Previously: All the feels happened when John Smith had to deal with the fact that he was a temporary construct.
—
Blink
Kirsti: I’m really curious to recap this episode, because it’s easily been one of my favourites up until now. (Which is odd because it’s written by Steven Moffat, and I’ve basically hated everything about his time as show runner…) But favourite things don’t always stand up to being watched incredibly slowly, so…we’ll see.
We open with CAREY MULLIGAN!!! climbing over a creepy fence into the grounds of a creepy house in the creepy rain accompanied by creepy music. There’s a “Danger: Keep Out” sign on the gate.
Marines: So, basically everything about her decision making right now is totally wrong.
K: Pretty much exactly. As with many Carey Mulligan characters, now that I think about it…
She kicks in some rotted boards and heads inside, photographing what she sees by torchlight. She photographs some peeling wallpaper, then spots letters on the wall behind it. Intrigued, she pulls at the paper, and it falls off to reveal the word “BEWARE” written in big letters.
She pulls another piece and more is revealed “BEWARE THE WEEPING ANGELS”. It also says to duck. No, seriously. The creepy music crescendos as she pulls off a piece that says “SALLY SPARROW” underneath, and she stares at it in horror. Another piece, and the full message says “SALLY SPARROW, DUCK NOW”.
There’s a noise in the background and she ducks just as a window smashes and a rock flies through, narrowly missing her head.
Sally shines her torch out into the garden and it lights a statue of an angel with its hands over its face. She studies it for a second, then glances back at the message. She peels off more paper, and reveals “LOVE FROM THE DOCTOR (1969)”. The zoomy cameraman zooms in on the Doctor’s name.
DOO WEE OOO!
Mari: So far so good, because that’s a really great cold open. I always find the few episodes that don’t start with the Doctor or focus completely on him really interesting, even if they do end with paving stone blow jobs.
K: Agreed.
After the credits, Sally heads to her best friend’s house and lets herself in. In the background, the Doctor is on TV. “Don’t even blink,” he says. “Blink and you’re dead.”
He goes on to say that “they” are faster than you could possibly believe and seriously, don’t even think about blinking. The recording stops, and we see that the room is full of screens, all of them showing the Doctor’s face.
Sally phones her sleeping best friend and says they really need to talk. Bestie is unimpressed because it’s 1am. Legit, girl. Sally asks what the deal is with all the screens, and Bestie’s all “Oh shit. Have you met my brother?”. Sally says she hasn’t, which is obviously the cue for the toilet to flush, the door to open, and Bestie’s naked brother to appear in front of Sally. Bestie’s all “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”, grabs her dressing gown and heads for the kitchen.
She snaps at her brother to put some damned pants on because she hates him, and then apologises to Sally. But one look at Sally’s face tells her that something more serious is going on. And here I thought it would be your best friend turning up at your house at 1am that did it. (M: No, girl, obviously it’s the lack of reaction to surprise peen.) Bestie asks what’s wrong, and we cut to them climbing the gate of the creepy house the next day.
They head inside and Bestie’s all “…why the fuck did you come to this manky old house?”. Sally replies “I like old things. They make me feel sad.” Oh God, you’re an emo hipster. Sally stares at the scribbled on wall for a while, then she and Bestie stare out the window at the Weeping Angel. Suddenly, Sally realises that it’s closer to the house than it was the previous night.
Back inside, Sally wonders some more about how her name can be on the wall. Then the doorbell rings, and they’re both all “OMG WHO THE HELL COMES TO A CREEPY ABANDONED HOUSE AND RINGS THE DOORBELL??”. Sally moves to answer the door, but Bestie freaks and suggests it might be a burglar. Who rings doorbells. Sally goes to answer the door and Bestie stays put, keeping an eye on things in a huge mirror.
Mari: While I get not wanting to answer the doorbell, Bestie, girl, you never stay alone in a creepy, old house.
K: SERIOUSLY.
Sally opens the door to a snooty lawyer looking chap, who says he has a letter – he produces it and it’s old looking – for Sally Sparrow. He was told to come there on this date at this time. He asks for ID, and Sally starts searching her pockets. Meanwhile, there’s a noise behind Bestie. She goes to investigate, but there’s nothing there. Except the Weeping Angel. She turns away, blocking our view of the Angel, and when it’s visible again, it’s moved. Nyargh.
