Weeping Angels - Recording defeat

‘Mark,’ shouted the Doctor. Press the big red switch! On the ground by your feet!’

K-chunk! K-chunk! K-chunk!

There was a brilliant, dazzling light. Temporarily blinded, Rory blinked.

When he looked again, when his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he found that the Weeping Angel hadn’t moved. It still had its arm wrapped around Amy, but the fact that the electric lamps had come on meant that the Doctor’s plan had worked.

The Weeping Angels were still in a circle around them, all frozen in position as they lunged forward, clutching at the air. But outside the circle of Angels, about six metres away, there was a second circle of six powerful halogen lamps mounted at ground level, all shining inwards. And beside each of the lamps was a video camera, on a tripod, pointing inwards, and beside each camera was a television monitor showing six pictures from six different angles of the Weeping Angels. They were standing in the middle of a ring of cameras.

Mark was crouching beside the big red ‘On’ switch.

‘It’s all right,’ the Doctor reassured Amy. ‘They’re not going to move.’ With some difficulty, he helped her squeeze out of the Weeping Angel’s embrace.

‘What did you do?’ asked Amy once she was free, shielding her eyes against the glare of the lamps.

‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor with a generous smile. ‘You have Rory to thank for this.’

‘Rory?’ said Amy incredulously.

‘Yeah, well, all in a month’s work,’ said Rory. ‘Though to be fair, it was the Doctor’s idea.’ He pulled the Doctor’s notebook out of his jacket. Flipping open the cover, he showed Amy the contents; a page of almost illegible instructions from the Doctor on what to do in 2001, along with a diagram on how to set up the video cameras.

‘ What was?’ said Amy, turning from Angel to Angel, making sure that they’d stopped moving.

The Doctor pocketed his torch. ‘It’s quite simple. The Weeping Angels are quantum-locked, meaning they can only move if they’re not being observed.’

‘I know that, you have mentioned it once or twice.’

‘So what we’ve done,’ said the Doctor. ‘Is to arrange things so that each Weeping Angel is not only being observed, but is also observing itself and all the other Weeping Angels.’

Amy peered at one of the monitors. ‘You mean this is showing the pictures from all the cameras at once?’

‘And there’s nowhere you can stand where you’re not looking towards one of the monitors,’ said Rory. ‘Every direction is covered.’ It had taken him the best part of a month to set it all up; travelling down to locate the exact spot, then persuading a video equipment company to not only set up a specific arrangement of lights, cameras and monitors, but to do it on a specific date, two years in the future. And then he’d had to convince the farmer who owned the land to let them do this. Rory had only managed to get everything sorted the evening before he was due to meet the Doctor and Amy. If he’d learned one thing during his time in 2001, it was this; it’s amazing what people will agree to if you’re prepared to pay cash in advance.

When they’d first arrived in the TARDIS, he’d been terrified that the Doctor might lead them to the wrong part of the field. But he needn’t have worried; of course they would all end up in the right spot, because that’s what they’d done last time. And although Rory had caught the occasional glimpse of the cameras, lamps and monitors, because he knew where to look, they were all sufficiently well hidden by the grass not to be seen by the Doctor, Amy, his former self - or, more importantly, by the Angels.

‘So you led the Angels into a trap?’ said Amy. ‘Using us as the bait!’

‘Bait and switch! They should know better than to put me in a trap!’ The Doctor walked over to Mark. ‘You came back,’ said the Doctor delicately.

Mark nodded, blinking back tears, his breathing shallow. ‘I could hardly let you die, could I?’

‘Had me worried for a moment there, though,’ said the Doctor.

‘Doctor! The Angels!’ shouted Amy.

Rory turned to see the five Weeping Angels begin to flicker and fade away, like the picture on a television screen during interference.

‘They’re too weak to maintain their corporeal forms,’ explained the Doctor. ‘And as they’re quantum-locked, there’s only one way left for them to go…’

In a few moments they were all transparent, their stonework fizzling like static, and then, in an instant, they all vanished.

‘Go?’ said Amy. ‘Go where?’

The Doctor nodded to one of the monitors. On the screen Rory could see the Weeping Angel, staring out at him in grainy, flickering black-and-white, its hands pressed against the glass as though it was trying to break through. Rory looked in the next monitor along. The story was the same. Each screen showed an Angel, trapped behind the glass, an indistinct grey mass.

‘Caught in a closed circuit! This is our chance. Do what I do!’ The Doctor rushed over to one of the cameras, lifted it by the tripod, then positioned it so that it faced towards the monitor to which it was connected.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Rory.

The Doctor flicked a switch. ‘I’m sending them into infinity.’

The Weeping Angel on the screen gained a line of identical ghostly Angels behind it. This then dissolved into a swirling, looping pattern of fog which rapidly faded to blackness.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory repeated the process on the remaining Angels. It was only when they reached the sixth monitor and discovered that it was blank that Rory realised something was amiss. ‘Doctor. One of our Weeping Angels is missing.’

‘What?’

‘There were six. One of them must’ve got away.’

The Doctor looked briefly alarmed, but then he peered up at the night sky. There hadn’t been a rumble of thunder

or flash of lightning since Mark had returned. The Doctor turned towards him. ‘You moved your car,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s not going to be a paradox. History isn’t going to be changed. That’s what weakened the Angels…’

(...)

‘What about the Weeping Angel?’ asked Rory. ‘Where did that go?’

‘It escaped.’ The Doctor indicated a metal box perched in the hedge by the side of the road a few metres from where the lorry had come to rest. The speed camera reflected the glow of the lorry’s warning lights as they blinked on and off.

‘But if it’s in the speed cameras, it could go anywhere…’ said Rory. ‘We have to find it.’

‘There’s no need,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s the Weeping Angel we encountered when we first arrived, in 2011. The Angel trapped inside a television.’

‘You mean, the one that sent Mark back to 2003?’ said Amy.

The Doctor nodded. ‘In a desperate attempt to break the time loop. But by trying to change history, it ends up creating it. A prisoner of its own past.’

‘But why wait until 2011?’

‘Recharging its batteries? And it couldn’t send Mark back until he’d received the letter. The letter I imagine they dropped off at Mark’s office a couple of days ago.’

***

Touched by an Angel, Chapter 17