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The Doctor, Amy, River Song, Father Octavian and his clerics find themselves standing on the nose of the ''Byzantium'', looking down on the surface and the [[Weeping Angels]], after having been caught by the ship's artificial gravity when the gravity globe burst. The group make their way to the secondary flight deck while being chased by the regenerating Angels, who have now also jumped up to the ship. All the while, Amy is counting downwards from ten without realising it. Angel Bob claims that this is a countdown to when they will kill her, after which they will take control of the universe. The Doctor asks the Angels where they can possibly expect to get the power from to take over the universe, but the Angels just laugh at the Doctor's ignorance of the situation. The Doctor turns around and then sees a giant crack in the ship's wall, identical to the one in Amy's bedroom in "[[The Eleventh Hour_(Doctor_Who)|The Eleventh Hour]]", and as seen in "[[The Beast Below]]" and "[[Victory of the Daleks]]", it is a crack in the universe. While the others escape into the ship's oxygen factory, a giant forest, the Doctor examines the crack, before noticing he is surrounded by Weeping Angels - one of whom catches him by his jacket. He warns the Angels that the crack, whilst full of energy, is not full of the energy they need (time energy); it is instead a crack from the end of the universe, a crack that will consume everyone. While distracting them with this thought, he escapes, minus his coat, and quickly follows after the others. |
The Doctor, Amy, River Song, Father Octavian and his clerics find themselves standing on the nose of the ''Byzantium'', looking down on the surface and the [[Weeping Angels]], after having been caught by the ship's artificial gravity when the gravity globe burst. The group make their way to the secondary flight deck while being chased by the regenerating Angels, who have now also jumped up to the ship. All the while, Amy is counting downwards from ten without realising it. Angel Bob claims that this is a countdown to when they will kill her, after which they will take control of the universe. The Doctor asks the Angels where they can possibly expect to get the power from to take over the universe, but the Angels just laugh at the Doctor's ignorance of the situation. The Doctor turns around and then sees a giant crack in the ship's wall, identical to the one in Amy's bedroom in "[[The Eleventh Hour_(Doctor_Who)|The Eleventh Hour]]", and as seen in "[[The Beast Below]]" and "[[Victory of the Daleks]]", it is a crack in the universe. While the others escape into the ship's oxygen factory, a giant forest, the Doctor examines the crack, before noticing he is surrounded by Weeping Angels - one of whom catches him by his jacket. He warns the Angels that the crack, whilst full of energy, is not full of the energy they need (time energy); it is instead a crack from the end of the universe, a crack that will consume everyone. While distracting them with this thought, he escapes, minus his coat, and quickly follows after the others. |
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Just before the Doctor can reach her, Amy collapses to the forest floor, seemingly dying. Recollecting that the image of an Angel is itself an Angel, the Doctor realises that Amy has the image of a Weeping Angel in the visual centres of her mind. The Doctor tells her to close her eyes in order to suppress the visual centres of the brain and explains that if she opens her eyes for more than a second, the Angel will kill her. Before he leaves, Amy confesses to the Doctor she is unsure if she can trust him yet, as he isn't always truthful with her, but the Doctor simply informs her that if he always told her the truth, she would never need to trust him. He |
Just before the Doctor can reach her, Amy collapses to the forest floor, seemingly dying. Recollecting that the image of an Angel is itself an Angel, the Doctor realises that Amy has the image of a Weeping Angel in the visual centres of her mind. The Doctor tells her to close her eyes in order to suppress the visual centres of the brain and explains that if she opens her eyes for more than a second, the Angel will kill her. Before he leaves, Amy confesses to the Doctor she is unsure if she can trust him yet, as he isn't always truthful with her, but the Doctor simply informs her that if he always told her the truth, she would never need to trust him. He implores her to remember what he told her when she was seven, but Amy does not know what he is referring to. The Doctor, River and Father Octavian head off to the main control room in the hope of slowing down the descent of the Angels, while Amy is left alone with the clerics as the Weeping Angels advance. Whilst walking through the forest, the Doctor traces the origins of the crack back to the point in time and space at which it began - June 26th, 201x (the last digit is not revealed until the end of the episode). While trying to break into the control room, an Angel traps Octavian. The Doctor is helpless to save him and Octavian urges him to leave and join River inside. Just before his inevitable death though, Octavian divulges to the Doctor that River is a criminal currently in his custody, guilty of the murder of a man whose identity he will not reveal. The Doctor gives his last apologies to Octavian and hurries inside. |
