whom the Doctor had previously connected appears on the radio to warn them; the Angels are hunting them down. As they escape, Amy's hand suddenly turns to stone, trapping her by holding on to something. Refusing to leave her despite her pleas, the Doctor tells Amy that it’s just the Angel messing with her head... and convinces her by biting her hand. She’s less than grateful.

Finding themselves directly under the hull of the Byzantium, the party’s torches are failing as the Angels continue to draw power and grow stronger. The Angels appear over the radio to taunt the Doctor for failing them all, hoping to make him angry. Unfortunately for them, it seems to work -- after asking everyone whether they trust him, the Doctor grabs a gun from Octavian and aims it at the gravity well, warning the Angels that they’ve made a mistake, because there’s one thing that should never, ever be put in a trap:

“''[[BadassBoast Me.]]''”

Bang. The Doctor shoots the gravity globe. Cut to credits.

To be continued in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E05FleshAndStone Flesh and Stone]]".

----
!!Tropes

* ActionPrologue: River Song aboard the ''Byzantium''.
* ActionizedSequel: Moffat described this as ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' to the ''Alien'' of "Blink".
* ActorAllusion: Karen Gillan's previous role on Doctor Who, "The Fires of Pompeii", also involved people turning into stone (including the small part she played) albeit for a different reason.
* [[AerithAndBob Angelo And Bob]]
* AreWeThereYet
* BadassBoast: The Doctor does it so well:
--> "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: '''''Me'''''."
* BadassPreacher: Clerics and bishops in the future have changed into soldiers.
* BatmanGrabsAGun: And sets up the cliffhanger with it...
* BBCQuarry: The Maze of the Dead.
* BerserkButton: The Angels taunted the Doctor.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Played twice as straight. The Angel's first kills (apart from everyone onboard the crashed ship) are two black clerics.]]
* BodyHorror: Amy has dust pour out of her eye, imagines her arm is stone and may well be turning into one of the Angels.
* BuffySpeak: "They're blue... boring-ers!"
* CallBack: Moffat does several nods to his previous episodes; besides the obvious Angels and River, there's people's voices being recorded and played back by the thing that killed them à la the Vashta Nerada.
** The Bishop appears to refer specifically to the devices in the latter episode that preserve a part of a person's consciousness, suggesting the dead troops can still be 'rescued' by that means.
** Apparently it's not just archaeologists; the Doctor points and laughs at museums too.
** And speaking of the museum, the Doctor seems to keep running into River in the vicinity of the universe's largest storehouses of knowledge.
* ChurchMilitant: The Bishop, along with Sacred Bob, Angelo, Christian and crew.
** Subverted in that they're a very nice group of soldiers -- no KnightTemplar behaviour at all.
** Their armbands, white cross on maroon field, mark them as the Knights of Malta.
* [[ColonelBadass Colonel ]][[BadassPreacher Bishop Badass:]] Bishop Octavian, natch!
* CommercialPopUp: Those fans watching on Creator/{{BBC}}1 in many regions were [[SarcasmMode uniformly delighted]] to be presented with [[MoodWhiplash a brightly-coloured animated banner complete with a caricature of Graham Norton]] for yet another talent show. ''During the cliffhanger.'' They might as well "[[CharlieBrooker just wipe s*** all over the screen during the final scene of Dr. Who next week]]".
** It's the second time Graham Norton has turned up in ''Series/DoctorWho'' when he's not wanted, the first time being some wire mix-up leaking sound from [=BBC3=] during "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E1Rose Rose]]".
** Creator/TheBBC [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8643684.stm reported]] the incident (which attracted ''thousands'' of complaints) as "Doctor Who fans want Graham Norton Ex-ter-min-ate-d!"
** Norton [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnpZS_54uoA later engaged]] in some SelfDeprecation for the incident.
* ContinuityNod: Amy's costume is almost identical to Emma's in the 1999 Comic Relief story "The Curse of Fatal Death" (which Creator/StevenMoffat also wrote). Both stories are set in ancient stone buildings built by now-extinct alien races with plot-relevant weird biology.
** The gravity globe is reused from The Satan Pit.
** The "Crash of the ''Byzantium''" is one of the future events that River alludes to in passing in "Silence in the Library".
** In some Eighties serials (including "Battlefield" and the original cut of "The Five Doctors") when the TARDIS lands, all that is heard inside is a chime. In this episode, when River lands the TARDIS without using the brakes, there's a very similar chime.
** River's message to the Doctor contains the letters "Theta Sigma", his old Academy nickname.
* DeadlyGaze: Looking a Weeping Angel in the eye, even when it's in statue form, is enough for it to gain a foothold in your mind.
* DrivesLikeCrazy: The Doctor leaves the TARDIS brakes on when landing, and calls the blue stabilisers "blue boringers".
* DruggedLipstick: River's break-in in the very beginning.
* EldritchAbomination: The Angels were already bad news in their original appearance; here it's explained that they can survive for centuries without sustenance, they eat all forms of energy, they're strong enough to snap necks with ease, they can materialise out of television images of themselves, they can ''steal your voice'' and, oh, yeah, the one way to stay ahead of them, by keeping a steady eye on them, backfires too if you stare them in the eye too long, since then they get inside your head!