Bestie heads back inside and resumes eavesdropping. Lawyer Chappy studies Sally’s ID and says he has to make absolutely sure. The camera angle changes and we see that the Weeping Angel is now basically in the doorway of the house. Lawyer Chappy hands over the letter, and Sally asks who it’s from. He chuckles that it’s a long story, but she wants a name.
Bestie leans closer, and we see that the Weeping Angel is right behind her, a hand stretched towards her. “Katherine Wainwright,” Lawyer Chappy says. But he goes on to say that he was told to specify that prior to marriage, the letter writer’s name was Katherine Costello Nightingale. Otherwise known as Bestie. There’s a bang from the back of the house. Sally’s all “What the fuck, is this a joke?” and calls out to Bestie. There’s no answer. She walks back into the other room, and there’s no one there. The Weeping Angel is back in the garden.
Cut to Bestie lying on the grass. She pulls herself upright and turns to find that she’s in a paddock full of cows. Back at the house, Sally calls out to Bestie some more. Lawyer Chappy begs her to take the letter, because he promised. Paddock. Bestie finds a young man who looks like he escaped from Newsies (I’m basing this solely on gifs on Tumblr because Newsies has never been released in Australia) sitting on a dry stone wall (fun fact: I’m still on a couple of archaeologist-y mailing lists thanks to my undergrad degree, and got an email a few years ago inviting me to a conference about dry stone walls. HAHAHAHAHA, no.).
She asks where she is because she was literally just in the middle of London. He’s all “Hahaha, NO. You’re in Hull.” She insists she can’t possibly be in Hull.
House. Sally’s all “YOUR GRANDMOTHER?!?!?!?!”, and Lawyer Chappy says his grandmother died 20 years ago. Sally rips open the envelope and finds a bunch of photos inside. She asks if Bestie and his grandmother are related because they look so freaking similar. Paddock. Bestie runs off down a hill, and Newsies Guy follows.
Sally opens the letter, and Bestie voiceovers for us as she reads it. “If my grandson has done as he promises he will, then as you read these words it has been mere minutes since we last spoke – for you. For me, it has been over sixty years,” it begins. Some of the photos are of her children, one of whom is named after Sally. Sally freaks and throws the letter and photos to the ground, declaring it to completely sick. She runs upstairs, yelling out for Bestie.
Mari: I find this really sad, in a scary way…? It’s difficult to explain but the entire idea of a person being plucked out of their life and sent backward gives me feelings and it makes the Weeping Angels so damn scary for more than just their terrible faces.
K: It’s interesting that we never see the “I JUST WANT TO GO HOME” rage that would come with that, because we flick back to the present and hear about them when they’re resigned to their fate of living to death in the past. Also, how do the Weeping Angels decide where to send you? It seems to generally be the 20th century, which isn’t completely terrible because, you know, reasonable health care and a basic knowledge of history to be able to, say, make your fortune before the Great Depression or move to Saskatchewan in 1938. But what if you wind up in 1284?
ANYWAY. At the top of the stairs, Sally finds three Weeping Angels, all with their faces covered in different ways. One holds a key on a chain. She moves closer, and crosses in front of one of the Angels. It’s changed position when it becomes visible again. Sally pulls the key from the Angel’s hand, and when she turns away, the second Angel is back in its original position.
The front door slams downstairs, and Sally rushes off, calling out to Lawyer Chappy. We see that the Angel that had the key was on the verge of touching her. Sally grabs the letter and photos from the stairs, but when she gets outside, Lawyer Chappy’s gone. The Angels watch from the windows as she leaves.
Cut to Sally sitting in a cafe, crying as she reads Bestie’s letter. It tells her not to be sad because Bestie was loved by a good man, and loved him in return. Bestie voiceovers that she married Newsies Guy. Aww. Sally heads to the cemetery to put flowers on Bestie’s grave as the voiceover informs us that the switch from 2007 to 1920 was kind of ridickity but she’d always wanted a new life. And that’s what she got. (M: Nope, still sad.) Sally chuckles about the date of birth on Bestie’s headstone: “You told him you were eighteen. You lying cow…” A Weeping Angel watches her go.
