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Revision as of 23:40, 23 January 2024
- You may be looking for the activity book of the same name or the box set of the same name.
The Weeping Angels were an incredibly powerful species of quantum-locked humanoids, so called because their unique nature necessitated that they often covered their faces with their hands to prevent trapping each other in petrified form for eternity by looking at one another. This gave the Weeping Angels their distinct "weeping" appearance. They were known for being "kind" murderous psychopaths, eradicating their victims "mercifully" by dropping them into the past and letting them live out their full lives, just in a different time period. This, in turn, allowed them to live off the remaining time energy of the victim's life. However, when this potential energy paled in comparison to an alternative power source to feed on, the Angels were known to kill by other means, such as snapping their victims' necks.
Biology
With an age almost as old as the universe itself, Weeping Angels that were converted from ordinary statues appeared as they did before being taken over. Other Angels resembled stone statues of winged, humanoid angels in chitons. Baby Angels resembled cherubs — naked, infant-sized versions of adult Angels. Baby angels possessed the same traits as adults, but when unseen, their footsteps and childlike giggles could be heard. Angels sometimes took the form of even bigger statues, such as the Statue of Liberty. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) When showing ferocity, Weeping Angels would bare their fangs and claws. (TV: Blink)
According to River Song, who had access to the definitive Book of the Weeping Angels, the angels were, in truth, not really stone, and they only took upon that form when quantum-locked to defend themselves and to hide as statues. As such, she noted they would "become" statues as soon as any sentient life-form looked upon them, only to be freed to their true form when that individual looked away. (WC: Monster File: Weeping Angels)
Weeping Angels grew weaker from starvation without their usual energy supplies to keep them fed, with the stone wearing away over years. This wearing could become so severe that they might not look like their original forms anymore, losing their wings and becoming more like a typical statue of great age. Weak Angels did not have the same speed as their "healthy" counterparts. They could regain their appearance and restore themselves if re-energised. A single hour was all it would take for them to restore themselves. (TV: The Time of Angels) Weakness could hamper their ability to send people through time. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Powers and abilities
Touch of an Angel
The Weeping Angels could displace their victims backwards in time with a single touch. They would then consume the potential energy from the lives the victims would otherwise have led. They could move people through space as well as time, as for instance Kathy was touched in London, but ended up in Hull in 1920. (TV: Blink)
In some cases, victims were transported over space but in the same time period. This was helpful for directing victims, such as Rory Williams, to quantum energy farms, like Winter Quay in New York. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) Other times, victims were transported back in time in the same place, intentionally isolating them, as in the case of the quantum energy farm, (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) or in the creation of absolute isolation for quantum extraction. (TV: Village of the Angels)
The Tenth Doctor theorised that getting touched by the same Angel as someone else would send you back to the same time as them when he, Martha Jones and Billy Shipton all got sent back to 1969. (TV: Blink) This theory would seem to hold as Rory Williams and Amy Pond both got sent to the 1930s, (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan). This ability led the Fifth Doctor to describe them as the most humane psychopaths in the universe. (AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
Different sources disagreed on the impact of being touched by a Weeping Angel twice. In Medderton, isolated by the Angels from both space and time, being touched a second time could cause a human to crumble to stone, destroying Gerald and Jean in 1901, rather than sending them back a second time. (TV: Village of the Angels) In New York City, however, Rory Williams was touched several times, being brought from Central Park to another street, then to Winter Quay, then further back in time in the same location, before time was changed by a younger Rory and Amy Williams, poisoning the stock by creating a paradox. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Quantum-locking
The Weeping Angels had a unique and nearly perfect defence mechanism: quantum-locking, which caused an Angel to literally turn to stone when observed, (TV: Blink) even indirectly. (TV: Flesh and Stone, Village of the Angels) This meant they could not attack while being seen, but also ensured they would not come under attack themselves, as, when transformed into stone, a Weeping Angel could not be killed. (TV: Blink) Despite being unable to attack directly, being quantum-locked did not inhibit an Angel's ability to send people back in time, provided their prey were the ones to touch them. (TV: Village of the Angels)
One of quantum-locking's drawbacks was that Weeping Angels had to cover their eyes, to ensure they would not engage each other's defences. If two or more Weeping Angels saw one another, they could be trapped forever. (TV: Blink, AUDIO: Fallen Angels) This caused the Tenth Doctor to think of them as the universe's loneliest assassins. (TV: Blink)
When unobserved, a Weeping Angel could move incredibly fast, travelling great distances in the blink of an eye. (TV: Blink) They would often slow down the closer they got to their prey, as though "playing with their food". (AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
Quantum-locking came into effect even when the Angel was observed through a medium like glass, or from another location entirely, viewed remotely on a monitor with CCTV footage. (COMIC: A Little Help from My Friends, TV: Flesh and Stone, Village of the Angels) An Angel could also engage their quantum-locking on instinct when they believed they were being observed. Amy Pond acted as though she could see the Weeping Angels, and they turned to stone all the same, though they cautiously began to re-engage as this false belief faltered. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
Victims could avoid the Angels by winking rather than forcing their eyes open and not blink. The Tenth Doctor avoided them in this way during World War I, (COMIC: The Weeping Angels of Mons) and Amy Pond did this briefly, though visibly struggled with it. (TV: The Time of Angels)
Physical strength
When an Angel was sufficiently fed, and had no need for further resources, it could kill by sneaking up behind their victim and breaking their neck. The Angels showed great physical strength, being able to break through steel doors, force magnetised wheels to turn, and snap necks without difficulty. (TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, The Lost)