** The prophecy (mentioned at the top of the page) implies that the angels are, in fact, ''sapient ideas''. Which makes sense, since perception is so important to their existence.
* EnforcedMethodActing: Apparently Creator/MattSmith actually bit Creator/KarenGillan's hand on several takes to provoke a proper reaction.
-->'''Karen''': The Doctor bites my arm, and I’m not really sure how we’re going to do that. Is he actually going to do it?
-->''[[[IronicEchoCut cut to Matt Smith grinning broadly]]]''
-->'''[[CrazyAwesome Matt]]''': ''Absolutely'' I’m going to bite her arm! Yeah, for sure!
* EverybodyLives: Subverted; this is an episode where you don't expect someone to die on screen (the Angels just send you back in time, not kill you), especially as it's a Steven Moffat episode. Explicit body count? Seven: Alistair and the three known ''Byzantium'' crew in the crash; and Bob, Angelo and Christian, of a quick snap of the neck. And that's to say nothing of the people who were retroactively erased from existence.
** The neck-snaps are horrifying in their own way: obviously, you'd never be able to ''show'' something like that in ''Doctor Who'''s time-slot, but you get a fleeting shot of a Weeping Angel that [[GoryDiscretionShot cuts to black]] [[SoundOnlyDeath and a crunching noise]].
* FailedASpotCheck: The Doctor and River fail to notice the discrepancies between the statues the Aplans supposedly left and the physical attributes of the Aplans until it's just a bit too late.
* FantasticAesop: The Church's opposition to the Aplans' "same-person marriage" would appear to be one about gay marriage, but this is then subverted/played for laughs when Amy points out that they do have a point - the divorces would be ''messy''.
* FauxAffablyEvil: Angel Bob is unfailingly polite. It's explicitly stated to be doing this just to anger the Doctor, though if you didn't know that, it almost comes across as the angel being InnocentlyInsensitive.
* FeeFiFauxPas:
-->'''Doctor:''' I mean what's all that about? But then that's the church for you! No offence... bishop.
-->'''Bishop:''' Quite a lot taken, if that's all right, Doctor.
* [[FollowThatCar Follow That Ship]]!
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Sacred Bob shoots a statue which he says he thought looked at him. He's promptly told off for panicking and shooting at the décor. Of course we later find out that all these statues ''are'' Angels.
* FreezeFrameBonus: When the Doctor's keying in the co-ordinates, you can see that there's a red [[AC: panic]] button on his keyboard.
** If you look closer, there's a green one just below it that says [[AC: smith]].
* HaveWeMetYet: River has a diary and photos of all the Doctor's faces just to find out where she is in his timeline. She's pleasantly surprised, however, to learn she'll be a professor one day.
** The last time we saw River, she asked the Doctor if they'd done the crash of the Byzantium yet.
* HilariousInHindsight: The Doctor's offhand comment about being on Virginia Woolf's bowling team becomes much more of a howler after you see Matt and Company participate in a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQfvLpfXe2U celebrity bowling contest,]] especially since Matt Smith is an absolutely ''horrible'' bowler.
* ILied: River gives Amy an immune booster, promising that it "won't hurt a bit". She follows Amy's complaint with this, word for word.
* IMeantToDoThat: When River Song manages to pilot the TARDIS better than he does, pointing out several features he didn't know about, the Doctor insists that it's better the way he does it because it's more interesting, in a tone that clearly suggests he had no idea it could do that.
--> '''Doctor''': It didn't make that noise (when it landed), you know like, ''(imitates TARDIS' engine)''
--> '''River''': ''That's'' because the brake was on.
--> '''Doctor''': ''[[{{Beat}} (pause)]]'' Well, I like it.
* ImminentDangerClue: The ancient ruins they're in were from a culture where the population had two heads, but nobody notices for a while that all the "statues" have only one head each.
* ItCanThink: In "Blink" the Angels are predators that sneak up when you're not looking and leave you stranded elsewhere in time. Here, they work together to lay traps, break necks and steal voices as bait. [[FromBadToWorse Gets worse in the second part]].
* ItWontTurnOff: This happens to the video recording of the Weeping Angel.
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: When River is caught snooping about at the beginning: "Wait until she starts running. Don't make it look like an execution".
* MeanwhileInTheFuture: The opening sequence.
* {{Metaphorgotten}}:
-->'''River''': A needle in a haystack.\\
'''Doctor''': A needle that looks like hay. A hay-like needle of death. A hay-like needle of death in a haystack... of statues. No, yours was fine.
* MistakenForGranite: All the ''other'' Angels.
* MoodWhiplash: We go straight from a humorous scene with BizarreAlienBiology jokes about the Aplans having two heads... to the Doctor's realisation that the statues ''don't''. OhCrap indeed.
* MostWonderfulSound: the TARDIS' *rnnnnnt* or *vworp* is explained by River as the Doctor leaving the brakes on; normally, it lands silently. However, the Doctor claims that he keeps the brakes on specifically to hear it. [[invoked]]
--> '''Doctor''': Yeah, well, it's a brilliant noise. I love that noise.
* MultipleHeadCase: The Aplans, according to the Doctor:
-->'''Doctor:''' Very relaxed, sort of cheerful. That's from having two heads. You're never short of a snog with an extra head. ''[...]'' Then they started having laws against self-marrying and what was that about? But that's the church for you. Uh, no offence, Bishop.''[...]''\\
