3.10: Blink
Synopsis: Sally Sparrow begins losing friends to some sort of strange phenomenon that snatches people back in time. Meanwhile, through contact with a media-obsessed acquaintance, she keeps encountering some rather mysterious footage of a man (the Doctor) speaking in what seem to be disjointed, random bursts. Connecting the dots, she realizes that the footage, and the Doctor's message, are meant for her.
The Doctor explains the threat of the Weeping Angels, creatures made of stone, who can move, but only when they are not being observed. Therefore, in their presence, one must not look away nor blink! They feed on potential energy, zapping a human back a number of years, letting them die in the past, and feasting on the time that he/she could have had. The Doctor and Martha have been attacked by the Angels and are now trapped in 1969, as the TARDIS is parked in 2007. He has left these clues for Sally because for some reason, only she can send the TARDIS back to him. But the danger to Sally is enormous, since the Weeping Angels are also after the TARDIS.
Sally is successful, but is left with the nagging wonder of how the Doctor could have known who she was, and exactly how to leave the video message from 38 years in the past. She obsessively keeps a packet of memorabilia relating to the case. By happenstance, she runs into the Doctor, who does not seem to recognize her name at all. All at once, she realizes that the adventure has not yet happened to the Doctor, and that she is the one responsible for giving him the information he needs. She hands over her packet, satisfied, though the Doctor himself seems a little confused...
Golden Comic Moment: Normally, we have a hard time choosing the funny moment from a Steven Moffat script. However, this time, clearly the objective was not to make the viewer laugh!
Moffat does many things, including humor, well. But we happen to have first experienced his genius on Coupling, and we have noticed in the years since that he does seem to shine when writing about the foibles of male-female relationships, particularly when men are being clumsy, and women are being either aloof or demanding.
Blink has a few of these moments, but one of the most incidentally memorable elements comes when when the tables of the sexes get turned a bit. Young Billy Shipton informs Sally that he knocked off early from work so he could ask her out, and she asks why. Without missing a beat, he answers, "Because life is short and you are hot." Normally, in Steven Moffat's world, the men are not nearly this concise nor straightforward about their motivations (usually indicating that their motivations are sexually-charged, but this is a family show) nor this smooth. The delivery is rapid and perfect, and leaves Sally flustered enough to get her own name wrong. It's a very sweet moment, which, unfortunately, prefaces disaster for DI Shipton.
Golden Fangirl Moment: This episode contains only one (that we're aware of) ongoing Moffatism (wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey). So we are left to the much less noble, much less universally fannish task, of pointing out the insidious squee we get from Martha Jones in this episode.
The moment when Martha sticks her head into the frame on the DVD Easter Egg and says, "We're stuck. All of space and time he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop, I've got to support him!" has inspired more fan-fiction than perhaps any non-Master-related moment all year. Her irritation at him seems to spark the idea of some kind of domestic life, in which the two of them behave like old marrieds. It seems to emphasize that they are trapped together, living in close-quarters, and emotions are running high. A sub-genre of Ten/Martha fics has sprung up, speculating about what life is like for them in 1969, and often in these scenarios, life is... well, again, it's a family show.
Or maybe I'm just projecting.
Cringeworthy Moment: As mentioned above, in the romantic world of Steven Moffat, women usually have the upper hand. It does get a bit old from time to time, because Moffat, whether he means to or not, has a tendency to portray women as snottily dangling their power over men's heads. In this episode, Sally mocks Larry Nightingale for various things, all of which seem gratuitous and sort of out-of-character for Sally.
Granted, it's a little unbecoming on Larry's part that the first time he meets Sally, he's not wearing any pants, but it's not entirely his fault. But later, when he is trying to place where they've met before, she seems to take a schadenfreude-like glee in his embarrassment. "It'll come to you... there it is!" she sings, as his eyes grow wide and his hands move nervously to cover his genitals. In the same scene, when Larry is explaining the DVD Easter Egg and says that "[he] and the guys" are always trying to work out what it's about, Sally asks smugly, "When you say you and the guys, you mean the internet, don't you?" She's implying his geekdom, and that he uses the internet as a substitute for actual human contact. We feel this is a stereotype that should have been well dispelled by 2007... or at least a concept not so novel as to be a punch-line. Speaking as someone who spends some time on the internet delving into various geeky media phenomena (ahem!), I'd be tempted to point out that Moffat is not doing much to endear himself to the Doctor Who fandom!
Though, in the end, of course it is a small offense, and Moffat actually does plenty to endear himself. And we'd like to point out that we really think that Blink happens to be basically cringe-free.