Psychic powers
When victims looked an Angel in the eyes, the Angel could infect their visual centres, creating an image in their mind. The victim could then be mentally influenced by the Angel until it became fully grown, at which point it could escape the person's body, killing them. This ability could only be stopped by shutting down the visual centre, that is, by closing one's eyes. If re-opened, the Eleventh Doctor theorised this process would continue. (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
Examples of mental influence included making the victim count down the minutes to their death, and making the victim hallucinate that a limb was petrified. They would also dissuade their hosts from closing their eyes, which would shut down their influence. (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
A rogue Weeping Angel once inhabited the mind of Claire Brown, and made her hallucinate that she had Angel wings. As she began to transform, Claire's extremities did actually start to petrify. (TV: Village of the Angels) Unlike in Amy Pond's case, which did not progress this far, (TV: Flesh and Stone) others could see this transformation. (TV: Village of the Angels)
In one unique case, a single Angel was able to infect and convert the robotic Heavenly Host, only Gabriel being able to resist the change. As the Host were already angelic in appearance, the transformation consisted of liquid rock being expelled from the face and coating them; instead of an Angel "popping" out of their heads. (COMIC: A Confusion of Angels)
In one instance, two Weeping Angels were able to enter the Eleventh Doctor's mind, though the second obtained his consent first. (PROSE: The Angel of Redemption)
Propagation
River Song once stated that there were always Weeping Angels lurking in the dark on any planet and warned that any statue someone encountered could be an angel in hiding, waiting for their target to blink or look away. (WC: Monster File: Weeping Angels) She also once indicated that the Angels had an ability to transform ordinary statues into Weeping Angels, or at least to inhabit them. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Anything with the image of a Weeping Angel, such as a photo or a video recording, also gained the abilities of an Angel, and would eventually become an Angel, provided the image wasn't broken. (TV: The Time of Angels, GAME: The Lonely Assassins) One Angel was able to escape from a photograph into a mobile phone, (GAME: The Lonely Assassins [+]Loading...["The Lonely Assassins (video game)"]) where it was able to move digitally, corrupting data, (GAME: The Lonely Assassins: "A weeping what now?" [+]Loading...{"path":"\"A weeping what now?\"","1":"The Lonely Assassins (video game)"}) and attempted to escape into the phone network. (GAME: The Lonely Assassins: "Escape? Where to?" [+]Loading...{"path":"\"Escape? Where to?\"","1":"The Lonely Assassins (video game)"}) Some attempts to destroy the image, such as the Thirteenth Doctor burning Claire Brown's illustration, could strengthen the Angel, in this case creating a fiery apparation of a Weeping Angel. (TV: Village of the Angels) Though it took a lot of effort, when given a chance, a Weeping Angel could move out from its image, taking physical form as it advanced. (TV: The Time of Angels, Village of the Angels)
Even mental images of sufficient presence and clarity could allow a Weeping Angel to take form within that person's mind, taking over and slowly transforming them. Claire Brown had premonitions of the Weeping Angels and the TARDIS, and became a host for a rogue Weeping Angel seeking refuge from the Division. (TV: Village of the Angels)
An Angel could also be created this way if an Angel were to see itself, as in a mirror. The Angel's reflection would be perpetually staring at itself for as long as the Angel were reflected. However, once the new Angel came into being, so long as the Weeping Angel continued to stare at its own reflection, more would be created. (PROSE: Magic of the Angels, AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
If a Weeping Angel became trapped in a CCTV system, it would be able to follow its victim in the image created by the camera, but not in the real world. An Angel threw Mark Whitaker back in time after it chased him through the CCTV systems of a high street. However, the effort this cost the Angel caused it to solidify in the real world and crumble into dust. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel) If a video recording of a Weeping Angel was made, then once the video became an Angel, it could exert significant power and influence over and through any system directly exposed to the recording the Angel came from - a projection of one Angel created from a looped recording displayed the ability to deadlock a vessel's entire system even when it had no deadlock seal, and protect the vessel's walls against penetration by methods such as thermal cutting. (TV: The Time of Angels)
If a Weeping Angel fed on a Time Lord, they can use the future regeneration energy to create more of themselves. This happened when the Sixth Doctor was sent back in time and the Tenth Doctor took him back to his TARDIS, creating seven other angels, equal to the number of regenerations separating them. Displacing the two incarnations of the same time created 49 angels. (AUDIO: Wink)
Communication
The Weeping Angels did not naturally possess intelligible voices, (TV: The Time of Angels) although they could produce screeches as a form of laughter, (TV: Flesh and Stone) and the infants could produce childlike giggles. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
That said, a Weeping Angel could take the consciousness — and voice — of someone they had killed. (TV: The Time of Angels, AUDIO: The Side of the Angels) As with Cleric Bob, an Angel could speak through their victim's consciousness to communicate with others. The Angel chose Bob in particular in order to infuriate the Eleventh Doctor, showing a capacity for understanding others' emotions. (TV: The Time of Angels) In one case, a Weeping Angel took the voice of the person they were attempting to communicate with, playing his own voice from his television set and engaging him in conversation, before taking form. (TV: Village of the Angels)
They also possessed the ability to communicate with each other over long distances, even when frozen. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Other abilities
The kiss of a Weeping Angel had various abilities and effects, including transforming kissed people into complete duplicates of other individuals, which died after a matter of weeks; an Angel's kiss could also suck a kissed victim of their life energy, reducing them to dust. (PROSE: The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery)
Weeping Angels also had excellent night vision. When their prey could not see them, allowing them to act, a Weeping Angel could navigate terrain in total darkness. (TV: Blink et al.)
