The Weeping Angels are certainly one of fashionable Doctor Who’s strangest paradoxes. Their smash-hit debut in “Blink” immediately created a iconic presence few different creatures of the revived period of the present may instantly command. And but, they’re harmful to make use of: the Angels are beloved, so folks need extra, however the extra you see them, the extra what made them iconic will get blunted. This week Doctor Who might need lastly pushed that danger just a little too far.

“Village of the Angels” for probably the most half opens with what feels one thing within the vein of “War of the Sontarans” early on in Flux—just a few scant right here and there nods to the zillions of lingering narrative threads permeating the whole miniseries, however in any other case a standalone episode revolving round a traditional monster. It’s right here that “Village” really works finest, giving us Doctor Who’s most favorite of narrative set ups, the bottom underneath siege, however making that base… a quaint, darkly lit British village within the late Nineteen Sixties. A lone scientist, a vicar, and a few pensioners: not a soldier in sight, no individuals who would possibly actually have a imprecise concept of the horror on their doorstep, simply environment and drama, thriller, and risk.

That’s the proper surroundings to throw the Weeping Angels into, they usually work right here fairly splendidly. There’s some actually nice moments of despair, whilst we as an viewers know full nicely simply how badly issues are about to get for the Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and their fleeting new pals (principally Professor Jericho, performed by Kevin McNally, and Annabel Scholey’s Claire, the thriller lady who confirmed as much as yell “Hello! I’m setting up this episode you’re now seeing four weeks later” within the messy season premiere). Lone angels in disguise as headstones in church graveyards, shadow and fog obscuring armies of them attempting to search out the Doctor as she desperately tries to determine occurring. “Village” even, right here, will get to leverage its standing as a related miniseries to play with our expectations and ship a correct shock to the viewers when each Yaz and Dan get zapped into 1901 not even 10 minutes into the episode—our untouchable heroes, now very a lot touched and compelled to cope with the ramifications of the Angel’s authentic, chillingly gradual “death.” This is Doctor Who as a creature characteristic within the horror sense in a approach we’ve not often seen in Chibnall’s period—maybe exterior of “Haunting of Villa Diodati” final season, and it’s becoming then that this episode is the only real of Flux to have a co-writing credit score, with that episode’s author, Maxine Alderton—and it actually works, simply letting the Angels be the mysterious, scary unyielding tide they had been after we first met them.

… If you’re sensing a however coming, nicely, right here it’s. There comes a degree in “Village of the Angels” that its standing as a one-off creature characteristic has to come back smashing into the dramatic inevitably of not its titular monsters, however its nature as a part of this ongoing Flux story, and it’s a showdown that arguably not even the Angels get out of unscathed. For probably the most half, the important thing central thriller of “Village” is what the Angels need with Claire, who’s seen visions of them in her desires, was focused by them within the current, and now finds herself the goal of their ire, a lot to the Doctor’s confusion, tormented by visions of their picture, and herself as changing into a part of their quantum-tinged brood. The approach “Village” solutions this thriller blows the questions on Flux’s wider story extensive open, blows the story of the Doctor’s personal previous open much more than it was already, and units the stage for a staggeringly lengthy listing of issues to get addressed in simply two episodes of Doctor Who. But in doing so, it takes one of many core, scary conceits of the Angels—that we don’t know what their overarching function is, that they only feed off time as creatures starved of its potentiality—and virtually utterly obliterates it, rendering them considerably much less meaty than they had been earlier than.

It’s finally revealed that the rationale that Claire is focused by the Angels is there may be one manifested inside her psyche—making it in order that earlier “any image of an Angel becomes an Angel” rule applies to even considering about one in your thoughts’s eye—not maliciously, however to cover from its fellow Angels. This is as a result of these Angels, and their rogue operative, are all really secretly members of Division, the unknown group that has ties to each the Fugitive Doctor’s previous work with them and… mainly every thing taking place in Flux. Remember when “Crack in time!” was once the go-to excuse for something taking place in Matt Smith’s first season because the Doctor? For Flux, it’s “Division!” flung into as many sentences as doable, within the determined hope that our full lack of expertise of what the Division even is will paper over the cracks left in any ongoing plot. The ex-Division Angel in Claire needs the Doctor’s assist in trade for recollections that can clarify each her previous and what the Division is definitely about, and their former allies are very eager to cease that by… out of the blue having the ability to do a bunch of latest issues that really feel much less like pure evolutions of the best way the Angels perform and extra like requirements for the plot of Flux to succeed in a selected endpoint.

Even except for Angels attempting to manifest inside natural beings—an fascinating concept with the groundwork in tales like “Time of the Angels” and “Flesh and Stone”—issues simply quickly speed up for the Angels’ instrument package as soon as “Village” performs its Division trump card in a baffling approach. Angels can out of the blue speak now, utilizing folks’s voices as psychic imprints. They can reduce off villages from house and time (we’re informed it’s quantum extraction, however we’re by no means proven how or why it’s completed, folks simply say “quantum extraction” and nod sagely prefer it means one thing), they will ship victims again to a single particular place and time at will, they will kill by “double-touching” victims, they will push limbs by cave partitions, they will make a whole cairn system out of Angels, simply because. Suddenly, by being elevated as vital to this wider Doctor Who thriller, the Angels change into much less of a selected risk an episode must be devised round, and one thing damaged and reshaped to suit the wants of this particular episode and the Flux narrative. And the minute the Angels really feel like they will simply do something so long as the plot wants it, the minute they lose certainly one of their biggest property since we first met them: the thriller of how and why they work so nicely within the first place.

Those limitations been chipped away little by little with each look since “Blink,” however that’s simply an inevitability. There’s solely so some ways to re-tell the ideas of that preliminary look, so the Angels do must develop and broaden of their toolkit. But now that thriller feels all however gone, however not as a result of we actually discovered extra about them as creatures—it’s merely been changed with the Angels being part of this still-unanswered thriller of regardless of the hell the Division is, and its relationship to Azure, Swarm, and the Flux.

And so, as a substitute of concluding a narrative within the second, “Village of the Angels” as a substitute asks us to attend just a little extra for its payoff: the Doctor is reduce off from her pals, betrayed by the Angels and turned over to the Division, and finds herself reworked into an Angelic, prisoned statue type herself. It’s a giant cliffhanger to make sure, and one which raises the stakes for no matter solutions are to come back as Flux will get into its last hours. But whether or not these solutions are well worth the sacrifice of a lot of what made the Angels such a compelling Doctor Who creature all these years in the past stays to be seen.

Assorted Musings

• As weird because the cliffhanger was, the shot of the Doctor being turned “into” an Angel for seize was really fairly nicely completed, and a creepy look. If there have been nonetheless Doctor Who motion figures being made frequently, Angel Doctor could be a fantastic one!
• The hyper-specificity of the Angels zapping villagers again to the identical village however 66 years prior creates the unusual temporal loop of the younger lacking woman Peggy assembly her aged self, Mrs. Hayward, however… how didn’t that create a timey-wimey nightmare? Maybe if we shout “quantum extraction!” sufficient we’ll be fantastic.
• The different Flux thread we get to see all through this episode is a little more of Bel and Vinder’s makes an attempt to attach up with one another—and the way that intersects with Azure’s plans, tempting survivors of the Flux into “safety” through being absorbed into one of many masked Passenger beings. Why these kinds? Why collect them if, as with the case up to now, all we’ve seen is folks in these kinds being used as mass-extinction bargaining chips? Given subsequent week’s title, maybe we’ll discover out sooner fairly than later.

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