Flesh and Stone (TV story)
Flesh and Stone was the fifth episode of the fifth series of BBC Wales Doctor Who. It was the second of a two-part story that began with The Time of Angels.
This story revealed more about the cracks, such as why Amy cannot remember the Daleks' attacks on Earth during Doomsday or The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. The Pandorica is mentioned again, this time by River Song, hinting it may be a serious event in the Doctor's future. The story also contained a moment where the Doctor appeared out of place from the conflict around him, and seemed more engrossed in a bigger crisis yet to ensue.
Synopsis
There's no way back, no way up and no way out. Trapped by an army of Weeping Angels and an ever-growing mysterious crack, the Eleventh Doctor and his friends try to escape through the wreckage of a crashed space liner. Meanwhile, surrounded by Angels, Amy faces an even more deadly attack, as she's forced to find her way through the forest vault, eyes closed.
Plot
The Eleventh Doctor, Amy, River, Father Octavian and the Clerics have jumped at the Doctor's signal. Caught by an updraft of the Byzantium's gravity field, they land upside down on the ship's hull. Octavian quickly notices that the Weeping Angels are beginning to restore; within an hour they'll be an army. The Doctor opens the door and leads everyone inside the corridor while the Angels pop the lights outside the entrance.
However, right before they can enter the secondary flight deck, the door shuts. The Doctor seals the door outside, but tells them that the Angels are there now. As the Doctor works on the lights, four Angels break off the door and enter the corridor. In the nick of time, the Doctor prevents the Angels from draining the lighting grid's power. However, he gravely announces he will have to drain the power in the corridor to get the door open — including the lights. Octavian and his men line up to fire on the Angels while the Doctor tells Amy to turn the wheel on the door four times after he has cut the power. She responds with ten, before correcting herself.
They quickly enter, with the Doctor shutting the door behind them. Octavian magnetises the door to keep the Angels out, thinking even they cannot turn the wheel now; they start doing so, but slow enough that it buys everyone time to think. Now that Octavian gets that the Angels cannot be stopped by conventional means, the Doctor begins figuring out what their resources are; River joins him in contemplating what they can do. The Doctor and River realise there must be an oxygen factory on board to supply the passengers with air. The Doctor activates a panel on the back wall, which opens to reveal a cybernetic forest within the ship. Amy continues counting down, but denies doing so.
While the Doctor and River try to explain the counting to her, Angel Bob calls to find out their plans. The Doctor taunts him, but grows serious when Bob tells him that they are in Amy's eye. The Angels are making her count to scare them, and will take her soon. Bob gloats over gaining mastery over time and space. The Doctor informs him the Byzantium doesn't have that much power. A screeching noise is heard from outside; "Dear God! What is that!?" Bob explains, the best as it can, that the Angels are laughing because "the Doctor in the TARDIS hasn't noticed". The Doctor wonders what he has missed and turns to see a huge crack in the wall of the ship. It is the exact shape of the one in Amy's bedroom wall. He orders the others to run while he looks at it. Though Amy is reluctant, River pulls her away, knowing the Doctor knows what he's doing. A scan from the sonic tells the Doctor that the crack is "extremely very not good." When he turns to follow, he is surrounded by the Angels. One catches him by his jacket.
The Weeping Angels do not kill him immediately, confusing the Doctor. He turns around to see them facing the crack, arms raised. Wiggling to get free of the grip of the Angel holding him by his jacket, the Doctor tells them that the light coming out of the crack is pure time energy; it is not power, but "the fire at the end of the universe." As the entire group looks at the crack, the Doctor runs off into the forest without his jacket, telling them, "Another thing, never let me talk"; he got out of his coat while they were distracted.
