DW Rewatch - 3x10, Blink
Feb. 22nd, 2010 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caz963Blink is another of those episodes that regularly makes everyone’s “best of” lists. It’s this season's NET (Not Enough Tennant) episode, but what we got more than made up for that. When you think about it, he’s on screen for about 90% of the time per episode (and no, I haven’t made a scientific study of that, it’s just a guess!), so his schedule must have been manic. Presumably, the NET episode was put in to give him a bit of rest so he didn’t keel over on set.
This one’s won all sorts of awards and if you’ve see it, you’ll know why. Moffat’s preoccupation with what it actually means to be a time-traveller, and all things timey-wimey shines through once again. I find all that makes my head hurt if I think about it too much :)
Like Love and Monsters in S2, (although this is in a totally different league) we’re seeing the effect that the Doctor has on the lives of people he hasn’t met (yet). Stranded in 1969, he nonetheless helps Sally to defeat the baddies – but only because she’s given him information in his future, which is information he’s given her in her past and… yeah, you can see why it gives me headaches.
Something that really tickles me during the opening, pre-credits sequence is the writing on the wall. It’s writing. But there is absolutely NO question that it’s the Doctor who wrote it (even before we get to the “love from” bit.)
Beware the weeping angels.
And duck.
No, really. Sally Sparrow.
Duck now.
It’s the “no, really” that does it, isn’t it?
Oh look! A cute bloke on the telly. Every telly in the house though. (My kinda house!)
The scene where Sally is visited by the grandson of her best friend – who she was talking to a minute ago – is really quite unnerving as Sally (and the audience) are trying to work out what’s going on. It seems, as Sally reads the letter, that nothing really bad happened. Her friend met a nice man, got married, had a family and had a good life… just not the one that she was having when Sally knew her. So it doesn’t seem that this particular alien threat is all that much of one. Well, not in the usual sense, that they want to kill everyone and take over the world/universe.
When it looks like Sally might have found someone who will help her – he’s snatched away, too.
Fortunately – well, sort of – he ends up meeting the one person who can tell him what’s going on.
Not that Billy can understand a word of it.
This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow.
You have to love Ten’s scientific descriptions. “It goes ding when there’s stuff.” Hee!
Delivering the Doctor’s message is going to take a while. Like 38 years.
The scene between Sally and Billy in the hospital is really touching. I have ‘till the rain stops - *sniffle*. Even though it is, as she points out, the same rain falling as when they met.
The now infamous “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey” bit. Non-linear temporal physics for dummies. Now there’s a book waiting to be written…
Martha’s only got about 4 lines in this one, but I like them :-)
We're stuck. All of space and time, he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop, I've got to support him!
Specs. Nuff sed.
Although he takes them off to make a point.
Never fails to send my kids diving behind the sofa! Which is, of course, exactly what Doctor Who is supposed to do.
But how did the Doctor get the information to be able to help Sally in the first place?
Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in order.
Wibbly-wobbly…
Four things and a lizard.
Another thing I love about the episode is the aliens themselves. I often cite the old 1950s movie Night of the Demon as a favourite horror movie of mine – and I’m not a big horror fan – because the threat in the film is what we, the audience, build up in our own minds. One of the reasons I’m not a horror movie fan is that the majority of them these days are too full of blood and guts and leave nothing to the imagination. But what that film – and this episode – do is scare the pants off us without being overly explicit. All we see in Blink are the statues in various places and poses; we don’t see them move or change position on screen, but what we do do is see it in our mind’s eye, and that, for me is so much more powerful than anything we could have seen.
Also, their threat isn’t immediately lethal. As the Doctor says, they’re he 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.
Although there is, of course, a wider threat – if the “angels” get hold of the TARDIS they could switch off the sun. No pressure, then.
My recaps/picspams of the final three episodes of S3 (Utopia – Last of the Time-Lords) may well be a bit late because I’ve got several late nights at work this week. But I do intend to do them before S4 starts next week.
Screencaps from Sonic Biro and Demon-Cry.net
This one’s won all sorts of awards and if you’ve see it, you’ll know why. Moffat’s preoccupation with what it actually means to be a time-traveller, and all things timey-wimey shines through once again. I find all that makes my head hurt if I think about it too much :)
Like Love and Monsters in S2, (although this is in a totally different league) we’re seeing the effect that the Doctor has on the lives of people he hasn’t met (yet). Stranded in 1969, he nonetheless helps Sally to defeat the baddies – but only because she’s given him information in his future, which is information he’s given her in her past and… yeah, you can see why it gives me headaches.
Something that really tickles me during the opening, pre-credits sequence is the writing on the wall. It’s writing. But there is absolutely NO question that it’s the Doctor who wrote it (even before we get to the “love from” bit.)
Beware the weeping angels.
And duck.
No, really. Sally Sparrow.
Duck now.
It’s the “no, really” that does it, isn’t it?
Oh look! A cute bloke on the telly. Every telly in the house though. (My kinda house!)
The scene where Sally is visited by the grandson of her best friend – who she was talking to a minute ago – is really quite unnerving as Sally (and the audience) are trying to work out what’s going on. It seems, as Sally reads the letter, that nothing really bad happened. Her friend met a nice man, got married, had a family and had a good life… just not the one that she was having when Sally knew her. So it doesn’t seem that this particular alien threat is all that much of one. Well, not in the usual sense, that they want to kill everyone and take over the world/universe.
When it looks like Sally might have found someone who will help her – he’s snatched away, too.
Fortunately – well, sort of – he ends up meeting the one person who can tell him what’s going on.
Not that Billy can understand a word of it.
This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow.
You have to love Ten’s scientific descriptions. “It goes ding when there’s stuff.” Hee!
Delivering the Doctor’s message is going to take a while. Like 38 years.
The scene between Sally and Billy in the hospital is really touching. I have ‘till the rain stops - *sniffle*. Even though it is, as she points out, the same rain falling as when they met.
The now infamous “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey” bit. Non-linear temporal physics for dummies. Now there’s a book waiting to be written…
Martha’s only got about 4 lines in this one, but I like them :-)
We're stuck. All of space and time, he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop, I've got to support him!
Specs. Nuff sed.
Although he takes them off to make a point.
Never fails to send my kids diving behind the sofa! Which is, of course, exactly what Doctor Who is supposed to do.
But how did the Doctor get the information to be able to help Sally in the first place?
Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in order.
Wibbly-wobbly…
Four things and a lizard.
Another thing I love about the episode is the aliens themselves. I often cite the old 1950s movie Night of the Demon as a favourite horror movie of mine – and I’m not a big horror fan – because the threat in the film is what we, the audience, build up in our own minds. One of the reasons I’m not a horror movie fan is that the majority of them these days are too full of blood and guts and leave nothing to the imagination. But what that film – and this episode – do is scare the pants off us without being overly explicit. All we see in Blink are the statues in various places and poses; we don’t see them move or change position on screen, but what we do do is see it in our mind’s eye, and that, for me is so much more powerful than anything we could have seen.
Also, their threat isn’t immediately lethal. As the Doctor says, they’re he 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.
Although there is, of course, a wider threat – if the “angels” get hold of the TARDIS they could switch off the sun. No pressure, then.
My recaps/picspams of the final three episodes of S3 (Utopia – Last of the Time-Lords) may well be a bit late because I’ve got several late nights at work this week. But I do intend to do them before S4 starts next week.
Screencaps from Sonic Biro and Demon-Cry.net
