Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone
"River admits to having killed 'the best man I've ever known.' Now who could that be?"
All in all, two episodes of Who that deserve 10 out of 10 in anybody's scorebook.
For me, The Time of Angels was marginally more dazzling. Am I alone in finding the decaying Angels in the Maze of the Dead more macabre than their chiselled chums aboard the Byzantium? But Flesh and Stone bombards us with shudders and tension - especially Amy stumbling through the forest with her eyes closed.
I was also much amused by Amy's amorous antics at the end. None of the protracted, doe-eyed mooning of Rose and Martha, or even Donna's classic: "You're not mating with me, sunshine!" Pinging aside the Doctor's braces, Amy isn't "suggesting anything quite so long-term". It seems she's just up for a quickie on the eve of her wedding - or is she actually falling in love with this dorky/dishy Doctor as much as we are now?
As is often the case, Steven Moffat's script leaves us with more questions than answers…
In Blink, the Angels were relatively benign, in that they sent victims back decades in time then fed off the temporal displacement energy. Now they're the "most malevolent life form evolution has ever produced". How and why have they become neck-breaking killers?
Will the Doctor return to the Delirium Archive, the museum glimpsed at the start of this two-parter? Is there any significance in it being "the final resting place of the headless monks"?
Couldn't the Angels have fluttered from danger when the ship's gravity adjusted? Or are their wings purely decorative?
The Doctor left his tweed jacket in the clutches of an Angel. How does he get a new one next week?
So the basecode of the universe is 26.06.2010… "Amy's time." Ooooooooo! What does it all mean?
This also confirms that most of The Eleventh Hour must have taken place in 2008. As Amy said, "That was two years ago." So why did the close-up of boyfriend Rory's hospital ID badge show it was issued 30.11.1990? Actor Arthur Darvill (who becomes a companion next week) would only have been eight.
What connects Amy to the crack in time? Does anyone understand all this duck pond business?
Will River get her pardon? She admits to having killed "a very good man. The best man I've ever known." Now who could that be?
From her parting words we know we'll be seeing River again soon. Earlier in her life, later in the Doctor's, "when the Pandorica opens". But what is the Pandorica?
The Doctor tries to shrug it off: "That's a fairy tale."
"Ah, Doctor," River laughs warmly. "Aren't we all?" - an oracular remark that blissfully reinforces this year's undercurrent.
