Ok, so the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who is now out, and the latest string of episodes sees the legendary David Tennant returning to the role. It got me thinking back to my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time, which I’m sure many of you are also massive fans of: Blink.
Often described as a gateway entry into the Whoniverse, this standalone episode blew my mind when I first watched it back in 2007. Time goes so fast.
“BLINK”: THE PERFECT DOCTOR WHO EPISODE
Still, it’s something that’s stuck with me, and I’ve gone back to it more times than any other episode in the series.
Everyone I’ve shown this to has become hooked on the Whoniverse, and this video is going to be a kind of love letter to the episode that’s about lots of timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff. Interestingly, the episode was pretty much a rush job, with writer Stephen Moffat thinking it was going to be a disaster.
He was so caught up in writing Jekyll he decided to throw himself onto what he called a grenade.
The episode was going to build off the back of the short story titled “What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow.”
This featured the titular character being contacted by the Doctor after the TARDIS burps him out. Writing messages under her wallpaper and sending her a videotape with messages in it, these elements provided the basis for the episode, with both becoming plot devices in it.
In both, Sally takes the main focus, and I kind of love how the Doctor isn’t even really in the episode that much. Up until the end, he’s viewed through recordings and is used mainly as a plot device that relays information rather than being a big part of the entry. This episode also introduces the terrifying Weeping Angels, who made their Doctor Who debut during this entry.
The statue-esque enemies weren’t as they appeared, and when not being viewed, they were able to move and roam around, hunting their prey. We, of course, never see them move either, and a lot of the time we’ll just cut to them in a different position. It gives you so much to imagine, and the horror is subtle, with them simply just standing there instead of being on the attack.
Statues are, of course, something we also walk past almost every day, but knowing that one of these could be hiding something more sinister adds an extra layer of terror to normal life.
Angels outside the church…
Now, River Song brought up the book of Weeping Angels at one point and talked about how they become quantum locked to the statue form once a sentient life form looks upon them.
This adds so much to the horror of them, and you can’t even blink around them, which, of course, ties into the episode’s title itself.
Said to be almost as old as the universe itself, they are almost vampiric in nature, and the way that they operate is by taking their victims, dropping them off in another time period, and then living off the temporal energy that this provides.
It’s a genius concept, and there’s something so unnerving about seeing a stationary enemy that could rip you apart, but the only weakness it has is that you’re looking at it. Typically, when faced with a monster, most people’s instinct would be to look away, but you have to remain fixated on them if you want to survive.
It’s something that I think Moffat really taps into in this entry, with the horror elements being what carries it.
However, Moffat still didn’t feel confident that he’d got it right, and from what he’s said, he just wanted it out of the way as quickly as possible.
Rushing through it, this is said to be the quickest piece of writing that Moffat ever put together, and after putting together just two drafts, they went into shooting it a mere ten days later.
Now, the horror elements are felt instantly, and we pick up outside a locked gate in the middle of the night. Here we join Sally, who’s much older than her source material counterpart.
Climbing over the fence, which has danger written all over it…literally…we watch as she explores an old dilapidated mansion that itself seems lost to time. This eeriness and atmosphere instantly draw you in as you begin to wonder what it is that she’s up to and what the writing behind the wallpaper means.
Now, this is what I love about the entry, and there’s a mystery to it that makes us as viewers instantly engaged. I think when it comes to a lot of other Doctor Who episodes, we kind of know what’s going on due to the villains often being long-established ones. The Weeping Angels at this point weren’t, so we learned things along with the characters, including the messages that were being left from the past.
That included “Beware the Weeping Angels” and an instruction specifically for Sally that she needed to duck.
Still, get goosebumps from it, and in hindsight, we know who threw it, but all Sally sees at this point is a statue and a message from the Doctor.
DISSECTING “BLINK”: WHY IT STANDS OUT
Now, the way this entry works is basically built around the bootstrap paradox, which is something I find myself talking about more and more on the channel. Recently popping up in Loki Season 2, it’s also featured in things like Dark, Triangle, and a lot more. At its core, it involves someone receiving a message which they then use to inform themselves on how to navigate the future. Normally, they record this themselves and then pass it onto the past where the information can then be used to get to this point.
For example…and yeah, sorry if we’ve said this before…but a scientist finds a book detailing how to build a time machine, they then build this and travel back in time to put the book where they’ll find it so the loop can continue. Here, though, it goes beyond just being that, with there being multiple items that are used to chronicle. That includes DVD extras and Easter eggs, which were something that was still pretty recent for the time. You see, kids, back in my day, a VHS could only hold a certain amount on it. Often when you’d buy them, they’d just have the film on and nothing else. However, when DVDs came out, the amount of data you could put on greatly expanded, and thus they were able to do not only better sound and picture but also special features. Sure, my first ever X-Men VHS had a making of on, but other than that, it was extremely rare; however, Blink cleverly used this new part of tech to allow the Doctor to record hidden messages on certain releases.
You guys who paid about £25 back in the noughties to get The Matrix on DVD, you might remember that if you clicked on the white rabbit, you could get an Easter egg, and that’s pretty much what all these moments are.
I’ve often talked on the channel about how one of my favorite films of all time is Ringu, and that centers heavily around a seemingly haunted videotape too. Though maybe not intentional, I’ve always thought that Blink was slightly similar due to the way that these old grainy recordings have their own element of horror to them too.
