Episode: Silence in the Catacombs
Chapter: Oh [6/6]
Summary: Amy Pond wanted a peaceful outing, just for once. Doctor River Song wanted a lift from her partner in crime. Father Octavian wanted an army to defeat one of the most terrifying monsters in the galaxy. The Master wanted everything to start making sense again. Or the one where legends and statues come to life and the past and the future conspire against Amy and the Master.
Rating: T
Koschei runs, knowing River and Amy won't be far behind, and rejoins the group of Clerics in time to catch Father Octavian berating one of his men for jumping at shadows.
"Sorry, sorry. I thought—I thought it looked at me," the Cleric apologizes, huddling into himself, and Koschei lets out an annoyed huff and turns his back to the scene to scan their surroundings, just in case.
The computer doesn't detect anything new, and he can't see or feel anything strange either – other than the unsettling wrongness from the statues that he doesn't know how to take, that is.
"—so, it would be good, it would be very good, if we could all remain calm in the presence of decor," Father Octavian is saying when Koschei tunes back into their conversation, and he can't help but snort.
"It would be even better if you had taken just the necessities, as I told you, and left all of your useless weapons behind," he reproaches them, glaring at Father Octavian over his shoulder. "Guns will be of no use against the Angel, but they can kill us if one of you gets spooked and starts shooting at whatever moves," he adds, sending a scathing glare at the cowed and ashamed Cleric. "You're terrified, aren't you? Well, great job, keep at it! The more scared you are, the faster you'll turn at the slightest noise. And, dealing with a quantum-locked creature that ceases to exist the moment you lay eyes on it, that split second can very well save your life," he tells the Cleric, not bothering to give him a second to answer, and, cautiously, the human looks up at him with the beginnings of relief. "But keep your gun locked and your finger off the trigger. Or you'll end up shooting any of us instead, and, trust me, dying from a gunshot wound is not pleasant, especially when it isn't an instant kill," he adds, and whatever relief the Cleric had felt turns to shame once more.
"Yes, Sir. I will, Sir," he answers meekly, staring at the ground under his boots and nodding softly.
"The same goes for all of you. Eyes open, reflexes primed, and hands off your weapons," he tells the rest of the Clerics, and, after Father Octavian's reluctant 'yes, Sir', the others answer in the affirmative as well. "Good. Let's move, we're losing time."
"Don't worry, Bob. He is not really mad at you, trust me. He's just trying to keep us all safe," Amy tells the scolded Cleric before Father Octavian sends him down a different passage to join a different group, and Koschei rolls his eyes.
Whatever. This way, they don't need to worry about being shot accidentally when someone startles.
It takes Father Octavian just two minutes to organize the group before they finally make their way to the ship, leaving Scaredy Bob and Friends to guard the ladder once they're done securing the perimeter, and Koschei spends that time moving from statue to statue as he tries to figure out what is wrong with them.
"Are you trying to glare statues into submission?" Amy asks, amused, and Koschei scoffs.
"I would if it worked," he grumbles under his breath, but her snickers let him know he wasn't quiet enough. "Keep your guard up and stay close. There's something wrong here."
"What, you mean besides the radiation, Weeping Angel and giant spaceship hanging over our heads?" Amy asks sarcastically as they make their way up, Koschei taking the lead and River sticking to Amy's side. "By the way, what are the chances of it just dropping on us?"
"Quite low. The Aplans were incredible builders," River answers with a reassuring smile, and proceeds to point out details of the structure and give them information about the old settlers of this world.
Like their belief that the soul ascended after death, which is why the Maze is built in six levels. Or their overall relaxed and cheerful society, more focused on creativity and teamwork than opulence or warfare, though their philosophy was kind of creepy.
They are about fifty feet from the wreckage when Koschei stops suddenly, forcing the others to still as well, tense and wide-eyed.
"What did you just say?" he asks River, tilting his head just enough in her direction that she knows whom the question is addressed to, but without facing her.
