Matt Smith is a beautiful man and a great actor, I will forever love him for those first few minutes. Following Amy’s question “What does it say?” to some scribbled high Gallifreyan scripture on a very literal black box, he simply says with exhaustion, “Hello sweetie.” If Alex Kingston wasn’t months older than my dad, and she didn’t already have a husband, I would be falling at her feet. I love her, I love River Song, and damn, I can’t help but smile every time I say “Hello Sweetie.” It is like when you are told, “say cheese” when having your picture taken, I am smiley and giggly every time.

I wish I could say the same about this episode, but I’m afraid I’m about to kick it like I was a horrible person who doesn’t understand pets need to sleep too (otherwise known as, a child). It is not that the episode is bad, it is like most Moffat episodes, very good. However, it is a weeping angel episode with Amy and River, while we continue to set up that River killed herself at the end of “Forrest of the Dead.” This is the problem with you Steven, you started out with a brilliant episode after the fantastic episode and both come before the perfection that was “Blink,” all of which is before you became showrunner.

What I am saying is, you’ve had the time before with all the stupid, fun, clever, and energetic sci-fi bits, now you’re heading the ship. This alone is the third and fourth episode Moffat has written for this series, yet when he was just a staff writer he’d written six episodes total, plus the mini-episodes. Once again, I feel like I have to state that I’m not saying it is bad; it just happens to be a standard Steven Moffat episode that happens to have all these moving parts. It is something quite de rigueur for a Moffat-written episode.

See, I love the sexual tension between River and the Doctor. I love the playful museum bit, and I love Amy trying to figure it all out. Yet there is just something about the episode I don’t care for. Maybe it is the horror of the angels never capturing that first pop of the cherry we got with “Blink.” Maybe it is just a bit too long, with it being a two-parter possibly overexposing the mystery, building and building to create an ending that never really climaxes the same way we resolved other Angel episodes such as “Blink.” Or I could just compare this episode that has nothing to do with “Blink” like it was a one-for-one, even though that’s not really doing anything productive.

This is the problem I am having; I can enjoy “Time of the Angels” well enough, with its fun little cliff-hanger, or rather, cliff-jump. I could even say there are bits of “Flesh and Stone” that I can admire, but in the end, I’m not the biggest fan of complete-thing. Piecing together River’s backstory is more exciting, in my opinion, than watching as the chaplains (or “Clerics”) all walk off into the crack in Amy’s wall. Oh yes, if that wasn’t clear from the last episode’s cliff-hanger, which my editor wouldn’t have seen, our arching story this season is the crack in Amy’s wall that is following us across time and space.

I’m about to say something that’s a bit damning of River’s story, but bear with me here. River is at this point where we don’t know… WHO (cough cough) she is or what she is, but we do know what happens to her in-the-end. That is the problem with Moffat’s pull into making Doctor Who more about time travel. What I am saying is, if it wasn’t clear, she’s in no danger; the Doctor is in no danger of the angels, and given we’re only four-five episodes into Amy’s run, we’re not losing her either. Telling me to care more about the chaplains with guns protecting River than I would any other episode just doesn’t fit with me.

Yes, they are exclusively men in what is meant to be the future, facing off with death as they try to destroy an angel. However, I cared more about the young men in Hulton college, at least I know the horrors of World War 1. I’ve said it several times, “World War 1? […] Yes, but what do you mean 1?” will always feel like a strike to the heart with a hot fire stoker. A thousand times more so than the rather self-righteous Bishop Octavian leading a few young men into what I’d say is like a cartoon version of an Alien sequel, in a bad way.

For lack of a better and more sensitive term, Sally Sparrow was expendable. However, she was the driving force in solving the mystery, the one uncovering the truth and getting us to the end. The militarized religious lot (America?) aren’t as important as Sally turns out to be, with none of them surviving to the very end. The point I am trying to get to is, with a first-time viewing it might be a little exciting, but a second time I simply don’t care. Yet, no matter many times I’ve seen Sally stand in that basement, or talk to the tape of the Doctor and have the conversation, it captures something within me because it was that good. It is much like any Alien sequel, I’m not as satisfied as I was with the original.

It is another episode where Amy is little more than the archetypal young doe-eyed damsel in distress, i.e Wendy Darling. That said, the only “Blink”-like bit of the whole two-parter was the video, the deeply unsettling and downright most horrifying section of the whole episode. A 4-second long clip, on a loop, of an angel standing in the corner covering her eyes, with just enough of a blip as the clip resets every time. Just enough time in the tape-like quality of CCTV footage to feature a scratch. That’s all you need, a quantum-locked statue in a tape trying to kill you because “an image of an angel itself becomes an angel.“

The angels using the voice of the young men they have killed through the walkie-talkies is a nice little creepy horror feature. Though, as I’ve said before, I am not one for the more horror elements of Who. “Blink,” as I am going to now call it “Bumbling Tiddly Pops” for as much sense as it is mentioning it at this point, is as horror-esque as I like to go: Something upsetting and unsettling rather than gory or action-packed. The conversations through the walkie-talkies are really the only great point to the second part.

Without going in circles and repeating myself endlessly, that’s all I really have to say that’s good (and bad) about episodes 4 & 5 of series 5. Sure, I could talk about Stormcage and fall head over heels for River and her “Heel boy!” demeanor for the episode, but I don’t want to turn this into me editorializing over my love of Alex Kingston. I’ve explained well enough that I wouldn’t mind wearing a bowtie and looking like a man-child (or whatever Matt Smith is) just to be there and have her say “can you sonic me?” Knowing what I, and those of us who’ve seen the further episodes, know it is fun to see Amy teasing the Doctor about the sex in the air.

“Ok, stop waffling you idiot,” I can hear you saying, Ok. “The Time of Angels” & “Flesh and Stone” are a bit of a mixed bag for me, with the former being a great set-up for a very dark and mysterious horror-influenced episode. Though, the latter of the two just happens to fall short, of concluding with something equally as dark and simply continuing what was set-up. At times it feels like the former is a dark Classic-Who-inspired episode, while the latter sits in an attempt to make horror “politically correct” and not really scare anyone. Honestly, Bumbling Tiddly Pops is just better.

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Dr Who "The Time of Angels" & "Flesh and Stone"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Have I ever said that I love River?
• The unsettling video section with the Angel.
• Smith's impression of the T.A.R.D.I.S' brakes on.
• "It's how he keep score."

Cons

• Tone lurches a bit in the second episode.
• There is just no danger with the main cast.