NUMBER FOUR:
Blink was held in pretty high regard for quite some time. Everyone ranted and raved about it for several years after it came out. It won a Bafta and some other impressive awards like that. In one of the many surveys in Doctor Who Magazine, it came in as the second-best Doctor Who story ever. It really was considered a pretty phenomenal piece of television for quite some time. And it deserved quite a bit of the praise it was getting.
Which is why it has ranked in this particular countdown. In fact, when I compiled my Top Ten Favorite Stories a few years back, Blink came pretty close to making it into that list, too. But I liked Logopolis just a little bit better. So it got bumped out.
Which is why it has ranked in this particular countdown. In fact, when I compiled my Top Ten Favorite Stories a few years back, Blink came pretty close to making it into that list, too. But I liked Logopolis just a little bit better. So it got bumped out.
For some reason, we stopped going on so much about Blink a few years back. Who can say why? It could be that Moffat just wrote some better stories since Blink that have caused us to forget about it. Or, it could be the exact opposite. Maybe some fans have disliked his writing so much since Blink that it's caused the story to lose a bit of its shine. It's hard to tell. Fans are a mercurial lot and their opinions can shift so easily!
Blink, for me, has always held about the same place in my heart. It's an excellent single episode and a pretty damned good story, overall. If I have any objection to it - it's that it is just a bit too simple in plot (yes, many of my favorite episodes keep the story very streamlined but it is possible to go too far with it). The Doctor is, basically, just trying to get his TARDIS back. He's doing it in an immensely clever manner - but that's really all he's up to. But the fact that the story does such a great job with causality helps me to disregard the fact that it is just a bit too simple. It's hard not to fall in love with the whole premise as you start creating that graph in your head of how events in the present and the past are affecting each other. I'm pretty sure we all do that as we watch Blink, don't we? We have put our geek brains into overdrive to make it all coherent. Do a bit of extra homework to get it all to make sense.
And that's one of the funnest parts about Blink: it gets you thinking. Not about deeper themes or messages the author might be trying to say. I mean, yeah, there's a bit of that in there. But, moreso, it asks you to give some serious consideration to the whole thing just to properly understand what the hell is going on. And that's a very innocent and straightforward way to be thought-provoking. A bit of a breath of fresh air, really. Some fans are complaining about the undertones of Series Eleven and how it's trying to have Big Messages behind every story. But the truth of the matter is, Doctor Who has always been like that. Sci-Fi, in general, tries to be allegorical and deliver all sorts of hidden or not-so-cleverly concealed social observations. So it's nice to have a story that asks its audience to devote extra attention to the story threads rather than the meaning behind them. That's very refreshing.
I quite enjoy the, overall, innocence of this tale. The Weeping Angels aren't meant to represent something else. Sally Sparrow is not an analogy of some sort. The Doctor's machine that goes ding really is just a machine that goes ding. This was, perhaps, one of the smartest choices Moff makes in the crafting of the adventure. It may be insanely non-linear - but, at the same time, it's quite straightforward.
Of course, this not the only thing that makes the story great.
Sally Sparrow is, without a doubt, the best supporting character in the entire history of the show (even better than Richard Mace!). She is excellently written. She gets great lines like "sad being happy for smart people". The journey her character takes as she deals with all these paradoxes is a nice subplot that helps fill the plot out a bit better. But what really immortalizes her is the acting abilities of Carey Mulligan. Sally has to go through some serious swings in those 40+ minutes. She loses her best friend in the most crippling of ways. Flirts with a man who she must watch die of old age just a few minutes later. Interacts with the only person who can save her through an Easter Egg. And must, finally, confront the show's creepiest monster. She nails all of these moments perfectly. And we fall deeply in love with her because of it. I especially like the sort of "gritty" edge the Carey brings to the portrayal. She is a very strong woman without making it a feel like some sort of feminist message. She's just tough and happens to be female.
And then we have those Weeping Angels. The only New Who Monster that seems to have the same level of gravitas as Great Classic Series Titans like the Daleks, Sontarans and Cybermen (who, incidentally, are still in the nursery compared to Time Lords). It's a well earned title, I feel. All the return appearances that they have made have been quite strong but their premiere episode is still the best. They are a wickedly simple concept: Don't look away or something bad happens to you. But Moff does a beautiful job of dressing them up into something more complicated and abstract so that it feels like intelligent sci fi rather than just an elaborate game on the playground (I love that modern day kids do actually play "Weeping Angels" in schoolyards in the same way that children of the 60s pretended to be Daleks). I particularly enjoy how Moffat set up all the expositional dialogue that reveals in tiny bits and pieces how the Angels work and, roughly, where they came from. Tennant does a great job of rattling off those explanations, too. I'm not sure why, but I just find this to be the most effective way a monster in Doctor Who has been introduced.
But the creep-out factor of the Weeping Angels is still their best selling point. That statue coming ever closer when you're not paying attention was an absolutely terrifying effect. And just when you think they can't be any scarier, we discover they can turn off lightbulbs. The sequence where the lights flicker on and off and statues are slowly approaching each time they turn back on will be indelibly stamped on my memory. There is a sheer brilliance to how the whole moment is contrived that makes that scene all the more enjoyable. It's the stuff of nightmares made smart.