"The Aplans were quite open about marriage, even amongst different species, which led to conflicts with the Church when they pressed for laws against self-marriage," she repeats dutifully, but there's tension in her voice as she tries to figure out what has put him on edge.
"After that," he prompts, slowly dragging his torch from one statue to the next all around them, feeling his uneasiness curling around his throat like clawed hands.
"Amy asked how self-marriage worked, so I told her it's because the Aplans had—Oh."
"Yes, oh is right," Koschei whispers with a strangled voice before ushering the group further, to a widening of the path without any statues in it, almost chamber-like.
"What's wrong, Sir?" Father Octavian asks as he reaches his side, after sending his Clerics first to secure the area, but Koschei doesn't turn away from the statues even as he carefully walks backwards towards the rest of the group. "Are we in danger?"
"Shut up and get in there. No speaking, no moving. Get your men to watch the exits but stay together. I need to test something," Koschei orders, recovering his cool so that his voice comes out clear and firm, and the Bishop hesitates only half a second before obeying.
After one last look around, reaching as much as he dares to see if he is truly feeling what he thinks he's feeling, Koschei finally joins the Clerics.
"What's going on?" Amy asks, standing in the middle of the circle of Clerics with River at her side, and Koschei can only spare her a quick look before turning once more to the corridors they came through.
He takes one deep breath...
"Turn off your lights."
The Clerics tense, some glancing at him after all of his previous insistence about torches and keeping a clear line of sight, but only Father Octavian keeps staring at him after the initial surprise.
However, he's not the one to speak.
"Are you sure?"
It's River.
Of course, being that she has figured out just what has Koschei on edge now, it only makes sense that it would be her.
He kind of wants to answer that no, he is not sure about that, but what alternative do they have?
Still, if this is what he fears it is, he can't just tell them that.
"I am. I'll turn off my own too, so don't freak out. It'll be just a moment," he answers instead, and River hesitates—
But nods without fear, moving a bit closer to Amy so that the younger girl is further inside the circle, before turning off her torch. The Clerics follow her example a moment later, until only Koschei's light remains.
And then, before he can overthink it any more, Koschei flicks his torch out – and back on again just a decimal short of a full second.
It's more than enough.
"Oh, my God. They've moved," Amy whispers, voicing what everyone else is thinking judging by the tension filling their stretch of corridor.
And they have. Moved. The statues, that is. The statues of the dead Aplans that aren't statues of dead Aplans like they first thought, because the Aplans had two heads.
A perception filter, just low level enough to tickle Koschei's senses but not let anyone realize that there was one head missing from every single statue they walked past.
With that thought blocking his throat, Koschei rushes past the reaching but immobile eroded statues that were not there before, and turns his torch down.
Every. Single. Statue. Has. Moved.
"They're Weeping Angels. All of them, every single one. They're all Angels," he whispers mostly to himself, before training kicks in and he pushes his dread to the very back of his mind. "Torches on, now! And don't take your eyes off them, keep watching the statues, but don't look them in the eye. They're Angels, all of them," he orders, returning to the group as he goes through different formations in his mind that will allow as many of them as possible to make it back outside.
"But they can't be," River protests, more in fear-fueled denial than actual refusal, even as she turns her torch to the corridor Koschei just left.
He's too busy climbing up one of the walls to answer, getting to a vantage point. He's back on his feet soon enough, managing to locate the gravity globe they left at the entrance, far below, and tracing a path past the reaching statues and zigzagging passageways with his eyes, discarding them not a second later. Too many possibilities, none of them with good enough odds even with him twisting them to their favor.
"They are," he finally tells River, feeling fear and desperation trying to claw at him while his stubbornness and refusal to die beat them back with a stick of blind denial. "Every statue in this Maze, every single one of them."
He looks down instead, to his motley crew of Clerics plus Amy and River, before once more turning to analyze the Maze. The Angels keep moving closer, those out of sight for the group below, and Koschei feels his throat go dry.
