Blink (Doctor Who)

186 – "Blink"
Doctor Who episode
Sally Sparrow, unaware she is being watched by the statue-like Weeping Angels.
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones)
Others Carey Mulligan – Sally Sparrow Lucy Gaskell – Kathy Nightingale Finlay Robertson – Larry Nightingale Richard Cant – Malcolm Wainwright Michael Obiora – DI Billy Shipton Louis Mahoney – Old Billy Thomas Nelstrop – Ben Wainwright Ian Boldsworth – Banto Ray Sawyer – Desk Sergeant Aga Blonska – Weeping Angel (uncredited)
Production
Directed by	Hettie MacDonald
Written by	Steven Moffat
Script editor	Helen Raynor
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	3.10
Series	Series 3
Running time	45 minutes
First broadcast	9 June 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Family of Blood" Followed by → "Utopia"

"Blink" is the tenth episode of the third series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 9 June 2007, and is the only episode in the 2007 series written by Steven Moffat; the episode is based on a previous short story written by Moffat for the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, "'What I Did on My Christmas Holidays' By Sally Sparrow".

The episode focuses on a young woman, Sally Sparrow, trying to solve the connection between 17 disparate DVD titles, and statues that move when no-one is looking at them. Just as in 2006's "Love & Monsters", the Doctor and his companion have very little screen time, allowing another episode to be filmed simultaneously. It is consequently referred to as a "Doctor-lite" episode.

The episode was well received by critics. For "Blink", Steven Moffat won the BAFTA Craft and BAFTA Cymru awards for Best Writer, and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

Plot

Synopsis

In 2007, Sally Sparrow enters the dilapidated house, Wester Drumlins, to look for subjects to photograph but instead finds eerie angel-like statues, and messages from "the Doctor" behind the peeling wallpaper addressed to her, warning her of the "Weeping Angels". Sally returns the next day with her friend Kathy Nightingale to explore further; Kathy disappears as at the same time a young man claiming to be Kathy's grandson delivers a letter to Sally. The letter from Kathy explains, just moments ago from Sally's perspective, that Kathy suddenly found herself in the 1920s in Hull. Kathy settled down with a husband and led a peaceful life, and, in the letter, requests Sally to let her closest relative, her brother Larry, know of her disappearance. Sally finds a yale key hanging from the hand of one of the statues, and takes it before leaving.

Sally visits Larry at a DVD rental store, and finds that he has documented a series of "easter eggs" across seventeen unrelated DVDs, each with the same man calling himself "The Doctor" having half of a conversation with the viewer. Larry gives Sally a list of the DVDs as she leaves for the police station. There, she meets Detective Inspector Billy Shipton, who explains that there have been several disappearances at the Drumlins, and shows her an impound lot containing vehicles abandoned near the Drumlins, including a locked fake police box. Sally leaves, but remembers the key she found, and returns to find Billy has disappeared. She immediately receives a call from a much older Billy on his death bed at the hospital and visits him. Billy explains, after she left the lot, he discovered the Angels trying to retrieve the police box. Billy then suddenly found himself in 1969 and met the Doctor, who asked him to relay a message to Sally decades later; Billy subsequently married and started a video production house and was responsible for putting the easter eggs on the DVDs. Before Billy dies, he tells Sally the Doctor's message to her: to look at the list of DVDs. Sally discovers that the list is her own DVD collection, and realises the easter eggs are meant for her.

Sally and Larry return to the Drumlins with a portable DVD player, and watch the entirety of the easter egg. Sally discovers she can "converse" with the Doctor as, in the past, he possesses a complete version of the transcript that is currently being compiled in the present by Larry as he watches. The Doctor explains that he and Martha Jones were transported to the past by the Weeping Angels, beings that feed off the potential time energy of others. The Angels are "quantum locked", allowing them to move incredibly fast when unobserved but when they are seen, they literally turn to stone, and thus warning Sally not to look away or even blink when they are around. The Doctor tells them they are seeking his TARDIS—the fake police box—to acquire its potential power, which could have catastrophic results. When the Doctor comes to the end of the transcript, Sally realises Larry has stopped writing it due to the presence of an Angel in the room, and the two quickly escape to the basement. There, they discover, the Angels have brought the TARDIS, and Sally and Larry take shelter inside it as the Angels surround them. Inside, a hologram of the Doctor informs them that the TARDIS has detected a control disc, which can activate it for one journey; upon doing so the TARDIS dematerialises, leaving the two of them behind. However, with the TARDIS gone, the Angels have been tricked into observing each other, permanently frozen as statues staring at each other (the reason that they are called Weeping Angels is that they cover their eyes, giving them a weeping-like appearance, but is really to prevent this from happening).

A year later, Sally and Larry have become romantically involved and have opened a DVD and book store together, though Sally's insistence on keeping a folder of the events for the Doctor worries Larry. As Larry steps out for an errand, Sally sees the Doctor and Martha hurriedly leave a taxi in front of the shop, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows, and goes to meet them. When they do not recognise her, she realises that they have yet to experience the events that sent them to the past, and hands over her folder of information, warning the Doctor he may need it in his future, thus completing the ontological paradox. The Doctor and Sally say their goodbyes as Larry returns, surprised to see the man from the easter egg. Sally and Larry return to the shop hand in hand. The episode ends with a repeat of the Doctor's warning to Sally, this time directed at the viewer, overlaid with flashes of famous bronze and stone statues.

Continuity

• A holographic projection of the Tenth Doctor can be seen in this episode. Earlier projections of the Doctor are those of the Seventh and Eighth Doctors in the television movie, the Ninth seen in "The Parting of the Ways", and another of the Tenth Doctor's projections in "Doomsday".
• The TARDIS fading away around Sally and Larry is similar to the effect used in "The Parting of the Ways", in which the TARDIS materialises around Rose and a Dalek. A similar trick is used in "The Runaway Bride", in which it fades in around the Doctor and Donna, and in Logopolis, in which it materialises around the Master's TARDIS.
• The Doctor says "I'm rubbish at weddings, especially my own" when explaining to Sally that he experiences events out of sequence. He has in the past referred to being a father in "The Empty Child" and "Fear Her", and would do so again in "The Doctor's Daughter", and formerly travelled with his granddaughter. The First Doctor is accidentally betrothed to the lady Cameca in The Aztecs. In "The Family of Blood", the Doctor as John Smith foresees an alternative future as a human, in which he has a successful marriage and raises a family. The Eighth Doctor also married in the novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. In The End of Time The Doctor states that before he answered the call of the Ood, he got married to "Good Queen Bess", one of the more favourable nicknames of Queen Elizabeth I. This may go some way to explaining the Queen's anger upon meeting the Doctor at the end of "The Shakespeare Code". Furthermore, River Song mentions to the Eleventh Doctor in the series 5 finale that he always dances at weddings, playfully alluding to being married herself though not specifying to whom.
• Larry gives Sally the list of DVDs from a folder with a Cunard White Star Line sticker on it. White Star were the operators of the ill-fated RMS Titanic. The Ninth Doctor was photographed in Southampton with a family due to travel on the RMS Titanic; the photograph is shown in "Rose". A starship modeled after the Titanic is featured in the later Christmas special "Voyage of the Damned" and again in an alternate timeline in "Turn Left" .
• The Doctor would later mention the events of this episode and Sally Sparrow to 'The Doctor' in 2008 episode "The Next Doctor".
• The Weeping Angels are referred to by the Lord President of Gallifrey in The End of Time, when he forces two dissenting Time Lords to adopt their eye-covering pose as a sign of disgrace.
• The Angels returned in the episodes "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone" in 2010.
• In The Unicorn and the Wasp, the Doctor begins to tell a story in which he is carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows like he does at the end of this episode, presumably referencing the same event, but he is cut off before he can explain what he was doing.

Production

You have to remember that being scared of the dark and being scared of monsters is basically a childish impulse. There's always something of the nursery about horror....Adults never quite grow out of their childhood fears. They just belong in a different part of our heads. Doctor Who isn't a childish programme, but it is childlike: it's a programme for children. And many, many adults who watch and love it watch it as that: as something like Harry Potter.

— Steven Moffat on writing horror fiction for Doctor Who.

