The episode hits the ground running with a spectacular pre-titles sequence which reintroduces the mysterious River Song. A guard is hallucinating that he is in a garden but he is actually on a space ship. He's been drugged by River Song who has stolen a flight recorder box and engraved a message onto it. Some time in the future the box is recovered from a museum by the Doctor and Amy who travel back in time and rescue River Song after she escapes the guards by leaping out into space. The constant switching between locations and time zones never feels jarring and its a sign of how good a writer Steven Moffat is that he can pull it off. Only a show like Doctor Who could switch narrative so easily.
The Doctor, Amy and River follow the Byzantium to the planet Alfafa Metraxis where they discover that 'The Byzantium' crash landed. River does not seem surprised by this and the Doctor and Amy discover that she is working with a team of militaristic clerics who are hunting the occupant of the 'Byzantium' vault... a lone Weeping Angel.
From here on. the episode settles down to a more standard scenario of a team of soldier trying to hunt down monsters through dark caves. It recalls James Cameron's Aliens as well as the Fifth Doctor story Earthshock.
The idea of clerics as soldiers is a nice touch of worldbuilding for this future society. Iain Glenn is good as Father Octavian, the leader of the Clerics. He has a hard time tolerating the Doctor's jibes at him. The others feel a bit like red-shirts as they express very little personality. Their sole purpose is to be picked off by the angel one by one.
The Weeping Angels are a little different this time. Now they can project themselves through images, like Samara from The Ring. They can also feast off radiation and the Doctor and his friends discover that the statues inside the caves are actually regenerating angels. Some might consider these extra abilities unnecessary but it is really no different to the Daleks getting more abilities in The Dalek Invasion of Earth after their first appearance. If Steven Moffat intends to reinvent the Angels as a recurring foe then it helps.
If you've followed the publicity images and set reports then you'll know that this was the first episode that Matt Smith recorded as the Doctor. You wouldn't have guessed it from his performance though as he already seems comfortable in the role. He effortlessly switches between funny, serious and worried in a blink of an eye. It's so obvious now why Steven Moffat cast him: he makes being the Doctor look effortless. It certainly proves that whatever was wrong with his performance in Victory of the Daleks, it had nothing to do with his lack of experience.
Karen Gillian is effective at playing Amy Pond as a feisty young woman, but there's very variety in how the character behaves. She shows cleverness in outwitting the angel, although she still seems a little too quick on the uptake in these science fiction scenarios. Still, the fact that she has an angel inside her means that we may get to see her more frightened and vulnerable than before.
Alex Kingson is great as River Song. She's still an archaeologist, but there's a touch of femme fatale to her in the pre-titles sequence. She is said to have killed someone, but who? Is she really the Doctor's future wife? She has developed into a far more interesting character than the one we were introduced to in Silence in the Library and I can't wait to find out the answers to the questions surrounding her.
Adam Smith had already proven himself as a good director with The Eleventh Hour and that's still very much the case here. He really sells the fast paced excitement of the pre-titles sequence and the creepiness of the cave exploration later in the episode. We're long way away from the flat direction that Andrew Gunn gave in the last two episodes. Hopefully the rest of the series will be more like Adam Smith and less like Andrew Gunn.
Murray Gold also delivered a fantastic score. The use of choir and vocals suited the more divine nature of the Angels and the Clerics that we saw here. His Eleventh Doctor theme works really well int he build up to the cliffhanger.
It is the cliffhanger where this almost perfect episode falters. That final shot makes it all too clear how the cliffhanger is resolved. We see that the Doctor is shooting at the gravity globe so it is fairly obvious he's going to use the explosion to make everyone reach the deck of the Byzantium. Perhaps it would have been better to cut after the Doctor fired the gun? I don't know.
On the other hand, the next time trailer is far more exciting. It seems that the Doctor and Amy are finally going to become aware that the cracks in time appear to be following them. That will be interesting.
Overall, I would say this is as good as The Eleventh Hour and far superior to the other two episodes. If the second part can be as good as the first, we are on to the second brilliant story of the Matt Smith era.
9/10
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