Any path he could find now would be overrun by the Angels before they got to it, so full of statues that it might be simply impossible to navigate, or to get past them. They will need to blink too, though he could probably work a way to get them to blink in shifts... But with so many Angels around them, their torches would be drained in no time, emergency ones included. They are weak now, but they outnumber them by far.
"But it can't be! There was just one Angel in the ship, I swear!" River calls up, her torch steady as it shines on the base of the mound of rock Koschei climbed on.
Clever. No Angel will sneak up to him, in his vantage but vulnerable position all the way up here, with her keeping the base illuminated enough to see them coming.
"How did the Aplans go extinct?" he asks instead of answering, twirling in his spot to try and figure out another way through a different passage than the one they came through.
"Nobody knows," she tells him dutifully, looking up just enough that Koschei's eyes meet both River's and Amy's.
"Now we do."
Only when you see them, Amy mouths, or, judging by the way River turns with a start to meet her fearful gaze, whispers. They are Angels only when you see them.
Koschei doesn't know what they're talking about, but he drops down to the group once he identifies a passage that may work. It's twisty and mostly encased in rock, which would make it the perfect trap if not for the quantum-locked nature of the Angels. It is mostly clear as well, which means a couple of the Clerics can walk backwards at the rear to keep the Angels in sight without fear of tripping, while the rest of the group keeps their eyes up and to the front. It will be slow, and it will be tedious, but it can be done.
And, if someone gets caught, Koschei will probably be able to just pop back to the past to fetch them – as long as they don't wander to the section reserved for the outworlders that River mentioned before. If they find their tombstones, the past becomes fixed and there's no taking them back to the present afterwards. Koschei will not risk a paradox on that, not even if that would poison the Angels.
Yet another point supporting the 'Weeping Angels as tainted Time Lords' theory. Any race that knows of the Time Lords knows of them keeping the timeline stable, but what none of them are aware of is why. Point one is because the universe could be destroyed, and they would rather not, thank you very much, as they are living in it. Point two is because it is literally painful to have such a wound in time screaming at the edge of their senses, distorting the universe and their perception of it. Point three is that the Weeping Angels are not the only ones who get poisoned by paradoxes. Time Lords are more resilient, probably because their lifeforce is not temporal energy like the Angels', but they are not unaffected.
Another reason why making a paradox machine without a TARDIS or Gallifrey's resources would have been impossible. The same life support systems that allow their occupants to go on with their everyday lives while in the Vortex can be adapted to 'filter' the paradox, to loop it into a stable cycle without the anti-artron energy that would harm any Time Lords stuck in it.
"I've found a route out. It'll be dangerous and it'll be stressful, but if you do exactly as I say, we can get out," he tells the group, before turning to Father Octavian. "Call the drop ship, tell your Clerics to keep watch over the entrance. Two of them, at least, so they can alternate blinking. And get in contact with the group at the ladder, Scaredy Bob and his buddies. They need to be on guard, establish a perimeter. Send some more in if necessary, but we need that area clear."
"And then what?" he asks, and Koschei snarls in lieu of wincing.
The mirror he pocketed to deal with the Angel from the ship is all but useless now.
"I'll time-lock the whole Maze if necessary, and figure something out later. But first, we need to get out of here," he hisses, and Father Octavian tenses but nods.
"But how can they be Angels? They don't look like it," Amy asks River under her breath when Koschei turns to them, Father Octavian already barking orders into his radio at his back.
"That's because they're dying," he answers instead, startling them, though he meets River's eyes as he speaks next. "The Aplans went extinct when the Angels kept displacing them. Their food source died out, what, four centuries ago?" he asks, and River nods, somber. "They've been starving ever since, locked in here, so weak that they couldn't even reach the colonists to feed on them. You said the other Angel, the one on the ship, was discovered a century ago? That's probably when it received the message from these ones. It had been bidding its time until it could find the perfect energy source to bring here, the Byzantium, and flood the Maze with radiation to heal these other Angels. This wasn't an accident, it was a rescue mission," he explains as he puts things together in his head, grimacing as he looks at the statues reaching for them. "That's an army, and we're surrounded. Hand, Eye and Crown, we are so screwed…"
"The message? The Angel from the ship received a message from these ones?" River repeats, startling him out of his musings to focus back on her and Amy, staring at him wide-eyed over the older woman's shoulder.
