Previously on Doctor Who…

So it turns out the Doctor used the gun to shoot the gravity ball. The energy from the gravity ball allowed everyone to float up to the hull of the Byzantium. The artificial gravity of the Byzantium grabbed them, and now they’re stuck upside-down on the hull of the ship. For some freaking reason (probably budget related), they didn’t film it. So the episode starts off with them already on the Byzantium hull. The New BBC, ladies and gentlemen.

The Doctor cracks open a hatch on the hull, and they all climb in. Because the artificial gravity is still working, everyone pulls to the ship’s floor despite the ship being pointed the wrong way. Everyone piles into the ship, but the doors that lead further inside the ship are locked. The Weeping Angels start to follow them inside, and they’re turning off the lights. During this scene, Amy accidentally says the number 10 during conversation.

I really love this scene. The episode just starts off in the middle of things, and this initial scene is just so very tense. Will the Angels pick off another soldier or two before they can make it to safety?

Once they make it to the interior of the ship, they find a forest inside. In a way, it makes perfect sense to have a forest inside of a spaceship. It’s a steady, renewable oxygen supply. Before they head into the forest, everyone stops to take a breather. During this time, throughout the conversation, Amy continues to randomly count down from 10. She doesn’t even notice until she gets to 5. The Doctor gets on the radio to ask the Angels what’s happening to her. It turns out Amy looked one of the Angels in the eye for too long, and now the image of an Angel has planted itself inside her eye. When Amy counts down to 0, the Angel inside of her will kill her. The Angels also plan to take over all time & space after they absorb energy from a certain anomaly on the ship…

Oh look, it’s that same crack. And this time, the Doctor and Amy have noticed it. River, Amy, and the clergy run away into the forest, but the Doctor stays behind to check on the crack. He sonics it, but it doesn’t just swing open and snap back like the one from Amy’s bedroom wall. When the Doctor turns around, he’s surrounded by Weeping Angels. They grab him, but they’re so distracted by their attempt to absorb the crack’s energy that they don’t kill him. It turns out the Angels can’t absorb the energy from the crack because it’s the raw energy at the end of the universe. With the Angels only holding onto his coat, the Doctor manages to slip out of his coat and run away.

The Doctor catches up to the rest of the gang. Amy is so weak that she can hardly stand up. The Doctor figures that the closest thing to Amy’s “turning off” her eyes in a similar way to turning off a monitor would be to close her eyes. Closing her eyes stops the Angel inside her eye from progressing any further, but it’s still stuck in there. Because Amy can’t walk with her eyes open anymore, the Bishop suggests they leave her behind. His four remaining clerics stay to protect her, while he, the Doctor, and River run through the forest to find a way to save their lives.

Then something strange happens.

A few seconds after the Doctor, River, and the Bishop walk off, the Doctor suddenly comes back to comfort Amy. Thing is, the Doctor left his coat behind with the Angels, but this Doctor who comes back is wearing his coat again. His sleeves are also rolled up, despite the Doctor’s sleeves being unrolled mere seconds ago. He tells Amy that she has to trust him, then says that it’s important that she remember what he told her when she was 7 years old. Either this is was weird non-sequitur moment with bad editing, or a future Doctor just crossed his own timeline to give Amy a message. We’ll leave that speculation for a future episode, if it ever comes up again.

Deeper into the forest, the Doctor (sans coat) talks to River about what the crack could possibly be. He theorizes that time itself may be running out. Time might also be able to be unwritten or rewritten with those cracks, depending on how they’re used. He uses some device to track the origin of the crack, and it seems to be some explosion in time that dates back to Amy’s time period (around 26 June 201X). During this time in the forest, the Bishop also reveals to the Doctor that River is a prisoner who’s working with the clergy in an effort to earn a pardon. He doesn’t say what she’s in prison for yet. The mystery of River Song thickens.

