29.10: Blink

[Ice fyre]

Ah the joys of causality!

Freaky episode never liked statues now llike em even less.

I liked this episode it was well played and set up. Its going to keep the chrolnicles buzzing for a while.

 

[PTeppic]

If the policeman was sent back to 1969, why didnt he just find himself and tell himself not to go near those angels in the car park to avoid be zapped back to the 60's???

He explained to Sally that he'd been told two thirds of the universe would be destroyed if he did. That's how she got onto the Doctor... the figure 2/3 was too precise.

 

[lukic]

I would probably still take a risk that I would be living in the third that didnt get destroyed..lol

Anyway, I wont think about it too long. Anything you watch involving time travel, you just have to watch and accept it without analysing it too much - it makes your head hurt if you do

 

[Dave]

He explained to Sally that he'd been told two thirds of the universe would be destroyed if he did.

So, who "told" him that?

Do you think it was the Doctor? It would have to be, wouldn't it?

So, they didn't bother to rescue him when they got the TARDIS back, because to do so would mean he couldn't give pass on the recordings or see Sally at the hospital. They let him get stuck there so that they could escape! Doesn't sound like the Doctor to me.

Why did they all go back to 1969, but Kathy Nightingale went back to 1920?

 

[PTeppic]

So, they didn't bother to rescue him when they got the TARDIS back, because to do so would mean he couldn't give pass on the recordings or see Sally at the hospital. They let him get stuck there so that they could escape! Doesn't sound like the Doctor to me.

Why did they all go back to 1969, but Kathy Nightingale went back to 1920?

If they'd rescued him from 1969 he wouldn't have made the recordings and spoken to Sally, so the TARDIS wouldn't have been rescued... paradox time.

1920/1969 - that's probably the biggest discontinuity of the episode. No real explanation. Maybe because she was going to live longer in the first place... they had to send her further back to enjoy that long life. But if so, how long should the Doctor have been sent back! Valid point.

 

[Lenny]

Actually... there WAS some sort of explanation.

When Billy appeared in 1969, the Doctor told him that he must have been touched by the same angel as he was.

 

[Ice fyre]

I'm afraid she couldnt be recued as she had by the time the doctor was recued, she had lived died and had people to carry on, also she would have not written that note to Sally, Sally would never have run the shop with her brother and never met the doctor earlier in his personal time frame.

Time travel is paradox, she was not recued as she could not be, as neither could that policeman, both were set in time and had a role to play to help Sally help the doctor eventually defeat the silent assasins.

It would have been far too dangerous to help either of them. As to her being dumped in 1920 they had more energy there I suspect they were running low when they caught the policeman.

Cause and effect consider who caused what to happen in this episode.

 

[PTeppic]

Cause and effect consider who caused what to happen in this episode.

I'd got my head round the episode until you said that. The cause, arguably is the Angels. The effect, the Doctor and Rose get sent back in time, but with advanced information, so they can send messages into the future (the hard/slow way) allowing earlier in (real) time our heroine to find and send back the TARDIS to rescue them.

 

[Pyan]

Actually... there WAS some sort of explanation.

When Billy appeared in 1969, the Doctor told him that he must have been touched by the same angel as he was.

Yes, I heard that too - I just assumed that different angels sent you back different amounts of time.

 

[Dave]

Yes, I heard that too - I just assumed that different angels sent you back different amounts of time.

Which explains why one or two of them seemed to move more than the others - two of them reached the church opposite the police station, one took ages just moving through the garden, and one only moved from upstairs to downstairs. They would have had differing amounts of energy.

 

[lukic]

I'd got my head round the episode until you said that. The cause, arguably is the Angels. The effect, the Doctor and Rose get sent back in time, but with advanced information, so they can send messages into the future (the hard/slow way) allowing earlier in (real) time our heroine to find and send back the TARDIS to rescue them.

Rose??? I take it you mean Martha - Rose has gone, get over it

 

[PTeppic]

Ah - but it was Rose. The first time. It just was never televised...

It was only on a second encounter with the Angels that THIS mess happened... ;-)

 

[Pyan]

Nice catch, Pteppic!

 

[AlexH]

It's interesting reading back on comments for what has probably become the most iconic modern Doctor Who episode, and perhaps the most iconic ever? Some comments almost seem to undersell the episode. And Teletext was still a thing in 2007.

Having "Blink" in memory as my favourite episode, it just became the first Doctor Who episode I've rewatched, and (no pun intended) it went by in the blink of an eye. I wanted MORE. What a brilliant episode. I 'remember' it being much longer.