"Another theory. How can creatures who can't see each other, who have no means of communication, hunt coordinately? Some scholars believed them to be telepathic up to an extent. This kind of range? Unheard of. But then again, who could have tested it and survived?" he tells them softly, and his grimace immediately reflects on their expressions. "Coincidences don't exist. Never ignore a coincidence. Most often than not, your life will depend on it later."
"Never ignore a coincidence unless you're running for your life?" River asks with the shadow of an amused smirk on her face, and Koschei twitches, hearing the quotation there, and knowing it is probably him she's quoting.
"Never ignore a coincidence unless you're running for your life, but never forget about it even then," he agrees, unable to stop himself before adding the last point because he is not going to let someone else have the last word, not even himself. "Your inferior human brains can't comprehend time, but I can, and when I tell you coincidences don't exist, it is because they don't. You lot think time is simple, a strict progression of cause to effect, but it isn't. Time is complicated, very complicated," he explains, hoping to get that point across, because he really needs all the details he can get his hands on if they're planning to survive this, and can't have any of the two startled women staring at him in disbelief forget to mention something just because they thought it was just a coincidence. "Ugh, alright. This is the simplified version, but no less accurate for it," he huffs, turning to them and lifting his hands as he tries to figure out how he can illustrate temporal physics theory simply enough for a non-sensitive species to understand. "From a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, time is not a line but a big ball of interconnected events, the links of which are flexible and interchangeable up to a point, and malleable themselves so that any ripple caused on an event bubble by an established connection results in a modification of the connectors, which, in itself, would cause yet another ripple on the adjacent event bubbles, until—"
"I get it now," Amy cuts with realization all over her face, and Koschei stops, gawking for a couple of seconds at the shock of those words and what they mean. "Time as 'a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff' is way easier to understand than that."
River lets out a loud hah! before she can cover her mouth to muffle the rest of her laughter, though she nods alongside a smug Amy. Koschei is too busy puffing up indignantly to answer with more than a glare, though, focusing instead on the redhead.
"Excuse you! That is most definitely not an accurate term or explanation for temporal physics. What's next, using 'jiggery-pokery' instead of Field Technological Repair and Assembly, or Xenotechnology Manipulation?"
"Oh, jiggery-pokery! Because you wave our screwdriver around and poke at stuff to make it work! Now, that makes everything clearer!" Amy exclaims happily, and Koschei gives her a betrayed look.
"Don't you start with that! I'm trying to kick that awful habit!" he orders as sternly as he can before turning around, conversation over.
Both women snicker at his back, but Koschei has more important things to worry about.
"Bob, Angelo, Christian, come in, please. Any of you, come in," Father Octavian is calling into his radio, but there's only static from the other side.
Those are the names of the guys who were guarding the ladder. If they've been displaced, it'll be harder to get back outside, but it may still be possible. However, it would mean that the radiation has reached far enough to give the Angels by the entrance sufficient power to move around and attack, and, with the displacements, they will be more dangerous than ever.
"It's Bob, Sir. Sorry, Sir," finally comes out of the radio, and Koschei relaxes minutely.
Maybe they are not as screwed as he first thought.
"Bob, are Angelo and Christian with you? All the statues are active. I repeat, all the statues are active."
"I know, Sir. Angelo and Christian are dead, Sir. The statues killed them," Bob answers, and Koschei tenses all over again before closing the distance between himself and Father Octavian in two long steps, practically ripping the radio out of his hands.