The voiceover continues, saying that Bestie’s parents were already dead in 2007 but someone needs to tell her brother, who works at a DVD shop. Remember those? I, for one, don’t miss the days when you had to leave the house to get a movie to watch. (M: One of the most counter-intuitive things we did as a society.) Sally heads over there and the skeevy dudebro behind the counter gestures at her to wait until a key scene in the movie he’s watching finishes before he lets her talk. When she says she’s looking for Larry, he tells her to go through to the back. And then stares at her arse as she leaves. Gross.
Out the back, she finds the video of the Doctor playing again. But instead of delivering “Don’t blink” speeches, he’s now just saying random words with long pauses in between. Larry appears, and looks horrified when he joins the dots on how he knows Sally. She tells him that Bestie had to go away for a while for work, and he’s all “Oh. Okay?”. Then she says that Bestie told her to tell him that she loves him, and he freaks that his sister’s sick. Or he’s sick.
They’re interrupted by the Doctor unpausing. Larry apologises, and Sally asks what the deal is with it. Larry gets all excited nerd boy, and says it’s an Easter egg. Except he’s on seventeen different DVDs, and every DVD has a different chunk of Doctor footage. Even the manufacturers can’t explain how it got there. Larry says he and “the guys” think it’s half a conversation, and they’re always trying to work out the other half.
Larry’s skeevy boss calls him, and he apologetically leaves. The Doctor unpauses again, and utters one of the most memorable quotes of Ten’s era:
“Started well, that sentence,” Sally says. “It got away from me, yeah…” the Doctor says. Sally freaks, especially when her next sentence and his response also make sense together. She pauses the DVD. Larry returns and hands her a list of the seventeen DVDs containing Doctor footage. She takes it and rushes out. But she stops at the door when she hears Skeevy Boss yelling “Go to the police, you stupid woman!” at the DVD he’s watching. She looks thoughtful.
Mari: Skeevy Boss, we’ve got a whole tag for that.
K: Cut to Sally rushing through the rain to a police station. She tells the officer behind the desk that she’s sure she sounds totally insane, but she needs to talk to someone about this big spooky house. When she drops the name of it, he’s suddenly interested and asks her to wait. She turns and stares out the window, suddenly noticing that there are two Weeping Angels on the church opposite. The zoomy cameraman zooms in dramatically on her eyes and we watch her blink. When the camera swaps back to the church, the Weeping Angels are gone.
The music gets all Psycho-squeaky-strings-y as Sally stares in shock and decides she’s cracking up. The camera angle changes again, and we see that the Weeping Angels are now on either side of the window she’s staring out of. A guy with a seriously cute West Indian accent walks up and introduces himself as DI Billy Shipton. He tells her that the creepy old house is his case but he doesn’t have much time. Then he looks at Sally properly, and decides he has plenty of time.
He and Sally head to the parking garage. He tells her that all the cars around them were found outside the creepy old house over the past two years. All of them still had personal items inside, and some had the motors still running. None of the owners were ever found. Sally spots the TARDIS in a corner, and asks what it is. Billy says it’s the prize of the collection, and that it also appeared outside the creepy old house. But they’ve never been able to get inside, even though it’s a standard lock.
Then he tells her that she’s missing the big question, and asks her out for a drink. She scoffs a little, but in a flirty way. They banter back and forth, and she gives him her phone number. He squints at her handwriting, and says “That’s Sally….?” “Sally Shipton. Sparrow! Sally Sparrow,” she replies. He grins and she rushes away before she can combust in shame. I totally ship it. (M: It’s adorable, especially when she’s shouting, “don’t look at me!”) (K: And the look on his face when she corrects herself and panics is adorable) He calls out that he’s going to phone her the next day, or maybe even that night, and she calls back that he’d better.
Sally leaves the police station as the orchestra goes full on OMG STRESSFUL MOMENT IS STRESSFUL. She gets to the other side of the street before finding the key she took from the Angel in her pocket. She hears Billy talking about how nothing fits the totally ordinary lock, and rushes back to the garage. But Billy, the Angels and the TARDIS are gone.
