Flesh and Stone

"Flesh and Stone" is the fifth episode of the fifth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith, the episode was first broadcast on 1 May 2010 on BBC One. Featuring the Weeping Angels as primary villains and the recurring character River Song (Alex Kingston), it is the conclusion of a two-episode story; the first part, "The Time of Angels", aired on 24 April.

In the episode, the alien time traveller the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), River Song, and Father Octavian (Iain Glen) and his militarised clerics have escaped entrapment by the Weeping Angels, creatures who only move when unobserved by others. They take refuge inside the crashed starship Byzantium, but the Angels pursue them and Amy is on the brink of dying from the imprint of an Angel in her eye. Both the Angels and the Doctor's team face danger from a widening crack in space and time which has the power to erase persons from history.

Moffat wrote the two-part story as a more action-packed sequel to his 2007 episode "Blink", inspired by the relationship between the film Alien and its sequel, Aliens. The episode contains vital information concerning the main story arc of the cracks in time, and contains many instances which are character-motivated. "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone" were the first two episodes of the fifth series to be filmed; filming for "Flesh and Stone" took place in July 2009, with location filming in Puzzlewood and Southerndown beach. The episode was watched by 8.495 million viewers in the United Kingdom and received mostly positive reviews from critics, though many commented that it did not live up to the quality to the first part and disagreed about the decision to show the Angels moving.

The Eleventh Doctor, Amy, River, Father Octavian, and Octavian's surviving clerics escape the approaching Weeping Angels when the Doctor destroys the gravity globe illuminating the cave they are in, allowing them to jump up into the artificial gravity of the crashed starship Byzantium. They scramble inside as the Angels start to follow, and the Doctor directs the group to the ship's oxygen factory, a forest contained within the ship. As they pass the primary flight deck, the Doctor notices a crack in its wall just like the one in Amy's bedroom is leaking time energy from the end of the universe that the Angels are being drawn to.

Amy starts becoming more afflicted by the image of the Angel in her eye, and the Doctor instructs her to keep her eyes closed, preventing her from seeing it. Octavian has the clerics guard Amy while he, the Doctor and River make for a secondary flight deck on the other side of the oxygen factory. During this, the Doctor learns that River is Octavian's prisoner and has been promised a full pardon if she helps capture the Angel. Octavian is killed by an Angel but this allows the Doctor and River to enter and secure the flight deck. They analyse the crack and confirm that the leaking energy came from an explosion in time, and they narrow the date of the explosion's epicenter to Amy's home time.

Meanwhile, the Angels start to move away from the flight deck room. The clerics are erased from time by the crack as it grows wider. River teleports Amy to the secondary flight deck, rescuing her from the Angels. The Angels' energy drain of the Byzantium engines cause the artificial gravity to fail, and the Angels fall into the crack. The crack closes, as the Angels are a sufficiently complex event in space and time to do so. Because the Angel that infected Amy has been erased from time, she is no longer afflicted by it.

River is taken back into custody, but tells the Doctor that they will meet again "when the Pandorica Opens". Amy asks the Doctor to take her back to Earth on the day he took her, and she shows him that she is to be wed the next day, before she tries to seduce him. The Doctor believes the cracks are related to Amy herself, and he brings her inside the TARDIS to "get [her] sorted out".

Writer Steven Moffat came up with the concept for "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone" when he was thinking of the worst possible situations to be in with the Weeping Angels and thought of the inability to see. His first idea was blindness, though this developed into the situation that Amy ends up in. Moffat designed the two-part story to be a more action-oriented sequel to "Blink", an episode he wrote for the third series that introduced the Weeping Angels. He was inspired by the relationship between the film Alien and its sequel, Aliens, which he referred to as "the best conceived movie sequel ever", describing it as being more "highly coloured" as opposed to Alien's more low-key tone. He also intended for the Angels to have a plan that could become "almost like a war", in contrast to the way they were struggling to survive in "Blink". The title "Flesh and Stone" was suggested by Moffat's son.