'''Amy Pond:''' Church had a point, if you think about it. The divorces must have been ''messy''.
* NeverGiveTheCaptainAStraightAnswer: The Weeping Angel uses this trope (and Christian and Angelo's voices) to lure Angelo and Bob to their deaths. The victims comment on how annoying it is, but give in after continued nagging.
* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: In "Blink", the Angels' MO and abilities were fairly straightforward. In this outing they get a whole raft of new powers that were never mentioned before. Possibly excused by RuleOfScary, though.
** It's HandWaved that the Angels in "Blink" were starving and possibly dying, hence their reduced abilities.
* NoEyeInMagic: Bad things happen if you let an Angel look you in the eye for too long. Which is a problem, [[MortonsFork because bad things also happen if you look away from an Angel]].
* NoodleIncident: It's implied that the Doctor and River have met a few more times between "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E9ForestOfTheDead Forest of the Dead]]" and this episode.
* OddNameOut: Octavian, Christian, Angelo, and Bob. Sacred, Scared, Angelic Bob.
* OhCrap: "Just something in my eye..."
** The Doctor and River realising the statues have one less head than they're supposed to have.
--> '''Doctor:''' Oh...
--> '''Amy:''' What's wrong?
--> '''River Song:''' Oh.
--> '''Doctor:''' Exactly.
--> '''River Song:''' How could we not notice that?
** And the Doctor after realising that which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel.
* PoorCommunicationKills: Amy, would it really bother you to tell the Doctor or River about that stuff in your eye?
*** The eye thing may be possibly justified, however, as the angel in her mind has some influence over her. In the second part of the episode, ''Flesh and Stone'' the angel makes her not want to shut her eyes, and she has to fight it, so it's entirely possible that the angel influences her to just ignore or forget the stuff coming out of her mind.
* PreMortemOneLiner: "[[VerbThis Hold this!]]" says Amy, right before the [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative television record for most epic use of a pause button.]]
* PostKissCatatonia: The episode begins with a guard suffering from this, albeit enhanced by the hallucinogenic lipstick.
* {{Reconstruction}}: In ''Blink'' the characters literally have a staring contest with the Angels. In this episode, during Amy's first encounter with the Angels, she's seen [[GenreSavvy winking one eye at a time]]. However, it turns out that looking at an Angel (especially [[NoEyeInMagic in the eyes]]) is still a bad thing.
* RushedInvertedReading: Amy and River discuss the Doctor while he scans the room with an electronic gadget. River accuses the Doctor of eavesdropping, he protests his innocence and she points out that he's holding the gadget upside down.
* SceneryGorn: The shot of the ''Byzantium'' crashed into the temple is rather spectacular.
* ScrewYourself: This was apparently a problem with the two-headed Aplan race, which commonly made out with themselves and even self-married before the Church stepped in.
* SchmuckBait: "Come and see this!"[[note]]http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Time_of_Angels_8637.jpg Whoops[[/note]]
* ShoutOut: Let's see, there's [[Franchise/StarTrek warp drives, a Galaxy Class starship]], [[TheRing Angels coming out of TV screens]] and [[Franchise/{{Predator}} Angels using the voices of their victims to lure in more victims]].
** And [[ASpaceOdyssey River throws herself out of the Byzantium to get into the TARDIS]].
** Also a ChurchMilitant group in a sci-fi setting? Using dropships? With names like Octavian? Exterminating an amoral alien menace to humanity with extreme prejudice? After all it's the Fifty-First Century and the church has moved on. [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} In the Fifty-First Century there is only war.]]
** "[[Series/CharliesAngels Hello, Angels]]."
** Possible oblique one to the Book of Revelation, or at least the King James Version, with the angels saying "Come and see". The Four Horsemen said that to John, and some equate the horsemen with the archangels Gabriel, Michael, Uriel and Raphael.
* SuggestiveCollision: The Doctor and River upon River entering the TARDIS.
* {{Technobabble}}: Played with.
-->'''River Song:''' How could we miss that?
-->'''The Doctor:''' Low-level perception filter, or maybe we're thick.
* TemptingFate: "All right, five minutes! But I'm telling you right now, that woman isn't going to drag me into anything!"
* TelevisionPortal: "That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel."
* TimeyWimeyBall: Once again, River Song has this effect on the Doctor's life.
* TitleDrop: Right in the trailer.
* ThrownOutTheAirlock: River airlocks herself to escape the ''Byzantium''... right into the TARDIS.
** For added points, she does that on the off-chance that the Doctor will find her message thousands of years later, and travel back in time to catch her.
* TheVirus: That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel. Including humans, if they look an Angel in the eye.
* WhamLine: "I didn't escape, sir. The angel killed me too."
** "[The Aplans have two heads] ''So why don't the statues?''"
** ''That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel''
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic?: invoked with the Church members, who take their own names and naturally have names like Angelo, Christian [[OddNameOut and Bob]].
** '''Sacred''' Bob, mind you!
* WomanInBlack: River.
* TheXOfY
* YourMindMakesItReal: Amy believes her hand is stone, thus it is stone. The Doctor therefore bites her hand to make her aware of it.
----