He has a bad feeling about this, the same bad feeling that first got to him when he saw the 'statues'. If only he'd known more about the Aplans before coming in… Ugh, whatever. He is not waiting for a clue this time.
"What do you mean, they're dead? Did you see the Angels displace them? Have they vanished off of whatever sensors you're carrying?" he asks, silencing whatever protests Father Octavian may have with a glare.
"Is it you, Time Lord, Sir?"
"Yes, it's me, now answer the question. How do you know they're dead?" he answers briskly, looking all around at the Clerics staring at the statues, but whose ears are on him and the radio.
"Because I found them, Sir. The Angel snapped their necks."
Koschei freezes.
Amy is pale as death, a hand clinging to River's arm like a child to their parent, with the torch trembling in her other hand. River is wide-eyed and horrified, but far steadier than Amy, patting the hand on her arm calmingly.
"You turn your back, you blink... And then a stone can kill you," Amy whispers, exchanging a look of realization and dread with River, who puts her hands on her shoulders.
"I'm not going to let them get to you," she tells Amy, and Koschei forces himself to take a deep breath and return his attention to the radio in his hand.
"That is not how the Weeping Angels usually deal with their victims, Bob. Where are you now? Did you notice anything about Christian and Angelo, about the Angel that killed them?" he asks, trying to figure out just what is happening now as he analyzes the Angels surrounding them in an attempt to see something.
"I'm on my way up to you, Sir, I'm homing in on your signal. And it was the Angel from the ship, Sir. It stripped their cerebral cortexes from their bodies and re-animated a version of their consciousnesses to communicate, since Angels have no voice," Bob explains with, Koschei finally notices, a strangely calm and composed voice that doesn't fit the scared Cleric shooting at shadows that he last saw.
"And that's how it got you too," Koschei whispers when the Cleric's words finally make it to his brain, feeling cold inside.
"Yes, Sir. This is the Angel communicating through me, Sir. Sorry for the confusion."
For a moment, everyone seems to be holding their breath, Amy's and River's eyes wide and Father Octavian grimacing in a mixture of disgust and horror, before the Bishop shakes his head to get back in the game.
"If that's the Angel from the ship, we can escape through the wreckage. Move out, run!" he orders his Clerics, and, trying to put his thoughts in order, Koschei ushers River and Amy after them, bringing up the rear so the Angels can't follow.
It is only when they're under the crashed Byzantium, a good thirty feet over their heads, and discussing their lack of climbing equipment and how more and more Angels keep showing up on the corridors leading to them, and their torches and the gravity globe starting to flicker, that Koschei takes in a deep breath and pulls the radio up to his mouth again.
"If you killed the three Clerics, may I ask, does this mean you have no need for our latent temporal energy?" he asks calmly with his best negotiator voice, not taking his eyes off of the statues yet changing his expression to calculated disinterest.
"We don't, Sir. The Angels are feasting on the radiation. Soon we will be able to absorb enough power to consume this world, and all the stars and worlds beyond," Angel Bob answers, still in that unnatural calm tone, and Koschei frowns softly.
Drive burn radiation will help restore this army of Angels, definitely, but not even six billion colonists and a Time Lord will give them such a power. If they get the TARDIS, they could do a lot of damage, true, but it would still not be enough.
"That sounds delightful, magnificent! My most sincere congratulations on your recovery. Oh, and excellent plan, too. We hadn't noticed a thing until we fell right into your trap," he tells them instead, grinning at all the eroded statues surrounding them, and glaring at Father Octavian when the man looks ready to snap at him.
If he can get them talking, just like the Doctor always did to his enemies, he may yet figure out what is going on here. River seems to agree with him, because she turns to the Bishop and whispers at him to let Koschei do his thing.
Well, she actually says let the Doctor work his magic, which would have earned her another scathing glare if not because Angel Bob chooses that very moment to answer.
"Thank you, Sir, but that is not entirely true. You noticed, as soon as you set eyes on the Angels, even if you didn't know what you were looking at. And we know you do not mean to congratulate us on our victory."
