Quote Originally Posted by Calemyr View Post
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What new powers? The only thing they really did (Liberty not withstanding) was display a bit more control over their existing time-toss attack.

What they did here was simple: Throw the prey into the Quay, then herd them to see their own death locking them into a time-loop. Then they could keep throwing them back in time multiple times, milking each person for more and more time energy (is that the same Artron energy?) in a controlled environment. Where Angels could stop in for a snack whenever they liked.

The Doctor said it best: Winter Quay is a farm. An extremely clever way to accumulate and preserve food in a safe, accessible, and controlled manner. Seriously, all they did was use their abilities more cleverly than they have previously.

And what did they do in Flesh and Stone/Time of Angels? One of them killed a target in order to obtain a method of communication, and it took him three separate tries before he figured out how to get something usable. He didn't use his traditional attack because he needed the corpse more than he needed food. I'll grant that the "image of an Angel is an Angel" aspect was new, but it struck me as a logical conclusion: if "evolution" produced them, that must mean they can propagate in some way, and the classical method probably isn't going to work in their case. That new trick explains a lot and only serves to make them more dangerous, but it isn't out of left field. It's just a logical extension of their previously defined nature.
Re: Angel Power creep:
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I think the problem is how quickly they've picked up new powers. Blink was cool because it was smart about using the timey-wimeiness of the show's premise to create a neat solution to the problem it presented. The angels had a creepy and cool gimmick (what if statues moved when you weren't watching?) and an original way of killing which also happened to tie into the smart use of time travel thing. The angels were pretty low powered on the Who villain scale compared to cybermen, Daleks, etc. They were also portrayed as monsters who were trying to trick the humans into giving them the TARDIS as a food source, but not especially evil.

Sum up, they could:
-Move quickly if you weren't looking at them, invincible when you are
-Throw you through time to feed
-Turn off lights
-Camouflage

Unless I'm forgetting something that's all they do in Blink

Flash forward to S5 and everyone's super excited about the Angels returning because Blink was a great episode. I think the writers wanted to make sure they would still be scary even with the Doctor around but they went overboard. Take everything above and add:

-Pictures of them become them
-Look into their eyes and you're mind controlled
-Can kill you WITHOUT throwing you through time
-Can feed off of all sorts of other kinds of energy too. Maybe those 4 Angels from Blink should have just opened up a power line under London or something
-They can steal your brain/voice
-Can hibernate forever until the find new power sources
-They can choose to turn to stone if they think you MIGHT be watching them (Amy walking blindly through the forest)
-They're actively evil bastards instead of just being hungry monsters

All this in their second appearance ever. That's a BIG change

Now in Angels Take Manhattan add the ability to feed off of you by moving you in space, not time. Why don't they always do that? Or warp the random people they stalk to the bottom of the ocean instead of giving them the rest of their lives to retroactively plan revenge? Plus a bunch of the other powers from the two-parter didn't show up when they logically should have (the pictures of the statue of liberty = angels thing). And the statue of liberty angel was a cool visual the first time we saw it but then did nothing except be a backdrop.

So yeah, that's why I think a lot of people like the Blink Angels but think they've changed too much.