Other energy sources
The Weeping Angels could also feed on other types of energy, such as radiation given off by a Galaxy class Star Liner, or the electrical energy from power grids or portable devices, such as torches. This would cause lights to flicker, making it easier for them to get around their quantum-locking. (TV: Blink, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Village of the Angels)
One account suggested the Angels could feed on the energy of a temporal paradox, (PROSE: Touched by an Angel) whereas another source showed that a paradox could poison their food supply, killing most of the Weeping Angels involved. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Weaknesses
Killing an Angel
Because of their defence mechanism, Weeping Angels were very hard to kill, being immune to all kinds of weapons. However, they were capable of starving to death if left without time energy for too long. (TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) It was also possible to defeat Weeping Angels by forcing two Angels to look directly at each other, which would cause them both to constantly see and quantum-lock each other. (TV: Blink) Another way of defeating them, and the only way of killing them apart from starvation, was to cause a paradox which would poison the time energy they used to feed. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) When the Angels were starved, they could be vulnerable to grenades. (COMIC: The Weeping Angels of Mons) A Raxacoricofallapatorian was strong enough to behead a Weeping Angel with a single swipe. (COMIC: A Confusion of Angels)
Weeping Angels appeared to have the ability to reform themselves when destroyed in their stone form, however. An Angel reformed itself when it was destroyed by the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, despite missing its right arm. (TV: Good as Gold)
A group of Angels were also killed (or at least, dispersed to the point where their consciousnesses could no longer affect anyone) when the Doctor used CCTV cameras to film them, while also having each Angel viewing all the others through the screens. This caused the Angels to dissolve into the screens. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel)
History
Early history
According to the Time Lords, the Weeping Angels evolved at the Dawn of Time. (AUDIO: The Side of the Angels) However, the Weeping Angels also had a mythological status in Time Lord society, with the Fourth Doctor being sceptical of their existence. (COMIC: Gaze of the Medusa) The Angels, or at least once sect of them, may also have originated from a plague, as seen on the planet Gehanna. (PROSE: Grey Matter)
According to a vision shown by the Carnival Queen, a race of stone men took care of the Original Mammoths' gardens before the Time Lords ended the Dark Times by making the universe rational, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) with one account specifying that they had been created by the Mammoths and worshipped their ruler, Cernunnos. Those who survived after the universe was made rational could only move when they were not seen by another being. While these "painted warriors" remained within an alter-time realm, (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory) Compassion implied they could enter the wider universe, as she enlisted a legion of "Terracotta soldiers" who only moved when not being watched. (PROSE: Warring States)
The Weeping Angels were involved with the Division, a covert Gallifreyan organisation that (TV: Village of the Angels) had helped establish rational time, (TV: Once, Upon Time) thereby ending the Dark Times the Mammoths had thrived within. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet, Cobweb and Ivory) Weeping Angels became operatives for the Division. (TV: Village of the Angels)
When asteroids formed together to create the planet Earth, three Weeping Angels were trapped inside the planet. (AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
During the Egyptian era, a Weeping Angel was found at the entrance to a village. During an eclipse, the Angel killed most of the village, save for one girl. Tracking the survivor to the tomb of the emperor, the Angel was defeated when the girl rearranged the mirrors, trapping the Angel in stone form. However, the girl then looked into the frozen Angel's eyes, and it is indicated that she thus became a Weeping Angel herself and remained with the trapped Angel. (PROSE: The Mirrored Room)
In its section on the Weeping Angels, the book The Secret Lives of Monsters that the story of Medusa was inspired by "an actual monster" that had the ability to turn people to stone with one glance. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
16th century
During the Renaissance, the three Angels who were trapped in Earth as it formed were discovered inside marble blocks. Believing it was a miracle, a group of priests and believers formed the Order of the Three Angels, and commissioned Michelangelo to "release" the Angels. The Angels were defeated by the Fifth Doctor and locked under the catacombs of the Sistine Chapel. (AUDIO: Fallen Angels)
On 23 March 1526 the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond tried to figure out what happened to the lost city of Anglica. There they encountered the Weeping Angels, who sent Amy to 1446. (GAME: Angels in the Shadow)
19th century
According to a transcription produced by the North West Historical Society of an article by The Manchester Guardian about the crash of the Elysium on 17 July 1888, there were reports of some sort of sort of angelic statue emerging from the wreck; however, the actual newspaper was at odds with this as it instead attributed the crash to a force 12 storm. (PROSE: Pride of Mayfield Star Lines Beached in Devastating Storm)
In 1898, a Weeping Angel attempted to attack the Eleventh Doctor and Amy while they were attempting to photograph ghosts for the Society for Psychical Research. (PROSE: Suddenly in a Graveyard)
20th century
In 1909, the Galerie d'Art de Parisiennes contained a portrait of a Weeping Angel. (COMIC: Gallery)
In August 1914, before and during the Battle of Mons in Belgium, Weeping Angels were seen hunting soldiers from both sides. This caused some to believe that angels were coming to save them from the horrors of World War I.