* CommercialPopUp: Those fans watching on BBC1 in many regions were [[SarcasmMode uniformly delighted]] to be presented with [[MoodWhiplash a brightly-coloured animated banner complete with a caricature of Graham Norton]] for yet another talent show. ''During the cliffhanger.'' They might as well "[[CharlieBrooker just wipe s*** all over the screen during the final scene of Dr. Who next week]]".

** TheBBC [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8643684.stm reported]] the incident (which attracted ''thousands'' of complaints) as "Doctor Who fans want Graham Norton Ex-ter-min-ate-d!"

** In the beginning of the episode, the Doctor makes an off-hand remark about the museum being the final resting place of the [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar Headless Monks]].

** "[[CharliesAngels Hello, Angels]]."

A light-producing "gravity globe" activated inside the catacombs reveals a disconcertingly large amount of statues, amongst which the Angel is hiding. The Doctor begins to explore, and Octavian and River have a conversation revealing that they’re keeping something from him, involving a spell in prison on River’s part which could conceivably prevent the Doctor from helping them. Meanwhile, a group of clerics investigating the one clear exit from the catacombs is being gradually picked off by the Weeping Angel, all after being summoned over the radio by their colleagues and having their necks snapped. And Amy’s problems with her eye begin to increase when, after rubbing it, she feels sand pouring out.

