*All Reviews Are Spoiler-Free Aside From Any Spoiler Sections*
*This is a bare-bones/lite review made after only a single viewing. (Hence there not being any replay rating)*
The Doctor and her friends arrive in a small village on the 21st of November, 1967. The day the entire village goes missing. A little girl is missing already, and soon Professor Jericho and his percipient Claire are about to come face-to-face with some of the most dangerous creatures in the universe. The Weeping Angels want something, Yaz and Dan are in big trouble, and Bel might have just found a way to get to safety at long last, but can it be trusted?
Oh. My. God. Talk about proper, scary, emotional, mysterious, and all-around exciting Doctor Who! This is easily the best episode this series and I have no reservations about saying that. I honestly don’t know how it could possibly be topped but fuck it, I’m willing to wait and see what Chibby comes up with next, although it does deserve to be said that Maxine Alderton co-wrote this masterpiece and that honestly probably is part of why it’s so dang perfect! So, let’s just get to dissecting, shall we? This story throws out so many mysteries throughout and the best part is that some of them aren’t even answered! They’re for the next two episodes to explain, and damn if that isn’t exciting! The mysteries are integral to the story, and going into this again with the knowledge of how it will go might make this story a thousand times better or worse, I don’t know, but I’m hopeful. This story is also, properly, the best-paced story of the entire series, and this series, as I predicted last series, has INCREDIBLE pacing! Also, the start, the way the Doctor got the Angel out of the TARDIS, not exactly brilliant or mind-blowing, but it was done perfectly, so while it wasn’t nearly as nail-biting and exciting as the rest of the episode, it is definitely an incredible resolution, which is really good because as we learned last episode, a bad resolution to a cliffhanger can very easily poison an entire story. I will say that the twist at the end was a little too quick for me, I’d have dragged it out for a bit longer, but that is literally the only bad thing about the twists this episode and also funnily enough the only part of the story that had ‘bad’ pacing. The dialogue in this story is generally really good, probably due to Maxine Alderton helping to curb Chibnall’s less-than-great dialogue-writing habits. Still, there are some small bits and pieces of conversations that just rub me the wrong way and I can’t overlook those very easily, so, yeah, 9/10 on the dialogue, but 10/10 in my heart of hearts. The exposition, go figure, was pretty iffy at many points, with the ending and the mysterious woman in the village being the stand-out issues in regards to this. I’ve already mentioned that the ending twist was annoyingly quick, but that actually isn’t really why the ending rating is a 9, that’s actually because the show pulls a fake-out and, after an ad break which pissed me off at first, runs the credits only for, thankfully and yet infuriatingly, a mid-credits scene to glitch into existence, and damn if it wasn’t Gucci; this is followed by a glitch back into the credits. Could have been less annoying if I didn’t get an ad literally right before it, but I doubt it would have been pleasant to cut from that INCREDIBLE ENDING SCENE directly into credits with no breathing room at all, so, yeah, 9/10. God, I loved this story. And the thing is, as much as I want to go into specifics, I literally can’t because there are so many little twists and surprises that I don’t want to ruin any of it for anybody, so let’s just move right on along into the acting!
The main characters are perfect, all of them, all throughout, period, end of story. The bad guys, specifically the Angels and Azure since they’re the only ones who appear, are also perfect. Azure has some iffiness to her bit, but it isn’t nearly enough to counteract the incredible angel voices throughout. For the record, like during Moffat’s run, these angels, to speak, use others’ voices. Specifically, Jericho and Claire get used and both do an amazing job at portraying the angels! Finally, we come to the side characters. Claire and Jericho are both perfect, I’d say that Peggy is nearly perfect, that Bel is incredible, but that the man that Bel meets on that one planet, I don’t care enough to find his name, wasn’t too good. I also think that the old couple aren’t all that good either, especially near to the beginning of the story, and the Priest is also just really not great when he’s on-screen. The old woman is really pretty good from what I recall, but the lines she had weren’t the best to work with. All in all, Jericho and Claire are carrying this episode and doing it with ease and I hope we get to see them next episode as well!
