5.5 : Flesh and Stone

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Season 5, Episode 5 - Flesh and Stone

Written by: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Adam Smith
Original Air Date: May 15, 2010

Synopsis
There's no way back, no way up and no way out. Trapped among an army of Weeping Angels, The Doctor and his friends must try to escape through the wreckage of a crashed space liner. Meanwhile, in the forest vault, the Doctor's companion, Amy Pond, finds herself facing an even more deadly attack.

Plot
The Doctor, Amy, River Song, Father Octavian and his clerics have all jumped on The Doctor's instructions, and have been caught by the Byzantium's still existent gravity field and have landed on the outside of the Byzantium, upside down in relation to the Weeping Angels left beneath them. They enter the ship, but are followed by the Angels. The Doctor and the others manage to escape and enter the control room.

In there, the Doctor and River realise that there must be an oxygen factory so the occupants can breathe, so the Doctor opens a door to reveal a forest! But then they realise Amy has been counting downwards from ten for several minutes without realising it, and the Doctor notices a crack on the wall, similar to the one in Amy's bedroom. The Doctor examines it, saying "That's extremely very not good", before noticing he is surrounded by Weeping Angels. He escapes, minus his coat, and follows the others. They discover that Amy has a Weeping Angel in the visual centres of her mind. The Doctor tells her if she opens her eyes for more than a second, the Weeping Angel will escape and she will die. She is left with the clerics as the Weeping Angels advance, Meanwhile The Doctor, River Song and Father Octavian head off to find a way to stop the Angels. As they leave, the Angels leave too when a light comes from the vault. Two clerics go to investigate, however, when Amy opens here eyes, she states it's the same crack from her wall. The remaining clerics forget about the existence of the other two, and then a third cleric goes to investigate. The one remaining cleric forgets about the others' existence, questioning Amy. He walks into the light too, and supposedly disappears. The Doctor and Father Octavian continue, but a Weeping Angel captures Father Octavian by the neck. Before Octavian is killed, he tells the Doctor that River Song was a prisoner because she killed a man; a good man. The Angels run away in fear of the crack, due to the Doctor saying it will consume them. The Doctor speculates that the crack is allowing time to be rewritten and River asks him how they can close it, with the Doctor replying that a complicated space-time event can close it: himself. As the four clerics have disappeared, Amy is left truly alone and with only a communicator. The Doctor radios Amy and tells her to come to the control room. She asks why she should risk confronting the Angels and the Doctor tells her that the Angels can only kill her, but the crack can erase her from time. Reluctantly and still with her eyes closed, she follows his sonic screwdriver signal, that is until the Angels arrive and surround her. The Angels are still scared and just follow their instincts around her to freeze to stone, but Amy soon gives herself away as blind and the Angels close in to kill her. Just in time, River teleports her to the control room.

All the Angels come by the entrance to the room as they drain energy from the doors, which then open. The lead Angel, Angel Bob, demands that the Doctor throw himself into the crack in order to save the Angels, Amy and River from it. River, as a time traveller, wants to throw herself in but the Doctor laughs at the idea, claiming that she is not even as complicated as one Angel and that only all the Angels are equivalent to him. Given this, the Doctor tells his friends to hold on to something and the artificial gravity field collapses because of the angels draining all the energy from the ship sending them into the crack. This is enough to seal it, erasing them all from existence. The group escapes to the outside of the temple, Amy safe now that the Angel in her mind has been erased from time. They remember those erased from time because they are time travellers themselves. River tells the Doctor she will see him again when the Pandorica opens and that the man she murdered was the best man she'd ever known. She is teleported back to the penal starship, with the remaining soldiers.

Amy tells the Doctor to take her home. There, she tells him that she is getting married in the morning and tries to seduce him. He declines and realises that she is at the centre of all the cracks and that the time explosion which created them occurs today, the day of her wedding. He quickly whisks her away in order to try to sort the issue out.

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