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Original Transmission
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia
She returns the next day with her friend, Kathy Nightingale. A man soon arrives at the door with an old letter from Kathy, who had just disappeared. Sally thinks this is a prank, and while searching for her, Sally encounters three Weeping Angel statues, one holding a Yale key. She takes the key and leaves the house, unaware that the Weeping Angels are watching her from the windows.
Sally reads the letter, wherein Kathy explains that the Weeping Angels transported her back to 1920. The letter asks Sally to explain her absence to her last close relative - Kathy's brother Larry, who runs a store that sells rare DVDs. Larry too has discovered a message from the Doctor, an easter egg hidden on seventeen unrelated DVDs. Larry gives Sally a list of the DVDs that have Doctor on them, apparently carrying on half of an unfathomable conversation. Sally goes to the police, where a Detective Inspector, Billy Shipton, shows her vehicles found at Wester Drumlins, including a fake police box with a Yale lock that cannot be opened. Before Sally realises that the Yale key could be used to open the police box, Billy is also transported by the Weeping Angels, landing in 1969. The Doctor finds him and asks him to deliver a message to Sally: that she should check the list of DVDs. Stuck in the past, Billy goes into the video business and reveals to Sally that he was responsible for adding the easter eggs.
After realising that the list exactly matches Sally's own DVD collection, Larry and Sally enter Wester Drumlins, and watch the Doctor's message on a DVD. This time Sally provides the other half of the conversation, which Larry adds to a transcript he brought with him. The Doctor explains several things; he has a complete transcript of the incomplete conversation, explained by time being non-linear, and that the Weeping Angels are "quantum locked", meaning they turn to stone when observed, but when unobserved they can be deadly, hence it is of utmost importance that she does not blink due to their incredible speed and agility.
An Angel moves closer towards them as they take their eyes off it. While trying to escape from it, Larry and Sally discover the TARDIS in the cellar. Unwilling to let their prey escape, the Angels cause a light bulb, the room's only light source, to flicker, allowing them to draw closer to the TARDIS. Larry and Sally manage to get into the TARDIS and shut the doors, just as the Angels manage to surround it. The DVD that Larry and Sally brought with them activates a protocol in the TARDIS, causing it to return to the Doctor. Sally and Larry are left behind, leaving the Angels trapped forever in a circle, tricked into observing each other.
The final scene takes place a year later, with Sally and Larry running the DVD store together. The Doctor and Martha emerge from a taxi outside the shop, and Sally gives the Doctor (who has not yet experienced the episode's events) the transcript (causing a ontological paradox). Sally, Larry and the Doctor exchange goodbyes. The episode ends with a repeat of the Doctor's warning to Sally (but to the viewer), overlaid with flashes of famous bronze and stone statues.
What a brilliant introduction. A girl taking photographs in an old house, finds a message behind the wallpaper ADDRESSED TO HER. It could only BE Doctor Who. Well, it could also be Bill and Ted, who faxed themselves a message to say duck. But after all, THEY nicked the idea of time travel by phone box, so fair enough. This was the Doctor light episode that we have come to expect. Last year it was Love and Monsters. But there the resemblance ends, and comparisons are pointless. This was a very cleverly done story in which a young woman called Sally is pursued by statues that can move when you’re not looking at them. Hands up who played that game as kids? Well, not me, because I was one of those people like Phil Collinson who played Doctor Who. But it’s a familiar game that is suddenly a lot creepier now.
Another time travel movie idea got re-hashed when the man turned up at the door with a letter to deliver that was written in the past. (Remember the Fedex man in Back to The Future Two?) But again it seemed a new and original idea when it was done in Doctor Who. The letter was delivered by the grandson of Sally’s friend who had just disappeared, thrown back in time by the stone angels. Later, Sally is shown a shed full of cars left by people who disappeared near the old house. And one police box. The Doctor and Martha were thrown back to 1969 by the angels, without the TARDIS. And the only way to get it back is to send messages to a girl called Sally through the ‘Easter Eggs’ on the only 17 DVDs that she owns. Sadly they never told us what the 17 DVDs were. I was strangely curious and a bit disappointed not to find that out. But slowly Sally and her friend’s brother Lawrence, who started as an even more embarrassing version of Spike from Notting Hill and developed into quite a nice bloke, worked it out. They tracked the TARDIS back to the basement of the old house. They manage to get into it and follow The Doctor’s instructions to get it going, and then, when we expected that they would be taken back to 1969 to rescue The Doctor and Martha, the unexpected happens. And I have to say that really WAS unexpected. because the simple, straightforward thing WOULD be to do it that way. But then the angels would still be there to cause trouble for more people. But The Doctor wasn’t just rescuing Sally and Lawrence and himself and Martha, he was setting up the angels to destroy each other. Because as soon as the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving Sally and Martha behind, the angels saw each other’s faces and like medusa, destroyed by her own reflection, they were done for. Congratulations to Steven Moffat for a story that was completely unpredictable, right down to the end.
Carey Mulligan as Sally is the absolute star of this episode. She well deserves all credit for her portrayal of the sort of girl The Doctor always likes to have around him. The sort who can work things out for themselves, think on their feet, and do what they have to do even if they’re scared stiff. If he was in the market for a new TARDIS companion he couldn’t have gone far wrong with Sally. But failing that she deserved a show almost all to herself.
The smaller roles of the two victims of the angels, Kathy Nightingale and DCI Billy Shipton were also very well drawn. The short but touching scene when Sally meets the older Billy, close to death and stays to make his last hours less lonely, was nice. It was also very cleverly the point where some necessary exposition was slid into the plot.
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