Day 760: The Time of Angels

When Steven Moffat was first announced as the next show-runner for Doctor Who, the prevailing opinion in the fan community that I had involved myself with was that the show would end up becoming a lot scarier. It was a sensible judgement to make as 3 of his previous stories for the series had based themselves around incredibly scary concepts and monsters, and the other had a jump-scare that makes me yelp every single time. And whilst Moffat's Doctor Who is not as scary on average as some might have hoped, it still manages to provide some truly frightening episodes, such as can be seen in The Time of Angels.

The Time of Angels was the much-anticipated sequel to Blink, and manages to succeed on that front by building on the notion of what a Weeping Angel is. Every moment from when the Angel first appears on a screen to the electrifying final speech consists of Moffat building the Angels up as something more and more frightening than previously thought. He begins by telling the audience that the image of an angel will become a Weeping Angel, and expertly illustrates this by showing one coming out of a television screen. It's a wonderful concept, as it makes the entire notion of watching this episode dangerous, planting the idea that the Angels could jump out from the television screen at any moment. This idea of idea planting is further explored with Amy, where it is established that the Angels can take control of people just through looking at them. It's another example of how Moffat is making them more powerful, both in terms of the strength that they have in the episode, and the strength that they have in terms of the fear that surrounds them.

Furthermore, The Time of Angels does what could be considered unthinkable. It gives the Angels voice. In other scenarios, this would be a major misstep as it would devolve their power - a silent assassin is far more threatening than one that talks to you while they do it. But Moffat again uses this to his advantage, playing the Angels as creatures that exploit fear and will attack people for the sheer sport of it. It makes them more frightening in terms of their entire philosophy, turning them from generic monsters with some frightening twists to something truly worrying for the viewer.

And, on the whole, this story takes all of these things and works. Granted, there is one major misstep that is made in the next episode, but other than that it's still a very powerful episode.