The dying star collapsed, having finally succumbed to the weight of its own matter. After consuming the last of its fuel, the iron core destabilized as it lost heat. Unable to balance the gravity, its core yielded and the star exploded. The blinding light was brighter than a billion stars in the night sky.

"Pretty cool, Doctor." Amy took a sip of lemonade.

"Isn't it just?" He looked at her and winked, completely forgetting that she couldn't see his eyes behind the thick solar glasses. "The explosion can last a whole month."

"Are you sure this isn't going to cause any permanent damage, Doctor? "

"If you're not blind Rory, then you're fine." The Doctor took his empty glass and stood up. "Anyone else need a refill?"

Amy and Rory both shook their heads. They were lying on wooden deck chairs that had been placed in front of the open Tardis doors, affording a perfect view of the supernova. Amy stretched her arms.

"I wonder if you could get a tan like this."

"It would burn you alive if the Tardis shields weren't up." The Doctor picked up a large jug. "And even those won't protect your eyes." As he finished pouring the lemonade, he became aware of a persistent buzzing noise. Looking around, he asked, "Do you two hear that?"

"Hear what?" Amy and Rory looked back at him.

"It's like a vibration or something. I can't tell where it's coming from." He set down his drink and began to search.

Listening intently, he followed the sound. It seemed to be emanating from his favorite yellow chair, by the console. He put his hand into the crack between the backrest and the bottom cushion, and pulled out a mobile phone. It continued to buzz, announcing an incoming call. The Doctor stared at the number on the readout for a moment before answering it. "Hello, Martha."

"Doctor, there you are! Where were you? I've been phoning for hours."

"I'm sorry Martha, I must have accidently set the mobile to vibrate. I only just heard it now. What can I do for you?"

Martha's voice sounded uncertain. "Doctor? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me Martha, who else would it be?" Then it dawned on him. ."Oh, you haven't heard my new voice yet, have you? Well, what do you think of it?"

The line was silent for a moment. "I…I don't really know. It's just different…I guess."

"Yes, well I quite like it. I think it's rather deep and masculine, don't you?" Behind him, Amy and Rory exchanged raised eyebrows at the Doctor's odd conversation.

Martha spoke quietly. "So…You've regenerated then."

The Doctor laughed. "Don't sound so serious Martha, it's not as bad as all that. I've had worse regenerations, mind you. All in all, I think I came out pretty well on this one." The Doctor looked into a small mirror that was attached to the console. He turned his head and studied his profile. "Not sure about the forehead, but I do like the cheeks." He rubbed his hand over his chin. "And a good, strong jawline." Martha's voice became slightly impatient.

"Look, maybe I should just get to the point. I need you here as soon as possible. I don't know how much I can tell you over the phone, but it's very urgent."

"Alright Martha, I'll be there shortly." The Doctor hung up, and turned to Amy and Rory. "I'm sorry guys, but we're going to have to cut this party short." He made some adjustments on the console. "Would you please do me the courtesy of shutting the Tardis doors?"

"Aw Doctor, this is the best part!" Pouting, Amy stood up and watched as Rory closed the doors. "Who is Martha? And where did you get that phone?" She took off her solar glasses and walked over to the Doctor, who had begun imputing coordinates.

"It's Martha's. " The Doctor pulled a lever and the Tardis lurched, spilling lemonade all over the floor. "She used to travel with me for a bit, not so long ago. She gave me her mobile in case she needed me for anything. Strange things tend to happen to my companions once we part our separate ways."

Amy raised her eyebrows. "Well, that's comforting."

"Hang on Doctor," Rory had also removed his glasses and was looking at the Doctor's face. "What did you mean when you said 'new voice'?"

"Well, that's kind of a long story Rory. And the short version is, I haven't always looked or sounded like this." The Doctor put his head down, and pretended to concentrate on the console.

"What, like you've had plastic surgery or something?" Amy looked intrigued. "What did you look like before?"

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the controls, and sighed. "My race, our bodies have the ability to heal themselves when we are about to die, by changing our entire cell structure. We look totally different as a result, but we come back to life."

"You mean like a zombie?"

The Doctor looked affronted. "No, not a zombie, it's a survival mechanism. When the body sustains enough damage to threaten cardiac arrest, the cells trigger a regeneration process. Unfortunately, it's very painful, and you're never quite sure what the results are going to be. It changes everything." He looked at himself in the mirror again. "Although it didn't turn out too badly this time around."

