If you're looking for nightmare-inducing, race-behind-the-sofa
Doctor Who,
Village of the Angels is certain to become a stone-cold (aha) classic. I'd been hoping that
Flux: Chapter Four would be a horror piece, given that its the only instalment of this series to be co-written by
Maxine Alderton - who wrote the the excellent
The Haunting of Villa Diodati last year, an episode that's only grown on me with time. It'd be easy to say that Alderton was responsible for the best aspects of the episode, but I think that's a disservice to
Chris Chibnall, who has given us two great episodes this season and one watchable bit of set-up. Which writer made it work? Perhaps it was the combination of the two.
During Steven Moffat's era I really started to feel as though the Weeping Angels were being overused. Their return in The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone was welcome, bar the moment when the lonely assassins moved on screen (for the first and only time). The Angels Take Manhattan felt like the rather lacklustre end to a trilogy, yet it was the cameos that really didn't help, appearing in The God Complex, The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent. Thus, when one appeared briefly in Chibnall's Revolution of the Daleks, it was hard to get in any way excited. But here, with a whole episode to play with, Village really showcases just how brilliant the angels are, building on the mythology established in Time to great effect whilst exploring new angles.
In
The Time of Angels two-parter, we never got to see just how far the angel transformation could go. It was hinted at as much as it could be with Amy, but when these things happen to a companion it's immediately apparent that it won't have any lasting impact. Yet with new character Claire, the writers can not only give us the eerie shot of the dust falling from her eye, but also the creepy reveal of the wings and finally the surreal beach hell-scape of the rogue angel fixed into Claire's mind. The reveal that the angels - or at least, these angels - are part of the Division's plans is also intriguing. Some fans have already started complaining, and while later reveals could change my mind, I really do like the idea of the Time Lords deploying the Weeping Angels to meddle with time, and then leaving them to their own devices.
The End of Time hinted that the Time Lords had a history with the lonely assassins, so this would hardly be a massive retcon; more like developing the show's mythology a little further.
Just when I was thinking the episode hadn't quite pushed the scares enough, director Jamie Magnus Stone throws in the terrifying tunnel escape. If an angel jumping out of a television doesn't scare you, or the scene of Dan and Yaz's torches going out, that tunnel scene is sure-fire nightmare fuel for generations of kids. And in case that wasn't enough, we get the haunting image of the Doctor transformed into a Weeping Angel for the cliff-hanger ending! Eeek!
I'm confident that the angel transformation is temporary - perhaps a means of transporting the Doctor, as they say she's been recalled by the Division? - while the mid-credits scene felt a little out-of-place. If
Doctor Who wasn't resolutely sticking to next time trailers, I'd have suggested it as a post-credits sting, but not such luck. I'm glad that we didn't completely lose Bel and Vinder's storyline this week, even if what's here feels like set-up for later; it's much the same with Yaz and Dan stuck in 1901.
Perhaps that's my main issue with Village of the Angels. This fifty-six minute tale of suspense and horror doesn't receive any kind of ending. The angels aren't defeated, the Doctor is transformed and her companions are stuck at the turn of the century. Survivors of the Flux surely can't be a direct sequel, so Village of the Angels must be it in terms of lonely assassin tales this series. It's certainly a very good one, and I'm wondering if it's topped War of the Sontarans to be my favourite chapter of Flux so far, but it's not quite the standalone classic that I would have liked it to have been. On the other hand, if the next two instalments of Flux manage to stick the landing, the whole six-part series may be worth re-watching over and over again for years to come...
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