Billy slams into a wall and slides down it. “Welcome!” says a voice. It’s the Doctor, accompanied by Martha. They inform Billy that he’s in 1969, but that it’s not all bad because the Moon Landing is coming up. Martha says it’s brilliant and that they went four times when they had transport. She gives the Doctor a pointed look, and he awkwards a little.
Billy wants to know how the hell he got there, and that’s the Doctor’s cue to info-dump: the touch of a Weeping Angel sends you into the past. “The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death.” They live, he says, off the energy of all the days you might have had if they hadn’t done that to you.
Mari: SEE? It’s such a neat idea, and so sad, and so damn scary.
K: I’ve been having an internal debate for like 15 minutes about whether it’s better or worse than instant death, and I still can’t decide.
Billy’s all “The fuck?” and Martha tells him to just nod and smile because it’s easier on everyone. The Doctor lifts a device that looks like a tape recorder and tells Billy it’s how they tracked him down.
Back in 2007, Sally’s mobile rings. It’s Billy. She asks where he is, and is surprised by the answer. We cut to her walking into a hospital room. Old Man Billy’s asleep in a hospital bed. Sally stares out the window at the rain. OMB wakes and says that it was raining when they met. “It’s the same rain,” she says sadly. He shows her his wedding photo – his wife was also named Sally – and says he thought about looking for earlier. But apparently it would have torn the universe apart.
She asks how he knows that, and he tells her about the Doctor and the fact that he’s been sent with a message: “Look at the list“. Sally wants to know what the hell that means, and he tells her it’s the list of DVDs. He didn’t stay a policeman in 1969. He got into video publishing, then DVDs. He’s responsible for the Doctor-y Easter eggs. She promises to come and tell him as soon as she knows what the DVDs have in common, but Billy tells her that the Doctor said he and Sally could only meet once more before he dies.
He has, he says, until the rain stops. Sally holds his hand and cries and says she’ll stay with him. The Bassoon of Feels does its thing. Later, the hospital bed empty, Sally stares out the window at the now sunny street. Then she turns and leaves.
Mari: It’s kind of amazing how many feels this all managed to give me, considering that Sally and Billy had one other scene together. They knew they were making us insta-ship it. They knew.
K: *shakes fist at Moffat*
Larry’s phone rings. It’s Sally, telling him that she’s worked out what the DVDs have in common: her. They’re the only 17 DVDs she owns. Thank God this story doesn’t involve me because I have nearly 400 DVDs, and at least a third of them are TV shows, so it’s like 900 discs to go through… “You’ve only got SEVENTEEN DVDs??” Larry says in shock. Legit, dude.
M: That’s totally me. I probably own just about that amount and mostly they’ve been gifts. Well, there was that one time a hurricane wiped out power across most of my city except for this one Wal-mart that had $1 DVD bins so I bought like 10, but all we watched that whole weekend was 50 First Dates, over and over again.
K: NGL, that sounds worse than being sent back in time to live to death.
Anyway, Sally asks him to meet her at the creepy old house and bring a portable DVD player. They meet at the house and play the first disc. Everything Sally says fits in perfectly with what the Doctor says, and she’s all “OMG HE CAN HEAR ME”. But Larry insists he can’t. It’s the same every time. He has a transcript. “Are you going to read out the whole thing?” he and the Doctor say in sync. Larry looks awkward.
Sally and the Doctor continue their weird conversation, and he tells her about being stuck in 1969.
Mari: My favorite line is in here and it’s made all the better when you know the Doctor knows it’s coming. He’s busy telling her it’s complicated (it’s part of his script) and she tells him, “I’m clever and I’m listening, and don’t patronize me because people have died, and I’m not happy.” That’s right, Sally. You sass him.
K: BEST.
Martha shoves her head into the frame to pissily say that he promised her all of time and space and now she’s stuck with a job in a shop to support him.
K: I can’t help but think back to The Impossible Planet where the Doctor was so grossed out at the idea of living a normal life and Rose was all “Yeah, but we’d be together…” Martha, on the other hand, is dealing with the reality of that.