Later in the war, in July 1916, the Tenth Doctor and Gabby Gonzalez encountered a flock of starving Weeping Angels hunting victims in the town of St Michel in France. (COMIC: The Weeping Angels of Mons)
In Paris, 1923, the Eleventh Doctor bought a bundle of comics (COMIC: The Doctor Shops for Comics) which really contained a miniature Weeping Angel. While on the run from the Voord, Gabby Gonzalez opened the package, causing the Weeping Angel within to grow and displace her back in time to the meeting between the Doctor's companions in Paris, 1923. Gabby guessed that the Weeping Angel was deliberately chosen and placed to send her back the proper length of time to change history. After defeating an alternate Twelfth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor promised to find the correct Weeping Angel and to plant it to ensure history continued on its current course. (COMIC: Four Doctors) After getting the correct Weeping Angel from the Weeping Angel Museum, Alice Obiefune planted it for Gabby to find. While the Weeping Angel was in the package, a viewing device kept it docile. (COMIC: The Doctor Shops for Angels)
In 1938, the Weeping Angels were using New York City as a "farm" due to its massive population, and transformed most of the statues in the city into Angels themselves. They would keep victims imprisoned in Winter Quay and send them back in time whenever they tried to escape. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) At this time, Max Kliener used the kiss of one of these Weeping Angels to transform people into duplicates of Kliener's stars and bodyguards. When River Song investigated Kliener, she used hallucinogenic lipstick to cause him to kiss the Angel he was using; allowing the Angel to drain Kliener's life energy and kill him. (PROSE: The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery)
Crime lord Julius Grayle also had the same Angel that Kleiner fed and several baby Angels in his possession at this time. He kept the adult chained in his office, torturing and damaging it, and the babies locked in his dark cellar. In response to the captive adult Angel's distress, at least two other Weeping Angels watched over Grayle's home, disguised as ordinary statues. They eventually attacked when it was left defenseless.
Shortly after the Angels' attack on Grayle's mansion, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, River and Rory Williams travelled to Winter Quay, where they were trapped by the Angels. However, Rory jumped from the Quay's roof, creating a time paradox (as an alternate timeline in which the Angels kept Rory imprisoned in Winter Quay until he died of old age already existed), which poisoned and killed the majority of the Angels. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Artist Ivan Stockinsky painted Glimpsed in a Graveyard, which depicted two-winged angel statues standing outside a tomb and was a departure from the style he had used throughout his life. He was sent back in time by an angel, leaving the completed painting on its easel and making people assume he had been assassinated by Joseph Stalin's agents. Nevertheless, only one angel "statue" remained outside the tomb, with no one ever explaining where the other went. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
During the 1970s, the Weeping Angels of New York formed an alliance with Cardinal Ollistra to power Gallifreyan structures that would shield them from the destruction of the universe, in exchange for humans as a source of potential time energy. They maintained communication with Ollistra and the Monk through a quantum communicator. When the Eleven came, the alliance was broken as he let the Angels feed on Enclave members hiding in the city. The Angels fed off the Monk, who they sent back through time, which gave them a huge amount of energy. (AUDIO: The Side of the Angels)
21st century
Scavengers of Wester Drumlins
A Little Help from My Friends (comic story), Into The Unknown (series)
A small group of Weeping Angels took to residing in Wester Drumlins, (TV: Blink) which had not been occupied since Mr Satchwell and Mrs Satchwell "disappeared" in the later years of the 1960s. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) The house had been the centre of many strange occurrences since the late 1930s. (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins)
Thanks to the Angels' presence, (TV: Blink) Wester Drumlins became regarded as a haunted location, with a number of people who arrived at the house going missing (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) after being touched by the Angels. (TV: Blink) Among their victims were nineteen year olds Carol Martindale and Andy Kenyon, whose disappearances were recounted in a newspaper report a week later. This report contained an image of one of the Angels, but the paper mistook the statues appearing in different places as local youths moving them around. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
In the 2000s,[nb 1] the group of Angels stranded the Tenth Doctor and his companion Martha Jones in 1969 and captured his TARDIS with the goal of using the Time Lord technology for its near-unlimited temporal energy in a process which could cause enough damage to "switch off the Sun". Despite gaining the TARDIS, the Angels could not find a way into the police box-shaped construct; however, they later found the TARDIS' key. Unfortunately for the Angels, Sally Sparrow took the key from one of them before they could reach the TARDIS. The Angels stalked Sally in their efforts to gain access to the TARDIS.
