"Fascinating race, The Weeping Angels. The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely"
When I was younger, so much younger than today (sorry couldn't resist the shameless Beatles lyric) I used to walk passed an old church. On one of the outside walls of this church, on the corner, was a statue. I can't honestly tell you what the statue was of but it was old. Old and covered in moss and dirt. The statue stared at me, I stared back, then the statue moved. Next time I didn't walk passed the statue I ran. Because in my child mind that statue would hurt me if it caught me.
Obviously the statue didn't really move and you are probably wondering why I just wasted your time with such a mundane, pointless anecdote from my childhood. Well, I believe that is exactly why The Weeping Angels are so terrifying. They trigger something base, something almost primeval within us. The fear of everyday common place items becoming sinister and taking on a life of their own. Doctor Who is littered with examples of this effective way of making us "watch from behind the sofa" (The Autons are another great example)
So, what do we know about The Weeping Angels, or Lonely Assassins? According to The Doctor (Blink) they are "as old as the universe (or very nearly), but no one really knows where they come from". They kill their victims with no mess or fuss, simply sending them back in time and feeding off the resulting energy displacement or "potential energy". What a fascinating idea! What makes this more sinister is that all they have to do is touch you. One touch from a Weeping Angel and you are plucked from your time stream and dumped unceremoniously in the past. Nasty!
The other characteristic of The Weeping Angels is their unsuppressable "quantum locking" or turning to stone as soon as another living creature looks at them. This is both their curse and their strength. Simply freezing and turning to stone as soon as they are spotted means that they cannot be killed. Weeping Angels are indestructible! The downside of this is that they cant move when they are being looked at. So provided you don't... blink you are perfectly safe!
This of course is where the good old paranoia kicks in. This is clearly seen both in the episode Blink and The Time of Angels. "Is that an Angel or a statue?" "Whose looking at that one?" you get the idea. In addition to this, Weeping Angels will communicate by snapping a victims neck and using the poor unfortunate soul to talk through (step forward Bob) So not everyone that falls prey to a Weeping Angel is killed "nicely"
We know that Weeping Angels feature in the Ponds final ever episode, The Angels Take Manhattan (I'm assuming Jason Vorhees gave it back then?) If the rumours are to be believed we are in for a jumpy and bumpy ride. It seems that they come in all shapes and sizes!
And is this majestic and iconic lady the biggest Weeping Angel of them all? Only timey wimey will tell.
Oh just one more thing. We are told that anything containing the image of an Angel becomes, itself, an Angel. By this logic this very article is a Weeping Angel so....
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| "Don't blink, Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away and don't blink. Good luck" |
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