The Doctor (Matt Smith), his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), the mysterious time-traveller River Song (Alex Kingston), and Father Octavian (Iain Glen), with his soldier-clerics, escape the Weeping Angels when the Doctor destroys the gravity globe that illuminates the cave they are trapped in and they can jump into the gravity well of the crashed Starship Byzantium. They scramble inside, pursued by the Angels, and enter the forest that provides oxygen for the great ship. The Doctor notices a crack in the wall of the main control room, which he knows is a crack in space-time. The Angels are drawn to its energy.
Amy has a sliver of Weeping Angel in her eye and the Doctor tells her to keep her eyes closed so she cannot see it. Octavian’s guards watch over her while the Father, the Doctor, and River head for the secondary control room on the other side of the forest. The Doctor learns that River is Octavian’s prisoner. She is helping him capture a Weeping Angel in exchange for a full pardon of her crimes. Octavian is killed by an Angel as the Doctor and River enter the control room. They determine that the crack is the result of an explosion in Time and determine its date.
The clerics are gradually deleted as the crack grows wider, Amy still keeping her eyes closed until River teleports her to the secondary control room. The Doctor determines that closing the Crack in Time requires him and the Angels to enter the crack together. The Angels are draining the energy from the ship, causing the artificial gravity to fail and the Weeping Angels enter into the crack. Amy is cured when the Angel that afflicted her is deleted. River is arrested. Amy asks the Doctor to return her to the same moment they left Earth and shows him that she is to be married the next day. The Doctor realizes that the wedding is when the Crack in Time was created.
The title Flesh and Stone was suggested by writer Stephen Moffat’s son Joshua. The two-part story was partly inspired by the movies Alien and Aliens, which Moffat thought the best primary and sequel action pairing ever. The crack came about through Moffat’s son as well, as there was a similar crack in the wall of his house. The Doctor believes that the crack has something to do with the fact that Amy does not remember important world-events in her life. Future events in the Doctor Who timeline are foreshadowed. River Song says she will see him again when the Pandorica opens, which is an event predicted by Prisoner One in the first Amy Pond story.
These two episodes were in fact the first two in the season to be filmed. The forest used was the Forest of Dean in England. It took two hours in Makeup to create the Weeping Angels and it was difficult for the actors to remain motionless. Gillan said the scariest thing was to walk with her eyes closed. The reviews were excellent, though some reviewers were bothered by the Angels being shown moving and Amy’s attempt to seduce the Doctor, which even Moffat thought was a mistake. Octavian’s emotional death-scene was particularly praised, though, over all, the second episode was considered less brilliant than the first. Iain Glen, who played Octavian, appeared in Game of Thrones, in which he was slowly turned to stone.