They also sent Kathy Nightingale to 1920 and Billy Shipton to 1969, unknowingly allowing the Doctor assisted by Martha, to indirectly communicate with Sally through them. Sally and Larry Nightingale later visited Wester Drumlins again, the Angels soon cornering them in the basement where the TARDIS was being stored. Despite the Angels turning out the lights, allowing them to move closer, Sally and Larry eventually made it inside the TARDIS and sent it back to the Doctor. When it finished dematerialising, the Angels were stuck looking at each other across the empty space where the TARDIS had been, each turned to stone eternally, their menace ended. (TV: Blink) The Eleventh Doctor later recounted these events when asked if he had ever encountered the Weeping Angels, describing these particular Angels as "scavengers, barely surviving". (TV: The Time of Angels)
Other events
At some point in the 2000s, Julia Hardwick found clues that warned her of the Weeping Angels, as well as photos which seemed to depict her in the past. When she investigated, she was sent to the past by an Angel. It was she who had sent herself the warnings. (WC: A Ghost Story for Christmas)
In 2009, a boy named Charlie Cause disappeared whilst filming an independent movie entitled Zombie Vixens. The last photos taken of him showed that he was attacked by a Weeping Angel in a graveyard. (PROSE: Whatever Happened to Charlie Cause?)
In the 2010s, a group of humans went on an adventure involving the Weeping Angels and the spaceship Elysium, (PROSE: Hello! [+]Loading...["Hello! (short story)"]) which the Eleventh Doctor had sent a distress message from not long prior. (WC: Analysis Lessons [+]Loading...["Analysis Lessons (webcast)"]) After this adventure, the Eleventh Doctor sent the humans a letter expressing his gratitude to them for saving him and the world. (PROSE: Hello! [+]Loading...["Hello! (short story)"])
In 2011, Mark Whitaker encountered a Weeping Angel which sent him back in time to June 1994. The Angel was trapped in the CCTV system and crumbled to dust after using all its energy to send Mark back. In the past, Mark followed instructions from a letter he thought to be written by his future self. In fact, it was psychic paper sent to him by a group of six Weeping Angels. The Angels wanted Mark to save his wife, who had died in a car accident in 2003, to create a paradox so they could feed. Mark eventually decided against saving his wife and returned to the present in the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS after helping the Doctor, Amy and Rory trap the Angels forever in a TV system and disperse their consciousness. During the adventure, Rory got sent back to 2001 by a Weeping Angel, but after spending a month setting up a trap for the Angels in 2003 following instructions the Doctor had given him, Rory reunited with the Doctor, Amy and his younger self. After trapping five of the Angels and the sixth accidentally trapping itself, the Doctor realised that the Weeping Angel that sent Mark back in time was trying to change its own past but caused it instead. Mark's time in the past ended up actually leading to him meeting Rebecca and ending up with her with his future self, facilitating many of the events in their lives. If he had changed her death, it would've caused a paradox because it would've changed both the past and the future. The Doctor realised that the Angels planned to do this to everyone eventually, starting with Mark, until they used every person on Earth to create paradoxes and feed. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel)
In 2012, a single Weeping Angel chased an athlete across the Olympic stadium in an attempt to steal the Torch and the spirit of the games. It followed him into the TARDIS and grabbed the torch, but the Eleventh Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to destroy the Angel. However, it reformed moments later, despite missing its right arm. (TV: Good as Gold)
In 2012, a Weeping Angel was captured by Sammy Star, who kept it trapped in a lead-lined box. Not entirely knowing what he had, Star found out the Angel's ability to make people disappear and used it to achieve fame in the magic business by having a different "missing" girl be taken by the Angel. The Angel remained placid due to Star "feeding" it every night.
However, Star's scheme was stopped by the Eleventh Doctor, who was also indirectly responsible for Star being taken by the Angel, before Star could put his act on television, an act, unbeknownst to Star, that would allow the Weeping Angel to make duplicates of itself appear in every house that watched the show.
