I agree on your first spoiler point
But I have to say the Weeping Angels have been weakened considerably since their first outing.
In general, I think Moffet is the best thing to happen to Who since Tom Baker, but he has an issue with "more is more" and the villains. The Daleks have become kind of a joke, for example.
I just watched the first reboot episode with a single Dalek recently. First of all, Eccleston was
terrified to see just that one (and anything that would terrify the Doctor, even in that early going, had to be something to take seriously). And we soon saw why. That Dalek cleverly and brutally took out a whole squad of armed soldiers in one go and continued to wreak havok for the whole episode. Now we just get bigger and bigger rooms of more and more Daleks, which is supposed to be enough. However, they actually become less menacing because they're just sitting around. We don't see them
do anything. We hear about how they wiped out entire planets, we hear them say "exterminate" but we need to actually see them do so, I think, to take them seriously again (and/or kill a companion or River, permanently). It used to be a Dalek would appear, and you would say, "Oh, crap!" Now I just say "Oh, crap" because I find their voices annoying.
We're heading down the same route with the angels, IMO. They're still scary, of course.
But in the beginning in the phenomenal episode with Tennant, there were very few and they were just horrifying. Easily the most terrifying, cleverly created villains since the dudes in "Hush" on
BtVS. Then we went to a whole planet of them. It was like going from Alien to Aliens, but they weren't trying to shift genres. They tried to multiply them and still have them be horrifying. The blinded Amy thing was a nice twist in that one, but it was a step in the wrong direction. Plus we found out a bit about them. Fear comes from the unknown, so don't explain them.
With this ep, we've had it piled on even more. The aforementioned problem being one aspect, but also
Spoiler for Hiden:
by making them churn out the humans in a sort of battery factory takes away the one on one intimacy of them. Now there was a nice return to it at the end, and while I understand the need for a narrated coda from Amy to finish the episode and the Ponds' story line, it took away the horror of what happened to them. Not to mention it made it confusing. So, what, they got sent back in time, but Amy could still publish a book? How is that so awful? The detective in the hotel room and old Rory made it seem like you were trapped there, alone until you died. But if Amy is able to write a bit in a book and publish it, it seems they're just having the home life they were craving in another time, which is kind of cool. Plus, if River is able to get a manuscript to her, how is that a "fixed time" that the Doctor can't get to? Seems a little "because the writer told us so" to me.
I don't think the Angels are ruined yet. I actually liked the planet episode and didn't hate this one (I was just expecting more). But I think we shouldn't see them again for a long time for them to remain terrifying. If/when they do come back, it should be smaller, not bigger. And I think something truly awful should be done with the Daleks.