* [[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score". It's not revealed for another whole series that [[spoiler:River is Amy's daughter]].

* [[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score". It's not revealed for another whole series that River is Amy's daughter.

* ContinuityNod: Amy's costume is almost identical to Emma's in the 1999 Comic Relief story "The Curse of Fatal Death" (which StevenMoffat also wrote). Both stories are set in ancient stone buildings built by now-extinct alien races with plot-relevant weird biology.

* [[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: [[spoiler:River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score". It's not revealed for another whole series that River is Amy's daughter.]]

* EnforcedMethodActing: Apparently MattSmith actually bit KarenGillan's hand on several takes to provoke a proper reaction.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Angel Bob is unfailingly polite. It's explicitly stated to be doing this just to anger the Doctor, though if you didn't know that, it almost comes across the angel as being InnocentlyInsensitive.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Angel Bob is unfailingly polite. It's explicitly stated to be doing this just to anger the Doctor.

* [[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score". It's not revealed for another whole series that River is Amy's daughter.

* Reconstruction: In ''Blink'' the characters literally have a staring contest with the Angels. In this episode, during Amy's first encounter with the Angels, she's seen [[GenreSavvy winking one eye at a time]]. However, it turns out that looking at an Angel (especially [[NoEyeInMagic in the eyes]]) is still a bad thing.

In the 51st Century, [[TimeyWimeyBall Not-Yet-Professor]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E8SilenceInTheLibrary River Song]] carves a message in Old High Gallifreyan onto the "home box" (like a black box) of a starliner, the ''Byzantium''. 12,000 years later, the Doctor and Amy come across the message while the Doctor’s 'touring' a museum, "keeping score" by laughing at all the mistakes on the plaques and noting the bits he’s been involved in. It says [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Hello, sweetie"]]. (Although Amy can't read the ancient Gallifreyan it's written in, which will be important later.) They run off with it, and after watching [[TimeyWimeyBall what's happening to River at this exact moment 12,000 years ago]], they travel back just in time to catch River as she [[ThrownOutTheAirlock ejects herself from the starliner via the airlock]]. She offers a warning that there’s something in the hold that will make sure the ship never reaches its destination.

Much to Amy’s curiosity and the Doctor’s resentment, River takes control of the TARDIS. She learned how to pilot it from the best pilot there is. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler The Doctor was busy that day.]] The team follows the Byzantium to where it has landed -- or, more accurately, crashed. Specifically, on top of an ancient, abandoned temple built on Alfava Metraxis. Not long after they’ve arrived, River is joined by a team of "clerics", a [[ChurchMilitant military off-shoot of the Church]] led by a "bishop", Father Octavian. They're hunting the creature that caused the ship to crash -- [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E10Blink a Weeping Angel]]. River has promised the Doctor’s help in catching it, as it appears to have escaped into [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "The Maze Of The Dead"]], the catacombs underneath the temple. Also, Amy quickly figures out that River has just ''got'' to be [[ShipTease the Doctor's wife]]. The Doctor honestly doesn't know, and River delights in keeping the answer a secret.

As the clerics work on breaking into the temple, the Doctor and friends work on decoding the mystery of the Angels with a four-second clip of the Angel in the Byzantium. They also use an old Alfava text which, ominously, does not include any images of the Angels. The Doctor and River eventually realize that the text is trying to tell them that any image of the Angels essentially ''becomes'' an Angel, and is imbued with the qualities that make them so dangerous. Something that Amy is well ahead of them in discovering, having become trapped in the room with the recording of the Angel, which is gradually coming out of the screen towards her. Amy manages to defeat it by stopping the looped recording at the exact point where the image of the Angel is glitched out, but not before she looks into the Angel’s eyes despite the Doctor’s instructions. As the clerics manage to access the temple, Amy complains of something in her eye...