The section Sally saw at the video store plays again, and Larry starts scribbling her lines onto his transcript.
Sally asks how the Doctor can hear everything she’s saying when she’s saying it 40 years after he recorded his sections, and he replies “Look to your left“. Larry says he loves that line and has written tons about it. He thinks it’s a political statement. Sally eyerolls and says “He means you“. The Doctor says he’s got a copy of the complete transcript and it’s on his autocue.
He asks if the Angels have the phonebox, and Larry gushes that he has “The Angels have the phonebox” on a t-shirt because it’s his favourite. (M: I just took like a 10 minute window shopping break thanks to this line…) Sally asks about the Angels, and that means it’s infodump time again. The Doctor tells Sally that they’re creatures from another world, and are only statues when you see them. The camera cuts to show us a Weeping Angel in the garden.
The Doctor continues info-dumping: they’re as old as the universe and they have the best defence system ever. The minute any living creature sees them, they turn to stone. They have to cover their eyes so that they can’t see each other. Sally tells Larry to watch the statue in the garden. The Doctor apologetically says that it’s all up to Sally now. If the Angels get into the TARDIS, the energy they find there could switch off the sun. She has to get the TARDIS back to the Doctor.
Sally asks how the fuck she’s supposed to do that, but the Doctor says that’s the end of the transcript, so he guesses the Angels are coming for her. He repeats the “Don’t blink” spiel from the teaser, and Sally suddenly realises that neither she or Larry are looking at the statue. They look up and it’s right in front of them, teeth bared and claws for fingernails. NGL, I jumped. They do too.
Larry says that everything will be fine if they just keep staring at it. (M: Why no one tries to hold their lids open is beyond me.) Sally peeps out the door and says there are three more. They were upstairs, but she’s pretty sure they’re not any more. She tells Larry to keep watching the one in front of them and starts steering him towards the front door. But it’s locked. She realises they want the key back. Larry’s all “FUCKING GIVE IT TO THEM!” She tells him to stay put while she checks the back door. That’s locked too.
There’s a noise behind Larry and he glances away for a split second. When he looks back, the Angel is right up in his face. He screams for Sally, who continues kicking the back door. Dude. Just break the fucking glass. Larry backs through the doorway because he can’t stay there with the Angel in his face. Sally yells that there might be a way out through the cellar. Dude. No. Not the Basement of Don’t Go In There. She heads in and Larry yells that he’s coming to join her.
Down in the No Seriously Why Are You In the Basement, Sally finds the TARDIS surrounded by the other three Weeping Angels. Larry rushes in as Sally pulls out the key, and there’s a sudden gust of wind as Larry’s Weeping Angel arrives. It’s pointing at the wall. Or, more specifically, the light switch. The lights start flickering. Sally and Larry shriek and flail for the lock as the lights strobe on and off. The Weeping Angels – now all teeth and claws – get closer and closer.
Just as all hope seems lost, the lock turns, and they rush inside. There’s some initial “OMG BIGGER ON THE INSIDE” staring, then a hologram of the Doctor appears. It announces that it’s detected an authorised control disc, valid for one journey. Larry pulls a DVD case from his hoodie pocket. He opens it to find the disc glowing orange. The hologram orders them to insert the disc and prepare for departure.
Sally spots something on the console that looks like a DVD player. But before Larry can get there, the TARDIS tilts dramatically. The Angels are shaking it. Larry gets the disc in, and the TARDIS starts vworp vworping. It starts to disappear from around them and Sally screams that the Doctor can’t do this to them. The Angels start to appear as the TARDIS slowly vanishes. Larry grabs Sally as she cries and they cower on the ground together.
The TARDIS vanishes, but nothing happens. Because the Angels are looking at each other, and they can never move again. Fade to black. “ONE YEAR LATER” appears on the screen. The DVD shop is now a bookstore, run by Sally and Larry. He tells her that he’s just going to pop out for some milk, and finds her putting together a package containing the transcript, Bestie’s letter, and photos of the Weeping Angels.