There’s just something more unsettling about a beat-up recording, and seeing this used for both Sadako and the Doctor really adds to the atmosphere.
Upon returning home, she sees several screens all showing the Doctor, but at this point, we don’t really know what’s going on. Heading out with her best friend Kathy Nightingale, they journey back to the house the next day to find out what’s going on.
Is a bit ITV, to be fair, and it’s at this house that we get our first victim. Realizing that the statue is a bit closer to the house, the doorbell then rings, which is when Sally answers it. Discovering a man who’s brought a letter, this is, of course, a reference to the end of Back To The Future 2, with it being specifically told to be delivered to the house at this exact time.
It’s, of course, not only giving Sally some information but also getting her out of the way while Kathy is consumed. Now, it turns out that this is actually from Kathy, who sent this letter through the years to this very moment to explain what was going on.
I just love the way that we see the angel creeping up behind Kathy, and just as she’s grabbed, we learn that the letter is from her in the past.
Get goosebumps just talking about it, and we sort of see…I dunno…the positive side of the angels’ fate. They’ve often been described as being merciful by certain characters, and we see that Kathy still gets a full life in the past. Just like…I dunno, invest in Apple, love.
Taken to 1920, she then writes Sally a letter with photos of all her children, including her daughter Sally. It kinda shows that though she was a victim, she managed to make the most out of it…and I dunno…kinda bittersweet.
Enraged by it, though, Sally runs upstairs and discovers a key, which symbolically acts as a way for her to unlock more of the truth. Discovering her grave, she ends up having to go to her brother Larry, who just so happens to work at the DVD store.
Boom, you start to see how all the pieces fit, and he was the one who’d been digging into all the Doctor Who DVD extras. Now, here, Sally is the key, and throughout the episode, we see as she has conversations with the DVD. Noting down the conversation, this can then be passed to the Doctor so that he can then read his side when he’s dropped off in the past, and then Sally can interact with it in the future.
They can then note things down and pass it on.
It’s a lot of timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff, but it’s one of the best depictions of time travel that I’ve seen in a TV show. Inspired to go to the police, we see other victims fall prey to the angels, with Sally almost getting a date who gets sent back to the past.
However, when they’re introduced, he shows Sally a garage of cars that belonged to people who disappeared at the mansion. Amongst these is a mysterious looking phone box which later gets surrounded by the angels. Though Billy manages to get Sally’s phone number, he’s sent back to the past by them after making the mistake of blinking in front of one of the angels.
Found by the Doctor and Martha back in 1969, he’s basically acted as a messenger, and using the number he’s just got, the man waits almost 40 years to get to the point he can call her.
Arriving at a hospital, we see how Billy has hung on for dear life so he could tell Sally.
It was raining when we met.
Learning that he got into publishing, we discover that he was the one who placed the messages on the DVDs, and that this is the day Billy will die. Kept going by this reunion, he plays on a line we heard earlier.
Life is long, and you are hot.
I think the real message of this entry is really exemplified in the characters like Billy and Kathy, who show that life is what you make it. Sure, the pair could’ve wallowed in the past, but they took the second life they’d been given and used it as a way to make a family. Finding happiness, it kinda shows the beauty in life and that everyone has the opportunity to make something.
Reuniting with Larry at the manor, they then get the full message from the Doctor, which Larry fills in using Sally’s bits. Mounting up the tension, though, we see as the transcript ends, surmising to the Doctor that they’re closing in. However, there is a way to stop them, and the angels can’t observe each other.
Realizing they’re trapped, they rush into the cellar and discover the TARDIS, which they’ve been planning to feast on due to its temporal energy. In the cellar, we get our final bit of horror for the entry, with the light flicking off and on as the statues close in. This almost strobe-like effect allows them to get closer and closer, and it’s such a smart way to ramp up things for the final act.
Getting inside the machine through using the key, the DVD is then placed into the TARDIS, which sends the machine back to get the Doctor and Martha. It also places the angels around them so that they’re stuck in a constant state of being quantum locked due to them all staring at each other.
It’s such a clever way to defeat them, and from here, we jump to one year later to see Sally and Larry now running the DVD store.
Sally is still unable to let things go because she doesn’t know how he got the transcript and information. She’s collected all this information in a folder, in case, though, but Larry desperately wants her to let go. He’s ideally after a relationship, but while this is on her mind, Sally can’t move on. Seeing a taxi pull outside, the Doctor arrives, and Sally rushes out to talk to him. Having no idea who she is, she realizes it’s a version of him that hasn’t gone to the ’60s yet, and now this folder can be used as a way for him to navigate the events of the episode.
Holding Larry’s hand, they then return to the shop, but we get the feeling that the terror isn’t over yet as we get a montage of statues around the area, letting us know that the angels could be anywhere.
It’s the perfect way to close things out, letting us know that we probably haven’t seen the last of the angels.
“BLINK”: IMPACT ON DOCTOR WHO LORE
Now, though I don’t think the other entries involving them lived up to this, it’s still a classic in my mind, with everything in it being on a causal loop that creates the groundwork of its own story while walking the path of it.
This is how you pull off a time travel story and instantly demonstrate the kind of thing you can get from an episode of Doctor Who. Even without featuring the main character that much, it still shows the power and wonder that he can bring, and it stands as one of my favorite episodes of a TV show of all time.
I really hope you’ve enjoyed us going through it and explaining some of the deeper layers and the making of.
This was a great trip down memory lane, and I really enjoyed going back through all that timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff.
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