Alright, let’s just go down the list, nothing special, just one by one. The music was perfect, Segun has only been getting better throughout the series he has worked on and this series is his magnum opus. The voice effects are all really good aside from Azure’s voice effect, which I swear to god is real and if I’m imagining it then I guess I’ve just gone completely crazy, I don’t care. The computer effects were a bit of a pain to rate. You have incredible visual effects like the empty chasm of space, a planet oozing magma as it’s been blown in half, you have the incredible effects of angels trying to materialize, you have the brilliance of the last scene, but then you have people standing in front of very obvious green-screened scenery, you have two people disintegrating which honestly wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but damn it it wasn’t good, and you have someone literally turning into a weeping angel, yet it clearly just looks like an effect was put over their skin and it looks shitty and I hated that moment. Overall though, luckily, I think that there were by far more good computer effects than bad ones, especially as the episode went on, but I really am disappointed with the effects in some parts, especially the ones I mentioned. The practical effects are perfect bar someone hallucinating themselves becoming an angel. At that moment the wings on them look so fake that if they are CG I would actually be impressed at how realistically shitty the wings looked and I’d say to give the CG artist responsible a damn raise. The costumes and makeup, unsurprisingly, only get marked down because of the aforementioned angel wings. I will say, I wasn’t pleased by the look of the angels as far as the magazine cover version was concerned, but, go figure, the magazine cover just had the worst possible image that could have possibly been chosen on it. The sets were incredible with the standout set being the only set we return to in the entire episode, Jericho’s lab. I absolutely loved it. I wouldn’t technically count this as a set, but I don’t care, I want to mention it somewhere, the mind beach (and the stoney variant) were fucking beautiful. The action has only been knocked down a point because this episode does sadly, for reasonable reasons that enhance the episode as a whole, nerf the angels to an extent, causing there to be many moments when they could, by all rights, have gotten somebody sooner than they wind up getting them. Aside from this, the action is perfect, as expected of a Weeping Angel episode; they’re hard to go wrong with. The cinematography here is just spectacular, and if it weren't for a handful of rather confusing shots then this would easily have been a 10/10. Still, this is a fucking beautiful and well-shot episode. There’s nothing like ending on a whimper. The sound design is perfect, as it needs to be for a Weeping Angel story to be any good, which this story is. Easily.
All in all, if it weren’t for the occasional flaw, this would have gotten an honest 10/10 rating, but since it didn’t I had to bump it up a point. It just really did deserve it. This is one of the best episodes of Doctor Who I have ever watched and it’s the scariest this series and, quite frankly, all of Jodie’s run if I’m not forgetting a story. It’s got a tight, mystery-filled, mystery-fueled plot, it’s got incredible acting, it’s got, for the most part, incredible effects, and it has just enough heart to keep you wanting things to turn out well however unlikely that may be. Honestly, don’t spoil yourself, this episode is so good to go into blind, so do that. Get scared, have fun, get ready to be wrecked, because this is an (admittedly only) almost perfect episode.
Total - 10 (Now THIS is just too fantastic for me to not bump up a rating! It DESERVES to be a 10/10 without a doubt!)
Plot - 9
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Story - 10
Pacing - 10
Dialogue - 9
Narration - NR
Exposition - 8
Enjoyment - 10
Twist/s - 9
Resolution/s - 10
Ending/s - 9
Acting - 10
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MC/s - 10
SC/s - 9
BG/s - 10
Narrator/s - NR
Effects - 9
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Music - 10
Voice Effects - 9
Computer Effects - 8
Practical Effects - 9
Costumes/Makeup - 9
Sets - 10
Action - 9
Cinematography - 9
Sounds - 10
Replay - NR
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Re-Enjoyment - NR
New Details - NR
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