I have to wonder what special stone these things are made of. I've killed lots of stones... with a hammer.

It may be a case of everyone being so freaked out by THE DOCTOR finding them terrifying that no one has the guts to just swing a hammer at 'em. Rather like the Vashta Nerada/Atraxi/entire armies turning tail and fleeing rather than just shooting the Doc. Psychology.

Or maybe the Angels are magic. 'What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us. The Time of Angels.' You can't kill dreams or ideas with a hammer.

Moderator's Note: Moved from the Season Five: The Time of Angels section:

With THAT many Angels in the labyrinth, they ALWAYS should be frozen into immobility as they glimpse each other.

They seem to have lost that particular weakness whenever they lost the ability to tell instinctively whether or not someone was looking at them and gained the ability to live inside someone's imagination.

Yeah *sigh* they've really, REALLY, er, evolved since we last saw 'em...

I think they've lost a little of their mystery with this new lot.

Moderator's Note: Moved from the 'Blink' section:

Sort of spoilers for Time of the Angels


Highlight to see: Sally took photos of the Angels. She spent hours looking at them.

She also gave copies of those photos to the Doctor, who presumably at least glanced at them.

Should we be worried?

Don't know about worried. Certainly embarrassed for not thinking of it before. Were we too distracted by the other rewrites of established Angel facts?

Nicely spotted...I don't actually remember Sally taking any pictures of the Angels (or I'M SURE I'd've thought of this, even with the distracting extremely long list of other rewrites of established Angel facts) but now you mention it OF COURSE she must have done, they'd've made better pics than graffiti (even if it IS by the Doctor).

Near the end, she's sitting there looking through her files, and there are at least 2 angel shots. She shoves them in with the rest of the stuff when she runs out to give it to the Doctor.

I still think the Angels are scarier in Blink than later.

I still think the Angels are scarier in Blink than later.

It helps that they don't talk. And suddenly turning around to see a fang-face inches from yours is terrifying.

Yeah. They may have some rather bizarre habits (chucking rocks at you, for example) but you can be pretty •••• sure the Blink bunch wouldn't be fooled by you PRETENDING your closed eyes were open...

Agreed. Clearly, the Master of the Land of Fiction was into a Stephen King phase during Blink, and when the story turned out well, decided to write a sequel and expand the villain while on a sci-fi kick. It's the only reasonable explanation. :-)

'I don't even think they're for us' - why wouldn't Rory think Angels were Amy's deepest fear? She certainly seems a lot less calm when THEY'RE around than when she was seven and sitting on her suitcase waiting for the Raggedy Git. (When she even falls asleep, for heaven's sake.)

Did Amy not TELL him how totally she freaked out? Surely she must have done, if only to excuse the fact she tried to seduce the Doctor five minutes later.

Incidentally, whatever happened to 'the image of an Angel becomes an Angel'?

And actually I'm not sure such iconic monsters should be used in such an offhand, impotent way. It's worse than that Cyberman popping up in Vorg's Zoo.

In Blink, has anyone noticed that whenever we see an Angel on screen, it is in its stone state, even if none of the characters in the program are looking at them? But even then, there's someone looking at them of course, us, the people watching the program.

That's why we never see an Angel move in Blink, they are quantum locked, they will always appear as stone, even to us. That's also why they miss so many opportunities of attacking Sally. They can't, we are seeing them as they try and that causes them to be frozen in stone.

I was very disapointed when we did see some of them move in Flesh and Stone. Somehow, it made them look mundane, ordinary, small, the difference between a tiger stalking you in the wild and one doing tricks in a circus.

Did we? I don't remember seeing one move.

When Amy is in the forest, trying to walk past the angels, after she trips and fumbles around looking for the communicator she dropped, you can see the angels turning their heads in her direction and start to move towards her.

But if WE CAN SEE the Angels move, isn't that proof positive that they AREN'T staying still because we're watching? Which is fair enough, it's not as if we're CANON (give or take 'And a merry Christmas to all of you at home'....AAAAGGGGGHHHH).

Yes, I do remember that now. I remember thinking at the time, weren't they supposed to move faster than you can blink?