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The crack in the secondary flight deck widens into the forest, where Amy is being guarded by four of the clerics. The Angels run away from the crack, in fear from the Doctor's warning, leaving the clerics and Amy behind. The Doctor speculates that the crack is allowing time to be rewritten and River asks him how they can close it. The Doctor explains that the best way to close it is to feed it a complicated space-time event: him. In the forest, three of clerics go to inspect the crack, which just looks like a very bright light but, after they've gone, the remaining cleric doesn't even remember that they existed. He goes to investigate the crack himself, leaving Amy truly alone and with only a communicator. The Doctor radios Amy and tells her to come to the control room. She asks why she should risk confronting the Angels and the Doctor tells her that the Angels can only kill her, but the crack can erase her from time. Reluctantly and still with her eyes closed, she follows his [[sonic screwdriver]] signal, until the Angels arrive and surround her. Since the Angels are still very scared, the Doctor informs Amy that if she walks like she can see, the Angels will remain in stone form due to their survival instincts, but Amy soon gives herself away as blind by tripping over and shouting, allowing the Angels (who are seen moving for the first time) to advance in on her. Just in time, River teleports her to the control room. |
The crack in the secondary flight deck widens into the forest, where Amy is being guarded by four of the clerics. The Angels run away from the crack, in fear from the Doctor's warning, leaving the clerics and Amy behind. The Doctor speculates that the crack is allowing time to be rewritten and River asks him how they can close it. The Doctor explains that the best way to close it is to feed it a complicated space-time event: him. In the forest, three of clerics go to inspect the crack, which just looks like a very bright light but, after they've gone, the remaining cleric doesn't even remember that they existed. He goes to investigate the crack himself, leaving Amy truly alone and with only a communicator. The Doctor radios Amy and tells her to come to the control room. She asks why she should risk confronting the Angels and the Doctor tells her that the Angels can only kill her, but the crack can erase her from time. Reluctantly and still with her eyes closed, she follows his [[sonic screwdriver]] signal, until the Angels arrive and surround her. Since the Angels are still very scared, the Doctor informs Amy that if she walks like she can see, the Angels will remain in stone form due to their survival instincts, but Amy soon gives herself away as blind by tripping over and shouting, allowing the Angels (who are seen moving for the first time) to advance in on her. Just in time, River teleports her to the control room. |
Revision as of 19:23, 6 May 2010
206b – "Flesh and Stone" | |||
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Doctor Who episode | |||
Cast | |||
Guest
| |||
Production | |||
Directed by | Adam Smith[2] | ||
Written by | Steven Moffat | ||
Script editor | Lindsey Alford | ||
Produced by | Tracie Simpson[3] | ||
Executive producer(s) | Steven Moffat Piers Wenger Beth Willis | ||
Production code | 1.5[4] | ||
Series | Series 5 | ||
Running time | 45 minutes | ||
First broadcast | 1 May 2010[1] | ||
Chronology | |||
| |||
"Flesh and Stone"[4] is the fifth episode in the fifth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was broadcast 1 May 2010. It is the conclusion of a two-episode story, beginning with "The Time of Angels", written by Steven Moffat. The title of the episode was suggested by Moffat's son.[5]
Plot
The Doctor, Amy, River Song, Father Octavian and his clerics find themselves standing on the nose of the Byzantium, looking down on the surface and the Weeping Angels, after having been caught by the ship's artificial gravity when the gravity globe burst. The group make their way to the secondary flight deck while being chased by the regenerating Angels, who have now also jumped up to the ship. All the while, Amy is counting downwards from ten without realising it. Angel Bob claims that this is a countdown to when they will kill her, after which they will take control of the universe. The Doctor asks the Angels where they can possibly expect to get the power from to take over the universe, but the Angels just laugh at the Doctor's ignorance of the situation. The Doctor turns around and then sees a giant crack in the ship's wall, identical to the one in Amy's bedroom in "The Eleventh Hour", and as seen in "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks", it is a crack in the universe. While the others escape into the ship's oxygen factory, a giant forest, the Doctor examines the crack, before noticing he is surrounded by Weeping Angels - one of whom catches him by his jacket. He warns the Angels that the crack, whilst full of energy, is not full of the energy they need (time energy); it is instead a crack from the end of the universe, a crack that will consume everyone. While distracting them with this thought, he escapes, minus his coat, and quickly follows after the others.
