epershand | I keep liking this show even more

(1) Wow, I can't believe Moffat was able to make the Weeping Angels even scarier. The main disconnect before was that while their approach was the MOST TERRIFYING THING EVER, all they actually did when they got you was... send you back in time and let you live a full life there, and then send the protagonist pictures of your spouse and children. Which, actually, wasn't such a bad thing, even if there was ALL KINDS OF HORROR leading up to the time travel.

So I could at least tell myself "it's just time travel, it's just time travel, it's just time travel..." every time I got too freaked out.

But now they are cracking people's necks and stealing their souls to lower protagonists' self-esteem. And making people think they are turning into stone, which is freaky. And ESCAPING FROM IMAGES OF THEM.

Which means that this is a scary episode of Who where you aren't allowed to hide behind your couch because it gets SCARIER that way, which is brilliant.

(PS I rewatched "Blink" this morning and Sally Sparrow gave Ten a photo of an angel. Potential new source of fear? Or just discontinuity?)

(2) "Wait... these statues don't have two heads!" seemed very "Curse of Fatal Death." Which made me love it EVEN MORE. I heart Moffat.

(3) I'm still kind of meh on River Song. I really like her in concept, and there's nothing that I can quite put my finger on that makes me dislike her, but she just hasn't gotten me excited yet. I think the problem is that timeline fuckery is one of my favorite plot devices ever, and they just haven't taken it as far as I'd like them to (I keep comparing River plots unfavorably to The Time Traveler's Wife). I think if I got really concentrated River and actually saw her do interesting things with the timeline other than be smug about things, I would be really into her. Just not there yet.

Additionally, the thing that was really cool about "Blink," in addition to the horror of the Angels, was all the wibbly-wobbly timey wimey. So this episode was a bit frustrating on two fronts. First, they didn't go as far as I might have hoped with River Song's timey wimey, and second, that they had the Angels without any timey wimey at all. Which didn't mean that I didn't adore the episode to pieces, just that they had multiple huge opportunities to fill this episode with one of my bullet-proof kinks and passed most of them by.

(4) My reaction to Amy has gone from "you better not make me like you more than Donna OR ELSE" to just "AMY!!!!!!!" She is so good.

That being said, the moment after she's defeated the TV angel and the Doctor was just like, "hug her and tell her that she's brilliant, River, because I don't have time" simultaneously made me really sad and really happy. If there's one thing that could be worrisome in their interaction, it's the degree to which Amy needs to be hugged and told she's brilliant after she saves the day, and the degree to which Eleven either can't see that or be there to do it for her. So I thought it was kind of awful and dismissive that he didn't do it himself, but also lovely that he knew that she needed it and tried to provide it the best he could. It's a great character note for him that he understands in the abstract what she needs, but that because it's only an abstract understanding and not an intuitive understanding, he doesn't see that the answer he's providing isn't really the right one.