If I had to pinpoint the best part of the story, though, it would have to be the Easter Egg (I love that there's an Easter Egg on the DVD that enables you to watch the Easter Egg in all its entirety). Never has anyone come up with a more clever central premise to not only a Doctor Who story but any story on television ever written. It's a fantastic hook that wins over the heart of anyone that should ever bother to watch this episode. Whether you're a die-hard fan like me or never watched an episode ever, - it's impossible to not get drawn into this story because of the level of intrigue the Easter Egg creates. You may want to disagree with some of Moff's choices as a writer (and, to be honest, I rarely do), but you cannot deny how fertile of an imagination he has in the crafting of this tale. Building the whole adventure around an Easter Egg on a DVD is a rare and twisted sense of brilliance.
We do get one more great moment that merits mentioning. Having clearly established how the Weeping Angels work, their own energy gets used against them during a very clever resolution of the conflict. It is truly awesome as the four Angels freeze forever when the TARDIS dematerializes between them. Sometimes, a great episode can end very flatly. But Blink doesn't do this. It maintains its cleverness to the very end.
And then pushes the horror one last time as we get shot after shot of statues we can find all around us. Are they also Weeping Angels? Can we ever trust statues again?
No. No we can't. And that's one more thing that gets us to love Blink all the more. A common day item now represents the potential for absolute horror. Doctor Who is always at its best when it can do that. Steven Moffat remembered that fact and exploited it to its fullest.
We may be taking a quick break from this Countdown. At the time of writing this, Series Eleven has just finished. I promised I would write up a review of the full season during my last post on A Female Doctor (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/10/unadulterated-boorish-opinion-female.html) so I think I'll do that next.
What did I think of the season that introduced us to the first female Doctor? You'll have to wait and see....
Sally Sparrow is, without a doubt, the best supporting character in the entire history of the show (even better than Richard Mace!). She is excellently written. She gets great lines like "sad being happy for smart people". The journey her character takes as she deals with all these paradoxes is a nice subplot that helps fill the plot out a bit better. But what really immortalizes her is the acting abilities of Carey Mulligan. Sally has to go through some serious swings in those 40+ minutes. She loses her best friend in the most crippling of ways. Flirts with a man who she must watch die of old age just a few minutes later. Interacts with the only person who can save her through an Easter Egg. And must, finally, confront the show's creepiest monster. She nails all of these moments perfectly. And we fall deeply in love with her because of it. I especially like the sort of "gritty" edge the Carey brings to the portrayal. She is a very strong woman without making it a feel like some sort of feminist message. She's just tough and happens to be female.
And then we have those Weeping Angels. The only New Who Monster that seems to have the same level of gravitas as Great Classic Series Titans like the Daleks, Sontarans and Cybermen (who, incidentally, are still in the nursery compared to Time Lords). It's a well earned title, I feel. All the return appearances that they have made have been quite strong but their premiere episode is still the best. They are a wickedly simple concept: Don't look away or something bad happens to you. But Moff does a beautiful job of dressing them up into something more complicated and abstract so that it feels like intelligent sci fi rather than just an elaborate game on the playground (I love that modern day kids do actually play "Weeping Angels" in schoolyards in the same way that children of the 60s pretended to be Daleks). I particularly enjoy how Moffat set up all the expositional dialogue that reveals in tiny bits and pieces how the Angels work and, roughly, where they came from. Tennant does a great job of rattling off those explanations, too. I'm not sure why, but I just find this to be the most effective way a monster in Doctor Who has been introduced.
But the creep-out factor of the Weeping Angels is still their best selling point. That statue coming ever closer when you're not paying attention was an absolutely terrifying effect. And just when you think they can't be any scarier, we discover they can turn off lightbulbs. The sequence where the lights flicker on and off and statues are slowly approaching each time they turn back on will be indelibly stamped on my memory. There is a sheer brilliance to how the whole moment is contrived that makes that scene all the more enjoyable. It's the stuff of nightmares made smart.
If I had to pinpoint the best part of the story, though, it would have to be the Easter Egg (I love that there's an Easter Egg on the DVD that enables you to watch the Easter Egg in all its entirety). Never has anyone come up with a more clever central premise to not only a Doctor Who story but any story on television ever written. It's a fantastic hook that wins over the heart of anyone that should ever bother to watch this episode. Whether you're a die-hard fan like me or never watched an episode ever, - it's impossible to not get drawn into this story because of the level of intrigue the Easter Egg creates. You may want to disagree with some of Moff's choices as a writer (and, to be honest, I rarely do), but you cannot deny how fertile of an imagination he has in the crafting of this tale. Building the whole adventure around an Easter Egg on a DVD is a rare and twisted sense of brilliance.
We do get one more great moment that merits mentioning. Having clearly established how the Weeping Angels work, their own energy gets used against them during a very clever resolution of the conflict. It is truly awesome as the four Angels freeze forever when the TARDIS dematerializes between them. Sometimes, a great episode can end very flatly. But Blink doesn't do this. It maintains its cleverness to the very end.
And then pushes the horror one last time as we get shot after shot of statues we can find all around us. Are they also Weeping Angels? Can we ever trust statues again?
No. No we can't. And that's one more thing that gets us to love Blink all the more. A common day item now represents the potential for absolute horror. Doctor Who is always at its best when it can do that. Steven Moffat remembered that fact and exploited it to its fullest.
We may be taking a quick break from this Countdown. At the time of writing this, Series Eleven has just finished. I promised I would write up a review of the full season during my last post on A Female Doctor (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/10/unadulterated-boorish-opinion-female.html) so I think I'll do that next.
What did I think of the season that introduced us to the first female Doctor? You'll have to wait and see....
Number 6:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html
Number 5:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/12/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html
Number 5:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/12/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html
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