Village of the Angels (TV story)

Village of the Angels, prefixed in the title sequence with Chapter Four and in other sources with Flux, was the fourth episode of series 13 of Doctor Who. It formed the fourth chapter of the six-part serial Doctor Who: Flux.

This episode's Weeping Angels were a special force called an Extraction Squad with the power to turn other beings into Angels if gathered in a large enough group, as well as being revealed to work for the Division who are revealed to be able to recruit any creature and being into their organisation.

Synopsis
Devon, November 1967. A little girl has gone missing, Professor Eustacius Jericho is conducting psychic experiments, and in the village graveyard, there is one gravestone too many. Why is Medderton known as the Cursed Village, and what do the Weeping Angels want?

Plot
Inside a rickety basement laboratory in the middle of the night on 21 November 1967, Claire Brown hooks herself up to a lie detector to test its technology. The professor taking the test, Eustacius Jericho, is surprised at the machine's insistence that Claire does not believe the current date and is confused further when Claire gives her birth year as 1985. In the village of Medderton outside, Reverend Shaw discovers a note marked "Leave Now" in the graveyard as many people search through the rain and the darkness for a girl named Peggy. Meanwhile, Claire corrects her birthday to 1935, further upsetting the lie detector. Taking a break, Claire's pupils dilate as she violently spasms, a deep voice using her to share threats about the end of time. She recovers, with Jericho noting her change in psychology, as she states that "the Angel has the TARDIS".

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, the Weeping Angel continues operating the controls as the Doctor tells Yaz and Dan to not blink. From the doorway, she pulls a glowing wire out of a hidden hatch on either wall, explaining that they should never touch as the resulting dimensional compression would 'reboot' the TARDIS and eject quantum lifeforms like the Angel. As it begins to cause the lights to flicker further, the Angel approaches the group and the Doctor touches the wires, ejecting it but causing the TARDIS to land and power down. With a long time to wait before they can take off again, they decide to look outside.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan exit in Medderton, discovering an elderly couple named Gerald and Jean attempting to use the TARDIS as a real police box in response to Peggy's disappearance. However, the sonic screwdriver starts reacting violently to something nearby and the Doctor leaves her friends to assist in the search for the girl. Meanwhile, Reverend Shaw pins the threatening message on a woman named Mrs Hayward, and she simply instructs him to count the church's gravestones.

Jericho calms down Claire after her incident just as the Doctor bursts in, letting herself in with her psychic paper. After being introduced to Jericho, she is surprised to see Claire, who she previously met briefly in 2021, and discovers some of Claire's sketches from her visions – ones of the TARDIS and a Weeping Angel, which the Doctor immediately rips up. Feeling ill, Claire washes her face in the bathroom and is extremely disturbed to see a pair of Weeping Angel wings sprouting from her back in her reflection.

In the graveyard, Reverend Shaw counts one more gravestone than expected. Discovering it to be a Weeping Angel, he is immediately taken back in time upon noticing it. Elsewhere, out in a wide field, Yaz and Dan talk to Gerald and Jean about Peggy, revealing her to be their great-niece, but receive little other information about her. Left on their own, Yaz and Dan are immediately confronted by a Weeping Angel that drains the power from their torches. With it getting closer to them and the moon disappearing behind a cloud, the Angel eventually attacks them.

In the deepest recesses of space, Bel continues to pilot her Lupari ship in search of Vinder, remarking on the state of the universe since the Flux hit. She lands on Puzano, the planet they were supposed to honeymoon on, which has since been rendered mostly dilapidated but left as the last point of refuge for most people in the quadrant. Bel shortly meets a man named Namaca Ost Parvess Po who, after failing to recognise a hologram of Vinder, invites Bel to a coalescence designed to take them all to safety.

The Doctor starts sonicking areas of Jericho's ground floor landing, and Jericho and Claire follow to find one of the windows broken. Opening the front door, the group face up to several Weeping Angels, forcing them to hurry inside and secure everything as tightly as possible. With Jericho distracted, Claire explains to the Doctor that before they met in 2021, she started receiving visions of her, the Angels, and the village, leading her to discover that on this day, the entire population of the village disappear for the second time after the same happened in 1901. As the Angels' attacks on the house intensify, even ringing the doorbell, Jericho moves his television to his basement lab, the Doctor finishes creating a device on the banister, and Claire briefly discovers stone dust in her eye.