Just before the Doctor can reach her, Amy collapses to the forest floor, seemingly dying. Recollecting that the image of an Angel is itself an Angel, the Doctor realises that Amy has the image of a Weeping Angel in the visual centres of her mind. The Doctor tells her to close her eyes in order to suppress the visual centres of the brain and explains that if she opens her eyes for more than a second, the Angel will kill her. Before he leaves, Amy confesses to the Doctor she is unsure if she can trust him yet, as he isn't always truthful with her, but the Doctor simply informs her that if he always told her the truth, she would never need to trust him. He implores her to remember what he told her when she was seven, but Amy does not know what he is referring to. The Doctor, River and Father Octavian head off to the main control room in the hope of slowing down the descent of the Angels, while Amy is left alone with the clerics as the Weeping Angels advance. Whilst walking through the forest, the Doctor traces the origins of the crack back to the point in time and space at which it began - June 26th, 201x (the last digit is not revealed until the end of the episode). While trying to break into the control room, an Angel traps Octavian. The Doctor is helpless to save him and Octavian urges him to leave and join River inside. Just before his inevitable death though, Octavian divulges to the Doctor that River is a criminal currently in his custody, guilty of the murder of a man whose identity he will not reveal. The Doctor gives his last apologies to Octavian and hurries inside.
The crack in the secondary flight deck widens into the forest, where Amy is being guarded by four of the clerics. The Angels run away from the crack, in fear from the Doctor's warning, leaving the clerics and Amy behind. The Doctor speculates that the crack is allowing time to be rewritten and River asks him how they can close it. The Doctor explains that the best way to close it is to feed it a complicated space-time event: him. In the forest, three of clerics go to inspect the crack, which just looks like a very bright light but, after they've gone, the remaining cleric doesn't even remember that they existed. He goes to investigate the crack himself, leaving Amy truly alone and with only a communicator. The Doctor radios Amy and tells her to come to the control room. She asks why she should risk confronting the Angels and the Doctor tells her that the Angels can only kill her, but the crack can erase her from time. Reluctantly and still with her eyes closed, she follows his sonic screwdriver signal, until the Angels arrive and surround her. Since the Angels are still very scared, the Doctor informs Amy that if she walks like she can see, the Angels will remain in stone form due to their survival instincts, but Amy soon gives herself away as blind by tripping over and shouting, allowing the Angels (who are seen moving for the first time) to advance in on her. Just in time, River teleports her to the control room.
All the Angels come to the entrance to the room as they drain energy from the doors, which then open. The lead Angel, whom the Doctor has named "Angel Bob" after the man whose voice it was using, demands that the Doctor throw himself into the crack in order to save the Angels. River, as a time traveller, wants to throw herself in but the Doctor laughs at the idea, claiming that she is not even as complicated as one Angel and that only all the Angels are equivalent to him. He then realises that as the ship's power is quickly draining, its artificial gravity field is about to collapse, and he urges his friends to hold on to something to stop themselves from falling. The gravity field then collapses and all of the frozen Angels fall into the crack. This is enough to seal it, erasing them all from existence. The group escapes to the outside of the temple, and Amy is again able to see - the Angel within her mind never existed, due to the fact it fell into the crack. Confused, Amy asks how it is possible she remembers all of the clerics who seemingly "ceased to exist," but the Doctor informs her that, since they are time travellers, and time has no context in which to work, they can remember them. River, who after completing her mission is about to be teleported back to her cell in space, tells the Doctor she will see him again when the Pandorica opens (unnerving the Doctor, who claims the Pandorica is just a fairy tale), and that the man she killed was the best man she'd ever known. She is teleported back to the penal starship, with the remaining soldiers.