Meanwhile, the crack is getting bigger. Not only that, but the Weeping Angels are running from it. The clerics who stayed behind start to walk toward the larger crack to investigate, but they get swallowed up and fade from existence. Amy opens her eyes briefly to look at what’s swallowing the clerics up, and is clearly distressed that the crack from her bedroom wall is apparently following her.

Elsewhere, River runs off and leaves the Doctor and Bishop alone. A Weeping Angel grabs the Bishop by the throat while his back is turned, but freezes once the Doctor turns around. With the Bishop caught in the Angel’s arm, he decides to tell the Doctor what River’s secret is before he dies. It turns out River is in prison because she killed a great man who was considered a hero to many. He says the Doctor can’t trust her.

The Doctor makes his way to a new control room where River is trying to fix the ship’s teleporters. The Doctor gets on the radio to contact Amy, who has been left alone at this point. With her eyes still closed, Amy has to navigate the forest and avoid the Weeping Angels until she can catch up to the Doctor and River. Piece of cake, right?

Fuck!

Before the Angels kill Amy, River gets the teleporters to work, and brings Amy directly to the control room. Unfortunately, the Weeping Angels have caught up to the Doctor and River. They (still using Bob’s voice, mind you) tell the Doctor that the crack will swallow them all up unless they can shove a complicated space/time event into it. River is a time traveler, so she volunteers to throw herself in. The Doctor says she’s not a complicated enough space/time event, and the crack would need the equivalent of hundreds of time travelers to fall in before it will close. Or a single Time Lord.

Hundreds of time events, you say?

The Angels tell the Doctor to throw himself in, but the Doctor notices that the Angels are still feeding off of the ship’s power and the gravity is about to shut off because of it. He tells Amy and River to grab onto something just as the gravity shuts off. The Angels fall backward into the crack, and there’s just enough of them to feed the crack until it closes.

Because the Angel that possessed Amy’s eye was swallowed by the crack, it’s now safe for her to open her eyes. Everyone makes their way back outside to the beach, where the TARDIS is parked. Everyone’s a little bruised from climbing out of the ship with its artificial gravity off, but they’re otherwise fine. River’s got a pair of handcuffs slapped on her wrists as she waits for the prison to come pick her up. The Doctor confronts her about the man she killed and asks who it was.

She slyly says that the Doctor will have to find out who she killed for himself when that day eventually comes. She also offers him one sneak preview: The Doctor will bump into River again soon, when the Pandorica opens. It’s something in the Doctor’s future and River’s past. What’s the Pandorica? We don’t know, but the Doctor says that it’s supposed to be a fairy tale. Before River gets teleported back to prisoner, the Doctor asks her if he can trust her. She replies “If you like, but where’s the fun in that?” Then she laughs as she gets teleported away.

Later, Amy tells the Doctor that she’s been running from something this whole time: Her wedding day.

Once Amy shows the Doctor her wedding dress and tells him that she’s getting married in the morning, she immediately tries to seduce him. Of course, the Doctor is having none of that. He points out that he’s over 900 years old, and a relationship between them can’t work. However, Amy isn’t looking for a relationship so much that she’s looking for some sex the night before her wedding. And I’m not making that up. Then the Doctor looks at the date, and comes to a realization. The cracks don’t just explode throughout time at some point in 201X, but in 2010 on the 26th of June. And the date is 25 June. The cracks right across the universe will start tomorrow, on Amy’s wedding day. On some level, Amy might be connected to these cracks. The Doctor passes up sex, and drags Amy into the TARDIS so they can sort this out.

I loved this episode. It worked for me on so many levels. The subplot of the cracks across the universe made a lot of progress, the Weeping Angels were scarier and more deadly than ever, Matt Smith pulled in yet another great performance, and I think I hate River Song a little less than I used to. What really gets me is River’s final scene, where she seems to cross the border from potential future wife to potential future villain. This story was fun, intense, and a little be frightening. Here’s hoping the rest of the series can at least maintain this level of quality.