Larry sighs, and asks why she can’t let it go. Sally’s all “Uh, maybe because the Doctor needs to get this stuff from somewhere and we still don’t know where???”, which is pretty legit. He sad pandas a little and heads out to get milk. Once he’s gone, a taxi pulls up out the front of the shop, and the Doctor and Martha hop out. Sally grabs her package of stuff and rushes out into the street yelling his name.
The Doctor’s all “Hi, sorry, bit busy right now”, and she’s surprised he doesn’t recognise her. Then she realises that whole wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing means he doesn’t know about her yet. It’s in his future. She hands over the package and says he’s going to get stuck in 1969 and needs to make sure he has it with him. He’s all “Oh. Okay, cool” and starts to dash off to deal with his super important thing.
Mari: Oh, gosh, he’s just so cute. I love how he just accepts this with a big smile and a knowing look. It really ties the whole episode together to think of the Doctor accepting this, keeping that folder and one day going through all the trouble of laying out the clues for Sally so he can get back to his TARDIS.
K: I mean, I guess shit like that happens all the time when you’re a Time Lord? Meeting people out of sequence and the like.
Then he turns back and asks her name. She grins and tells him. “Good to meet you, Sally Sparrow,” he says with a smile. Larry returns with the milk and freezes in shock when he sees the Doctor. Sally takes his hand and leads him back into the shop as the Doctor rushes off. The camera pans up to a gargoyle sitting on the roof next door. Then we get the Doctor’s “Don’t blink” speech for the THIRD time, intercut with shots of statues all over London. “Good luck,” the Doctor finishes, and we fade to black.
I’m pleased to announce that I still love this episode. It’s a great one to show total newbies because it gives an excellent sense of what the show’s about without needing any prior knowledge. It’s pretty damned scary at times but also full of fun and feelsy moments and ridiculous one liners. I love that it focuses on an everyday person, and that it does it far, FAR better than Love and Monsters did. And it contains the shortest ship that ever sailed. Sigh. Basically, this episode is pretty much the high point of Moffat as far as I’m concerned.
Mari: I also think it held up well to scrutiny. Clearly, there is a reason why this is one of the most beloved episodes in the fandom. Again, I loved that it’s framed through Sally’s eyes, with the Doctor kind of on the periphery. Over the last two episodes, we took a hard long look at the Doctor. After being a human, it really put into perspective how big he is and how terrible he can be. Then, boom, we follow that up with an episode where the Doctor just flits in and helps save the day while not even being present. It kind of resets things and gives you a little space from him.
Additionally, in The Family of Blood, Joan asked the Doctor if people would’ve died if he hadn’t shown up. He can’t answer that. Here, in a very subtle way, is a way of saying that sometimes the Doctor is stuck in the timey wimey-ness of it all too. In this story, the Doctor tries to get unstuck, but there is a looping nature to everyone’s timeline. Bestie, for instance, is still upstairs in the old house as her letter from the future arrives. It hasn’t happened but it already happened.
The Weeping Angels might be my favorite villains on this show…? I can’t remember much of what comes of them beyond this point, but what an introduction. Sure, I’ll always have a soft spot for Daleks and Cybermen, but there is something actually, truly and deeply unsettling about the Weeping Angels. They are silent predators and suffer neither from the cheesiness of dialogue or costume that plague the other monsters. The best part is that what they do to you is incredibly mild compared to, you know, actual death. You still get to live a life, but one that is displaced.
I also think they are particularly brilliant because they have a tie to real life. If a Doctor Who fan ever sees an angel statue, where does their mind first wander? Don’t blink. Don’t even blink.
The entire idea of keeping an eye on the monster is also fantastic. There is a meta-element to it because at times, the characters in the story had their backs turned, but we are looking at the Weeping Angels, through the camera, through the TV, and so they remain stone. The story acknowledges our gaze, and still they remain. Plus, I know that my first reaction when faced with a scary thing IS to look away.
Carey Mulligan did a great job as Sally Sparrow and I think a less likeable actor and character would’ve made us feel the absence of the Doctor more. I had a lot of fun rewatching this one and yes, it will still remain a favorite.
Next time on Doctor Who: Jack Harkness is back!!!! Find out what happens when Martha meets Jack in S03 E11 – Utopia.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