"Can you show us what you looked like before?" Rory had finished putting away the deck chairs, and came to stand next to Amy.

"I don't think so Rory, I don't keep a photo album of my previous regenerations."

Amy stared at the Doctor. "How many times have you changed?"

The Doctor thought for a moment. "This is my eleventh face. I'm actually quite young for a Time Lord, being in my eleventh regeneration. Usually they're thousands of years old by the time they get to eleven.

Amy shook her head. "So you've looked like eleven different people? I'm sorry but that's just weird."

The Doctor frowned at her. "Well I think it's weird that you spend your entire life looking exactly the same. Don't you ever get bored with the monotony?"

The Tardis lurched again, and the time rotor came to a halt.

"Well, we're here. Time for you to meet Martha!" The Doctor walked to the door and clapped his hands. "This should be interesting." Amy and Rory followed him out. They had landed in a large cargo bay, surrounded by numerous rows of unmarked crates. Martha was waiting just outside of the Tardis. She stood next to a young man, who was surveying the Doctor with a critical expression.

"Mickey! Martha, it's so good to see you!" The Doctor grinned and walked over to them, arms extended. Mickey shook his head.

"So, you've gone and done it again, have you Doctor?" He smirked. "What's the matter, are you blind this time?"

It took the Doctor a moment to realize that he still had his solar glasses on. "Oh these?" He took them off and put them into his pocket. "I forgot about those. You interrupted a supernova viewing party I'm afraid. Bye bye, Betelgeuse!" The Doctor waved towards the ceiling. "And now, am I going to get a hug or am I going to stand here all day?" Martha stepped forward, hesitant.

"It really is you, Doctor?"

"You knew that I could regenerate Martha. I hope you weren't so attached to the old face that you can't enjoy the new one!"

Mickey put his arm around Martha and looked at the Doctor. "You must really have a thing for big ears."

The Doctor frowned. "I think they give me a lot of character. I find them much more interesting than your ears, Mickey Smith."

Mickey laughed. "You can say that again."

"Oh come here, you!" The Doctor wrapped Mickey and Martha in a bear hug, and was inwardly surprised at how glad he was to see them. He had been so sure that his previous brief encounter with them would be his last. They broke apart and Martha turned to Amy and Rory.

"Well, look at you Doctor. Some things don't change, you must have a thing for redheads." She smiled at Amy, who grinned back. Rory did not look so pleased at the comment.

"Pleasure to meet you Martha, I'm Amy." They shook hands. "And this gentleman is?"

Mickey smiled. "I'm Martha's husband, Mickey Smith."

"This is my husband, Rory." Amy squeezed his arm, as Rory gave a brief nod.

The Doctor clapped his hands. "Well, now that the introductions are over with, Martha, perhaps you can tell us about this urgent matter that you needed help with."

"Yes of course, Doctor. Please, follow me." As they made their way through the cavernous cargo bay, Martha began to explain. "A couple of weeks ago, UNIT came into possession of some very hazardous material. A very hazardous thing, to be precise. It was discovered at a quarry in Dorset, when it was unearthed by an explosion. It was in a section of rock that that couldn't have seen sunlight in at least a million years. Of course, UNIT took over and brought it to one of our labs. That's when it started changing form. They discovered that it was absorbing radiation from their equipment."

The Doctor seemed alarmed at this last revelation. "It wasn't a hand was it?"

Martha raised an eyebrow at him. "It does have hands. Let me take you to it."

They followed Martha into a large lift, where each floor required a special key card entry. When the lift came to a stop, they exited into a dark hallway.

Amy spoke. "Where are we, anyway?"

"These are the UNIT vaults, where the high risk items are stored." Martha continued to lead them down the lengthy hallway, which was lined with large, heavily fortified doors. Each had its own touch screen monitor attached to the front. Martha stopped in front of one, and tapped a code into the touch screen. A picture of the interior of the room came onto the display. Amy gasped.

Martha looked grim. "Now do you understand why I called you?"

"I don't get it." Rory stared at the monitor. "It's just a stone statue."

Amy fought to keep her voice calm. "Doctor, what is it doing here? I thought you said all of the Angels were gone, you said they ceased to exist after they fell into the crack."

