Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 4- Village of the Angels

 “Mrs Hayward, you appear to be... at night."

Right then. I've been pretty positive about pretty much every episode this season so far, leavened by a little apprehension about exactly what Chibnall is doing with his retconning of the mythology and whether the end result will do the show good or ill. I'm enjoying the ride, but perhaps not unconditionally.

Well, this episode is not one for such equivocation. It's bloody sublime, scary Who at its greatest. Well done Maxine Alderton, who gives us another slice of proper behind the sofa scares. This episode treats the Weeping Angels easily as well as Steven Moffat used to, and is crammed with excellent suspense-filled set pieces of exactlythe sort that Doctor Who should be doing. The Angels are the perfect television baddies, literally dependent on being seen by the camera for the very effective scares. And there is, of course, a television within a television, because we all remember that an image of an Angel becomes an Angel.

Yet the setting- a village cut off from the world and a base under siege along two time zones- is compelling and, moreover, so are the characters. We have Claire, suffering the horror of being stranded decades in the past and the further body horror of being possessed, Exorcist-like, by an Angel. We have the likeable Professor Jericho, whose bravery stems from the fact that the horrors he's witnessing tonight are as nothing to the horrors he witnessed at Bergen-Belsen. There's even a brief exchange of words showing that Gerald (who thankfully dies; apparently a second touch of an Angel simply kills) is the worst kind of authoritarian patriarch. This is good writing, and well shot too.

Yet there's more than scares and characterisation. The story of the week may take centre stage here, as in War of the Sontarans, but the arc plot continues apace. Vinder is still (in a nifty mid-credits sequence at the end) on the trail of a rather heroic Bel, while Azure is luring countless victims into a Passenger. The TARDIS crew all get good stuff to do. And there are revelation- The Weeping Angels are (sometimes) working for the Division, and the whole thing is a trap for the Doctor, suddenly recalled to the Division at the end in an effectively shocking moment. And Yaz and Dan are still trapped in 1901.It's all the more effective for seeming to come from nowhere, yet the whole plan makes perfect sense.

I have no idea where this is going, but perhaps I really ought to put aside my reservations about Chibnall's work and admit I'm just enjoying the ride.