Blink (Doctor Who)

190 – "Blink"
Doctor Who episode
Sally Sparrow searches for her friend Kathy, unaware she is being watched by the Weeping Angels.
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones)
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	1 episode, 45 mins
First broadcast	9 June 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Family of Blood" Followed by → "Utopia"

"Blink" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 9 June 2007, and is the tenth episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. It was a single episode story, written by Steven Moffat.

As with 2006's "Love & Monsters", the Doctor and his companion feature little, due to David Tennant and Freema Agyeman being busy filming other episodes.

Synopsis

Sally Sparrow is a photographer, who enters an old abandoned house to take pictures. Inside, though, the Weeping Angels are waiting. She must decipher several cryptic messages from 1969 from a strange man called the Doctor - all directed specifically at her.

Plot

The episode, set mainly in 2007, focuses upon Sally Sparrow, who breaks into a dilapidated house called Wester Drumlins to take photographs. There she discovers behind the peeling wallpaper a message from "the Doctor" dated 1969, calling her by name and telling her to "beware the Weeping Angels" and then to "duck now", just before an object launched from behind nearly hits her.

She returns the next day with her friend, Kathy Nightingale. A man soon arrives at the door with a decades-old letter from his grandmother, saying he had promised to deliver it to Sally on this date at exactly this time. The name of his grandmother was Kathy Nightingale. Thinking this is a prank, she searches for Kathy, who has just disappeared. Sally encounters three Weeping Angel statues, one holding a Yale key. She takes the key and leaves the house, unaware that the Angels have moved and are watching her from the windows.

Sally reads the letter, wherein Kathy explains that the Weeping Angels transported her back to 1920 and that she lived a happy and full life. The letter asks Sally to explain her absence to her last close relative — Kathy's brother Larry, who runs a store that sells rare DVDs. Larry has also discovered a message from the Doctor, which features him carrying on half of an unfathomable conversation, as an easter egg hidden on seventeen unrelated DVDs. The easter egg is unusual in that no-one who worked on the DVDs had any idea it was there, it seemed to pop up from no-where. At one point, the Doctor appears to respond to one of Sally's comments and then tells her he can hear what she's saying, seriously freaking her out. Larry gives Sally a list of the DVDs that have the Doctor on them.

Sally goes to the police, where a Detective Inspector, Billy Shipton, shows her a car park full of abandoned vehicles found at Wester Drumlins, including a fake police box with a Yale lock that cannot be opened. Billy then begins to flirt with Sally, asking her to have a drink with him. She laughs, gives him her telephone number and leaves. Outside, Sally realises that the Yale key could be used to open the police box while inside, Billy is sent back in time by the Weeping Angels to 1969. The Doctor finds him and tells him that the Angels feed on potential energy, and to do this they send people into the past and feed on the futures that will never be. After Billy asks the Doctor how he knows all this, he asks Billy to deliver a message to Sally, but apologises that it's going to take a while. In 2007, Billy calls Sally minutes after they last spoke (from her point of view) and asks her to meet him in a hospital. He is now an old man, although he did marry in the past (to someone called Sally, no less), and eventually got into DVD publishing, and it was he who was responsible for adding the easter eggs. He gives her the Doctor's message: Look at the list of DVDs. She stays with him until he dies shortly after.

Looking at the list, Sally realises the connection between the DVDs: They are the seventeen DVDs she owns. The easter egg was intended for her. Sally and Larry enter Wester Drumlins, and watch the Doctor's message on a DVD. This time Sally provides the other half of the conversation, which Larry adds to a transcript he brought with him. The Doctor explains several things: He has a complete transcript of the incomplete conversation and is reading off an autocue, which is possible due to the non-linear nature of time; and that the Weeping Angels are "quantum locked", meaning they turn to stone when observed, but when unobserved they are fast and can be deadly, hence it is of utmost importance that she does not blink. He also tells them that the Weeping Angels feed off of the potential energy of what the victim could have become by teleporting people to the past where they "live to death". They stole the TARDIS from The Doctor and Martha to try to feed off of all of the time energy in it, with which they could absorb so much power as to switch off the sun if they wished, it is vital they don't make it inside. When Sally asks the Doctor how she can defeat the Angels, he cannot answer, as his copy of the transcript has ended since Larry has stopping writing, because an Angel has entered the building! He urges her to keep her eyes on the Angels, and to not blink!

While trying to escape from an Angel in the room they are watching the DVD in, Larry and Sally discover the TARDIS in the cellar. Unwilling to let their prey escape, the Angels cause a light bulb, the room's only light source, to flicker, allowing them to draw closer to the TARDIS. Larry and Sally manage to get into the TARDIS and shut the doors, just as the Angels manage to surround it. The DVD that Larry and Sally brought with them activates a protocol in the TARDIS, causing it to return to the Doctor. Sally and Larry are left behind, leaving the Angels trapped forever in a circle, tricked into observing each other.

The final scene takes place a year later, with Sally and Larry running the DVD store together; however, Sally is keeping a folder of everything connected with her experience with the Doctor and the Angels. Even though the danger has passed, she still doesn't understand how the Doctor got the list of DVDs, the transcript, how he knew what to write on the walls, etc. As Larry goes to get some milk, Sally suddenly spots the Doctor and Martha emerge from a taxi outside the shop, armed with bows and arrows, apparently in pursuit of an unidentified monster. She quickly runs out and calls to him, and when the Doctor fails to recognize Sally, she realizes he has not yet experienced the episode's events (causing an ontological paradox). Finally understanding fully, she hands over the folder which contains everything the Doctor will need to extricate himself from 1969, and tells him he'll need it in the future. Sally and the Doctor exchange goodbyes as Larry returns, surprised to find the man from the DVD Easter Egg. 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.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Martha Jones — Freema Agyeman
• Sally Sparrow — Carey Mulligan
• Kathy Nightingale — Lucy Gaskell
• Larry Nightingale — Finlay Robertson
• Malcolm Wainwright — Richard Cant
• DI Billy Shipton — Michael Obiora
• Old Billy — Louis Mahoney
• Ben Wainwright — Thomas Nelstrop
• Banto — Ian Boldsworth
• Desk Sergeant — Ray Sawyer
• Weeping Angel - Aga Blonska (uncredited)

Cast Notes

• Louis Mahoney plays an elder Billy Shipton. He has previously appeared in the Third Doctor serial Frontier in Space (1973) as a newscaster, and the Fourth Doctor serial Planet of Evil (1975) as Ponti.

Continuity

• A holographic projection of the Tenth Doctor can be seen in this episode. Earlier projections of the Doctor are that 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", where the TARDIS materialises around Rose and a Dalek. A similar trick is used in "The Runaway Bride" where it fades in around the Doctor and Donna, and in Logopolis where 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 ("Fear Her"), and formerly travelled with his granddaughter. The First Doctor is accidentally betrothed to the lady Cameca by making her a cup of cocoa in story The Aztecs. In "The Family of Blood", the Doctor as John Smith foresees an alternate future as a human where he has a successful marriage and raises a family.
• 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 later episode "Voyage of the Damned" features the Titanic.

Outside references

• Larry describes the house as "Scooby-Doo's house", a reference to the dilapidated mansions that the Scooby-Doo gang (Mystery Inc.) 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 newspaper shown to Kathy in 1920 has the headline "Hull FC 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.
• The name of the dilapidated house, Wester Drumlins, is taken from a previous residence of Steven Moffat from the late 1990s.

Production and publicity

• The BBC Fear Forecasters 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.
• 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". "Blink" is thus 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.

• The Doctor and Martha's absence from the majority of the episode was due to the filming of two episodes simultaneously.
• This is the first episode since the Sixth Doctor serial The Mark of the Rani to be directed by a woman.
• 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?".
• The Doctor's unedited Easter Egg message was itself included as an Easter Egg on the Series 3 DVD release.
• This episode received the award for Best Story in the Doctor Who Magazine 2007 Survey.

External links

• "Blink". Doctor Who Episodes. BBC.
• "don't blink" - episode trailer