A light-producing "gravity globe" activated inside the catacombs reveals a disconcertingly large amount of statues, which the Angel is hiding amongst. The Doctor begins to explore, and Octavian and River have a conversation revealing that they’re keeping something from him, something involving a spell in prison on River’s part which could conceivably prevent the Doctor from helping them. Meanwhile, a group of clerics investigating the one clear exit from the catacombs are being gradually picked off by the Weeping Angel, all after being summoned over the radio by their apparently dead colleagues and having their necks snapped. And Amy’s problems with her eye begin to increase when, after rubbing it, she feels sand pouring out.

As the party investigates deeper into the temple, the Doctor and River [[FridgeHorror realize something terrible which has been staring them in the face all this time]] -- the Aplans were two-headed beings, whereas the statues in the Maze of the Dead are all one-headed. They’re ''all'' Angels, emaciated and weakened from centuries underground. But the radiation from the crashed ship is giving them strength and reviving them, exactly what the Angel on board had intended. The Doctor has led everyone into a trap. At the same time, the voice of a dead cleric the Doctor had previously connected with appears on the radio to warn them; the Angels are hunting them down. As they escape, Amy reveals to the Doctor that she looked into the eyes of the Angel when her hand suddenly turns to stone, trapping her. Refusing to leave Amy despite her pleas, the Doctor convinces her that it’s just the Angel messing with her head... by biting her hand. She’s less than grateful.

* BadassPreacher: Apparently clerics and bishops in the future have changed into soldiers.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Played twice as straight. The Angel's first kills are two black clerics.]]
* BodyHorror: Amy has stone pour out of her eye, imagines her arm is stone, and may well be turning into one of the Angels.

* EldritchAbomination: The Angels were already bad news in their original appearance; here it's explained that they can survive for centuries without sustenance, they eat all forms of energy, they're strong enough to snap necks with ease, they can materialise out of television images of themselves, they can ''steal your voice'' and, oh, yeah, the one way to stay ahead of them, by keeping a steady eye on them? That backfires too if you stare them in the eye too long, since then they get inside your head!

** The neck-snaps are horrifying in their own way: obviously, you'd never be able to ''show'' something like that in ''Doctor Who'''s time-slot, but you get a fleeting shot of a Weeping Angel that [[GoryDiscretionShot cuts to black]] [[SoundOnlyDeath and a snapping noise]].

-->'''Bishop:''' Quite a lot taken if that's all right, Doctor.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Sacred Bob shoots a statue that he claims turned and looked at him. He's promptly told off for panicking and shooting at the décor. Of course we later find out that all these statues ''are'' Angels.

* HaveWeMetYet: River has a diary and photos of all the Doctor's faces just to find out where she is in his timeline. She's actually surprised, however, to learn she'll be a Professor one day.

* ItCanThink: In "Blink", the Angels are predators that sneak up when you're not looking and leave you stranded elsewhere in time. Here, they work together to lay traps, break necks and steal voices as bait. [[FromBadToWorse Gets worse in the second part]].

** Although it's HandWaved that the Angels in "Blink" were starving and possibly dying, hence their reduced abilities.

*** The eye thing may be possibly justified, however, as the angel in her mind has some influence over her mind. In the second part of the episode, ''Flesh and Stone'' the angel makes her not want to shut her eyes, and she has to fight it, so it's entirely possible that the angel influences her to just ignore or forget the stuff coming out of her mind.

* RushedInvertedReading: Amy and River discuss the Doctor, while he scans the room with an electronic gadget. River accuses the Doctor of eavesdropping, he protests his innocence and she points out that he's holding the gadget upside down.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic?: invoked with the Church members, who take their own names and naturally have names like Angelo and Christian. [[OddNameOut And Bob]].

** Justified: they're catacombs.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Played twice as straight. [[spoiler:The Angel's first kills are two black clerics.]]
* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Amy has stone pour out of her eye, imagines her arm is stone, and may well be turning into one of the Angels.]]

* FauxAffablyEvil: Angel [[spoiler:Bob]] is unfailingly polite. It's explicitly stated to be doing this just to anger the Doctor.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Sacred Bob shoots a statue that he claims turned and looked at him. He's promptly told off for panicking and shooting at the décor. [[spoiler: Of course we later find out that all these statues ''are'' Angels.]]

