Where can Doctor Who fans find the Weeping Angels? Since returning to television in 2005, Doctor Who has relied heavily on classic villains. The Daleks have overstayed their welcome, the Cybermen have plagued almost every modern Doctor, and two different variations of The Master have appeared. But new Doctor Who has also introduced fresh enemies to the franchise, with a select few earning the same popularity and enduring appeal as the classics. The creepy, memory-sapping Silence, the invisible Vashta Nerada, and the militaristic Judoon have all made an impact, and can sit proudly alongside their old-school predecessors. Arguably the best modern addition to Doctor Who's roster of monsters, however, are the Weeping Angels.
Introduced in Doctor Who season 3, the Weeping Angels are powerful, ancient villains scattered throughout the universe. Since they only come to life when unseen, the Weeping Angels appear as statues to the naked eye, instantaneously turning to stone whenever they're sighted. While keeping an eye on these villains is the only way to stay alive, the Weeping Angels move with terrifying speed, meaning a single blink can prove the difference between life and death. Once catching its prey, a Weeping Angel will send a victim back through time, feeding off the life that person would've lived.
The name "Weeping Angel" derives from how the creatures cover their eyes to avoid freezing each other, which is precisely how the Tenth Doctor first defeated them. Despite debuting in 2007, the true origin of the Weeping Angels remains unknown, but that ambiguity only serves to make the villains even more frightening. As with all great horror stories, the scariest creations are usually the ones who remain hidden, and by only showing the Weeping Angels in their statue form, Doctor Who has created a truly timeless monster. Here are all the episodes the Weeping Angels feature in.
It defies logic that a Doctor Who episode with very little Doctor would be one of the best episodes the iconic science fiction series has produced in any era, but that's exactly what happened with "Blink." Played by a young Carey Mulligan, Sally Sparrow stumbles across an abandoned house full of Weeping Angels, and runs away with the TARDIS key after her friend falls victim to the lonely stone assassins. Sally receives messages from David Tennant's Tenth Doctor (himself sent back in time by the Angels) in the form of DVD Easter eggs, instructing her how to defeat the fang-bearing statues. Sally successfully evades the Weeping Angels' "merciful" brand of death and protects the TARDIS key, helping The Doctor trick the angels into looking at each other.
"Blink" immediately establishes the Weeping Angels as among the best Doctor Who villains, playing out like a mini horror movie with compelling characters, genuine scares, and a neat time-traveling twist. The episode launched Steven Moffat towards the showrunner job, made a Hollywood star of Mulligan, and is still consistently voted the very best story modern Doctor Who has to offer.
The Weeping Angels wouldn't trouble the Tenth Doctor again before his regeneration, but Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor wasn't so lucky, meeting the Weeping Angels in his fledgling season. Reuniting with River Song, The Doctor is taken to the wreckage of the Byzantium, a ship carrying the last, supposedly dormant, Weeping Angel. It's soon revealed the crash was orchestrated to awaken an entire colony of starving Angels on Alfava Metraxis. In "Flesh & Stone," The Doctor must balance defeating the Weeping Angels with the emergence of a crack in the fabric of time, threatening the whole of reality. After briefly considering sacrificing himself, The Doctor sends the Weeping Angels through the crack instead, killing two troublesome birds with one stone.
This two-part adventure introduces the idea that Weeping Angels can inhabit whatever takes their image, from reflections to TV footage, adding a new wrinkle to their mythology. While the return of Weeping Angels to Doctor Who was certainly welcome, their comeback is somewhat overshadowed by the glut of long-term story threads spread over "The Time Of Angels" and "Flesh & Stone." The relationship between River and The Doctor, the upcoming "big bang," The Doctor's murder, and the cracks in time are all developed here - a stark contrast to the standalone "Blink" which benefited from simplicity.
Doctor Who season 6's "The God Complex" introduces an illusory hotel, where each room contains a guest's worst fear in a loving homage to The Shining. Making their way through this foreboding establishment, The Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory accompany the eternally-terrified Gibbis (played by a guest-starring David Walliams) into his own personal nightmare room, which contains Weeping Angels. The Doctor maintains that these Angels aren't the genuine article, and can't send any of the gang back through time, but Gibbis is frightened nonetheless, and Amy shares her own experience with the Weeping Angels in an effort to calm him. The stone villains have little impact in "The God Complex," appearing only for added fright factor.