"Those Angels that we encountered weren't the only ones in existence, Amy. There have probably been Angels on Earth since it formed." The Doctor looked at Martha. "What's going on here? Why is UNIT keeping an Angel? Didn't you tell them how dangerous it is?"

Martha nodded. "Of course I did, Doctor. But they want to study it; they think it can be used to create a defensive weapon. And so far, this Angel has shown no signs of aggression.

The Doctor was surprised. "What?"

"The workers who found it had carried it out of the quarry by hand, and none of them were adversely affected. It was left unmonitored several times, but it hasn't attacked anyone. It appears to be dormant, aside from absorbing radiation. It was also extremely deformed when they found it .The radiation must have somehow restored it to its present condition."

The Doctor stared at the scene on the monitor. The Angel sat, unmoving. It wasn't facing the camera; its face was hidden behind its hands. It was never safe to look at the image of an Angel for too long, but this felt different somehow. Little was known about the Weeping Angels. There had been legends, whispers as to their origins, but nothing concrete. The Doctor had always wondered how such a species could even come into existence, unless they had been manufactured.

And then he met Rassilon. The first time the Doctor had encountered Rassilon, he had seen firsthand how the Time Lord dealt with potential enemies; he turned them into stone. Looking back, the Doctor wondered how he had failed to make the seemingly obvious connection at the time. The Weeping Angels had the abilities of time travel and quantum lock, and had been around at least as long as the Time Lords. Was it possible that the Weeping Angels were a product of the Time Lords themselves? Created as some sort of punishment? He thought back to his last encounter with Rassilon. The two Time Lords whose faces were hidden, Rassilon said that they would "stand as monuments to their shame, like the Weeping Angels of old." Not much was known about Gallifrey under the rule of Rassilon, except that it was a violent and aggressive time. The Time Lords had not been observers of the universe, they were conquerors. Was it possible that the Weeping Angels were victims of Rassilons battles? Prisoners forced to endure an eternity in stone, feeding off the potential energy of others. It made as much sense as anything else.

But what was different about this Angel? What had prevented it from being aggressive? The Doctor shuddered. If his theory was correct, then how many innocent people had been condemned to live as Weeping Angels?

"Martha, I want you to open the vault. I want to see this Angel myself."

Amy grabbed the Doctor's Arm. "Doctor, are you NUTS? You can't go in there!"

The Doctor pulled his arm away, and straightened his jacket. "And why not? Martha said those workers pulled this statue out by hand. This Weeping Angel is different. It hasn't attacked anyone."

"Yet! For all we know it could be waiting for you."

Rory interjected. "Um, is anyone going to tell me what's so threatening about a statue? It is a little creepy looking, I'll grant you-"

The Doctor turned to Rory. "The Weeping Angels are a race of beings that exist in a state of quantum flux. They possess the perfect defense mechanism; they turn to stone if anyone is looking at them."

Rory laughed. "That could be any statue. What happens if you don't look at them?"

The Doctor gave him a very serious look. "Then bye bye Rory."

Rory waited to see if the Doctor was joking, and laughed again. "No seriously, what can a stone statue do?"

Amy answered. "They'll break your neck; kill you before you know what happened."

"That's not all they can do Rory, if they touch you they can strand you back in time and consume all of the potential energy that you would have used in your life." Again, the Doctor was forcibly reminded of the Time Lords. There weren't many races with the technology to engineer a creature like that. He knew that he could not pass up such a rare opportunity to study an Angel.

Mickey laughed. "Martha told me about you getting stuck in 1969. You're pretty useless without the Tardis, aren't you?"

The Doctor ignored him. "Martha, can you get me into that vault or no?"

"I can."

"Then do it."

Amy turned to the Doctor. "Then I'm going in too."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, you are Rory are going with Mickey to wait in a safer area. If something happens, I don't want you around here."

Amy opened her mouth to protest but the Doctor silenced her with his hand. "Please Amy, do as I say, just this once."

Furiously, Amy turned and complied with the Doctor, following Mickey and Rory to the lift.

The Doctor turned to Martha. "Ready?"

She nodded. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"

"Absolutely. Now, please open the vault; I have a feeling that there is a lot more going on here than either you or I am presently aware of."

Martha stepped forward, and held her thumb up to the touchscreen monitor. After verifying her identity, the large vault door opened, revealing a small antechamber with another door. She tapped a series of codes onto the keypad that was attached to the second door and it opened, hissing as the air pressure seal broke. They both stepped inside.