* HeyItsThatGuy: He's hard to recognize visually wearing the helmet the whole episode, but if Octavious's voice have you wondering where you've heard it before, Iain Glen went on to play Jorah Mormont on ''Series/GameOfThrones''.

* IdiotBall: See PoorCommunicationKills.

* ImminentDangerClue: The ancient ruins they're in were from a culture where the population [[spoiler:had two heads]], but nobody notices for a while that [[spoiler:all the "statues" have only one head each]].
* ItCanThink: In "Blink", the Angels are predators that sneak up when you're not looking and leave you stranded elsewhere in time. Here, they work together to lay traps, [[spoiler:break necks and steal voices as bait]]. [[FromBadToWorse Gets worse in the second part]].

* ''(spoiler for the following series)'' [[spoiler:[[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score". It's not revealed for another whole series that River is Amy's daughter.]]

* MistakenForGranite: [[spoiler:All the ''other'' Angels.]]
* MoodWhiplash: We go straight from a humorous scene with BizarreAlienBiology jokes about the Aplans having two heads... to the Doctor's realisation that [[spoiler:the statues ''don't'']]. OhCrap indeed.
* MortonsFork: Look away from the Angel, or blink? It breaks your neck. Stare at the Angel too long? Your mind retains the image of the Angel [[spoiler: which then becomes ''another'' Angel]].
** Actually, it is staring into the Angel's ''eyes'' that results in this. Consequently the Doctor tells Amy to keep looking at the Angel, but not at its eyes.

* OddNameOut: Octavian, Christian, Angelo, and Bob. Sacred, Scared, [[spoiler: Angelic]] Bob.

** The Doctor and River realising the statues have [[spoiler:one less head than they're supposed to have]].

** And the Doctor after realising [[spoiler:that which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel]].

* ShoutOut: Let's see, there's [[Franchise/StarTrek warp drives, a Galaxy Class starship]], [[spoiler: [[TheRing Angels coming out of TV screens]] and [[Franchise/{{Predator}} Angels using the voices of their victims to lure in more victims]].]]

* TelevisionPortal: [[spoiler:"That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel."]]

* TimeyWimeyBall: Once again, River Song has this effect on the Doctor's life.
* ThrowItIn: In the spaceship, the Doctor is fiddling with a strap and it comes off in his hand. The first time that happened, it was an accident (Smith kept on going, but Gillan and Kingston [[{{Corpsing}} corpsed]]), but the production crew decided to keep it and had him do it again in subsequent takes. (Even in the scene that made it into the episode, you can see Karen flinch.)

* TheVirus: [[spoiler:That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel. Including humans, if they look an Angel in the eye.]]
* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"I didn't escape, sir. The angel killed me too."]]
** [[spoiler:"[The Aplans have two heads] ''So why don't the statues?''"]]
** [[spoiler: ''That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel'']]

* ActorAllusion: Karen Gillan's previous role on Doctor Who, "The Fires of Pompeii", also involved people turning into stone (including the extra Karen Gillian played) albeit for a different reason.

* CallBack: Moffat does a bunch of nods to his previous episodes; besides the obvious Angels and River, there's people's voices being recorded and played back by the thing that killed them a la the Vashta Nerada.

** Subverted in that they're a very nice group of soldiers--no KnightTemplar behavior at all.

** River's message to the Doctor contains the letters "Theta Sigma" his old Academy nickname.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: The Doctor leaves the TARDIS brakes on when landing, and calls the blue stabilizers "blue boringers".

* EldritchAbomination: The Angels were already bad news in their original appearance, here it's explained that they can survive for centuries without sustenance, they eat all forms of energy, they're strong enough to snap necks with ease, they can materialize out of television images of themselves, they can ''steal your voice'', and, oh, yeah, the one way to stay ahead of them, by keeping a steady eye on them? That backfires too if you stare them in the eye too long, since then they get inside your head!

