New Who Review #64

The Time of Angels

This story was kinda dull. It's nice to have the angels back but they are so underutilised and so mythologised it's hard for me to get into it. In Blink they are barely even known but here they're mythological creatures and I hate it. Having river back is nice and this time the doctor knows her. Good speech from the doctor and the side characters were ok. Overall an ok episode that doesn't do much for me. 5/10

plays a song by the river

Rewatch (2025-04-10)

Is it sacrilege to say that I enjoy this two-parter more than Blink?

The Time of Angels is impactful in a different way if it is your first exposure to River Song and the Weeping Angels. When I started Doctor Who with Series 5, I was not aware that both River Song and the Weeping Angels had only appeared once previously on Doctor Who TV and I had imagined more interactions had occurred already. The mystery around River Song presented in The Time of Angels is intriguing enough, but it is more impactful if you have seen episodes of Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead already.

The additional abilities given to the Weeping Angels: “image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel” with their ability to possess someone who looks at them too long, makes this story and their threat more intense than their debut in Blink. But Blink is still fantastic. Also, the fact that the Weeping Angels are killing people in this episode rather than just sending them back in time to live out their lives in the past makes the danger more real.

It is shocking how one can easily be surprised by the reveal that all the statues are Angels when the Doctor casually mentions that the natives of the planet, Aplans, had two heads. Looking at the statues, one would correctly conclude that the single-head statues are not of the Aplans, but somehow, I was still surprised along with the Doctor and River by their epiphany about the statues. Guess I was subjected to the perception filter as well.