Star was defeated after being knocked off a walkway and sent back in time by his own Weeping Angel. The Doctor determined that the box only worked because the Weeping Angel was using Star and so allowed itself to be trapped. However, Rory Williams and Amy Pond came up with a plan to use a mirror to trap the Angel using its own reflection which would create another Angel, leading to the two quantum locking each other. The plan initially succeeded, but the Weeping Angel started to make more copies of itself until Rory smashed the mirror, leaving the two Angels trapped in quantum lock. The Doctor, making a trip back in time and collecting a few favours, put the two Angels in Trafalgar Square on the Fourth Plinth, under the title of Monument to the Missing in memory of the Angel's victims, where the two Angels would be in someone's line of vision for many years to come. (PROSE: Magic of the Angels)
On two occasions in 2012, a Weeping Angel in New York displaced Rory Williams in time. The first time was when an Angel disguised as part of a water fountain sent Rory to 1938. On the second occasion, he was displaced by a survivor of the destruction of Winter Quay near his and Amy's gravestone. Amy allowed the Angel to touch her, sending her back with Rory, but preventing the Doctor from ever reaching them again. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
In 2016, a Weeping Angel killed Dorothea Ames for her failure in stopping Charlie Smith from using the Cabinet of Souls against the Shadow Kin. The Governors worked for the Angels, preparing for the Arrival. (TV: The Lost)
The Twelfth Doctor encountered and defeated a Weeping Angel connected to a Gallifreyan stone in New York. (AUDIO: The Lost Angel)
A group of humans recruited by Kate Stewart (PROSE: And now for a story...) for Operation Time Fracture in the 2020s (WC: 14684 UNIT Field Log) fought off Weeping Angels at UNIT HQ. (PROSE: And now for a story...)
Later history
At an unknown time, a definitive piece of literature about the Angels was created. (TV: The Time of Angels)
On 20 October 2820, the cathedrals of the Gothica colony were suddenly filled with people claiming to be from the future. They warned that in one hundred years and two days the entire colony would be overrun with Weeping Angels. Indeed, the cathedrals of the Gothica colony were overrun with Weeping Angels on 22 October 2920. (PROSE: Time Traveller's Diary)
In the 33rd century, flocks of Weeping Angels swarmed human colony worlds and darkened the sunlight to feed; worlds such as New Moscow were asked to take up arms against them. Some said it would not be possible to oppose such powerful creatures. (PROSE: Legends of the Weeping Angels)
At some point in the 47th century, hundreds of Weeping Angels came to Alfava Metraxis and wiped out the civilisation of the Aplans. Afterwards, they ran out of food and began to starve, going dormant in the Aplan Mortarium. Another Angel somehow learned of this, and feigned dormancy in the ruins of Razbahan until it was dug up, persisting on to the end of the 50th century. It passed through private hands and eventually was brought to the Byzantium. River Song, who had been tracking the Angel, tried to warn the owner, but he didn't listen to her forewarnings and the Angel caused the ship to crash onto Alfava Metraxis, planning to use the radiation as fuel.
The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond, along with River and soldiers from the Church, entered the temple to find it. Inside the Maze, they found many worn statues. The Doctor deduced that the Angel must have hidden among them to avoid being found. The Angel killed three soldiers and used the consciousness of one to communicate with the Doctor. When the Doctor eventually realised that all the statues were Angels, the awakening Angels attacked. (TV: The Time of Angels)
Surrounded, they escaped by destroying a gravity globe, creating an "updraft" and falling onto the Byzantium. The Angels followed them, only for both groups to encounter a crack in one of the ship's walls. The Crack was bleeding pure time energy, something the Angels had predetermined would appear, bearing limitless energy for them to feast on. However, after capturing the Doctor, he told them they could not feast upon pure time energy, which was the fire at the end of the universe. This allowed the Doctor to escape and regroup with his posse.
Fearing the Crack, the Angels began fleeing to the other side of the ship, being briefly halted by the clerics' gazes. When only Amy, the Doctor and River remained, the Angels confronted the Doctor. They told him the only way he could close the crack was by throwing himself into it. Instead, the Doctor waited for the Byzantium's artificial gravity to shut off (because the Angels were absorbing too much energy from the ship itself), which caused the entire Angel army to fall into the Crack, closing it and erasing them from history along with the mental image in Amy's mind. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
At an unknown point in time, the Weeping Angels travelled to Trenzalore along with many other races in response to a mysterious message broadcast through time and space. Unlike the other species, they managed to make it onto the planet, where they were discovered by the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald. The Weeping Angels surrounded them, but the Doctor summoned the TARDIS and they escaped. During the later Siege of Trenzalore, a Weeping Angel tried to invade the town but was trapped by the Doctor using a mirror on which he wrote "with love from the Doctor!". The remaining Angels eventually retreated, as with all the invaders except the Daleks. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
In the 67th century, a vid-briefing series entitled Perils of the Constant Division provided information on, amongst others, Weeping Angels. (TV: The Tsuranga Conundrum)
In the year fifty squillion, the Weeping Angel Museum contained hundreds of thousands of Weeping Angels trapped under constant surveillance, many of whom were donated to the museum by the Doctor. (COMIC: The Doctor Shops for Angels) The Doctor borrowed the miniature Weeping Angel that would send Gabby Gonzalez back in time (COMIC: Four Doctors) from here after figuring out which one would send Gabby an appropriate length of time back her own timestream. (COMIC: The Doctor Shops for Angels)
End of the universe
On Gallifrey, some cherubs and full-grown Angels had gotten trapped in the "Fibre-optic cables" within the Matrix, and were found by Clara Oswald and the Twelfth Doctor. (TV: Hell Bent)
Undated events
Strax captured a Weeping Angel. After sending a message to Sontar, Strax decided that he'd figured out a way to become immune to Weeping Angels. He thought that since the Doctor always told him not to blink around Weeping Angels, he'd close his eyes to get rid of the need to blink. (COMIC: The Adventures of Strax & the Time Shark)
Jack Harkness fought a horde of Weeping Angels in his time as a Time Agent. (COMIC: Secret Agent Man)
