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I mean, come on. With technologies beyond all of humanity's, he couldn't find a way to wriggle out of this one and "rewrite" time? *scoffs* definitely a plot hole; the writers wanted it to seem inescapable so that later on we easily buy into why and how

Rory and Amelia left the show. How it must've been Amelia's farewell

because River had to break her wrist just because they read their futures. so it seems that time could absolutely not be re-written.

But I'm prepared to stand corrected. Anyone?

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  • I too think it's a plot hole; the fact that Amy later wrote about it proves nothing: people can write all sorts of nonsense, which doesn't make that nonsense a fixed point in time.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 9:25
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    On another hand, given the fluent nature of Doctor Who canon, it's hard to blame authors for "plot holes", since it's not their fault that latter authors sometimes just override everything.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 9:41
  • You make a pretty big assumption that it's stone. Nobody ever said a weeping angel was made of mere stone, even while appearing to be a statue.
    – DisturbedNeo
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 14:01
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    @DisturbedNeo yes, they did. Back when they were introduced, in Blink, the Doctor says "they literally turn to stone". Their fundamental premise rests on their genuinely being stone while observed.
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 20:27
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    @DoctorTwo Blink states "it's a fact of their biology", indicating it has nothing to do with how much "food" they've been getting. If Moffat has the same character claim otherwise later as though he's always thought that way, this rather proves the point about inconsistency in the question.
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 22:45

2 Answers 2

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An Angel survived crashing into a planet during the events of the Byzantium.

There's one survivor. There's a thing in the belly of that ship that can't ever die.

The Time of Angels

What makes you think you can destroy or damage a Weeping Angel?

We've seen them quantum locked and wiped from time but never physically harmed.

Later in the Time of Angels the Doctor tells us they've lost form due to being starved for centuries.

RIVER: But there was only one Angel on the ship. Just the one, I swear.

AMY: Could they have been here already?

DOCTOR: The Aplans. What happened? How did they die out?

RIVER: Nobody knows.

DOCTOR: We know.

OCTAVIAN: They don't look like Angels.

AMY: And they're not fast. You said they were fast. They should have had us by now.

DOCTOR: Look at them. They're dying, losing their form. They must have been down here for centuries, starving.

AMY: Losing their image?

DOCTOR: And their image is their power. Power. Power!

AMY: Doctor?

DOCTOR: Don't you see? All that radiation spilling out the drive burn. The crash of the Byzantium wasn't an accident, it was a rescue mission for the Angels. We're in the middle of an army, and it's waking up.

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    The fact that the angels in that same episode started in bad shape suggests strongly that they can be damaged.
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 20:29
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    they're also heavily worn, the implication being that due to the starvation they couldn't (so to speak) self-repair, not that the external damage was caused directly by the starvation.
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 20:32
  • yes, they repaired once they had the radiation, which is to say once they were no longer starving: without an energy source they were unable to do so. The 51st-century weapons weren't exactly optimised for damaging stone, which is enough to explain that. And I interpreted that as their having been unable to maintain form (by the ongoing self-repair typical of living things) because of starvation.
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 20:40
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    @DoctorTwo anything that's actually stone (aggregates of minerals and/or mineraloids) will have a breaking stress. Even azbantium (Heaven Sent) and Dalekanium (Remembrance of the Daleks, among many many others) are breakable, and in any case were the angels some exotic stone like that when locked, we can reasonably assume it would have been mentioned rather than the generic "stone".
    – Darael
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 12:37
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    Another thing, in The Angels Take Manhattan, the mob boss guy had tortured the angel he held captive, so they can be harmed. In the episode, River remarks that the angel looks badly damaged (as they can be badly damaged), to which the mob guy replies I wanted to know if it could feel pain (which implies that he's the one who inflicted the said damage). To which River replies, "you realise it's screaming?" Which implies that not only do they feel pain, they can also call the others for aid.
    – strawberries
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 18:31
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The doctor only has a sonic screwdriver, not a laser beam. They would state that bringing and setting the equipment would take time.

Agreed on the fact that this episode tries do manage Angel related time paradoxes, but the "hey we will trigger it because we love each other" part breaks the plot...

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  • As long as they stared at the thing, they had all the time in the world. granted, they were looking for Rory, but it took them several minutes to locate Rory anyway, that time could have been spent in getting a laser beam from the tardis, for example. Like, they could've managed, especially when the alternative was River breaking her own wrist.
    – strawberries
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 9:58

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