But if WE CAN SEE the Angels move, isn't that proof positive that they AREN'T staying still because we're watching?

They're moving between the frames of the picture, which is why they're going so slowly.

Oh! That's very clever.

But the fact remains, we're just...NOT CANON.

Like Macra, WE DO NOT EXIST.

Oh my--no wonder I'm depressed.

I don't exist.

I'm breaking the laws of nature just sitting here typing!!

OH MY STARS AND GARTERS!!!!!!!

If I don't exist, who's the guy I see in the mirror every morning?

If you don't exist--who's seeing the guy you see in the mirror every morning??

OH MY GIDDY AUNT!!!!

The weeping angels move very fast. One can be on the other side of a room, then you blink and it is suddenly inches from your face. But even if looking at the angel turns it back to stone instantly, shouldn't its acquired momentum still carry it foward and make it smash into you?

Being quantum-locked applies to Newton's Laws as well, it seems.

Our stone chums have WIPED THE FLOOR with everyone else in a Radio Times favourite monsters poll of over 10,000 Doctor Who fans:

The Weeping Angels (49.4%)
The Daleks (17%)
The Silence (11.84%)
The Master (8.66%)
The Vashta Nerada (6.81%)
The Cybermen (2.53%)
Davros (2.2%)
The Zygons (0.69%)
The Ice Warriors (0.54%)
The Sontarans (0.33%)

In my opinion, they're fantastic but not quite THAT fantastic. It's a very Moffat-heavy poll - what kind of maniacs would think a swarm of dust was better than a Cyberman?

Anything's better than a Cyberman, even the new ones are slower than dirt and couldn't sneak up on a freight train.

The Angels appeal to kids mostly. Who do you think took this poll? For us adults, it's got to be the Master or the Daleks.

Not that I hate them or anything, but frankly, I never understood the appeal of the Zygons. Their 0.69% rating may seem pretty low, but I never get why they frequently make these lists at all.

Conversely, I have to wonder how many people who voted are literate in both new and old series.

Good turn out for Moffat though.

what kind of maniacs would think a swarm of dust was better than a Cyberman?

If the swarm in question can strip you to bare bone in a heartbeat, I'd say that makes them a lot better, and scarier. I wonder how cybermen would deal with Vashta Nerada. Not very well I suspect.

Oddity I just thought of...

The Weeping Angels must be using the quantum "watched pot never boils" effect (and yes, there actually is such a thing), rather than uncertainty, because when you look at one, you know both its location (it's over *there*), and its momentum (it's not moving).

Therefore, they're in violation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one of the cornerstones of quantum theory.

Therefore, they're in violation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one of the cornerstones of quantum theory.

Not really. I can say the same thing about a chair, and I know THAT'S not violating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The effect is simply not large enough at our scale to be noticed.

But the point of the Weeping Angels that for them, quantum effects occur on a macroscopic scale, which is why they can only move when nobody is watching them.

So why, exactly, does this army of Angels go dormant? If (as one assumes) they wiped out the Aplans, surely they had enough energy to last for centuries? Especially once six billion humans turned up - surely ONE of 'em must have set foot in the Maze of the Dead sooner or later...

And what WOULD have been the effect on Aplan history if the Angels (again, as one assumes) sent EVERY APLAN back in time?

And why do the Angels ASK the Doctor nicely to sacrifice himself for them by chucking himself into the Crack? OK, maybe they can't touch him and chuck him in personally cos they'd automatically send him back in time (though they seem to have at least a second's grace in which to snap necks) but they could grab him by the scruff of his jacket - oh, wait, he wriggled out of it - by the seat of his trousers or something.

Angels Take Manhattan:

'Nobody knows' if the same Angel will send Amy back to the same time it sent Rory? Since when? The Doc knows the same Angel sent poor old Billy Shipton back to the same place n'time it sent him n'Martha? (Come to think of it...it would have sent him n'Martha separately, wouldn't it?)

That 'badly damaged...I wanted to know if it could feel pain' stuff is all a bit Dalek-y. Why does River turn her back on the damaged Weeping Angel - and why does it only grab her once the lights are out? And since when has sending people back in time been something they needed lots of power for, rather than an automatic process that GIVES them power?

