“Blink” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema
Agyeman as Martha Jones with Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow, Lucy Gaskell as
Kathy Nightingale, and Finlay Robertson as Larry Nightingale. It was written by: Steven Moffat based on his
short story “What I Did on My Christmas Holidays By Sally Sparrow and directed
by: Hettie Macdonald with Helen Raynor as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as
Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers. It was originally broadcast on Saturday 9
June 2007 on BBC One.
The original slot Russell T. Davies wished to assign
Steven Moffat was “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks”, even
after Moffat mentioned he would be unable to write a two-part story pushing to
develop another idea about a space library menaced by stone angels. Davies has always been described as a determined
man and after much convincing and suggesting using a story Moffat had written
for the Doctor Who Annual 2006 as a baseline, Moffat signed on to write
the Doctor light story for the series, bringing in the idea of the Doctor
leaving messages for the focus of the episode while expanding the story to
include the angel statues as an antagonist as it is something that would be
necessary for adapting a 5-page short story into a full episode. The decision was also made to make the central
character of Sally Sparrow an adult and push the Doctor and Martha further back
in time than originally intended for a tragic element in the death of one of the
episode’s supporting characters. “Sally
Sparrow and the Weeping Angels” entered production as the fifth production
block to be made along side “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood”, assigning
the episode to Hettie MacDonald who would in turn cast Carey Mulligan, then an
up and coming actress, as Sally Sparrow.
Before filming began and the scripts were finalized Steven Moffat
amended the title to “Blink” and the beginning of a Doctor Who legend
was born.
“Blink” was voted as the absolute best Doctor Who
story in the 2009 Doctor Who Magazine poll and has often been used as
the episode fans would use to introduce new people to Doctor Who. In the most recent 50th anniversary
Doctor Who Magazine poll it came in second place behind “The Day of the Doctor”. This review is already going to be difficult
to write because this is one of those instances where fan consensus is
absolutely correct, “Blink” is an absolutely brilliant piece of television and
science fantasy, the only part of consensus I actively disagree with is that it
should be someone’s first episode of Doctor Who, mainly because it is
atypical in many ways from what Doctor Who is. Except of course it also isn’t, it’s still
the Doctor coming in to save the day even if the enemy of the Weeping Angels
are the only real danger. “Blink” is
paradoxical, it’s Steven Moffat’s best use of time travel mechanics while structurally
it is telling a very similar story to “The Girl in the Fireplace”, just from
the other side’s perspective with a different villain and a compressed
timescale. Steven Moffat as a writer
does have a tendency, like many writers, to reuse tropes and plots and “Blink”
is no exception, but “Blink” works so well because it’s the purest form of the
tropes he has used. Moffat’s use of romance
usually rubs me the wrong way, but in “Blink” it is something that happens in a
narrative gap as the episode flashes forward at the end to where Sally and
Larry are running the DVD shop together and just begin to kindle a
relationship. His use of time travel mechanics
often crumbles under its own weight, but despite the Doctor’s now iconic and overquoted
speech makes the mechanics out to be confusing it’s a very simple paradox of
the Doctor reading a completed transcript to setup the video message to Sally
Sparrow that she will respond to and create the transcript to give to him. Tennant and Agyeman give these wonderfully
short performances on the DVDs played in the episode and that’s it. The rest of the plot is Sally finding the
TARDIS key and getting the TARDIS back to the Doctor, almost accidentally freezing
the Weeping Angels in place by the TARDIS dematerialization.
So if this is a simple premise than what really
elevates “Blink” to such a high status?
Well, the performances for starters are utterly brilliant, Moffat
crafting simple characters. Sally
Sparrow is a disaffected young adult, giving this pretentious quote in her second
scene which Moffat clearly doesn’t believe is deep, having a friend who she confides
in. Kathy Nightingale is Sally’s only
real human link and she is sent back in time at the end of the first act of the
episode, this to introduce the audience to the true danger of the Weeping
Angels genuinely being alive and moving when you aren’t looking. Hettie MacDonald’s direction adds to the
horror by being very careful to draw the audience into the action, this being
the only episode thus far of the series that treats the lock of the Weeping
Angels as affected by the audience. They
cannot move when they are on-screen because they are being viewed, an idea of
metatext that Moffat would actually play with in the Angels’ second appearance
in the show, though that appearance falls down quite quickly when analyzed in
this regard because it doesn’t have MacDonald at the helm. Murray Gold’s score for the episode is fascinating,
the themes only appearing for this single episode give rise to the notion of the
passage of time being forced upon the victims of the Angels. There is this string clock motif that punctuates
several moments. Finlay Robertson as
Larry Nightingale is also an excellent character as essentially Sally’s
companion, Sally being in the role of the Doctor, a fascinating dynamic and
analysis to be done on the parallels of the Doctor and Sally. It's integral to the episode that Sally does
not become a companion at the end, since she is essentially as proactive at being
the Doctor figure in the episode.
Overall, “Blink” is the perfect example of a simple
meal well made. It does not give some
treaties on the nature of humanity or have particularly deep storytelling
outside of an underlying message to live one’s life to the fullest because time
can just slip away. It’s bolstered to perfection
by some absolutely brilliant performances, MacDonald’s direction knowing how to
create the atmosphere of gothic horror and make non-moving monsters work, and
this haunting clocklike score. It’s a
perfect paradox. 10/10.
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