Four Weeping Angels once trapped someone in the attic of a house on Earth. The Twelfth Doctor helped the trapped person and sent his TARDIS. After the person escaped in the TARDIS, the angels were trapped in a quantum-locked state in the attic. (GAME: Don't Blink)
The Weeping Angels send two children named Tarmin and Izmay into the past where they would eventually become an old couple who would leave sweets out for any kids who would play in the gardens of the house they would end up living in until the end of their lives, including their past selves. (PROSE: The Garden of Statues)
A Weeping Angel was transported to Gehanna by the planet's Chief Medical Officer, Perinne, who hoped to study it to reverse engineer its quantum-locking to enhance the planet's quarantine. The Angel sought revenge by spreading its image into the population via the masks every citizen wore, slowly transforming the entire population into Angels. (PROSE: Grey Matter)
A Weeping Angel was imprisoned in the Judoon prison, along with the Thirteenth Doctor, who nicknamed it "Angela". Whilst walking around the cells, the Doctor blinked to make it move. The Angel tried to attack, but was restrained by the electric cage and her shackles, which only scared the Doctor. "Angela" moved back to her previous position, as the Doctor moved on. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
Working for the Division
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A number of Weeping Angels worked for the Division. (TV: Village of the Angels) During her time working for the Division, an Angel helped the Fugitive Doctor rescue the children of the Empress of Weavers. (COMIC: Origins)
One Angel went rogue from the Division, taking with it the memories the Division had erased from the Doctor's mind, so an Extraction Squad of Angels were tasked with retrieving it. Seeking the Doctor's aid, (TV: Village of the Angels) during the Great Disruption the Angel appeared in the centre of the time storm running through the Mouri, the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends. It infiltrated Yasmin Khan's time stream, where the Doctor had hidden her to keep her safe during the storm. Once the Disruption had been resolved, the Angel used Yaz's phone to appear in the Doctor's TARDIS and hijacked the ship, (TV: Once, Upon Time) directing it to Medderton in 1967. The Doctor managed to evict it by resetting the TARDIS, so it took refuge in the mind of Claire Brown, (TV: Village of the Angels) who had ended up in Medderton after being attacked by a Weeping Angel in Liverpool on Halloween 2021. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
As the Extraction Squad closed in on Medderton, sending all the villagers and the Doctor's companions back in time to 1901, the Doctor sheltered with Claire and Professor Eustacius Jericho in his house's basement. Making telepathic contact with Claire, the Doctor spoke with the rogue Angel and it told her the information it held on the Division. The group fled the onslaught of Angels via a secret tunnel, with Jericho being caught and sent back to 1901. The rogue Angel made a deal with its pursuers to handover the Doctor instead to save itself, and she emerged from the tunnel to find herself surrounded. Speaking through Claire, the rogue Angel revealed the deal it had made and that the Doctor was recalled to the Division. The Doctor was transformed into a Weeping Angel and all of the Angels were transported away. (TV: Village of the Angels) The Angels transported her to Division Control where the Doctor was reverted to normal. (TV: Survivors of the Flux)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate dimension in which the Doctor's adventures existed as a fictional TV show called Doctor Who, a fan dressed as a Weeping Angel was present at a Doctor Who convention which the Eleventh Doctor visited with Ally in 2013. (COMIC: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who)
In an alternate timeline, the miniature Weeping Angel in the Eleventh Doctor's comics was discovered by Gabby Gonzalez. The Weeping Angel sent her back in time to Paris, 1923 to the companions meeting, allowing Gabby to alter time. Learning of this event caused the Eleventh Doctor to plant the Weeping Angel in the comics package in the first place. (COMIC: Four Doctors)
Other references
Children knew instinctively about the danger of the Weeping Angels and created "play ground games" about how to escape the lonely assassins. As such, River Song once pondered whether children naturally being afraid of the dark was a natural reaction to the shadows, as any angel could be hiding under the cover of the darkness. (WC: Monster File: Weeping Angels)
Before the outbreak of the War in Heaven, Avus journeyed into an alter-time realm and encountered a malevolent army of statues that only moved when he wasn't looking at them. (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory)
When a museum was made from the Doctor's memories in the Matrix, it contained a Weeping Angel. (COMIC: The Forgotten) While trying to jog Jackson Lake's memory, the Tenth Doctor reminded him of his adventures with the Weeping Angels by asking him about the "Don't Blink" meme from his experiences with Sally Sparrow. (TV: The Next Doctor) Rassilon declared that the two Time Lords who opposed him, who covered their eyes in the same way as the Weeping Angels, would "stand as monuments to their shame, as did the Weeping Angels of old". (TV: The End of Time)
Gibbis' biggest fear was of Weeping Angels, which may have caused an apparition of them to appear in a computer-generated hotel. (TV: The God Complex) While hunting parts of an Eternity Clock, the Doctor came across a stone angel statue in 1561 London; he warned River not to blink before determining it was just a regular statue. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
When the telepathic Emily Fairfax read the mind of the Hypothetical Gentleman, a Weeping Angel was among the images seen. (COMIC: Hypothetical Gentleman) As noted by the Twelfth Doctor in propaganda broadcasts to an occupied Earth in the late 2010s, the Weeping Angels were among the menaces to humanity whom the Monks took credit for defeating. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
The Toymaker would display a puppet show towards the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble about the companions he had after Donna's departure, and retold how Amy Pond was killed by a Weeping Angel, with the Doctor correcting that she died of old age after she was sent back in time. (TV: The Giggle)
Behind the scenes
The Brilliant Book 2011
The Brilliant Book 2011, a book that contains non-narrative based information this wiki does not consider a valid source, has put forward many unknown pieces of Angel history, including:
- The Time Lords knew of the Weeping Angels and viewed them as nightmarish: an old manuscript on the Weeping Angels, written in High Gallifreyan, translated into "It's behind you".
