The Predatory Statues at the World War

It feels like the Weeping Angels have been way overdone at this point. Frankly, the moment they showed up past their introductory episode, “Blink”, they were already getting overused. They were a very specific kind of monster that worked well in the context of their story, where the mystery was as much what they were as how to get away from them, but “Blink” effectively told the whole story and gave us enough information about the Weeping Angels that they felt complete. But like any popular Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space. villain or monster, they were bound to show up again.

And they did. First in the two-parter "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone", which didn't use them poorly, but really started expanding their mythology in ways that took away their mystery. And then again in "The Angels Take Manhattan", which overused them so much that they really never needed to be visited again. They haven’t made major appearances in the show since then, taking smaller roles when they are used, but it’s pretty clear that they aren’t a monster that can really feel effective again. Their time has passed.

This is the biggest thing holding back “The Weeping Angels of Mons”. As a Doctor Who story it’s not bad, and I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the better Weeping Angels stories that’s been done since “Blink”. It does this largely by reiterating the points from “Blink” that worked – that the Angels kill people “kindly”, send them into the past while the Angels devour their future potential – but that also means it really doesn’t have anything new to say about the creatures. Slap them in a new time and place, give them an adventure where they eat a bunch of people… it all feels very much like the stories we already knew before. Despite being decent in its own right, what “The Weeping Angels of Mons” proves is that, right now, the Weeping Angels are a narrative dead end that’s very hard to resurrect.

The Tenth Doctor and his comic book companion, Gabby Gonzalez, end up in Mons, Belgium, in 1914. This is not a good time, in fact, to visit Belgium as it’s the beginning of The Great War, aka World War I, and Mons is right on the Eastern Front. The Doctor quickly realizes what’s going on, and tries to steer Gabby back to the TARDIS, but a bomb lands on the ship, sending both travelers flying, and it knocks the Doctor out while making it seem like the TARDIS is destroyed. Gabby drags the Doctor into the trenches, on the German side, which is a safe idea right up until the Allied forces move in and think Gabby and the Doctor are spies.

Back at their makeshift headquarters, the commander questions the Doctor about what he and Gabby are in the trenches, but soon the Doctor realizes something else is going on. The men start disappearing, as if taken by some kind of force. Quickly the Doctor notices there are statues all over the town, and he realizes they’re Weeping Angels. The Angels have been eating the men, sending them back through time so their futures can be devoured. But this is a warzone and there’s only so much future potential to devour. The Angels are desperate, and they want the power of the TARDIS to feed off of. It’s up to the Doctor, Gabby, and their new allies to stop the Angels before they get what they want.

As a Doctor Who adventure taken on its own terms, “The Weeping Angels of Mons” is actually a pretty effective little story. It feels like a proper Doctor Who adventure, with the two hapless travelers showing up right where they’re needed, totally by accident, and then saving the day because that’s what the Doctor does. It’s the kind of story you could see being made as a real Doctor Who episode, especially since it’s given most of this volume to tell its story. It’s fleshed out, given space to breathe, and it works.

It’s even decent at being a Weeping Angels tale. While it doesn’t have anything new to do with the Angels, sticking pretty close to the basic mythology already established in “Blink”, it at least uses them as effective monsters. The Angels grab people, send them back in time, and sometimes it’s to a disaster, or a murder scene, or the like, leading to their untimely deaths (for a second time, when you think about it) as soon as they get there. That’s pretty chilling. That aspect does at least work.

But the fact is that the story has nothing new to say about the Weeping Angels. Their modus operandi is the same, they take the same kinds of actions we’ve already seen before, and they even try to steal the TARDIS for its potential time energy, just as they did in “Blink”. The story works here, largely because it’s cribbing whole cloth from one of the best Doctor Who stories of the modern era, but that’s really all it is: a copy of better material.

That doesn’t make it bad, mind you, but it does keep it from being exceptional. The book tries to work around this, giving us some new characters to become temporarily attached to (since they won’t carry on with the series past this book) and a setting that feels lived in, and that’s all great. But at the end of the day the Weeping Angels aren’t really that interesting once they’re outside of “Blink”. They don’t talk, they don’t have complex thoughts or adventures. They’re statues that grab people and send them back in time. It’s a good beat, but that doesn’t stop it from eventually feeling one note.

Still, this tale is miles better than the backup story for this second volume, “Echo”, which sees the Doctor and Gabby return back to New York for a quick pop in, only to be confronted by aliens on a hunt, stalking other aliens that only the Doctor and Gabby can see. This feels like a pale imitation of the adventure we got in the previous volume, “Revolutions of Terror”, and it makes you wonder if every time the heroes go back to New York they’re going to have to help another alien species only they can see from a group of alien hunters coming to kill them. Just how many alien species are being hunted in New York City day to day?

This book isn’t bad, but it does feel like it’s straining for relevancy. Taking one of Doctor Who’s biggest villains of the last couple of decades and giving them a comic story is a good idea in theory, but the Weeping Angels are the kind of villain that you can only really do effectively once. The television show already beat them into the ground, and while this comic series tries its best, it’s really hard to find anything interesting to say about the creatures. This is the kind of filler episode you get part way into a season as the writers throw out whatever creatures haven’t been seen in a while just to try and get viewers interested. I get why the writers used the Angels, I just don’t know that there’s any point in us getting more stories about these villains again.