And since when have Angels moved when facing each other?

Never mind been able to turn any/every old statue they encounter into an Angel...(Presumably not including the image-of-an-Angel-becomes-an-Angel powers, or we'd have MILLIONS of fanged-Statues-of-Liberty stomping round...)

'The Weeping Angels are stuffed if a moth sees them' - Moffat, vis-a-vis who'd win a Daleks v Weeping Angels battle. Guess there aren't any moths (as well as people) in the City That Never Sleeps, then...

Moffat in DWM:

'The best thing about Doctor Who monsters is their imminence. It's before they arrive, just the moment you realise they're on their way: the tombs melt and the Cybermen come out, the Sea Devils rise from the sea...

'So what you've got with the Weeping Angels is Doctor Who monsters that are permanently imminent. You never actually see them do anything, they're just always about to attack...Because when the Doctor Who monster actually gets to you, it says "We will not kill you yet!" or "Lock them up in that cupboard!", or something stupid like that.'

What a joke that it was all “Weeping Angels!” in the promotions for the Christmas special. Um, no. One brief scene doesn’t equal them as serious antagonists.

Especially when all they did was a) grab Clara's ankle and b) get stupidly stuck staring at themselves in mirrors. And that's after they did sod-all in The God Complex. They're not exactly living up to their reputation as the Best Monsters Ever...Plus they're a bit too much like the Silence (DON'T LOOK AWAY!) to appear in the same episode...

A MIRROR. Why did no one think of THAT before?

WOULD a mirror work? If you looked at Medusa directly, you turned to stone, but if you looked at her in a mirror, you were ok. Similarly, looking at a weeping angel directly freezes it into stone, but looking at its reflection in a mirror should not. Those are two VERY different quantum modes of observation.

But Medusa's just FICTIONAL! It says so in Mind Robber, so it must be true. Anyway, I can believe a mirror a lot faster than I can believe them leaving Amy alone if she ACTS like her eyes are open EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE NOT. (And she's not even acting like they are, but we'll leave THAT aside.)

Since the whole "quantum lock" thing seems to depend on how observed the angels feel at any given moment, a mirror is as good a way of stopping them as any. That and/or these were especially self-conscious Weeping Angels.

Blink was the first time ewe saw the Doctor meet Weeping Angels, but that just means the BBC couldn't be bothered to film any earlier encounters. I can easily imagine the Master conspiring with Weeping Angels against the Doctor, sometime in the Unit years, only for them to inevitably turn on him.

Are there any scenes where one of the first nine Doctors looks warily at a statue in what, with hindsight, is clearly suspicion it might be a Weeping Angel?

The only thing that's springing to mind is Keeper of Traken, where the Doctor frankly wasn't wary ENOUGH of the statue.

Who's for a rewatch? Of everything from scratch, looking out for suspicious statue-related glances?

OK, maybe later. When they've found ALL the black-and-whites, perhaps.

Bok is an obvious contender. Don't recall exactly how the Doctor reacted though.

There's the statue that was the fourth segment of the Key to Time, but the Doctor never saw it. Romanna may have been too naive.

Just brainstorming other instances of statues here.
The Gods of Ragnarok
the Nemesis
the Monoid's statue
Aggador's statue

These are a stretch:
The information statue that Donna becomes in the Library (though taking over them would be a pretty clever plan)
Petrified animal on Skaro

Moffat in DWM on the genesis of the Weeping Angels:

'There was an abandoned church with a dangerous graveyard...The gates were chained up and there was a sign saying KEEP OUT - DANGEROUS STRUCTURE...I went and peered through the bars. And there, among all the ancient leaning gravestones, was the statue of lamenting angel. The way it looked at me, I felt sure this was the dangerous structure in question...What a gift for a man with a Doctor Who story to write!...A few Christmases later...my son Joshua and I went for a walk past the church, and it all came flooding back. "Hey," I said, "want to see the original Weeping Angel?" I took him to peer through the bars of the dangerous graveyard. "Dad...there's no Angel in there." There wasn't. There really wasn't, not any more. We left fairly quickly.' - bless!