Amy tells the Doctor to take her home. There, she tells him that she is getting married in the morning and tries to seduce him (to which he acts alarmed). He declines to reciprocate and, whilst looking at her bedside digital clock, realises that she is at the centre of all the cracks and that the time explosion which created them occurs today - the day of her wedding, June 26th 2010. He quickly whisks her away in order to try to sort the issue out.
Continuity
After coming upon the realisation that the cracks in time and space can cause time itself to be unwritten, the Doctor realises that this explains the fact that Amy could not remember the events of "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End", as well as recent history's failure to record the Cyber-King rampaging over Victorian London, as seen in "The Next Doctor". He also mentions the duck pond without any ducks from "The Eleventh Hour".
The Pandorica was previously referred to by Prisoner Zero in "The Eleventh Hour".
Filming locations
The forest scenes in the Byzantium were filmed at Puzzlewood, in the Forest of Dean.[6]
Broadcast
Flesh and Stone was first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 1 May 2010. Following on from the broadcast incident of the previous week's episode, which involved a trailer for the next show appearing over an important scene, BBC One and BBC HD broadcast a trailer for the next show over the credits. On BBC One, the show was introduced with a brand new ident which involves the Doctor, Amy and a Dalek as well as characters from Over the Rainbow and Total Wipeout animations inside the circular central courtyard of BBC Television Centre. Overnight figures showed that Flesh and Stone was watched by 6.9 million viewers with a share of 34.5% of the audience. 6.53 million watched on BBC One, where it was again the most watched programme of the evening, with an additional 0.34 million watching on BBC HD. The audience on BBC One once more built throughout the episode to a peak of 7.15 million, before dropping by around 2 million as the episode finished [7]
Reception
Gavin Fuller, writing for telegraph.co.uk described the episode as "... a rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills" [8]. He praised the forest scenes, saying they were "... easily the highlight of the episode, taking in a whole range of emotions as the nature and scale of the threat facing the Doctor, Amy, River and the clerics shifted as the episode progressed." However he expressed uncertainty over Amy's "... attempted seduction of the Doctor ...", claiming that it "... did seem out of keeping with the usual tone of the series", and that "Given the number of young children who watch, it may not have been the most appropriate of scenes to screen". Daniel Martin gave the episode a positive review on guardian.co.uk, saying "Flesh and Stone can lay credible claim to being the greatest episode of Doctor Who there has ever been" [9]. He went on to declare: "It's just ridiculously good - so much that there's scarcely any point in picking out moments because there was an iconic sequence every couple of seconds." In particular he praised Father Octavian's death scene, noting how "... despair creeps over Matt Smith's face as he realises he going to have to leave him to die; Octavian's final speech weeps with honour and elegance". Patrick Mulkern, writing for the Radio Times, gave the episode a positive review, describing it and its predecessor The Time of Angels as "... two episodes of Who that deserve 10 out of 10 in anybody's scorebook ..."[10], although he felt that of the two Flesh and Stone was "... marginally more dazzling." He claimed that he was "... much amused by Amy's amorous antics at the end ...", and found the "... decaying Angels in the Maze of the Dead more macabre than their chiselled chums aboard the Byzantium".
References
- ^ Doctor Who magazine issue 420, page 12
- ^ Doctor Who Magazine, issue 418, 3 February 2010, "Shooting on Matt Smith's first series enters its final stages..." p.6
- ^ "Shooting on Matt Smith's first series enters its final stages...". Doctor Who Magazine (417). Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Panini Comics: 6.
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ a b Doctor Who Magazine, issue 419, 5 March 2010
- ^ Steven Moffat on Front Row, 30 March 2010
- ^ "Behind the scenes at Puzzlewood". BBC. 21 April 2010. Retrieved 1st May 2010.
{{cite web}}
: Check date values in:|accessdate=
(help) - ^ http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/05/flesh-and-stone-ratings.html
- ^ "Doctor Who review: Flesh and Stone". Retrieved 03/05/10.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - ^ "Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone - series 31, episode five". Retrieved 03/05/10.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - ^ "Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone". Retrieved 03/05/10.
{{cite web}}
: Check date values in:|accessdate=
(help)
External links
- Flesh and Stone on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki