Blink

The Angels are coming for you. But listen, your life could depend on this. Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead. They are fast, faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back, don’t look away, and don’t blink. Good luck.

The Tenth Doctor

Synopsis

Only the Doctor can stop the Weeping Angels, but he’s lost in time. So Sally Sparrow must fly into action…

Review

This is the story that hooked me back in 2007. Having sporadically watched Doctor Who since Doomsday, Blink would be the episode that would make me keen to keep tuning in, and watching the show to date. I remember watching this story on its’ BBC Three repeat and being utterly gripped and terrified. Even my parents, who are not science fiction fans, watched it and confirmed how scary it was. Blink is a story that is frequently featured in lists of the top-ranked episodes, and one that is signposted to people looking to watch the show for the first time, ironically for an episode which features very little of the Doctor.

With the Doctor and Martha trapped in 1969 having previously had an encounter with an Angel, the story is led by Sally Sparrow. Sally is played by Carey Mulligan, who joins the ranks of actors who have come through the show on their way through to stardom. Mulligan brings a real sense of steely determination to Sally as she is pursued by the relentless Angels from Wester Drumlins across London. Her response to the Easter Egg recording of the Doctor is definitely appropriate, considering what she has been through, feeling as though she has been the victim of a prank following her best friend’s disappearance and apparent new life in 1920s Hull. Sally is perhaps the greatest one-off companion we have in the show, and the door was certainly left open for her return one day, but I can imagine that Carey Mulligan’s availability rapidly became an issue as her career went from strength to strength.

We’ve got bigger problems now. They’ve taken the blue box, haven’t they? The angels have the phone box.

“The angels have the phone box!” That’s my favourite, I’ve got that on a tee shirt!

The Tenth Doctor and Lawrence Nightingale

Like the previous Doctor-lite story, Love & Monsters, Blink reflects on the nature of fandom. It is a story that features on the quirk of Easter Eggs on DVDs, which are things that are often not found by those other than the most devoted fan, eagerly sought out for an extra tidbit of information or maybe even a joke. Larry’s screens in the front room of his sister’s home show the signs of such a fan, and he mentions being on the forums and committing phrases from the Doctor’s monologue to t-shirts. Larry has even jumped down rabbit holes, taking innocuous comments made in the Easter Eggs, like “look to your left”, which he perceives to be a political statement, which makes no sense in the context of even one side of the conversation. In some ways, Moffat’s script walks the same line as Love and Monsters, but does it far more successfully.

Steven Moffat loves playing around with time, and Blink is no exception. In this case, the story is a loop, experienced by the Doctor and Sally in a different order, before being neatly tied up in a bow at the end. It’s an interesting example of time travel – the narrative is primarily set in 2007, and whilst we get snippets of the past, both in 1920 and 1969, we do not spend overly long in these settings. Moffat’s script is also quite funny – I always laugh at the comment that Kathy’s suggestion that she and Sally brand themselves as Sparrow and Nightingale as being ‘a bit ITV’, and this is among other amusing moments. When we meet DI Billy Shipton and find that he has a collection of cars collected from Wester Drumlins, he comments that the TARDIS is not a standard police box, with the windows being the wrong size and the phone doesn’t work. The guest cast are all very good too, utterly committed and bringing Moffat’s words to life.

We are introduced in this story to the Weeping Angels, who are arguably the most effective foes introduced in the modern run of the series. They are impossibly old, and feast off their victims’ potential time energy, or as the Doctor states, they are the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. They are also an effective example of a practical foe, being played by actors in substantial prosthetic make-up. They are also an unique foe in the fact that we never see them move. There’s an incredibly spooky moment when Sally is upstairs looking for Kathy, and whilst we never see the Angels in transition, we do see that they have moved. It’s a very good job by director Hettie MacDonald, who makes sequences like the four Angels rocking the TARDIS in the basement work incredibly well, combining the flickering light with the movement of the famous blue box. This, combined with Murray Gold’s score, make the Weeping Angels all the more creepy, especially when the audience are uncertain as to the exact nature of the threat. The moment the TARDIS demateralises around Sally and Larry, seemingly leaving them at the mercy of the Angels, is a truly terrifying moment.

Doctor!

Listen – got to dash. Things happening. Well, four things. Well, four things and a lizard.

Martha Jones and the Tenth Doctor

This is a Doctor-lite episode, and the Doctor and Martha do not appear on screen, outside of the Easter Eggs, until around the twenty-second minute, but both David Tennant and Freema manage to make their brief short time count. The Doctor pulls the strings to make sure that the loop is tied up nicely by recruiting Billy to help with putting the Easter Eggs on the DVDs. Martha, on the other hand, is the one who ensure that they can live. It’s another thankless task for her after working as a maid at the school.

Verdict: Blink continues to be a masterpiece of the revived series, intricately plotted, well-directed and well-acted. 10/10

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Carey Mulligan (Sally Sparrow), Lucy Gaskell (Kathy Nightingale), Finlay Robertson (Larry Nightingale), Richard Cant (Malcolm Wainwright), Michael Obiora (Billy Shipton), Louis Mahoney (Old Billy), Thomas Nelstrop (Ben Wainwright), Ian Boldsworth (Banto) & Ray Sawyer (Desk Sergeant).

Writer: Steven Moffat

Director: Hettie MacDonald

Producer: Phil Collinson

Composer: Murray Gold

Original Broadcast Date: 9th June 2007

Behind the Scenes

• Steven Moffat originally was intended to write a two-parter, but had to pull out of writing this due to his commitment to Jekyll. He volunteered to take the Doctor-lite episode.
• This story won a Hugo award in 2008.
• The first story to be directed by a woman since The Mark of the Rani.

Cast Notes

• Lucy Gaskell would go on to play Miskavel, wife to the villainous Time Lord the Eleven.
• Louis Mahoney had previously appeared in Frontier in Space and Planet of Evil.

Best Moment

There is something really hauntingly beautiful about the scene with Sally and the elderly Billy, which really hammers home the true horror of the Weeping Angels.

It was raining when we met.

It’s the same rain.

Billy Shipton and Sally Sparrow

Best Quote

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.

The Tenth Doctor

Previous Tenth Doctor review: The Family of Blood