11.4: The Time of Angels
In which we still don’t find out who River Song is.
Broadcast: April 2010
Watched: October 2021
“Is River Song your wife?” Absolutely love the way that Moffat handles the obvious question by just making subtext text, and then still refusing to answer it. “The Doctor’s the Doctor” feels like a mission statement for the episode: the mission being, No We Aren’t Telling You Anything.
We’re still on the RTD model: introduce new cast member, future, past, then big dumb high concept action two parter (instead of parallel universe/invention of cybermen, it’s River Song/weeping angels). But Moffat is incapable of writing dumb so we get a big clever high concept action two parter instead. Later in the season, Chibnall will screw up the actual clever one, so it feels like they’ve swapped in the running order.
Anyway, this one’s bloody amazing. One of the all time great pre-credits sequences, containing one of the all time great cameos with the Streets hallucinating to some weirdly familiar bird sound effects (I think they might be on a Kula Shaker album). The regulars in the museum described as the “final resting place of headless monks” who we won’t meet for another year. And then this dialogue:
DOCTOR: Old High Gallifreyan. The lost language of the Time Lords. There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.
AMY: What does it say?
DOCTOR: “Hello, sweetie”.
Incidentally, Moffat gets a lot of stick for his attitudes to women, but a) Kingston, at 46, is explicitly coded as sexy, which is a big shift from an RTD era in which any woman over 30 who doesn’t have kids is written as just sad, and b) he does a reverse “woman driver” joke when River flies the TARDIS. (Smith doing the noises is lovely, btw.)
“The image of an angel becomes itself an angel” makes no sense as expansion of angels but it’s such a brilliant, terrifying sequence and Gillan is so great in it that I don’t care. Although the references to ideas “that could think for themselves ... dreams no longer needed us” feels like a deleted version where angels are something else? A literal nightmare given form, perhaps?
And then that amazing cliffhanger, in which Matt Smith gets a second big “I am the Doctor” statement speech and then does something baffling.
It’s funny. It’s exciting. It’s got some great world building (“It’s the 51st century, the church has moved on”). Everyone’s great in it. Also – it just looks gorgeous. The teleport effects. The crash site. The maze of the dead. At one point the Doctor literally bites his companion (kudos to Amy for being so willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good, mind).
And it’s the first episode this team made. How ridiculous is that? Christ, I’m literally tempted to watch it again, even though I only just watched it. Bloody Moffat.
Other things.
Thinking about it, the “I am the Doctor and you are the Daleks” bit in Victory was probably meant to be a statement speech too. So was “Nobody human has anything to say to me today”. Is this a slight lack of confidence that a 26 year old could play this part?
We can tell River’s the Doctor's equal because she realises the Aplan/two head/angels thing precisely half a second after he does.
Iain Glen plays his mix of respect for and dislike of the Doctor so well. One of those actors who should be in everything.
“You’re letting people call you sir, you never do that” is a weird line. Surely Amy doesn't know the Doctor well enough to say things like this yet?
Something I noticed this time and never had before – there’s a human population in danger if the angels win. But we never see them and they only get one line mentioning them. Hmm.
“Sorry about the confusion” – I love the angels communicating through the voice of an apologetic dead soldier.
Also love the fact there’s a bit where Smith literally breaks the set and they all have to make it part of the scene. ALSO the bit where River can tell the Doctor is listening because he’s got the book the wrong way up.
I said Moffat was better on women than he's given credit for but all the space marines are men. Oh well, he’ll correct that soon.
I always thought this episode changed setting after the marines arrived but no, it’s just nighttime. I’m a moron.