Over seven days, I’m watching a selection of stories from the rebooted Doctor Who series, and reviewing them in celebration of the 50th anniversary.
Blink
By Steven Moffat
“Don’t blink.
Blink and you’re dead.
Don’t turn your back.
Don’t look away.
And don’t blink.
Good Luck.”
They are called the Weeping Angels. But they’re not really weeping, and they’re not really angels. They’re an ancient life form that feeds off your life’s potential energy. That is, the energy your life would have expended had you lived it in your own time.
You see, they touch you and send you back in time, to live out your life in the past. They kill you. Nicely. No muss, no fuss, you’re just not there any more.
And they’re “quantum-locked”, which means they can’t move while they’re being seen by anyone or anything else. But don’t look away. Resist the urge to blink, because they move faster than you can imagine.
And then they’ve got you.
Blink is considered by many to be one of the most creepy and frightening episodes of the entire Doctor Who universe. It’s certainly understandable, who wouldn’t be frightened of a bunch of statues which move when you aren’t looking at them and one brush of their finger and you’re zapped back into history?
Blink is also the first (and only) episode of Doctor Who within which The Doctor doesn’t take a leading role. Instead, 90% of The Doctor’s part comes from a pre-recorded video of him played over and over again throughout the story, and also provides us with the wonderful “timey wimey” reference:
“People assume,” says The Doctor, ” that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey … stuff.”
Best. Explanation. Of. Time. Ever.
Naturally, in the last few moments of the story, everything gets tied together, The Doctor gets what he needs to help the main character of this story defeat the angels, and everything is reset for the next episode.
And Doctor Who has a brand new and very, VERY scary, villain; which really plays with your psyche. I have seen the odd statue of an angel around and always make a point of staring at them. Never once, taking my eyes off the statue, and never, ever, blinking.
Just in case.