Meanwhile, Amy has reached "two" in her countdown and lies down, cradling her head. River produces a scanner to check her while Octavian worries they are exposed. River retorts that Octavian's only job is to keep the Doctor safe. If he's dead, she won't forgive herself, but if he's alive, she won't forgive him. She realises he is standing right behind her. They wonder how he escaped the Angels; "Found a crack in the wall and told them it was the end of the universe". When questioned what the crack really is, the Doctor repeats "the end of the universe". He rushes to Amy and deduces that because she looked into the eyes of an Angel, and, as the image of an Angel becomes an Angel, there is a living Angel in her brain's visual center. After internal debate, the Doctor orders Amy to close her eyes. She soon begins to normalise. If she opens them for more than a second, the Angel will escape and she will die. She is too weak to move and is left in the forest with the remaining Clerics while the Doctor, River and Octavian head to the primary flight deck.
As she sits waiting, Amy is suddenly approached by the Doctor in different clothing, who tells her that it's vital she start trusting him, despite the fact that he doesn't always tell her the truth. Amy then asks how the crack in her wall can be here, and the Doctor responds that he's working it out. He requests that she remember what he told her when she was a little girl. When Amy asks him what he told her, the Doctor tells her that what he said isn't the point... just as long as she remembers. Just as quickly as he arrived, the Doctor is gone again.
The Angels stake out the clearing and begin tearing apart the treeborgs to cut off the power supply to the lights. The lights flicker. When they go out, the Angels are nowhere to be seen. Light projects across the forest from the secondary flight deck. Marco, the squad leader, sends Crispin and Phillip to investigate it. Amy insists on seeing its source, though she will have to open her eyes. When she sees it is the crack from her wall, she collapses and begs to know why it is following her.
Octavian tells the Doctor that River is on leave from Stormcage Containment Facility in his custody; through this mission, she hopes to earn a pardon. While River tries to open the door to the primary flight deck, the Doctor considers the anomalies he has recently noticed: the duckless duck pond in Leadworth; Amy's inability to remember the Dalek invasion of Earth; and the CyberKing in Victorian London. He uses River's scanner to work out that a temporal explosion will occur on 26 June 2010 and cause the cracks in time and space — Amy's time.
Marco orders Pedro to go to the light. Amy reminds him he sent the other two, but he insists there weren't any others. After some time, Marco decides to go and investigate, having forgotten Pedro as well. Amy pleads with him to stay. As a compromise, he leaves her a spare communicator and agrees to speak to her through it. As he reaches the crack, his voice vanishes in a crackle of static. Amy is now left alone without anyone to guard her from the Angels: the one in her mind and the ones outside of it.
River opens the door and steps inside while Octavian waits with the Doctor. The lights go out. When they return, Octavian is trapped in an Angel's stranglehold. Knowing the Doctor cannot save him, Octavian tells him River is in prison for murder and he shouldn't trust her. As the Doctor flees, Octavian's neck is snapped. River tries to get a teleport working as the Doctor explains the cracks. When she challenges his ideas, he responds with growing rage and tells her the teleport is useless.
Amy huddles alone in the forest, blind and with nothing but the communicator. The Doctor contacts her; Amy must make her way to the flight deck. The Angels can only kill her, but the crack can erase her from time. He sends software to the communicator to guide her. Terrified, she slowly makes her way across the forest, soon surrounded by the army of Weeping Angels fleeing from the crack. In their own terror, they do not realise her eyes are closed and their defence mechanisms kick in. They figure it out, though, when Amy trips over a root on the ground. They slowly remove the statue guise, and move in to kill her. Just as an Angel reaches towards Amy, River thankfully gets the teleport working and transports her to the flight deck.
The Angels drain all of the ship's energy, opening the flight deck doors in the process. Angel Bob demands the Doctor throw himself into the crack to save the Angels, Amy and River. River, as a time traveller, wants to throw herself in in place of the Doctor, but he laughs — she is not even as complicated as one Angel and it would take all of them to equal him. He tells her to get a grip. She continues to protest, but the Doctor tells her to seriously get a grip. River deduces his "genius" plan, and has Amy grab onto the console, warning her not to let go. With the words, "Night-night", the Doctor grabs onto the console and the ship's gravity fails. The planet's gravity field takes over in its place, sending the Angels plummeting into the crack while the Doctor watches in delight. The crack explodes in a burst of energy, and closes.
