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Doctor Who: Blink
I didn't post last night about Blink because I was still thinking about it.
I thought Gridlock and the Family of Blood two-parter were good, but I think Blink just took front place for this season, which has in fact been a very good one so far.
This has to be one of the cleverest versions of the old endless time loop, with genuinely scary monsters, a tight plot, and an excellent cast. Sally Sparrow was likeable, brave, and very believable; all of the characters were very well drawn, even those who, like Billy Shipton, were hardly on screen. The hints of his and Kathy's lives lived out of their own times were both haunting and positive; they both made the best of it and lived well and happily. Billy's "I have until the rain stops" got me though. What must it have been like to live all those years knowing the exact day he'd die? I loved that Sally stayed with him, and of course that was how she knew what happened to him and what the Doctor told him so that the Doctor could tell him. :-P
When the Doctor explained about the angels, I guessed how to defeat them, but the only way I thought of would be to get a lot of people to move them into a circle, and I bet they were heavy. The Doctor's solution was a clever one.
I really liked the geeky bits too: the easter eggs, Larry having a t-shirt with "the angels have the phone box" on it, the clerk telling the girl on screen to go to the police so that Sally did, Sally knowing that 'the guys' were Larry's internet friends. Lovely writing and characterisation.
I thought there were some unexplained holes at first but I think I've filled all but one in to my satisfaction:
- Why were the angels in the deserted house and nowhere else? I would guess precisely because it was deserted, so they wouldn’t be noticed when they moved around.
- Why didn't they use the key on the TARDIS? Because they didn't know where it was after the police removed it, presumably along with the abandoned cars, because it looked like their property. I'm guessing the angels needed some sort of connection with someone who did know.
- Why was Billy sent back to 1969 but stayed in the same place, yet Kathy ended up in Hull? I have no answer for this one.
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It's 3:00 am here and I'm extremely tired but not sleepy but that does mean I'm not thinking straight. Did it say in this episode that Billy went back to 1969 in the same place as the Doctor? He may have been displaced and the Doctor found him, or as my fuzzy brain is trying to tell me we saw him appear in the "car park". If the latter is true then that is a hole I can't fill in either.
I am in agreement with you about this episode, it is about the best so far. I found the Angels truly scary, much scarier than I ever found the Daleks.
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I was worried when
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I've never actually managed to watch Alien, it frightens me so much, the angels are not nearly as scary as that film.
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I never saw 'Alien' at the cinema. I watched it on TV during a sunny afternoon and I still had to keep stopping the recording, it was so tense.
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But those angels, wow, what a creepy monster! It really latches into the "monster under the bed" psyche.
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Oh, they did, and the whole "did I just see something out of the corner of my eye" thing. Eep.
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It was very well written, as you say with nice geek stuff like easter eggs, and Sally overhearing the exasperated clerk telling the girl in the movie to go to the police. And I liked the way it wound back on itself with Sally giving the transcript of her conversation to the Doctor, so he'd have it when he needed it.
And the weeping angels were a wonderful piece of design. Very effective and creepy. I loved the coda, of all the statues around the city, with the implication that these could be more of the same. Beware the statues !
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The time loop does hurt my brain a bit. The Doctor was very in character but he only did and said what Sally told him he'd already done and said. Ow.
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one thing cats are good at is watching intently!
I loved the way they suckered the angels too.
BTW a Dr Who annual has a Sally Sparrow story in it in which she is peeling wallpaper and reads the message put there for her. Evidently they re-used the idea and name!
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It's taken my subconscious quite a while but it has come up with a reason that plugs this hole to my satisfaction. AS I was coming home on the bus last nigh in a deeper than usual commute fugue this crossed my mind.
The weeping angels sent people back in time ans space as a method of feeding. The fed on the potential energy, for want of a better word, from that persons absence. Have I got that right?
If the answer is yes then logically the further the person is displaced in time and space the more food for the angel.
Feeding/hunting talents among predators are also used for defence but so as not to use an excessive amount of energy, especially after they have just fed, when using the displacement as a defence mechanism the angels move the 'enemy' as little as possible but far enough either through time or through space to get them out of their way. In Billy's case they chose a shortish trip through time.
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