Doctor Who: Flux is coming at the end of October, and with its arrival comes a few familiar faces. This includes certain villains, as the trailer confirmed The Doctor would once again go head-to-head with one of the most terrifying enemies she’s faced, the Weeping Angels. The villains created by former showrunner Steven Moffat will be a part of Jodie Whittaker’s final season as The Doctor, and apparently, they spooky baddies will be a bit different than in the past.
Doctor Who executive producer Matt Strevens recently spoke about the return of the Weeping Angels and confirmed they won't play into expectations this time around. In an interview with the BBC, Strevens said the Weeping Angels’ upcoming presence will be markedly “different," and described their involvement as such:
In terms of monsters, we’ve got some returning favorites... so we’re bringing back the terrifying Weeping Angels, who have a very sinister role to play and a very different role to play. It’s quite an interesting development to their story, if you like.
“Sinister” is how I’d usually describe the Weeping Angels, though who knows how their story will be different this time around? One way to twist things around would be to make the Weeping Angels the “good guys” in Season 13, albeit likely through unintentional means. After all, Weeping Angels feed on various types of energy, so if the oncoming Flux is some sort of energy, could the Angels be tricked or convinced into consuming it? Or maybe all of this is uneven speculation.
Doctor Who briefly featured a Weeping Angel in the 2021 special “Revolution of the Daleks,” though the scene wasn’t substantive enough to affect anything else that occurred. Current showrunner Chris Chibnall expressed excitement to use the Weeping Angels for Doctor Who: Flux and noted it’s been quite a while since the villains have been a meaningful part of the show.
With the Weeping Angels, I really wanted Jodie to come up against them, and we’d been thinking about a story for her for a long time, testing out ideas. They are genuinely scary and a brilliant creation by Steven Moffatt, and they haven’t been in a main Doctor Who story for nine years, so they were due to come back as well. There’s lots of ideas you can explore around Weeping Angels, so we’ve had a lot of fun with them.
Doctor Who: Flux will be unlike past modern seasons of Doctor Who in that it’ll be one giant serialized adventure. The season marks the beginning and middle of Jodie Whittaker’s final stretch as the Doctor, though her tenure will officially end with a series of specials in 2022. After that, Russell T. Davies will return as showrunner for the series’ 60th anniversary and potentially more seasons after.
Fans can catch the premiere of Doctor Who: Flux on BBC America starting Sunday, October 31st. Here’s hoping the change of pace will be a positive final chapter for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and answer some of the major questions presented by Season 12.
