Doctor Who: Village of the Angels (13x04)

Oh boy, taking full advantage of the angels being spooky as hell!

Cons:

Bel and Vinder are perfectly lovely characters and all, but I find myself perplexed by their continued presence. See, the way I see it, there are two possible outcomes: either they are random new characters, mostly disconnected from the rest of the story, who will loop in at a key moment and that will be that... or, they're some big twist. They're related to someone, the baby is the Doctor or Yaz's ancestor or some timey wimey thing like that... and I just don't really want it. I want the show to take a breather from twisting up the canon. Maybe I'll be impressed with what they come up with, but as it is, I can't see myself being particularly happy either way.

For all that the Weeping Angels are properly creepy at certain points of this episode, I will say that having them so ubiquitous this season does have the effect of dampening the horror at times. When they talk through Claire inside Claire's mind with the Doctor there to see it, I thought that was kind of a cool idea. But when they speak to Professor Jericho, it just got kind of hokey. A bit how the Daleks are less scary when they start having a full-on conversation with you, you know?

For the fourth time, the Doctor doesn't actually spend much of the episode with her companions! In this one, Yaz and Dan are immediately splintered off and have a separate adventure from the Doctor. I found the episode compelling, but I'm beyond frustrated by the lack of any solid bonding time whatsoever! Dan feels like a very unmotivated character, we haven't established his connection to the Doctor or Yaz in any real sense, or why he's come along, if he's here by choice or by pure happenstance... it's very messy.

Pros:

For all that, the Doctor turning into a Weeping Angel was a proper good twist and quite the shocker of an ending. That's how you do a good stakes-raising in Doctor Who!

I also found plenty of moments of the actual angels creepy. In the house, coming out of the old television set... I loved the moment when the Doctor and Jericho moved as one to try to escape, and the fact that Jericho... didn't. The plan failed. One of the fun things about the Weeping Angels is that they're very creepy and also very easily subverted in a universe where the protagonist has a time machine. Getting sucked back in time isn't quite as terrifying when you remember the TARDIS... even if they try and make up reasons why it's not so simple. So you get all the fear of the setup, and then don't have to worry too much about the consequences. Maybe that's technically a bad thing, but I'm rather a fan of it.

I like Claire as a character quite a bit... although I will say that hiding the rogue Weeping Angel in Yaz or Dan would have been kind of cooler, tied more directly in with the Doctor. At the same time, it being a human who the Doctor had no previous allegiance to works as a metaphor for the Doctor's abiding love of humanity. I also loved how excited Professor Jericho was about the science involved, all of his tracking and then his courage in the face of danger. Quite fun!

We only have a couple more episodes left to tie up this plot, and I'm a little nervous about how crowded the story is... but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying certain pieces along the way!

7.5/10