Golden Moment: It is very tempting to cite the Doctor's quote, "Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast - faster than you can believe! Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink!" playing in the Wester Drumlins house as the Golden Moment since it's so iconic. It's one of the most quoted lines from David Tennant's era, is repeated three times in the episode, and is the creepy cornerstone of the whole Weeping Angels concept. We also just enjoy seeing the Tenth Doctor get sort of worked up and earnest, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
The fact is, the thing that makes Steven Moffat such a formidable storyteller, and not just on Doctor Who, is his ability to build a mystery and deliver a great big payoff. In five seconds of self-realization, Sally Sparrow gives us the tie that binds all of the pieces together. "It was me! Oh, for God's sake, it was me all along! You got it all from me!" She is the one who gave the Doctor all of the information which allows him to write on the wall of the house, know what to say on the video, know who to give the footage to and where to plant it, how to make the TARDIS move, how to trick the Angels into looking at one another. It is a stunning moment, and suddenly makes the story feel like a symphony, a perfect blending of elements, harmonically sound, tied off like a gift, by a satisfying final chord. It is magic.
Why I Beg To Differ: The Magazine cites the moment when Sally and Larry are fiddling with the DVD player in Wester Drumlins, only to look up and find that a Weeping Angel is right there with its teeth bared and arms reaching out. This particular commentator calls himself a "jaded" fan, and thanks Steven Moffat for making him jump out of his skin for the first time in years. We agree that it'a genuinely spine-tingling moment, possibly the moment when the Weeping Angels join the ranks of the Daleks and Cybermen as "classic" Doctor Who monsters.
But a lot of writers can scare us. Granted, not with such precision as with the brilliantly terrifying concept of the stone angels that move when no one is looking, but many a worthy writer has made us jump. Blink's true genius, and arguably its true legacy, is the "timey-wimey" quality, the idea that things don't always happen in the right order, and occasionally, events cause themselves.
Case in point: yes, the scary Angels have appeared again in the Eleventh Doctor's time, and they packed a punch, but not as much as River Song, the swaggering, living embodiment of timey-wimey. Steven Moffat goes on to write Time Crash, for Children In Need, in which an event causes and solves itself, and another writer borrows the idea in series 4 for The Doctor's Daughter. Then there is time folding in on itself in the series 5 finale, the Doctor and Amy planting clues for each other in The Lodger, the utterly insane Comic Relief specials entitled Time and Space from 2011...
Yep, lots of folks do scary. Only Doctor Who does timey-wimey and gets away with it.
The Doctor explains the threat of the Weeping Angels, creatures made of stone, who can move, but only when they are not being observed. Therefore, in their presence, one must not look away nor blink! They feed on potential energy, zapping a human back a number of years, letting them die in the past, and feasting on the time that he/she could have had. The Doctor and Martha have been attacked by the Angels and are now trapped in 1969, as the TARDIS is parked in 2007. He has left these clues for Sally because for some reason, only she can send the TARDIS back to him. But the danger to Sally is enormous, since the Weeping Angels are also after the TARDIS.
Sally is successful, but is left with the nagging wonder of how the Doctor could have known who she was, and exactly how to leave the video message from 38 years in the past. She obsessively keeps a packet of memorabilia relating to the case. By happenstance, she runs into the Doctor, who does not seem to recognize her name at all. All at once, she realizes that the adventure has not yet happened to the Doctor, and that she is the one responsible for giving him the information he needs. She hands over her packet, satisfied, though the Doctor himself seems a little confused...
Golden Comic Moment: Normally, we have a hard time choosing the funny moment from a Steven Moffat script. However, this time, clearly the objective was not to make the viewer laugh!
Moffat does many things, including humor, well. But we happen to have first experienced his genius on Coupling, and we have noticed in the years since that he does seem to shine when writing about the foibles of male-female relationships, particularly when men are being clumsy, and women are being either aloof or demanding.
Blink has a few of these moments, but one of the most incidentally memorable elements comes when when the tables of the sexes get turned a bit. Young Billy Shipton informs Sally that he knocked off early from work so he could ask her out, and she asks why. Without missing a beat, he answers, "Because life is short and you are hot." Normally, in Steven Moffat's world, the men are not nearly this concise nor straightforward about their motivations (usually indicating that their motivations are sexually-charged, but this is a family show) nor this smooth. The delivery is rapid and perfect, and leaves Sally flustered enough to get her own name wrong. It's a very sweet moment, which, unfortunately, prefaces disaster for DI Shipton.
Golden Fangirl Moment: This episode contains only one (that we're aware of) ongoing Moffatism (wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey). So we are left to the much less noble, much less universally fannish task, of pointing out the insidious squee we get from Martha Jones in this episode.