Moffat explains how the Statue of Liberty could have strolled unnoticed through New York:

'They can bend time, climb inside your mind, hide in pictures, steal your voice, mess with your perception, leak stone from your eye...New York in 1938 was a nest of Angels and the people barely more than farm animals...in that conquered city, you saw and understood only what the Angels allowed...Also, it tiptoed.'

It still made a lot of noise, and it doesn't matter how much the Angels could mess with people's minds, as soon as anyone (or anything) so much as glanced at it, it would have frozen on the spot.

Btw, the Statue of Liberty is made of metal, NOT stone. How does he explain THAT?

Did it actually DO anything or just stand around pulling nasty faces? If the latter, it might have been one of those messing-with-your-perceptions-for-fun things the Angels do.

Oh, yeah, ok. I can go with that.

Weeping Angel: Look Bob just pretend to be the Statue of Liberty and sneak up on this guy. Just imagine the look on his face when he sees you? It'll be hilarious!

I wonder if the Moff will ever give us the origin of the Weeping Angels?

Weren't the Angels' origins that our dreams no longer needed us? That might be tricky to show on-screen. On the other hand you COULD slip in a couple of lines to explain why the Angels' abilities are so drastically different in each of their stories. Which would be VERY NICE INDEED.

Hmm. Origin stories have a mixed level of success.

Daleks: all-time classic.

Cybermen: excellent (in Spare Parts) and perfectly enjoyable (in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel).

Davros: 'Davros' and 'I, Davros' audios were mildly amusing.

Sontarans: The First Sontarans is rubbish. THAT'S why it was rejected as a TV story, Big Finish! DUH!

Ice Warriors: Ditto for Lords of the Red Planet.

Humans: Best. Origin. Story. EVER. In fact...Best. Story. Ever.

Time Lords: All that Pythia/Rassilon/sterility-curse/Looms/vampires stuff (e.g. Time's Crucible, Lungbarrow, Cold Fusion, Zagreus, Omega) may not have been fantastic but at least it had a real depth and richness to it. And made 'em a lot more alien than New Who's retcon of Time Lords as having normal sex and babies all over the place.

The Great Intelligence: yeah, The Snowmen would have been a good story (if not entirely convincing as the origin of a villain who'd been hanging around a monastery for hundreds of years previous to said creation without knowing a thing about the Doctor) if only it hadn't been for the sentimental drivel of the ending.

The Master: The Dark Path MA is utterly unconvincing in its attempt to explain why the Master went evil. The Harvest of Time novel was more plausible (and enjoyable) but I still didn't believe a word of it. The Master audio was possibly the stupidest and most boring and most implausible - no, make that impossible - thing ever inflicted on me. And Sound of Drums' attempt was fun but not particularly satisfying.

The Doctor: various novellas, novels, audios etc attempt to portray a pre-Unearthly Child Hartnell, how he got his name, why he fled Gallifrey, how he gradually became the person we know, none of them in any way worthwhile.

The universe: Terminus is REALLY REALLY boring. Though about fifty trillion times better than Slipback.

FRANCOIS in Apocrypha: Reference Books: New Series:

How DO you study creatures who turn to stone the instant you look at them?

You look at the effects they have? You can see them sending people back to the past, you know that this releases lots of energy, you don't see the energy go anywhere ELSE, ergo, the Angels ate it and THAT'S why they do what they do.

(I mean, if you're a Time Lord or something.)

Oh, look, I'm no scientist...

Oh, look, I'm no scientist...

(Ronald Reagan)You keep Star War-ing it! I never said where the weapons should be, or what kind! I'm not a scientist!(Ronald Reagan)

The Weeping Angels were never going to be as good as they were in their first ep in any repeat performance it would always be a letdown.

You are right that in their first appearance we freeze them as well but only in that first appearance, it's part of what gave them their creepiness.

As for the rock there was an explanation for that, in their first appearance they didn't have this perception altering, sneak the Statue of Liberty through New York rubbish, if anything saw them they froze, it's very easy to be seen so they try to incapacitate their prey if possible, or district them.

There is a theory that the Angels that steal the Tardis actually came from Sally's photos as anything that holds their image becomes an angel.

You're right they've gotten less powerful, like how in New York which was a city they apparently won they couldn't get through a locked wooden door but could defeat the deadlocked spaceship door in their last appearance.

