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Steven Moffat Reveals The Weeping Angels Were Originally Going to Feature in Heaven Sent

Former showrunner, Steven Moffat has revealed that the Weeping Angels were originally due to appear in the penultimate episode of Doctor Who Series 9, Heaven Sent.

Tweeting along to the international rewatch, he wrote:

“I originally planned for it to be a Weeping Angel. Oh, I’d forgotten that!!”

If that had happened, it would’ve been the first time the Angels appeared in the Twelfth Doctor era; instead, their only appearance with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was the next episode, Hell Bent, which featured one in the Cloisters under the Gallifreyan Capitol.

Though we don’t know exactly in what capacity, we can presume that one would have taken the place of the Veil, although that could’ve changed things substantially – the Veil moves slowly, whereas the Weeping Angels were described by the Tenth Doctor as “faster than you can believe” in Blink.

During the tweet-along, Moffat also spoke about the origin of the Veil:

“My son, Joshua, told me about a dream he had: there was tiny slug-like creature somewhere in the world. It was very far away and very slow, but it was inching closer to him all the time, and when it finally arrived he knew it would kill him.”

This also sounds like Mark Gatiss’ reasoning why the Ice Warriors were scary (when he was pitching Cold War): that they were slow but that showed a confidence that they didn’t need to hurry – they’d catch you anyway…

The next tweet-along will be The Stolen Earth/ Journey’s End, this Sunday (19th April 2020). More on that soon…

Philip Bates

Editor and co-founder of the Doctor Who Companion. When he’s not watching television, reading books ‘n’ Marvel comics, listening to The Killers, and obsessing over script ideas, Philip Bates pretends to be a freelance writer. He enjoys collecting everything. Writer of The Black Archive: The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang, The Silver Archive: The Stone Tape, and 100 Objects of Doctor Who.

Steven Moffat Reveals The Weeping Angels Were Originally Going to Feature in Heaven Sent

by Philip Bates time to read: 1 min
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