Yaz and Dan find themselves in the Medderton of the past, at daytime and completely deserted except for the occasional cart in the street. Deciding to continue the search for Peggy, they are drawn to a house with the sound of a stuck record inside. Discovering it deserted and the noise coming from a gramophone, they reckon they are in the early 20th century and are immediately met by Peggy, who informs them she is the only one left after the Weeping Angels attacked. Settling down to eat some leftover food, Peggy explains that the Angels put messages in her head to say that they will leave her and not to venture beyond the village boundary. As they go to see it themselves, they discover that the entire town is floating in the depths of space – something Peggy says relates to the words "quantum extraction".

As Gerald and Jean also explore the edge of the village, arguing about his poor treatment of Peggy since her parents died, they also discover that the village has been lifted out of space. They turn around to be met by an Angel and are both immediately teleported back in time upon trying to move it back to the churchyard.

In Jericho's lab, the Doctor finishes her invention, having created a rudimentary CCTV monitor from his TV, now revealing there are Angels in the house. Pointing out that they can escape images of themselves, she is quickly proven right when Claire's sketch of an Angel bursts out of the paper, forcing the Doctor to set it on fire, which only makes the Angel be coated in flames as well. Finally extinguishing it, Claire reveals that they may be after her, watching her hands turn to stone as she believes there is an Angel in her head because of the vision she received. The Doctor decides she needs to make psychic contact with Claire to see what is going on.

Inside Claire's mind, on a deep blue beach stood between parted waves, the Doctor faces up to Claire who is shadowed by an Angel, speaking through her. The Doctor notices it is the same Angel who hijacked her TARDIS, to which it explains that it wanted her help and was hiding in Claire's mind to escape others of its kind. This group of Angels sent Claire back in time by accident while in search of the rogue Angel as they were part of an Extraction Squad for the Division.

On Puzano, Bel and Namaca gather as part of a huge expectant crowd inside a rocky gorge. Stood on a distant hilltop but speaking so all can hear is Azure and a Passenger form. She claims that the Passenger will provide safety away from the effects of the Flux, but Bel recognises it and tries to run away, throwing herself and Namaca to the ground at the last second and becoming the only survivors. Azure is not disturbed and Namaca is furious at Bel, storming off.

In past Medderton, the group notice that the edge of space is slowly creeping in, but every direction they try to escape in is blocked by an Angel. However, they are distracted by the arrival of Gerald and Jean. They both ignore the group's cries to stay away from the Angels, being almost immediately captured again. Peggy explains that "nobody survives it twice" and the couple turns to stone and disintegrates when the Angel catches up to them again.

With the Doctor and Claire in psychic contact, Jericho continues looking at the Angels on his TV until they briefly turn it off. They then use his voice from the TV to taunt him about his supposed failings and the one remaining Angel on the TV jumps out of it at him, causing him to smash it. With the rest having reached the stairs down to the cellar, he continues watching, but the Angels are unfazed.

Meanwhile, the Doctor continues questioning the Angel about the Division, it explaining that the group "uses everything and everyone - every species, every world, every moment". It offers her an ultimatum: stop the squad of Angels from obtaining its knowledge of the Division and the Doctor's forgotten lives and it will spare Claire's life and give the Doctor the information. However, she cannot go any further before Jericho forcibly wakes her up. She explains that there is still an escape route: a hidden tunnel leading out from the basement, which they use to run out, but not after decing to put the psychic headsets on two Angels and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow to stun them. In the musty tunnel, the Doctor promises to keep looking ahead as Claire and Jericho escape, but they are countered again by Angel arms reaching out of the walls. As the Doctor begins to struggle against them, the trio finds themselves stuck in between two Angels in the tunnel.

In 1901 Medderton, Peggy explains that the town's supposed Stone Age burial site suddenly appeared overnight before the people disappeared, but she is distracted upon seeing a split in space-time with 1967 Medderton on the other side. Realising they cannot pass through, Mrs Hayward comes to talk to them, explaining she remembers these events because she is Peggy in 66 years, and she only returns home the long way around. Hayward explains that she only lived because the Angels wanted a witness to their quantum extraction.

In the tunnel, the Doctor struggles as the Angels try to drain her torch, followed by them trying to shake the tunnel so the dust makes them blink. Realising there is a small gap around an Angel they can use to escape, Claire barely gets through, but Jericho is not as lucky, ending up in 1901 with Yaz, Dan, and Peggy. The stone burial ground begins to shake, making the Doctor worry in 1967 as well. She realises that she must turn around to escape and tries to race the Angel but is not attacked when she does. Even when slowly and deliberately blinking, the Angels do not move, unsettling her.