Still at least they haven't suddenly had a billion new weaknesses crop up, they can only be stopped by being seen or Temporal Paradoxes.

Though I maintain they've always had a weakness to dynamite and hammers, I'm sure the Dakeks could easily obliterate them on maximum extermination, which would explain where all the angels went in time of the Doctor.

Surely a mirror would freeze an angel as it's still being looked at, even though it's in a roundabout way you can still see it. Seeing one through a video camera froze it.

Surely a mirror would freeze an angel as it's still being looked at, even though it's in a roundabout way you can still see it.

Well it did in Time of the Doctor.

Though when it gets dark, surely the Angel can't see itself any more?

Depends how good their night vision is, and it's much easier to see at night when it's snowed as well.

Time of Angels & Flesh and Stone:

Angels can become real from photos AND reproduce inside your head AND telekinetically shut doors AND deadlock seal them (even though they're sans deadlock seals) AND make sure your remote control can't shut off the TV? That's one REALLY weird set of abilities they evolved with. (Could we not have just CUT all that image-of-an-Angel-becomes-an-Angel stuff? It contradicts Blink and Angels Take Manhattan and Magic of the Angels (not that anyone particularly cares about Magic of the Angels.) Oh, and why wouldn't your image in a mirror count (Time of the Doctor)?)

And come to think of it, SPOILERS FOR HELL BENT why did that one chained up in the Time Lord basement still look so Angel-ish instead of battered and unrecognisable like this lot? Were the Time Lords FEEDING it? END OF SPOILERS.

Why were the Angels stupid enough to kill everyone on the Aplan planet and then just STARVE? Why not farm 'em like in Manhattan?

Odd that NONE of the rotting statues have vestigial wings.

Why is the Doctor so terrified about Amy's Angel-encounter? This was before they started snapping necks, surely he'd just have assumed that she'd get zapped back into the past, and given that he has a time machine...(plus someone who actually knows how to steer it...)

Why did the Angels snap Christian and Angelo's necks? The Doctor said 'they needed bodies for something' - but they only used Bob's.

Whatever happened to this just being a race of Lonely Assassins which happened to look like Weeping Angels when we saw 'em in Blink? Why are they ALL Angels?

'They'll assume you can see them and their instincts will kick in' - leaving aside the fact this is ABSOLUTE RUBBISH...surely the Angels would have HEARD the Doctor telling Amy that on the communicator?

'The Angels need you to sacrifice yourself now' - yeah, like the Doc would top himself for THEM. Why not grab him and chuck him in the Crack? One or two of them might have to sacrifice themselves to drag him up to the light but it certainly sounds like a safer bet for the survival of the species than ASKING the Doc to do the Noble Self-Sacrifice thing.

And come to think of it, SPOILERS FOR HELL BENT why did that one chained up in the Time Lord basement still look so Angel-ish instead of battered and unrecognisable like this lot? Were the Time Lords FEEDING it?

It was on GALLIFREY. The planet of the TIMELORDS. It must have been bathed in all sorts of weird spacetime effects it could derive some nourishment from.

Oh! Yeah, good point.

Surely the Dalek too should have been soaking up some of that lovely artron energy, breaking out of its bonds, and exterminating everyone?

Surely the Dalek too should have been soaking up some of that lovely artron energy, breaking out of its bonds, and exterminating everyone?

The Timelords could have disabled those systems.

They could if they were...y'know...COMPETENT.

And seriously, how sick IS it to keep a Dalek tied up in your basement? After the Time War?

They probably forgot it was there, and the Cloister-wraiths kept it in check.

FORGOT IT WAS THERE! In the Last Day minisode the Time Lords were claiming 'If just one Dalek made it through, it could destroy this entire city. That's all it would take. One Dalek. One Dalek acting alone and we're finished.'

Blimey. I know there was a LOT of protest when the Tory Government announced that basically ANYONE could set up an Academy but NONE of the protesters foresaw that the WEEPING ANGELS would want to come and have a go...

The CIA had the CHEEK to name their spying-on-you-through-your-TV programme 'Weeping Angel':

John Oliver

(c.2 min to 3.15 min.)

