Albie's Angels

Connections #3

Released: 6 December 2022

Listened: 1/28/23

The story of Helen’s brother Albie, who was jailed for homosexuality in 1963 and was never seen again, has been around since “UNIT Dating” and really since “Absent Friends” before that. This one has a record-store owner in 2025 trying to exploit a Weeping Angel for profit, which is kind of bonkers, but the important part is that it allows Helen to reunite with her brother. Roy Gill turned this into a tearjerker, and Hattie Morahan sells the heck out of it. You get the full force of Helen’s regret at the things she never said, her joy at her brother’s happiness and positivity at this point in his life, her disappointment that she didn’t know what was going on, and her fear of damaging the timelines…right up to the point where she decides she is going to make a change, and then we get determined Helen, who we haven’t seen in a while. There’s some timey-wimey running around with the Doctor and Liv trying to figure out where Helen’s gone, but that’s not really critical. And there’s even some new twists on the Angels: a new way to escape from one, for starters. Liv and Helen have encountered Angels before, so they don’t need the crash course. Liv gets to explain the whole “image of an Angel” trick, but really poorly, so that the Doctor won’t understand it until “The Time of Angels.” And there’s even a suggestion that the Angels may have individual personalities, and possibly even feelings. All of which takes a back seat to Albie’s story, which is finally resolved in a bittersweet way. It’s a heck of a boxed set, starting with comedy and ending in tears. It’s a nice change from the giant story arcs.