I keep hearing about people discovering Blink, and I feel good every time. I have used it on a number of occasions as a gateway episode to bring people into Doctor Who. Since it’s one of the so-called “Doctor-lite” episodes where he is largely a peripheral character, and the episode protagonist has never heard of him before and needs to be caught up, it’s a marvelous standalone treat, and practically works better as an introduction to the series than the 2005 re-launch pilot, Rose. The only drawback is that it may well be the best episode of Doctor Who ever made in it’s near 50-year history, and so you have to confess to people that it isn’t always going to be this good.
And what is it that makes it so good? It is massively helpful that the episode’s hero, the resourceful young photographer Sally Sparrow, is played by Carey Mulligan, who after her Oscar-nominated starring role in An Education is now on the short-list for the female lead in just about every major project in Hollywood. She brings so much spark to this role that fans have been clamoring for a return of Sally Sparrow ever since. This seems much less likely these days.
But most of the kudos have to go to the writer, Steven Moffat. Moffat, who created Coupling for the BBC as well as the new and spectacular modern-day Sherlock series, contributed one story to each of the first four seasons of the Who re-launch; and each one has arguably been the best of its season.
Season One featured the two-parter The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, with its spooky gas-mask-headed zombie boy, wandering the streets of WWII London calling for his Mummy. Season Two provided The Girl in the Fireplace, with its body-snatching clockwork robots stalking a legendary French noblewoman, and the Doctor in full-on dashing romantic mode, crashing through a window of time on horseback to charge to the rescue. Season Four was where he provided Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, which featured the Vishta Nerada – shadows that stalk you and consume your flesh, as well introduced us to a brilliant recurring character in the flirtatious archaeologist Dr. River Song (played by ER‘s Alex Kingston). And from Season Five on, with the introduction of Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, Moffat has taken over as the show’s head writer, which means that fans now get to enjoy four or five treasures from his imagination each year.
But Season Three, in the middle of David Tennant’s long and stellar run in the role, is where Moffat gave us Blink. It’s an old, old saying in Britain that children in that country grew up watching Doctor Who from “behind the sofa”, in order to hide from the many monsters. But most post-adolescent viewers, looking back at the penny-budget special effects, have a hard time getting the chills from a salt-shaker-shaped Dalek.
Blink is different – Blink is out-and-out, all-ages, terrifying; because of the Weeping Angels. What a fabulous monster – completely harmless, immobile, even, as long as you’re looking at them. But if you look away, if you even blink, they can zap you back decades into the past, trapping you there, and feeding off the stolen energy of the life you would have lived. Later, when they re-appeared in a Season Five story, we learned that they had other nasty tricks available to them as well.
And I think, were it just a great old spooky-house chase with these monsters, it would have been a memorable episode. But what makes it possible to hold up Blink against any legendary episode of The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer – really, what makes Moffat so good that the sight of his name on a writing credit promises you something, is that he never, ever, stops at one idea.
In just 44 minutes of television, Blink not only features those monsters, but a joyfully clever version of one of those self-fulfilling time-travel paradox storylines that can be so difficult to map out. And then there’s not one, not two, but THREE romances. One of them – due to the nature of the story – lasts only an hour for the girl, but a lifetime for the man – poignant in a way only science fiction can be.
And Moffat writes brilliant dialogue; enjoy the way The Doctor tries to clear things up for the heroine by explaining “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.” Or when Sally’s friend Kathy asks “What’s good about sad?“, and Sally replies “It’s happy for deep people.”
Moffat won BAFTA and Hugo awards for the episode, but I believe it is one of those stories that breaks out of its categories. You don’t have to be pre-disposed to British television, or science-fiction, to appreciate it. All you need is to watch this great story, and realize how feverishly you’re paying attention to your eyelids in the climax.
Episode streams on Netflix here
Blink teaser trailer