Part of the story of "Blink" is based on Moffat's own Ninth Doctor short story from the Doctor Who Annual 2006 called "'What I Did on My Christmas Holidays' by Sally Sparrow". "What I Did" is presented as a homework essay from Sally, though only 12 years old, who encounters evidence of the Ninth Doctor's presence from the past in her aunt's house while visiting. "What I Did" includes several elements that are reused in "Blink", including messages under the wallpaper and an ontological paradox involving a conversation between Sally and the Doctor, prerecorded on cassette tape, based on a written transcript (the essay itself); however, instead of the Angels, "What I Did" features the Doctor and the TARDIS are inadvertently separated twenty years in time by a fault in the time machine, and the Doctor is able to instruct Sally how to bring it back to him in the past. "Blink" is the third story of the revived series to be adapted for television by the same writer from a piece of their spin-off writing. It follows "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", which were adaptations by Paul Cornell of his novel Human Nature, and "Dalek", which had the basic premise as well as some scenes and dialogue adapted by Robert Shearman from his audio drama Jubilee.

"Blink" is referred to as a "Doctor-Lite" episode because the Doctor and/or his companion have very little screen time. This allowed two episodes to be filmed simultaneously. This practice had begun with 2006's "Love & Monsters", and would continue for 2008's "Turn Left" and "Midnight".

Hettie MacDonald is the first female director of a Doctor Who episode since the Sixth Doctor serial The Mark of the Rani.

Although they are never shown moving on screen, all of the Weeping Angels were played by actors wearing prosthetics. Footage of them being put into costume and moving on the set can be seen in the Doctor Who Confidential episode "Do You Remember The First Time?".

Location shooting for scenes set at the Police Station Garage took place at the Coal Exchange and Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff Bay.

Reception

"Blink" has been widely recognised as an exceptional episode of Doctor Who. Writer Steven Moffat was awarded the 2008 BAFTA Craft and BAFTA Cymru awards for Best Writer for his work on this episode. It also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, and Carey Mulligan received the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode. The episode was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Script, but lost to Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro. This episode also received the award for Best Story in the Doctor Who Magazine 2007 Survey.

The BBC Fear Forecasters (four children, aged 6, 8, 10 and 14, who rate each episode on how scary children will find it) gave this episode a 5.5 rating ("Off the Scale"). The only other episode with a rating above 5 is "The Impossible Planet", which received a 6 ("Beyond Fear"). A notice for parents was also attached to the top of the page, recommending that parents record the episode and watch it in the daytime with their children, as it was one of the scariest episodes yet. This warning is similar to the warning that was attached for "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", both of which were also written by Steven Moffat.

In the BBC Four programme Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe's review of 2007, Brooker described the episode as "terrifying" and "one of the most skillfully crafted pieces of populist drama ofthe past decade."

The episode was first released as a region 2 DVD on 23 July 2007. Like all of the first DVD releases, the DVD did not contain any extra features. The episode was included in the series three boxed set, released on 5 November 2007. As well as containing an edited version of the episode's Doctor Who Confidential, the set features The Doctor's unedited Easter Egg message, itself as an Easter Egg.

In Doctor Who Magazine's 2009 poll to find the greatest Doctor Who serial ever "Blink" came in second place after Peter Davison's final story, The Caves of Androzani.

Fandom and popular culture

• Larry describes Wester Drumlins as "Scooby-Doo's house", a reference to the dilapidated mansions that the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang would usually visit. The BBC fact file notes that 1969, the year Martha, the Doctor and Billy are sent to, is the first year Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! aired. The name of the dilapidated house, Wester Drumlins, is taken from a previous residence of Steven Moffat from the late 1990s. The newspaper shown to Kathy in 1920 has the headline "Hull F.C. to play Hull Kingston Rovers", a reference to the two professional Rugby League teams in Hull.

• Billy mentions that the windows of the TARDIS are the wrong size for a real police box. In 2004, when the first photographs of the new series' TARDIS prop were revealed, there was a vigorous discussion of the box's dimensions on the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who discussion forum, in which some fans complained that the prop's windows were too big. Writer Steven Moffat has confirmed that this line is an in-joke aimed at the Outpost Gallifrey forum.

• A line spoken by the Doctor, "The angels have the phone box", is rhetorically repeated by Larry and prompts him to say "I've got that on a T-shirt"; as expected by Moffat and Murray Gold, this led online retailers such as ThinkGeek, Zazzle, and CafePress to offer versions of such a product for sale.

External links

• Blink on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• "Blink" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• Template:Doctor Who RG
• Template:Brief
• "Don't blink" - episode trailer
• "What I Did On My Holidays," by Sally Sparrow – the original short story on which the episode was based
• "Blink" at IMDb

Reviews

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• Template:OG review