Weeping Angel

Weeping Angel
Main aliases:	"Lonely Assassin"
Appearances:	DW: Blink DW:The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone WC: A Ghost Story for Christmas

For angels in general, see also Angel.

The Weeping Angels were a species of winged humanoids from the early universe, so called because they cover their faces, giving them a weeping appearance, to prevent trapping themselves in stone form for eternity. (DW: Blink)

Biology

You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy.The Doctor describing the Weeping Angels.

The Weeping Angels were winged humanoids with sharp teeth who evolved numerous unique survival mechanisms throughout their time, including the ability to move creatures back through time with a touch, allowing them to consume the potential energy from the time the victims could have had alive had the Angels not transported the victims back in time.

There was no apparent reason as to what time period people were transported, however the Doctor states that each Angel sends it's victims to the same time period. Kathy Nightingale was transported to the 1920s; The Doctor, Martha Jones and Billy Shipton were sent to 1969 (DW: Blink); and there was an account of one Julia Hardwick who was transported to 1887 (WC: A Ghost Story for Christmas). The Angels were able to move people through both space and time, as Kathy (and possibly Julia) were touched in London, but ended up in Hull, while Shipton was touched inside a parking garage, but arrived in 1969 in an outdoor location. (DW: Blink)

A Weeping Angel stalking Hardwick (look closely in to the left of Hardwick, you can see the Angel)

They also had a unique and nearly-perfect defence mechanism, quantum-locking, or use of the Quantum Zeno effect, which caused them to turn into stone when being observed. When not being observed, they could move incredibly fast to catch their victims. However, this meant that they had to cover their eyes when in their stony form; otherwise if they saw each other they would be trapped forever.

The Weeping Angels also seemed to have some psychic abilities as demonstrated when one causes a light bulb to flicker just by pointing at it. This could well mean, though it is left ambiguous, that the Weeping Angels are capable of knowing what is occurring around them while they are in their stone form, as they seemed to be able to know what people were doing around them even when Quantum-Locked.

When Angels get older, they did not appear to age in a biological sense.They appeared to wear away as a normal statue would over many years. They would also change form slightly (the did not look like angels anymore, but more like a typical statue of sicnificant age) presumably because the statue wore and the wings fell off, though there is no evidence for this. Older weeping angels were seen in The Maze Of The Dead, and were apparently responseable for killing the temple's constructors (according to the Doctor).

History

A Weeping Angel covering its eyes.

The Weeping Angels evolved near the beginning of the universe, and were (as the Doctor put it) the kindest of killers and psychopaths since their method of killing was to let their victims "live to death", but also perhaps the loneliest beings in existence, as due to their defence mechanism they could not even look at each other. In that respect the Doctor appears to pity them.

In 2007, a quartet of Weeping Angels managed to strand the Doctor 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 is capable of turning 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's key. Unfortunately for the Angels, Sally Sparrow gained the key from one of the Angels before they could reach the TARDIS by looking at them, causing the quantum locking effect to kick in, leaving a key on one of the Angels for Sally to take.

They then started stalking Sally in their attempt to gain access to the TARDIS. They managed to corner her in the basement of the building where the TARDIS was stored by the Angels, at which point she managed to enter the TARDIS and which dematerialised as the Angels tried to stop it by holding onto it. When it finished dematerialising the Angels gazed at each other across the empty space where the TARDIS was, which turned each other into stone perpetually, thereby ending the group's menace.

It is not known what became of the statues afterward; they could have been left at the Wester Drumlins estate, but seeing as the location was condemned and likely to someday be redeveloped, relocation by the Doctor or another entity is possible.

Because they are turned to stone when observed, any statue in the Universe could have been a Weeping Angel, though most likely just the ones that looked like Weeping Angels. (DW: Blink)

During the crash of the space ship Byzantium, Doctor River Song did try to stop it from taking the people onboard the ship, but she failed as the staff on that ship knew she was a criminal and she jetisoned herself of the ship and had alerted the Doctor. In doing this the people of the ship the Weeping Angel made it crash on the planet Alfava Metraxis on top of a temple which contained Weeping Angels. The Doctor and Amy Pond along with River and a crew of solders from the church entered the temple to find several statues that did not look like Weaping Angels but were Weeping Angels they had just been weathered away. They angels did manage to kill some of the crew and talk through a members voice. (DW: The Time of Angels)

Weaknesses

• Each-other
• Looking at them.

Other References

• Rassilon declared that the two Time Lords who opposed him (who covered their eyes in the same way as the Weeping Angels) were 'monuments to their shame, and will stand witness as the Weeping Angels of old'. (DW: The End of Time)

Behind the Scenes

• Although never seen actually moving on screen, the Weeping Angels were in fact portrayed by live actors, as revealed in the episode of Doctor Who Confidential corresponding with Blink. The closest they come to moving on screen is during the sequence in which Sally retrieves the key in the attic at Wester Drumlins: through careful timing, the "statues" subtly change their position while the camera's view is momentarily blocked by actress Carey Mulligan.
• It has been announced by Steven Moffat that the Weeping Angels will return in Series 5.  They were also seen in a trailer for Series 5. Briefly in the trailer, the Weeping Angels can be seen pursuing a group of people through what appears to be a tunnel, one of the people in the tunnel was River Song in a military outfit. Steven Moffat has stated that the Weeping Angels will be more "deadly" when we see them next. [1] In an interview with SFX magazine, Moffat declared, “They have more powers than you thought. And you are not safe just because you can keep your eyes open!”[2]
• One of their powers is whoever stares into thier eyes they believe they are turninig into stone and can't move, making it easier for the Weeping Angels to catch their prey.
• The Weeping Angels are rumoured to be appearing in Series 4 (The Sarah Jane Adventures) [3]
• Curiously, the Weeping Angels also seem to turn into statues even when no one's looking at them, except the viewer. The viewer obviously cannot count as an in-universe character actually physically looking at the Angels. It has yet to be explained then why the Angels are locked when no one is actually looking at them. This could maybe be the show trying to break the fourth wall, between the viewer and the show.