The Doctor emerges on the other side of the burial ground with Claire, also seeing the space-time split to 1901. However, Claire is stood on top of the stones, surrounded by several dozen Weeping Angels, claiming that her rogue Angel is enjoying watching the Doctor figure out the situation. As Yaz and Dan explain how they are stuck, the Doctor realises that quantum extraction is the process of taking the whole village out of space and time to capture the rogue Angel. The Doctor tries to reason with the Angels, telling them to let Claire go and she will negotiate a deal, but the rogue Angel refuses, stating that they are happy to capture the Doctor instead. Realising that she has been lured into a trap, Claire passes on the message that "you are recalled to Division", watching as the Doctor is slowly and painfully transformed into a Weeping Angel, with wings sprouting out of her back and her whole body transformed into stone before she turns to cover her eyes with the rest of the Angel squad.

Later, on Puzano, Namaca sits alone at night next to a campfire, regretting his decision not to leave with Bel. He is interrupted by Vinder, asking if he has met Bel. Namaca leads him some distance away to a rock wall with a hologram projector embedded inside, and Vinder watches, emotional, as Bel explains where she is and what she is doing. After passing on a message of love, she attempts to share her coordinates but is cut off seconds before she can. Vinder promises to find her.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jodie Whittaker
 * Yasmin Khan - Mandip Gill
 * Dan Lewis - John Bishop
 * Professor Jericho - Kevin McNally
 * Claire Brown - Annabel Scholey
 * Reverend Shaw - Alex Frost
 * Gerald - Vincent Brimble
 * Jean - Jemma Churchill
 * Mrs Hayward - Penelope McGhie
 * Bel - Thaddea Graham
 * Namaca - Blake Harrison
 * Vinder - Jacob Anderson
 * Peggy - Poppy Polivnicki
 * Azure - Rochenda Sandall
 * Weeping Angels - Barara Fadden, Isla Moody, Lowri Brown
 * Passenger - Jonny Mathers

Story notes

 * Just as The Halloween Apocalypse was set on its broadcast date of 31 October 2021, Village of the Angels was set on 21 November, albeit in 1967.
 * This episode is the second episode of Doctor Who to feature a mid-credits scene, the first being Death in Heaven. The show also previously featured a post-credit scene in Face the Raven.
 * The mid-credit scene was given a special glitching effect as it started and as it ended.
 * The Doctor Who theme also received a special variation during the credits. It returns to normal during the Next Time segment.
 * This was the first episode of Doctor Who: Flux to not feature Karvanista, Swarm or Joseph Williamson. Vinder is also absent for a majority of the episode, only appearing in the mid-credits scene.
 * This episode marks the first time in the show's history that a victim of a Weeping Angel has been killed on-screen, with the characters in question shattering into rock debris.

Ratings

 * Overnights: 3.45 million
 * Consolidated: 4.55 million

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * In the end credits, Barbara Fadden's name is mispelt as "Barara Fadden".

Continuity

 * The Weeping Angel is still controlling the TARDIS' controls. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
 * Bel and Vinder are still attempting to find one another. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
 * The Doctor says "contact" when initiating telepathic contact. (TV: The Three Doctors, Spyfall)
 * The Doctor tells her companions, "don't wander off". (TV: The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Eleventh Hour)
 * The Weeping Angels have hidden in or emerged from rock before. The Fifth Doctor previously discovered that Michelangelo was being commissioned to carve living, sentient Weeping Angels out of stone. (AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
 * The Thirteenth Doctor also met Weeping Angels whilst bumping into the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, who had been sent back to 1969. (COMIC: A Little Help from My Friends)
 * The Doctor tricks two Weeping Angels into looking at each other to prevent them from moving. (TV: Blink)
 * The Doctor once again has various objects in her pockets, making another individual hold them for her. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
 * The Doctor remembers River Song's statement: "that which holds the image of an Angel is an Angel" (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone) and that they send people back in time to feed on the energy of the time they did not live in their normal time stream. (TV: Blink)
 * The Doctor utters her previous incarnations' catchphrases, notably "when I say run, run!" (TV: The Power of the Daleks, et al.) and "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow". (TV: The Sea Devils, et al.)
 * The TARDIS phone is used from the outside. (TV: The Empty Child, The Bells of Saint John, The Time of the Doctor, Time Heist)

Home video releases
to be added