-->'''[[CrazyAwesome Matt]]''': ''Absolutely I''’m going to bite her arm! Yeah, for sure!
* EverybodyLives: Subverted; this is an episode where you don't expect someone to die on screen (the Angels just send you back in time, not kill you), especially as it's a Steven Moffat episode. Explicit body count? Seven: Alistair and the three known ''Byzantium'' crew in the crash; and Bob, Angelo, and Christian, of a quick snap of the neck. And that's to say nothing of the people who were retroactively erased from existence.
** The neck-snaps are horrifying in their own way: obviously, you'd never be able to ''show'' something like that in ''Doctor Who'''s time-slot, but you get a fleeting shot of a Weeping Angel that [[GoryDiscretionShot cuts to black]] [[SoundOnlyDeath and a snapping noise]]
* FailedASpotCheck: The doctor and River fail to notice the discrepancies between the statues the Aplans supposedly left and the physical attributes of the Aplans until it's just a bit too late.

-->'''Doctor:''' I mean what's all that about? But then that's the church for you! ... No offence ... bishop.
-->'''Bishop:''' Quite a lot taken if that's alright, Doctor.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Sacred Bob shoots a statue that he claims turned and looked at him. He's promptly told off for panicking and shooting at the decor. [[spoiler: Of course we later find out that all these statues ''are'' Angels.]]

* FreezeFrameBonus: When the Doctor's keying in the coordinates, you can see that there's a red [[AC: panic]] button on his keyboard.

* HaveWeMetYet: River has a spotter's guide and a diary just to find out where she is in the Doctor's timeline. She's actually surprised, however, to learn she'll be a Professor one day.

--> '''Doctor''': It didn't make that noise (when it landed), you know like, ''(imitates Tardis' engine)''

* ''(spoiler for the following season)'' [[spoiler:[[LikeFatherLikeSon Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: River and Amy both say the Doctor goes to museums in order "to keep score." It's not revealed for another whole season that River is Amy's daughter.]]
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: When River is caught snooping about at the beginning: "Wait until she starts running. Don't make it look like an execution."

'''Doctor''': A needle that looks like hay. A haylike needle of death. A haylike needle of death in a haystack ... of statues. No, yours was fine.

* MoodWhiplash: We go straight from a humorous scene with BizarreAlienBiology jokes about the Aplans having two heads...to the Doctor's realisation that [[spoiler:the statues ''don't'']]. OhCrap indeed.

* MostWonderfulSound: the TARDIS' *rnnnnnt* or *vworp* is explained by River as the Doctor leaving the brakes on; normally, it lands silently. However, the Doctor keeps the brakes on specifically to hear it. [[invoked]]

-->'''Doctor:''' Very relaxed, sort of cheerful. That's from having two heads. You're never short of a snog with an extra head. ''[...]'' Then they started having laws against self-marrying and what was that about? But that's the church for you. Uh, no offense, Bishop.''[...]''\\

** The Doctor and River realizing the statues have [[spoiler:one less head than they're supposed to have]].

** And the Doctor after realizing [[spoiler:that which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel]].

** Or couldn't she just tell them that the angel image had moved?
*** The eye thing may be possibly justified, however, as the angel in her mind has some influence over her mind. In the second part of the episode, ''Flesh and Stone'' the angel makes her not want to shut her eyes, and she has to fight its influence, so it's entirely possible that the angel influences her to just ignore or forget the stuff coming out of her mind.

* RushedInvertedReading: Amy and River discuss the Doctor, while he scans the room with an electronic gadget. River accuses the Doctor of eavesdropping, he protests his innocence, and she points out that he's holding the gadget upside down.

* ShoutOut: Let's see, there's [[Franchise/StarTrek warp drives, a Galaxy Class starship]], [[spoiler: [[TheRing Angels coming out of TV screens]], and [[Franchise/{{Predator}} Angels using the voices of their victims to lure in more victims]].]]
** And [[ASpaceOdyssey River throws herself out of the Byzantium to get into the Tardis]].

** Possible oblique one to the Book of Revelation, or at least the King James Version, with the angels saying, "Come and see." The Four Horsemen said that to John, and some equate the horsemen with the archangels Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, and Raphael.

-->'''The Doctor:''' Low level perception filter, or maybe we're thick.
* TemptingFate: "Alright, five minutes! But I'm telling you right now, that woman isn't going to drag me into anything!"

* ActionizedSequel: Moffat described this as ''{{Aliens}}'' to the ''Alien'' of "Blink".

* AffablyEvil: Angel [[spoiler:Bob]] is unfailingly polite. It's explicitly stated to be doing this just to anger the Doctor.