Outside the temple, a second squad of Clerics cleans up the camp while Amy sits nearby, complaining of aches from climbing out of the Byzantium with her eyes shut. The Doctor tells her she did not have to do this, since the Angel in her mind never existed. Amy wonders why she remembers them and the Clerics, when they never existed at all. The Doctor explains that, as a time traveller, she now sees things differently.
The Doctor goes to River, who has been handcuffed, and is prepared to teleport back to Stormcage, hoping to have done enough to earn a pardon. The Doctor admits that Octavian told him of River's crime, and demands to know who she murdered. River confesses he was a good man, "the best man she ever knew." When the Doctor asks if he can trust her, River laughs, saying he can if he wants to... "but where's the fun in that?" She vanishes with the Clerics.
Back in the TARDIS, Amy tells the Doctor she wants to go home. He thinks she means for good, but she insists she has something to show him. He parks the TARDIS in Amy's bedroom five minutes after they first left. Amy shows him her wedding dress and engagement ring; she is getting married in the morning to Rory Williams.
She tries to explain to the Doctor "who" she wants, but the Doctor hasn't a clue to what she is talking about. Seeing he is not going to get hints, Amy kisses him. She lies on the bed and continues to allude to sexual connotations, all of which the Doctor nervously attempts to fend off. He rebuffs her advances and stops her attempts to undress him. She kisses him again, but he pushes her away, citing her marriage the next morning. This suddenly makes him remember the date of the temporal explosion: 26 June 2010. 26 June is the date of Amy's wedding. He pushes her back into the TARDIS just as the clock turns past midnight to the next day.
A flashback returns to the conversation River Song and the Doctor were having about the origin of the cracks in time. Amy's wedding day will preclude a catastrophic event. The base code of the universe translates to "26 06 2010", the date of an explosion that caused the cracks to appear.
Cast
- The Doctor - Matt Smith
- Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
- River Song - Alex Kingston
- Octavian - Iain Glen
- Bob/Angel Bob - David Atkins
- Marco - Darren Morfitt
- Pedro - Mark Monero
- Phillip - George Russo
Crew
| Executive Producers Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
References
The Doctor
- Whilst trying to figure out the implications of the cracks in time, the Doctor wonders about the CyberKing, and if 21st century Earth's lack of knowledge of its presence is somehow related.
- The Doctor states his age is nine hundred and seven.
- River Song says she and the Doctor will meet again when the Pandorica opens; the Doctor claims that is just a fairy tale.
Timeline
- Amy's age and her second encounter with the Doctor are established as taking place in 2008 (when she encountered Prisoner Zero), while her third encounter with the Doctor when she left with him took place on the night of 25 June 2010 when Amy is twenty-one.
Story notes
- According to Steven Moffat on the 30 March 2010 edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Front Row, the title of this episode was supplied by his son, Joshua.
- The title is a play on "flesh and bone", a common idiom referring to a creature's anatomy, since most humans and animals are composed of flesh and a skeletal structure. The title also refers to the Weeping Angels' weakness of turning to stone whenever anyone looks at them, and possibly the fact that Amy thought her hand had turned to stone in the previous episode, The Time of Angels. This was a rumoured title for the episode Gridlock.
- There is a crack in the Byzantium — continuing the theme throughout the series. The crack appears to be growing, and upon finding it, Amy Pond notes its similarity to the one on her bedroom wall from TV: The Eleventh Hour. The Doctor says of the crack, "That is extremely very not good."
- The Doctor says that time can be unwritten.
- The time on the scanner that the Doctor holds says that Amy's time is her wedding day.
- The Weeping Angels are seen moving for the first time. One Angel is seen moving a hand to grab the Doctor by his jacket, and later they turn their heads when they realise that Amy can't see them.
- The date shown in the episode, 26/06/2010, would be the broadcast date of the final episode of Series 5, The Big Bang, in Britain. In other counties, it was not aired until later, however.
