Doctor Who S05E05-Flesh and Stone

Even though The Doctor has moved himself and his dwindling group of survivors up to the Byzantium, The Weeping Angels are right on their tail and multiplying. Making matter worse, not only are the Angels growing stronger, but one of them is manifesting itself inside of Amy. And as if things weren’t tough enough, a new yet oddly familiar threat, one worse than the Weeping Angels themselves has appeared within the ship. As the heart pounding race to the end begins, who will survive this dual onslaught of terror?

The terror factor was amped up tremendously is week on Doctor Who. I will say that as compared to my blink and you’ll miss the episode attitude from last week, this week is was hooked and truly frightened for everyone on the ship. It sucks that Father Octavian (Iain Glen) had to bite the big one this week and his final scene with The Doctor, who stayed with him even though he knew he couldn’t get him out of the Angels grip, was a emotionally gripping one. You really feel for The Doctor this week. Between the return of the crack in the wall and The Weeping Angels he is being pushed to his limit trying to figure out how to stop both before everyone is killed. The scene where he shouts at River because of a lack of ideas really nailed this and Matt Smith did a good job delivering the fear and frustration needed to pull off such a performance.

After her encounter with the digitized Weeping Angel last week, we all knew something was going to happen to Amy in some kind of way. In fact it may have been Amy who had it worse than The Doctor this week. She had not only two foes to face, but three, the third of course being the darkness as she had to walk around blind through a field of Weeping Angels and listen to the remaining Clerics wander off to the light and never return. The poor, poor girl.

And when all was said and done by episodes end, there was the final scene, the other big highlight of the episode. Amy finally revealed to The Doctor that she was getting married…then tried to get him to sleep with her!!! Whoa. I don’t think we’ve ever seen this kind of an attitude in a Doctor Who Companion before. I mean Rose was in love, but she never tried to do that. Still it’s understandable. Amy has loved The Doctor for the better part of her life and to be honest, we all knew she was going to kiss him at some point. The Doctor, however and sadly, does the right thing and says that Amy needs to marry her fiancé, revealed to be Rory. But first he needs to solve the mystery of the crack in the wall and how it is affecting Amy, all by June 26, 2010, which is as I double checked, the date of the Season Finale, nice.

This was a great episode, arguably the best of the series thus far. It has terror, action, suspense and a lot of sexual tension between The Doctor and two women, lucky guy. This is how Doctor Who should always be done. I’m sure we’ll see River Song again, possibly before the end of series five as she hinted to events that might happen then. Plus there’s always the onboard tension in the TARDIS. Now that Amy has tried to openly seduce The Doctor, how will that affect their relationship in the future? Special cudos should go out to Steven Moffat, who has put a lot of the fear factor into his episodes thus far. This week however was when he did it at its grandest and most effective.

Next Week: It’s off to Venice with Amy and Rory. But wait, girls with sharp fangs, pale skin and no reflection in the mirror? To quote The Doctor, “Oh you have got to be kidding me?”

Rating-10/10