September 18: "Chapter Four: Village of the Angels"

(Flux episode 4)

The Angel has the TARDIS, but the Doctor is able to expel it -- but not before the Angel takes them to its desired destination: an English village in 1967, where Claire Brown (the woman who met the Doctor and Yaz outside the TARDIS before a Weeping Angel attacked her back in "The Halloween Apocalypse") is now residing.  And it seems there's more than one Angel about...

"Village of the Angels" is the only episode this series where Chris Chibnall has a coauthor: Maxine Alderton, who also wrote "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" last series.  It might just be a coincidence, but it's also the case that this episode is the most focused one of series 13.  Part of that is because we spend so much time in the village of Medderton (admittedly, in two time periods, but still) instead of in various disparate locations: there are only three scenes that are set elsewhere, as we follow Bel (still looking for Vinder) exploring the planet Puzano and learning that Azure is using Passenger to entrap people for some currently-unknown nefarious purpose, and then, in a mid-credits scene (only the second one for the entire show, after series 8's "Death in Heaven"), we see Vinder following after Bel, looking for her.  And the fact that they actually made that a mid-credit scene might be significant, as if they knew including a Vinder scene in the main part of the episode would pull focus from the rest of it.

So instead we follow the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan as they quickly get caught up in events in the village: Yaz and Dan become involved in a search for a missing ten-year-old girl named Peggy, while the Doctor follows her sonic screwdriver to an experiment being run on Claire by Professor Eustacius Jericho, as played by Kevin McNally, returning to the show for the first time since 1984's The Twin Dilemma (where he played Lt. Hugo Lang).  Claire, it seems, is psychic, and so the Professor is recording her brainwaves.  And honestly, it's a bit disappointing, finding out Claire is psychic; the first part of Flux seemed to be suggesting that maybe Claire and the Doctor were meeting out of sequence, but instead it's just that Claire had a premonition, which is a bit less exciting.

A Weeping Angel attempts to emerge from Jericho's television.
("Village of the Angels") ©BBC

But that's a minor complaint.  The meat of the episode is really good, with the Doctor, Jericho, and Claire under siege from a group of Weeping Angels who are hunting Claire.  It seems a rogue Angel is hiding inside Claire's mind (since Claire had a premonition of the Angel, and the image of an Angel can become an Angel, even inside the mind -- honestly, that's a reasonably terrifying idea), and the other Angels have come to extract it.  This is because the rogue Angel was once a member of the Division, but, while that provides some motivation for the Angels in terms of the overall story, it's not necessary to properly understand that to enjoy the rest of the episode.  And to their credit, Chibnall and Alderton make good use of some of the other Weeping Angel tricks, with half-formed Angels sprouting from a drawing and a television, while Claire feels stone dust coming out of her eye, just like in "The Time of Angels".  It's suitably creepy and engaging, and it doesn't require the audience to have much in the way of prior knowledge to get what's going on.  In other words, this is probably the most accessible episode of this series.

But one of the nice things about "Village of the Angels" being part of a larger story is that they can play a longer game.  To wit, the storyline involving Dan and Yaz looking for Peggy results in them actually attacked by an Angel and sent back in time to 1901, where Peggy also ended up.  And because Flux isn't over yet, they can leave things with the two of them still stuck in 1901, instead of having to have the Doctor come rescue them by episode's end.  But not only that, this move also gives Yaz and Dan a chance to do some investigating on their own, as they find that the 1901 version of Medderton has been deserted (presumably the work of the Angels).  Really, the only complaint here is that they have to do a bit of clunky exposition where Peggy has had thoughts placed in her mind by the Weeping Angels, in order to explain what's going on with the village having been "quantum extracted", whatever that means.  (Something about taking the village out of time and space; maybe the "quantum" part means it's both extracted and not extracted?  Or maybe "quantum" is just the latest SF buzzword, like "cyber" once was.  Or "sonic", to use a particularly relevant example.)  But it's nice to see Yaz take charge -- since Dan seems to quickly defer to her -- in a situation where it doesn't come across as reckless (like it did in "Praxeus", to give an example).  Plus, we get to see Peggy's rather unpleasant uncle Gerald (Vincent Brimble, who's also a returning Who actor, having played Tarpok in Warriors of the Deep -- also from 1984, curiously enough) meet an unpleasant end when a Weeping Angel attacks him after having already been sent back to 1901.  "Nobody survives it twice," Peggy says.  It's a good way of increasing the threat of the Weeping Angels; now they can kill you for real, instead of just "kindly" by sending you back in time.²⁹⁹

Jericho, Peggy, Dan, and Yaz talk to the Doctor across the barrier while
she's surrounded by Angels. ("Village of the Angels") ©BBC

I also like how the episode wraps things up with the striking image of the two time zones separated by some sort of barrier, with one during the day and the other at night.  It's a cool look, and it allows some interaction that we otherwise wouldn't get, such as Peggy learning that the old woman who's been leaving warning notes around the village in 1967 is in fact Peggy herself, having taken the long way home.  It's always neat to be confronted by the actions of the Weeping Angels in such a direct way, and it does a good job of directly tying things together even more tightly.  There's also the fun moment where Yaz warns the Doctor at the barrier: "Don't come any closer!  We're stuck in 1901."  "Wait, we're what?" asks Jericho, who'd been caught earlier by a Weeping Angel.  "Maybe we should have broken that to you a little bit more gently," Dan says ruefully.  But the most shocking moment comes at the end, where we learn that the rogue Angel has in fact brokered a deal with the Weeping Angel extraction squad, to exchange its freedom for that of a bigger prize: the Doctor.  The image of the Doctor slowly turning to stone and covering her eyes as wings sprout from her back is definitely a striking one, and it leaves the audience wondering just how she can possibly get out of that.  It's compelling stuff.

So "Village of the Angels", by focusing mainly on the Weeping Angel storyline and not really on any of the other Flux plot threads that have been intruding throughout the story, becomes easily the standout tale of series 13.  It's focused, well-written, and clear, keeping the number of "wait, I don't understand what's happening or what the motivation is" moments to a minimum.  If only all of Flux could be as good as this.







²⁹⁹ How this works in relation to the battery farm we see in "The Angels Take Manhattan" is left unclear.  Maybe if you wait long enough between Weeping Angel attacks, you can survive?