"And this, dearest Angel, is why you should pay more attention to your enemies, because I said none of those things. I praised your plan, your trap. The moment we set foot in the Maze, the trap was set, so I noticed once we were in your trap. And I did not congratulate you on your victory, but on your recovery. You haven't won yet," he scoffs, glaring at the closest Angel but meaning it for all of them.
"But we will, Sir. We have all the power we need in that vessel."
There's nowhere near enough power for what you plan in that wreck, is what he wants to say, but Koschei snaps his mouth shut before he can say it.
"So, you really have no need for us. How about letting us leave, then?" he asks casually, and can feel the incredulous looks on his back without turning around.
"I'm afraid we can't do that, Sir. You would try to stop us."
"Why would I do that? Look, the other Angels have been observing us all the time – that's why Bob started shooting at nothing, he actually noticed one of you eying him up. You know how much I care about this circus, which is not at all. The only thing I want is to get out of here and go on with my life. An army of Weeping Angels is not what I signed up for," he tells Angel Bob almost conversationally, channeling all his disgust at the humans and the situation into his voice, and ignoring the hisses of what are you doing from behind him.
"But you would do it, Sir. You're the Doctor, the man who saves people. This is why you were so angry when I started shooting, because I could have hurt someone else. This is why you didn't want guns, because you want to keep people safe. You want to save everyone, quite hypocritically, because you would kill all of the Angels here to do so. You want to put the Maze under a time lock, and the Angels can't allow that. We will kill the Clerics, one by one, and Doctor Song. We will leave Miss Pond for last, and kill her slowly, right where you can see, and you will be able to do nothing to save any of them. But we won't kill you, Doctor, we will just incapacitate you. You couldn't keep me safe, Doctor, no matter how much you reassured me that fear would keep me fast and that no accidental bullets would be fired anymore. Miss Pond trusts you too, but we will show her the truth. We will show you the truth as well. You can't save anyone, Doctor."
"Get out of the way."
"See you in five minutes, Amelia!"
"Never give up, never give in, huh? The Doctor, the sanctimonious twat who makes people better."
"The Time War ends today."
Theta. Amelia. Starship UK. The whole of the universe.
One died so he could live. The other lost fourteen years waiting for him. The Star Whale was going to die so the Starship could live. The Daleks are out there once more because he chose Earth.
No, Koschei is not the Doctor.
But the Doctor couldn't save everyone either.
"I know you can do it, Koschei. I have faith in you. Not just about being nice to the old girl, but… At the time I'm recording this message, you've already taken control of some operations, and you are great, Koschei. You are fantastic, magnificent, and you know it. So, don't forget it, please? You're beautiful, Koschei. And no matter what happened to me, how we left things. I forgive you. I thank you. And I want you to know you can still be beautiful, even if I'm not there anymore."
"It's hard, Koschei, it really is. But sometimes, you can really save everyone. Don't give up, alright?"
"Amelia, do you trust me?" he asks softly, not looking away, but feels her surprise turn to determination even before she answers with a firm yeah. "River?"
"Always."
"Father Octavian, Clerics, do you trust me?" he asks, and, this time, he actually meets eyes with the Bishop.
"We have faith, Sir."
"But do you have faith in me?" he insists, and, after a moment of tense silence, Father Octavian—
Nods.
"I have faith in God sending us the right man for the job. Yes, Time Lord, I have faith in you."
"Clerics?"
"Yes, Sir!" they all answer in unison, spurned by their leader's words, and Koschei turns to face the closest Angel once more.
"When I tell you to, jump. Just up, as high as you can go. Understood?" he asks, receiving confirmation from everyone even as he weaves their faith, their trust, around him, his grip on the radio growing stronger as he lifts it back to his mouth. "Angel Bob?"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Are you sure you don't want to just let us go?"
