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The Weeping Angels were a species of quantum-locked humanoids from the early universe, so called because their unique nature necessitated that they often covered their faces to prevent trapping themselves in stone form for eternity. This gave them a weeping appearance. They were known for being murderous psychopaths, killing their victims "nicely" by dropping them into the past and letting them live to death. This 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
Appearance
Weeping Angels that were converted from ordinary statues appeared as they did before being taken over, and other Angels resembled stone statues of winged, humanoid women in chitons. Baby Angels resembled cherubs; naked, infant-sized versions of adult Angels. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) The Weeping Angels also seemed to grow fangs and claws when attacking. (TV: Blink)
When Weeping Angels became older and/or grew weaker, they wore away as a statue would over many 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. These older Weeping Angels did not have the same speed as their "healthy" counterparts, but were just as deadly. They could regain their appearance if re-energised. (TV: The Time of Angels)
Powers and abilities
River Song once indicated that the Weeping Angels had the ability to transform ordinary statues into Angels (or at least animate and control them, and give them the abilities of true Angels such as quantum-locking). (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
The Weeping Angels could also move their victims back through time with a touch. They would then consume the potential energy from the lives the victims would otherwise have led. They could move people through both space and time, as Kathy was touched in London, but ended up in Hull in 1920; Billy Shipton was touched inside a parking garage and arrived in 1969 in an outdoor location; and the first time Rory Williams was touched was in an archway in a park, and he arrived in a street; and the second time he was touched was in Grayle's cellar, and he arrived outside Winter Quay in the same time period. (TV: Blink, The Angels Take Manhattan)
They could also feed on other types of energy, such as radiation given off by a Galaxy class Star Liner or the electrical energy in electronics. This would cause lights to flicker, making it easier to use their quantum-locking. (TV: Blink, The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone) If they were sufficiently fed, however, the Angels would kill by sneaking up behind their victim and breaking their neck. The Angels were very strong; being able to break through steel doors, force magnetised wheels to turn, and snap victims' necks without difficulty. (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
The Weeping Angels had a unique and nearly perfect defence mechanism: quantum-locking, which caused them to turn into stone when being observed. (TV: Blink) It could also happen by instinct when they believed they were being watched. (TV: Flesh and Stone) When not being observed, they could move incredibly fast, though they appeared to slow down the closer they got to their prey. However, quantum-locking meant that they had to cover their eyes when in their stone form, as if they saw each other they would be trapped forever. (TV: Blink)
Anything with the image of the Angel, such as pictures or film, also gained the abilities of an Angel and would eventually become an Angel. (TV: The Time of Angels) When victims looked an Angel in the eyes, the Angel could infect their visual centres, creating an image in their mind. The victim could 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. Examples of mental influence included making the victim count down the minutes to his or her death, and making the victim hallucinate that a limb was petrified. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
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, and 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. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel)
The Angels could take the consciousness of someone who had died and speak through it to communicate, as they used the Cleric Bob, whom they killed, to talk with the Doctor. (TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) They also possessed the ability to communicate with each other over long distances, even when frozen. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
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)
History
The Weeping Angels evolved near the beginning of the universe. They were, in the Doctor's words, "the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely," since their victims were otherwise uninjured and would live out the rest of their lives in the past. They also had a defence mechanism of turning into stone when observed by another. This made them the loneliest beings in existence; due to this defence mechanism, they could not even look at each other. In that respect the Doctor appeared to pity them. (TV: Blink)
In 1898, the Weeping Angels had a presence [statement unclear]. (WC: Suddenly in a Graveyard)
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. At around this time, crime lord Grayle captured one adult Angel, and several infants. He kept the adult manacled in his office and tortured and damaged it, and the infants 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, and eventually attacked it when it was left defenceless.
At around the same time, when the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, River Song and Rory Williams came to Winter Quay, the Angels there trapped them inside. 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)
At some point in the 21st century, 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 2007, a group of Weeping Angels stranded the Tenth 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 could turn off Earth's 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 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 cornered her in the basement of the Wester Drumlins building where the TARDIS was stored by the Angels. She entered it and sent it back to the Doctor. When it finished dematerialising the Angels gazed at each other across the empty space where the TARDIS had been, each turned to stone eternally, their menace ended. (TV: Blink)
In 2011, Mark Whitaker encountered a Weeping Angel which sent him back in time to June 1994. 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. (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 Doctor used his Sonic Screwdriver to destroy the Angel. However, it reformed moments later, despite missing its right arm. (TV: Good as Gold)
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)
At an unknown time, a definitive piece of literature about the Angels was created.
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 Razvahan until it was dug up. It passed through private hands and eventually was brought to the Byzantium, when it caused the ship to crash onto Alfava Metraxis, planning to use the radiation as fuel. River Song, who had been tracking it, tried to warn the owner, but he didn't listen to her forewarnings.
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 itself 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.
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 seal 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), causing the entire Angel army to fall into the Crack, sealing it and removing them from history along with the mental image in Amy's mind. (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
Other references
- 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 "Do not 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, causing 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)
Behind the scenes
- The Weeping Angels were portrayed by live actors, as shown in CON: Do You Remember the First Time?.
- The Doctor stated twice that while the Weeping Angels are quantum-locked, they are nonexistent and are lifeless stone. (TV: Blink, The Time of Angels) However, this is contradicted by the fact that Angels have been shown to be able to speak, exhale and drain energy while quantum-locked. (TV: Blink, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, The Angels Take Manhattan)
- The Brilliant Book 2011, a book that contains non-narrative based information, 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".
- During the Egyptian era, a Weeping Angel was found at the entrance to a village. During an eclipse, the Angel killed most 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.
- In 2009, a boy named Charlie Cause disappeared whilst filming an independent movie entitled Zombie Vixens. The last photos taken of him show that he was attacked by a Weeping Angel in a graveyard.
- 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.