The moment when Martha sticks her head into the frame on the DVD Easter Egg and says, "We're stuck. All of space and time he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop, I've got to support him!" has inspired more fan-fiction than perhaps any non-Master-related moment all year. Her irritation at him seems to spark the idea of some kind of domestic life, in which the two of them behave like old marrieds. It seems to emphasize that they are trapped together, living in close-quarters, and emotions are running high. A sub-genre of Ten/Martha fics has sprung up, speculating about what life is like for them in 1969, and often in these scenarios, life is... well, again, it's a family show.
Or maybe I'm just projecting.
Cringeworthy Moment: As mentioned above, in the romantic world of Steven Moffat, women usually have the upper hand. It does get a bit old from time to time, because Moffat, whether he means to or not, has a tendency to portray women as snottily dangling their power over men's heads. In this episode, Sally mocks Larry Nightingale for various things, all of which seem gratuitous and sort of out-of-character for Sally.
Granted, it's a little unbecoming on Larry's part that the first time he meets Sally, he's not wearing any pants, but it's not entirely his fault. But later, when he is trying to place where they've met before, she seems to take a schadenfreude-like glee in his embarrassment. "It'll come to you... there it is!" she sings, as his eyes grow wide and his hands move nervously to cover his genitals. In the same scene, when Larry is explaining the DVD Easter Egg and says that "[he] and the guys" are always trying to work out what it's about, Sally asks smugly, "When you say you and the guys, you mean the internet, don't you?" She's implying his geekdom, and that he uses the internet as a substitute for actual human contact. We feel this is a stereotype that should have been well dispelled by 2007... or at least a concept not so novel as to be a punch-line. Speaking as someone who spends some time on the internet delving into various geeky media phenomena (ahem!), I'd be tempted to point out that Moffat is not doing much to endear himself to the Doctor Who fandom!
Though, in the end, of course it is a small offense, and Moffat actually does plenty to endear himself. And we'd like to point out that we really think that Blink happens to be basically cringe-free.
Golden Moment: It is very tempting to cite the Doctor's quote, "Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast - faster than you can believe! Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink!" playing in the Wester Drumlins house as the Golden Moment since it's so iconic. It's one of the most quoted lines from David Tennant's era, is repeated three times in the episode, and is the creepy cornerstone of the whole Weeping Angels concept. We also just enjoy seeing the Tenth Doctor get sort of worked up and earnest, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
The fact is, the thing that makes Steven Moffat such a formidable storyteller, and not just on Doctor Who, is his ability to build a mystery and deliver a great big payoff. In five seconds of self-realization, Sally Sparrow gives us the tie that binds all of the pieces together. "It was me! Oh, for God's sake, it was me all along! You got it all from me!" She is the one who gave the Doctor all of the information which allows him to write on the wall of the house, know what to say on the video, know who to give the footage to and where to plant it, how to make the TARDIS move, how to trick the Angels into looking at one another. It is a stunning moment, and suddenly makes the story feel like a symphony, a perfect blending of elements, harmonically sound, tied off like a gift, by a satisfying final chord. It is magic.
Why I Beg To Differ: The Magazine cites the moment when Sally and Larry are fiddling with the DVD player in Wester Drumlins, only to look up and find that a Weeping Angel is right there with its teeth bared and arms reaching out. This particular commentator calls himself a "jaded" fan, and thanks Steven Moffat for making him jump out of his skin for the first time in years. We agree that it'a genuinely spine-tingling moment, possibly the moment when the Weeping Angels join the ranks of the Daleks and Cybermen as "classic" Doctor Who monsters.
But a lot of writers can scare us. Granted, not with such precision as with the brilliantly terrifying concept of the stone angels that move when no one is looking, but many a worthy writer has made us jump. Blink's true genius, and arguably its true legacy, is the "timey-wimey" quality, the idea that things don't always happen in the right order, and occasionally, events cause themselves.
Case in point: yes, the scary Angels have appeared again in the Eleventh Doctor's time, and they packed a punch, but not as much as River Song, the swaggering, living embodiment of timey-wimey. Steven Moffat goes on to write Time Crash, for Children In Need, in which an event causes and solves itself, and another writer borrows the idea in series 4 for The Doctor's Daughter. Then there is time folding in on itself in the series 5 finale, the Doctor and Amy planting clues for each other in The Lodger, the utterly insane Comic Relief specials entitled Time and Space from 2011...
Yep, lots of folks do scary. Only Doctor Who does timey-wimey and gets away with it.