Flesh and Stone

"Flesh and Stone" is the fifth episode of the fifth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith, the episode was first broadcast on 1 May 2010 on BBC One. Featuring the Weeping Angels as primary villains and the recurring character River Song (Alex Kingston), it is the conclusion of a two-episode story; the first part, "The Time of Angels", aired on 24 April. In the episode, the alien time traveller the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), River Song, and Father Octavian (Iain Glen) and his militarised clerics have escaped entrapment by the Weeping Angels, creatures who only move when unobserved by others. They take refuge inside the crashed starship Byzantium, but the Angels pursue them and Amy is on the brink of dying from the imprint of an Angel in her eye. Both the Angels and the Doctor's team face danger from a widening crack in space and time which has the power to erase persons from history. Moffat wrote the two-part story as a more action-packed sequel to his 2007 episode "Blink", inspired by the relationship between the film Alien and its sequel, Aliens. The episode contains vital information concerning the main story arc of the cracks in time, and contains many instances which are character-motivated. "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone" were the first two episodes of the fifth series to be filmed; filming for "Flesh and Stone" took place in July 2009, with location filming in Puzzlewood and Southerndown beach. The episode was watched by 8.495 million viewers in the United Kingdom and received mostly positive reviews from critics, though many commented that it did not live up to the quality to the first part and disagreed about the decision to show the Angels moving. Plot The Eleventh Doctor, Amy, River, Father Octavian, and Octavian's surviving clerics escape the approaching Weeping Angels when the Doctor destroys the gravity globe illuminating the cave they are in, allowing them to jump up into the artificial gravity of the crashed starship Byzantium. They scramble inside as the Angels start to follow, and the Doctor directs the group to the ship's oxygen factory, a forest contained within the ship. As they pass the primary flight deck, the Doctor notices a crack in its wall just like the one in Amy's bedroom is leaking time energy from the end of the universe that the Angels are being drawn to.