Doctor Who: 10 Villains The Doctor Couldn't Defeat
8. The Weeping Angels (The Angels Take Manhattan)
The Doctor has beaten the Weeping Angels on a few separate occasions: in Blink, he tricked four of them into staring at each other, locking them in place forever; and then, in Flesh and Stone, he managed to send a whole army of them flying into a crack in time, wiping them from the universe.
But you could argue that he didn't actually beat them on either occasion. The Angels from Blink could move again if a human stumbles across them, and decides to move one of the statues. And those Angels that were wiped from existence? They'll have been reinstated when the Doctor reset the universe in The Big Bang.
These instances aside though, there is a clear cut and undeniable example of the Doctor failing to defeat the Angels, and this took place in The Angels Take Manhattan.
Near the end of the episode, the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River find themselves in a graveyard, and for a few moments, it looks like they've managed to escape the creepy stone assassins for good. But then, out of nowhere, a lone Angel sneaks up and zaps Amy and Rory back in time, removing two close friends from the Doctor's life.
The Angels are said to be impossible to kill, and the best thing to do when facing them is to simply run away. But here, the Doctor couldn't even do that, and it cost him his companions.