They were massively exaggerating the power of one Dalek in The Last Day, it was a nice callback to Dalek (it wasn’t accurate then either) but as we saw the Arcadians blow up loads of Daleks despite being under attack by thousands, it obviously wasn’t accurate.

Still my money is still on Daleks to beat the Angels in a fight, I wonder if the Sontarans could.

They were massively exaggerating the power of one Dalek in The Last Day, it was a nice callback to Dalek (it wasn’t accurate then either) but as we saw the Arcadians blow up loads of Daleks despite being under attack by thousands, it obviously wasn’t accurate

Yeah, that's true, so the question is, are Time Lords displaying their usual contempt for the truth cos they think it'll make their Dalek-tracking soldiers more alert, or does that guy really believe what he's saying and at this point in the Time War Gallifreyans regard their enemies as mythical beings of ultimate power? Did the Daleks hit 'em with some really effective propaganda? Was THAT why the Time Lords were losing?

I reckon it’s just a very bad motivational strategy.

Fair enough, once the Time Lords finally got round to realising they're in need of some motivational strategies, they WOULD be very bad at 'em.

I wonder if we'll ever get an origin story for the Weeping Angels?

Class was gonna give us the PLANET of the Weeping Angels in Season Two...*sob*...

In the video game Lego Dimensions the Weeping Angels make an appearance. The only new Who monster to do so (the Level features Daleks and Cybermen as the other enemies).

When they first appear they do not move around attack, when the camera moves off of them they change their pose, but they stay in the same spot. Except for a single one that does move once.

It’s all a great subtle build up that even for those of us who know what they are sets the scene.

However there is a small bug in the game where the single one that moves at the start will do so on screen, it very unimpressively glides to its new position in full view.

It reminded me of them moving on screen in Time of the Angels and how it really stole a lot of their creepiness.

Here is the level in question the angel section begins at 18:45. It doesn’t get the one moving on camera sadly. Also I do admit that using the Wicked Witch of the West rather than Gandalf does steal some atmosphere

https://youtu.be/ApI78_YtXrU

So judging by the Weeping Angels being Gibbis's nightmare in The God Complex...they've invaded Tivoli. In a scarier way than all those other marauding armies the Tivolians have welcomed with open arms. So...er...WHY? Why are they invading other worlds AND running schools?

Incidentally, whatever happened to 'the image of an Angel becomes an Angel'?

Well Chibnall's certainly remembered that bit even if The Moff conveniently forgot...

Yeah, that's true.

So if someone just thinks of (visualises) an Angel, why doesn't that become an Angel?

They would be invincible if that happened, so I don't want it to.

How strong an image do people THINK of when they do visualise stuff? Can't be that detailed, surely? I'm pretty much totally-non-visual myself so wouldn't know...

Village of the Angels:

Why does Gerald scream when the Angel removes him? No one else ever does.

The Angels took an awfully long time to smash in some wooden doors.

And why don't they just put out that swinging bare lightbulb and GET Our Heroes? (I mean, sure, they're playing with JODIE! or something but I don't see why they can't just nab her AND their Rogue Angel too.)

'They told me later why they left me, why they left all of you, when they could have killed us all. It's because they're cruel, and they like to leave a few rare witnesses to tell the story' - whatever happened to being only psychopaths in the universe to kill you NICELY?

Never understood how the Angels "feed off the life you might have lived." Uh, except that you're not dead, just zapped into the past.

Kathy Nightingale managed to make a life for herself when she got zapped back. So did the Ponds. And it seems that Peggy will too.

It's almost as if Steve Moffat came up with something that sounded cool but didn't bother to think it through. Which is so unlike him.

As opposed to Chibnall who's obviously been plotting various masterplans, probably since BEFORE he confronted Pip n'Jane as a teen, but does HE get any credit for it...

Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone:

'A Weeping Angel, Amy, is the deadliest, most powerful, most malevolent life form evolution has ever produced' - a) are you sure they EVOLVED? Like, NATURALLY? and b) are they really THAT BAD? I mean, sure, sometimes they'll snap your neck but usually they'll just give you a free trip in time, gods what wouldn't I give...