Doctor: Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)
Companion: Karen Gillan (Amy Pond)
Others
Alex Kingston – River Song
Simon Dutton – Alistair
Mike Skinner – Security Guard
Iain Glen – Octavian
Mark Springer – Christian
Troy Glasgow – Angelo
David Atkins – Bob
Darren Morfitt – Marco
Production
Directed by Adam Smith
Written by Steven Moffat
Script editor Lindsey Alford
Produced by Tracie Simpson
Executive producer(s) Steven Moffat
Piers Wenger
Beth Willis
Incidental music composer Murray Gold
Production code 1.4
Series Series 5
Length 1st of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast 24 April 2010
The Doctor and Amy find a plea of help from Dr. River Song for the Doctor engraved in Gallifreyan on the flight recorder of the starship Byzantium 12,000 years prior, currently housed in a museum. They travel back via TARDIS, and rescue River before her ship crashes on the planet Alfava Metraxis. On the planet's surface, the Doctor comes to realise that while this is only his second encounter with River, she has met him several times before in her own timestream. River explains that the Byzantium, crashed nearby, holds a Weeping Angel in its cargo. She contacts Father Octavian and his miliarised "clerics" to help capture it as to protect a large native population elsewhere on the planet.
As the clerics set up base camp, River accesses footage of the Angel from the Byzantium to verify its secure. She and the Doctor leave to study a text written about Angels, learning that even an image of an Angel can become an Angel itself. They are unaware that Amy stayed to watch the footage, and when she blinks, the Angel appears to move. The Doctor helps her stop the video feed, and believes Amy is safe, but she feels something in her eye.
Father Octavian orders them to set out through a cave system to reach the Byzantium, using a gravity globe to illuminate the cave. The Doctor and River comment on the various statues they pass, believing they are made by the planet's natives, until they recall the natives are two-headed beings and the statues are only single-headed. They conclude they must be weakened Weeping Angels, and that the Angel on the Byzantium purposely crashed the ship here to rescue its kind. The Angels start to pursue the group. Amy finds that she cannot move, and the Doctor realises that the image of the Angel still exists in her eye and is making her believe this; he bites her wrist to prove she is still mobile, and they continue to flee.
The rear guard is consumed by the Angels, and they trap the survivors at the highest point of the cave, right underneath the hull of the Byzantium. The Angels tell their prey they will use their life energy to regenerate. The Doctor says they never should have trapped him, tells the others to prepare to jump, and detonates the gravity globe.
The Time of Angels