Doctor Who: Legacy
In the story of Doctor Who: Legacy, the Eleventh Doctor and his companions face the Weeping Angels in New York in 2012 while travelling back through the timeline.
Video games
- There are Weeping Angels in the Doctor Who level in LEGO Dimensions.
- In the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, an Easter egg was put it the multiplayer map Nuketown (stylized NUK3TOWN): shooting the arms of all the mannequins on the map in the first two minutes of the game will induce the mannequins to a "zombies"-style gameplay, however, the mannequins moves and attack when not seen by the players, and freezes when seen, a clear homage to the Weeping Angels.
- In the Blood and Wine downloadable content for The Witcher 3 video game, there are stone angels that also move when you look away in graveyards.
- There's an Easter egg of the Weeping Angels in Just Cause 3. An abandoned ruin on a hilltop features four statues ringed around an amphitheatre-like structure with a dead goat in the middle. If you approach the goat, the statues will close in on you, but only when they're off-screen.
Class
With the cancellation of Class, the Weeping Angel cliffhanger and the exact details of "the Arrival" have never been shared. Ideas for Class Series 2 included a Weeping Angel civil war and a visit to the Weeping Angel homeworld. Patrick Ness stated "I'd envisioned the civil war and the planet like that. Something only comprehensible in a small way, with so much of it remaining a mystery, reminding us that there are paths we're just never going to understand."[1]
Other matters
- The collaborative fiction wiki known as the SCP Foundation was first conceptualised in part through a 4chan post in June 22, 2007, thirteen days after Blink's initial airing, about a Weeping Angel-esque creature known as SCP-173 otherwise known as "The Sculpture". This character would be used as the primary antagonist in the freeware horror survival game SCP: Containment Breach. Striking similarities include their appearance as a non-organic statue, their lack of mobility during eye contact with something else and the capability of moving around with surprisingly high speed, when looked away from. SCP-173 is also capable of snapping the neck of its victims, though this is more due to malice than as a method of communication. Connections between the Weeping Angels and SCP-173 were hotly debated until October 8th, 2018, when a Twitter user under the name Jason Scott uploaded the post along with several million more posts from 4chan's /x/ board to the Internet Archive[2], confirming the closeness of the time of posting in relation to Blink's release and making it extremely likely that the first SCP entry was inspired by the Weeping Angels.
- The Zeno paradox-like effect, proven in the article Measurement-Induced Localisation of an Ultracold Lattice Gas, showing that a particle is unable to move while it is being observed, was referenced in Gizmodo Australia as the 'Weeping Angel' Effect.[3]
- In 2017, BBC news mentioned the Weeping Angels in connection with the CIA hacking tool, "Weeping Angel".
- Weeping Angels named Chas and Chelsea appeared in Alien Babies!.
External links
- Weeping Angel at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki
- Weeping Angel at the LEGO Dimensions wiki
- Weeping Angel at the Fallout Who Vegas wiki
Footnotes
Notes
- ↑ While Blink itself uncontroversially sets its main setting in 2007 and "twenty minutes to Red Hatching" a year later in 2008—as Kathy Nightingale's letter describes taking "one breath in 2007 and the next in 1920", and the Tenth Doctor's side of his conversation with Sally Sparrow in 1969 happens 38 years before Sally says hers—these are contradicted by heavily conflicting dates in the Redacted audio series later on regarding both Kathy's disappearance and the Red Hatching. In Angels, Abby McPhail identifies 2008 as the year of Kathy's disappearance, which suggests 2009 as the year of the Red Hatching. In Salvation, the Thirteenth Doctor recognises the Red Hatching as the cause of death of Andy Proctor, who was last seen by his daughter Cleo "nearly 20 years" before 2022 according to Recruits.
Citations
- ↑ Class writers tease scrapped Weeping Angel storylines for cancelled Doctor Who spin-off
- ↑ Jason Scott on Twitter
- ↑ Ouellette, Jennifer (18 September 2015). Quantum 'Weeping Angel' Effect Freezes Atoms In Place. Gizmodo Australia. Retrieved on 30 December 2016.
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