- The method the Doctor uses to dispose of the Weeping Angels mirrors his method of vanquishing the Cybermen and Daleks in TV: Doomsday.
- Amy continues the tradition of female companions kissing the Doctor. However, instead of falling in love with him, Amy had another idea.
- This episode aired on the same day as the K9 episode Alien Avatar was first broadcast on Disney XD in Britain. It also aired on the same day that Sirens of Ceres was first broadcast on Network Ten in Australia.
Ratings
- 6.9 million viewers [source needed]
Filming locations
- The beach scenes on Alfava Metraxis were filmed at Southerndown beach, Vale of Glamorgan. This was also where scenes in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and Journey's End were filmed.[1]
- Scenes in the forest vault of the Byzantium were filmed in Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean.[2]
Rumours
- Amy and Rory will either marry each other or put it on hold at the end of the episode, and Rory will travel in the TARDIS at the end. This was proven false, but Rory joined Amy and the Doctor in the TARDIS in the next episode, and he and Amy got married in the series finale.
Production errors
- When the Doctor is searching for a way to open the door to the forest he places his hands on it and it wobbles.
- When Amy lies down on the tree stump her hair is all over her face but on the wide shot her hair is behind her head.If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
- While the Doctor is talking to River in the forest, he has both hands behind his back as if tucking in his shirt; however in the next shot he is still in mid-sentence and is suddenly holding his hands in front.
- While the Doctor talks to River at the end of the episode the position of his right suspender strap switches places from angle to angle.
- Just after the Doctor leaves with River and Octavian, his future self holds Amy's hand and talks to her. However, he does not wear his normal gold watch, which is replaced with a black one, and does not have the vortex manipulator on his right arm, which he should have had.
- During the final scene in Amy's bedroom the Doctor looks at Amy's alarm clock. Despite the fact that the conversation was talking about Amy getting married "in the morning" the clock changes from 11:59 AM on 6/25 to 12:00 PM on 6/26, a mysterious 24-hour jump.
- In the scene where Amy is following the sound of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, there are points where the light on the screwdriver is off, yet the sound can still clearly be heard on both ends of the communicator.
Continuity
- Events the Doctor thinks are erased from history by the cracks include TV: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End and The Next Doctor.
- River says to the Doctor, "You, me, handcuffs... must it always end this way?", unknowningly referencing her own death in TV: Forest of the Dead.
- River Song mentioned the crash of the Byzantium to the Tenth Doctor in TV: Silence in the Library.
- River Song refers to the events of the Pandorica opening. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
- When mentioning how time can be rewritten the Doctor references Amy's lack of knowledge of the Daleks and planets in the sky. (TV: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)
- There is a flashback to TV: The Eleventh Hour.
- After the Doctor leaves with River and Octavian to find the primary flight deck, the Doctor quickly returns for a moment to speak with Amy and his behavior and appearance are completely different (jacket, rolled-up sleeves, different watch, etc). This turned out to be the Doctor from the future. (TV: The Big Bang)
- The Doctor mentions the duck-pond with no ducks from TV: The Eleventh Hour.
- This is the third time the Doctor has kissed a female companion on the forehead before he temporarily left them; the first was Zoe Heriot in TV: The War Games. He similarly kissed Jo Grant on the forehead in TV: Colony in Space.
- Angel Bob says that the Doctor in the TARDIS hasn't noticed. Prisoner Zero says something similar to the Doctor in TV: The Eleventh Hour.
- In TV: The Big Bang, the Doctor succeeded in closing the cracks.
- Meanwhile in the TARDIS (scene 2) immediately follows this episode.
Home video releases
BBC Video - Doctor Who Series Five - Volume Two was released on Monday 5 July 2010 (UK Only) on DVD and Blu-ray, featuring The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone and The Vampires of Venice.[3]
External links
- Series 5: Episode 5 - Flesh & Stone [1]
- Flesh and Stone at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
Footnotes