I agree. A very good episode. Long may this quality continue.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, I thought I spotted Derek Jacobi in the trailer for next week's story. It seems as if the Doc is starting to attract some of the UK's finest acting talent...and quite right too

And from "Blink," Carey Mulligan went on to great things, so far nominated for two Oscars and winning a BAFTA. I remember watching "An Education" and thinking "That's Sally Sparrow!"

Early this year, Carey Mulligan said she would be up for returning as Sally Sparrow...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1350125595468984320

Obviously it takes a lot more than saying something, but it'd be cool if the right episode could be written and it came together one day.

 

[BT Jones]

It's interesting reading back on comments for what has probably become the most iconic modern Doctor Who episode, and perhaps the most iconic ever? Some comments almost seem to undersell the episode. And Teletext was still a thing in 2007.

Having "Blink" in memory as my favourite episode, it just became the first Doctor Who episode I've rewatched, and (no pun intended) it went by in the blink of an eye. I wanted MORE. What a brilliant episode. I 'remember' it being much longer.



And from "Blink," Carey Mulligan went on to great things, so far nominated for two Oscars and winning a BAFTA. I remember watching "An Education" and thinking "That's Sally Sparrow!"

Early this year, Carey Mulligan said she would be up for returning as Sally Sparrow...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1350125595468984320

Obviously it takes a lot more than saying something, but it'd be cool if the right episode could be written and it came together one day.

Agreed. This is how, not just Doctor Who, but TV should be; a clever premise, a twist, plenty of suspense, characters you like, and a show that is happy to sideline the main characters and just have them be supporting characters. Blink is virtually faultless.

It should certainly be watched and then rewatched daily by the incumbent DW showrunners (although I doubt they understand what makes it truly brilliant).

This was the first Doctor Who paradox story and remains comfortably the best. I generally find paradox episodes / movies a bit of a cop-out; problem solved / world saved because a future version of our hero came back in time to tell them how. That doesn't stop them being enjoyable (Pandorica Opens / Under the Lake), I just think there is a slight after taste by having the plot holes miraculously blocked by 'because it happened'.
That being said, I barely notice that issue in Blink, and that device becomes a very minor quibble on account of just how brilliant the rest of it is, particularly the video conversation / transcript, which is just absolute gold!

 

[Droflet]

The weeping angels, what a lovely name, are amongst the most terrifying creatures ever written. Bravo to the former producer / writer who invented such uniquely wonderful and spooky villains. Love me some angels. But not in the most recent outing.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Weeping Angels are by far one of the scariest nastiest things Dr Who has ever come up with. Way more scary than the Daleks.

 

[Danny McG]

I hadn't realised until Confidential they had actors inside the Angels, with masks on

There's probably some poor soul 14 years down the line at an audition:-

"That was me! Really! So please give me this panto part for December, I'm an actor, honest"

 

[Lenny]

Bravo to the former producer / writer who invented such uniquely wonderful and spooky villains.

This was one of Steven Moffat's episodes - he wrote/was involved with arguably some of the best NuWho episodes under RTD:

• The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances - S1E9/10, set in the London Blitz, and marked the first appearance of Captain Jack. The monster was a child in a gas mask repeatedly asking, "Are you my mummy?". If memory serves, when the child touched someone their face morphed into a gas mask.
  
  
• The Girl in the Fireplace - S2E4, wibbly wobbly timey wimey 18th Century France and Madame de Pompadour, with the Doctor jumping around her timeline. Monster is clockwork androids trying to fix their spaceship with body parts. An RTD story that Moffat was assigned to write.
  
  
• Blink - S3E10
  
  
• Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead - S4E8/9, Doctor and Donna are summoned to a library planet rife with mysterious disappearances. First appearance of River Song. Some weirdness with information nodes bearing human faces, and another top tier monster - skeleton in a spacesuit, lurching around exclaiming, "Hey! Who turned out the lights?"

All memorable, with some of the more terrifying monsters of the NuWho era.

Interesting to look back and note the commonalities - something scary to do with faces, often a catchphrase, and the monster forever marching slowly, unstoppably onwards.

 

[Pyan]

It should certainly be watched and then rewatched daily by the incumbent DW showrunners (although I doubt they understand what makes it truly brilliant).

It's a wee bit late for them - but it's interesting that they incorporated the Weeping Angels into the current Flux series.