Doctor Who Series 31 Time of Angels

The Doctor discovers a message from Doctor River Song, engraved in Old High Gallifreyan on the side of a ruined flight recorder from the starship Byzantium 12,000 years in the past. With Amy Pond, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to rescue her before the ship crashes on the planet Alfava Metraxis. After reuniting with the Doctor, with whom she has had extensive contact within his relative future, Dr. Song warns the Doctor of the Byzantium's cargo, a deadly Weeping Angel that can only move when unobserved by others. Dr. Song calls for Father Octavian and his troops to join her on the surface to recapture it before it becomes too powerful from the radiation leaked by the ship and to protect a large human colony on the planet. Dr. Song shows the Doctor and Amy a four-second loop of security footage of the Angel as the soldiers set up base camp. The Doctor and Song review a book written by a madman about the Angels which warns that any form of image of the Angels become Angels themselves. Simultaneously, Amy finds, when she looks away, the Angel from the footage moves and begins to emerge from the screen, further trapping her in the viewing room. The Doctor and Song attempt to free Amy; the Doctor warns Amy not to look directly into the eyes of the Angel. Amy is able to freeze the image on a loop break, causing the Angel to disappear and saving herself. As the Doctor and Song verify Amy is safe, she continues to believe she has something in her eyes after she was unable to follow the Doctor's warning.

To access the Byzantium and locate the Angel, the group must travel through a "Maze of the Dead", a stone labyrinth with numerous statues erected by the planet's natives that the Angel could hide among. After launching a gravity globe near the roof of the Maze to provide illumination, the group splits up, with some soldiers left to guard the entrance. As they explore, the Doctor and Song come to recall that the long-dead native species of the planet, the Aplans, have two heads, while all the statues have one; they quickly realise that every statue is a Weeping Angel. Each is presently slower and weaker than the captured Angel due to lack of beings to consume over the centuries but they are now absorbing energy from the crashed ship; the Doctor surmises that the Angel purposely crashed the Byzantium to rescue its kind. As the group tries to escape, Amy believes her hand to have become stone and cannot move, but the Doctor points out that her perception has been influenced by the Angel through her direct eye contact, and she is still fine, allowing her to flee. The group soon finds that the Angels have killed their rear guard and are using their consciousness of one of the soldiers, Bob, to speak to the Doctor. The Angels reveal they have lured the group in the trap at the highest point of the maze directly under the crashed ship, and are planning to kill and use their essences to further regenerate. The Doctor threatens that the Angels should have never put him in the trap, and prepares the group to act once he destroys the gravity globe; the episode ends on this cliffhanger.

Cast
Doctor

* Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)

Companion

* Karen Gillan (Amy Pond)

Guest stars

* 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

Production
Writer Steven Moffat
Director Adam Smith[1]
Script editor Lindsey Alford
Producer Tracie Simpson[2]
Executive producer(s) Steven Moffat
Piers Wenger
Beth Willis
Production code 1.4[3]
Series Series 5
Length 45 minutes
Originally broadcast 24 April 2010 (2010-04-24)