"I'm afraid not, Sir. The Angels would quite enjoy seeing you suffer," he answers as calmly as any other time before, and Koschei nods, mostly to himself.
"Right. You've been warned."
"Warned, Sir? About what?"
Koschei takes in a deep breath, twists all of the faith and trust tightly around himself, crouches—
"I'll take a raincheck on failure," he whispers mockingly into the radio, his smirk sharp— "Jump!"
And the lights flicker for the last time.
AN: The next episode is ready, fret not. It'll be posted in two days.
This episode's title is a nod to Silence in the Library, River Song's first appearance.
Blink. Really scary episode, even if, when you think about it, the Weeping Angels really aren't the scariest creatures, they actually let you live… But then again, I remember someone saying once that death is not the worst that can happen… Why did I add the video from Blink? One is because I thought it would be hilarious. Two is because, in the episode itself, the video actually fits in different settings, and all of them make sense. In Kathy's house, it catches Sally's attention, so she eventually asks Larry about it, which leads to them going to the house to send the TARDIS back after Billy Shipton's death. And, in the video shop, too, Sally and the Doctor have a conversation, even if Sally doesn't know about it and ends up freaking out. So, the video can be useful in many different situations, not just in the house and as a full clip, as it was intended. Ergo, me thinking it would be really cool to have it here, in this episode, and, you know what? It actually made sense, as the Angels really kill people in here instead of displacing them, and you really don't know they're there until the 'Aplan' statues move, they think there's just the one Angel.
Another minor detail that bothered me at the time is that River says the TARDIS' noise is due to the brakes being on. Okay, sure, laugh it up, it fits, it's great. But. In the original series, the Master's TARDIS makes the noise too. Again, it could be because TARDISes have to be piloted by six people, and so the Master has more important things to worry about than the brakes… But why would he? They make the TARDIS rattle and it's harder to pilot her (among other things, like the blue boringers). And there's also the fact that the Doctor himself, his tenth incarnation, says he failed the test to fly the TARDIS (or barely passed it, can't remember which one it was). So, my brain's explanation? The Master didn't have all the parts because he used them to lock Weeping Angels in a time lock and run the Hell away from the planet on his way to Earth for the Auton invasion.
Armor. Time Lords as military, did I mention that? Green armor for the Doctor, as his studies were mainly in the Arcalian Chapterschool, the one for scientists. Red armor for the Master, as his studies were mainly in the Prydonian Chapterschool, the one for leaders and warriors, with the golden bands on his wrists declaring his status as second-in-command (I think it's in Heaven Sent/Hell Bent that you can see the second-in-command of the Gallifreyan soldiers wears the same kind of armor as the rest of the soldiers but has golden bands to separate him from them). This also explains the Master's extended knowledge of the Weeping Angels, as enemies of the Time Lords, but lack thereof in more science/jiggery-pokery areas, or about alien species that were neither threat nor asset to Time Lords, such as the Aplans. This difference in their fields of expertise has closed over time, as they travelled and learnt, but it's still there, and it'll become more poignant with time (like the Master thinking he wouldn't be able to hack the Dalek ship last chapter, when we see the Eleventh Doctor actually doing it in the episode).
Also, I've been asked if the Master will ever tell Amy who he truly is. Truth is, I don't know. I mostly put the characters in the situations and let them deal with it, they mostly write themselves. So, while the Master is not trying to hide the fact he is not the Doctor, I believe his wounds are still too fresh to talk about that in more detail, and Amy already has a set idea of who he is, and so doesn't ask. That can change, the characters, as I mentioned, do as they want. But still, I have no idea of if, or when, such a thing would happen.
And, on that same point, the conversation between the Doctor's ghost and the Master about the 'Daddy frown' and caring about people and all that is yet another instance of the characters doing what they want, so I really don't know what half of it meant *insert shrug* They'll probably explain more in future chapters.
Next time: The group is trapped, people go missing, questions are asked and answers are given, but maybe not in that order, and maybe not to those questions.