Doctor Who: Flux – Village of the Angels

The Weeping Angels are back even creepier than before and this time, their mission is personal! Yes. That’s right: mission.

In previous episodes of Doctor Who the Weeping Angels were just evil quantum-locked beings who sent their victims into the past so they could feed off the time energy of the victim’s life. The Angels in Village of the Angels are different in that they work for the Division and are on a mission to retrieve a rogue Angel.   

Just like the Doctor, I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of Weeping Angels being retrieval specialists. But the rogue Angel spelt it out for us: “Division uses everything and everyone. Every species. Every world. Every moment. They are everywhere. Present and unseen. Division is unstoppable.” Who is creepier the Weeping Angels or the Division?

Claire’s story isn’t as simple as past Angel victims. Yes. She was sent back in time, however; she was being hunted by the Angels because a rogue Angel was hiding inside her. The rogue also worked for The Division before deciding to leave. As you do when you realise there’s no room for career progression and the pension plan is abysmal.

When we first met Claire (Annabel Scholey), she seemed to know the Doctor and Yaz. It turns out she had premonitions of them and also of the Angels. She was sent back in time to 1967 to a little English village. Claire was desperate enough to allow an excited Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally) to run tests on her. It’s not quite clear when the rogue hijacked her body but in doing so it somehow also managed to hijack the Tardis bringing the Doctor and the companions to 1967.

As Thirteen battled to keep Claire and Professor Jericho safe we got to see all the Weeping Angel’s dirty tricks; from dust in Claire’s eye to hiding in images and crawling out of walls. *Shiver*  

Cutting a deal to help the rogue seemed like a no-brainer for the Doctor as it has knowledge of The Division and all its history. More importantly, it holds the memories that were taken from the Doctor.  

For some reason, I was expecting things to actually go in the Doctor’s favour. She’d help the Angel; the rogue would leave Clare and we would finally find out what happened to the Doctor in her past. Call me a sweet summer child.

Clare and the village were a trap set for the Doctor. The Division want her more than they wanted a rogue Angel and the last we saw of the Doctor she was turned to stone.

Other things happened

Dan and Yaz always seem to be sent off somewhere and this episode was no different. As part of Claire’s story, they were sent back to the same village but in 1909 by an Angel. There they find Peggy, a little girl who had gone missing from the village in 1967. Both old and young Peggy were there to spout a lot of exposition about quantum extraction and stuff. Apparently, the village had been taken out of time and space to extract the target, the target being the Doctor.

I’m not sure how I feel about the new angel mythology that no one survives the angels twice. A person gets sent to the past the first time they are touched but die if they are touched a second time. Why would the angels kill their food source like that?

Meanwhile Azure (Rochenda Sandall) was posing as a benevolent helper on a planet that Bel landed on. Claiming to provide transport people to a safe galaxy she was actually using Passenger to trap people.

Bel and Vinder are still searching for each other and I’m still searching for meaning to their plotline. I don’t believe they are the Doctor’s parents as some fans have posited.

Anyway, all in all, this was a nice creepy episode and I’m looking forward to seeing how the Doctor gets out of this trap.