Despite clocking in at a mere 3 minutes and being penned by small children as a tie-in to the 2012 London Olympics, "Good As Gold" still features Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, so can probably be considered Doctor Who canon (more or less). An athlete accidentally enters the TARDIS carrying the Olympic torch, and is followed by a Weeping Angel trying to steal the flame and "destroy the spirit it represents." In a moment that would make the War Doctor despair, Eleven points his sonic screwdriver at the monster and blows its arm off, releasing the torch to its rightful owner. Gripping stuff.
After their cameo in season 6, the Weeping Angels returned with a vengeance in Doctor Who season 7's "The Angels Take Manhattan." A quiet break in present-day New York turns sour when Rory is caught unawares (again) and is sent back to the 1930s by a stray Weeping Angel. The Doctor and Amy eventually follow him, and team-up with River Song to unearth a human farm in the Winter Quay apartment building, effectively allowing the Angels to send the same victims back through time over and over, including Rory. After his future self dies old and lonely in Winter Quay, Rory is determined to avoid his dark fate, and resorts to suicide, which will supposedly create a paradox that kills the Weeping Angels in New York. Amy joins him, and the plan is successful.
Although most of "The Angels Take Manhattan" technically never happened, a surviving Weeping Angel appears behind Rory in the closing moments, catching him off guard (seriously, come on Rory). Once again, Amy refuses to abandon her husband, and gives herself up, leaving The Doctor behind to live happily ever after with Rory in the past. After a bloated two-parter and a fleeting cameo in previous Smith seasons, "The Angels Take Manhattan" restored the fear of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, and the departure of Amy and Rory is undeniably tear-jerking stuff. Interestingly, this episode puts The Doctor in Sally Sparrow's position of watching a loved one fall victim to the Weeping Angels.
As Matt Smith's final episode, "The Time Of The Doctor" was a veritable festive feast of all things Doctor Who. Long-running storylines overlapped, solving the mysterious cracks in time, the true purpose of The Silence, and everything in between. Finding himself on the fateful planet of Trenzalore once again, The Doctor discovers the Time Lords are attempting to escape their pocket universe and return to reality, but only The Doctor holds the password to free them. Unfortunately, The Doctor's enemies catch wind of this, and storm Trenzalore in an attempt to prevent the Time Lords' return, and the village is soon beset by Daleks, wooden Cybermen, Weeping Angels and more. The stony monsters first attack The Doctor and Clara Oswald on Trenzalore by emerging from the planet's snowy surface, but Eleven is able to summon his TARDIS in the nick of time. Another Weeping Angel attacks during The Doctor's centuries spent protecting Trenzalore, but is trapped staring at itself in a mirror.
Just as the Weeping Angels were present for the farewell of Amy and Rory Pond, so too do they feature in Clara Oswald's final episode. The Twelfth Doctor's first companion had already been killed in "Face The Raven" as part of a Time Lord scheme to trap The Doctor. After painstakingly fighting his way to Gallifrey for several millennia in "Heaven Sent," The Doctor returns home for the first time since Doctor Who's 2005 return, and is hellbent on rewriting his friend's death by any means necessary. On the run from his own kind, The Doctor takes Clara through the fearsome Cloisters, which serves as a tomb for deceased Time Lords, and houses the famous Gallifreyan Matrix. In ages past, the Cloister Wars were fought between the Time Lords and their enemies, and relics of that conflict remain trapped in the bowels of Gallifrey to this day, including a Dalek, a Cyberman and a Weeping Angel. As in "The God Complex," this episode uses the Angels for a momentary scare, but the prospect of an ancient war between Time Lords and Weeping Angels is certainly tantalizing.
The speed with which the BBC cancelled Class suggests they'd rather fans forget this ill-fated school-based spin-off, but since Peter Capaldi appeared in Class' very first episode, it's impossible to ignore the presence of Weeping Angels in the finale. Revealed as the overarching villains of the series, the Weeping Angels had been controlling the board of Governors at Coal Hill school, preparing them for a mysterious event known as "the Arrival." Since Class was cancelled on a cliffhanger, the Weeping Angels' masterplan was never revealed, although they killed one of the Governors for failing to stop the pesky students meddling. According to Class showrunner, Patrick Ness, season 2 of the Doctor Who spin-off would've focused more heavily on the Angels and explored their home planet.
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December 28, 2020 at 04:15AM
