I Love Time Travel – Part 23 – Doctor Who – “Blink”

It’s known as one of the best, if not the best episodes of the new series of Doctor Who.  Hands down, it is my favorite episode.  I watched it again recently, while I was desperately looking for something to pass the time on Netflix. It was just as good as I thought it was the first time.  I’m hesitant to burn too many details, because it’s such a good one.  Needless to say, if you like any aspects of the time travel genre, this may be the best singular episodic TV story using time travel ever. No shit.

Television provided a few dabbles into time travel, but nothing earth-shattering. Lost played with it, and it worked when it was pulling at the heartstrings more than invoking true terror.  Quantum Leap was a show I never liked, but I guess they screwed around with it.  Star Trek played with it some…a few times.  I guess what I mean is, very few shows have the central conceit that realities can be affected by altering timelines.  Most shows use it as a gimmick, or as a way to move characters into new challenges.  Doctor Who is specifically about altering timelines.  He is the last word in conflict resolution, from the beginning to the end of eternity.

The reason “Blink” is so damn good is that it incorporates so many fun tropes into the story, and it works.  The main character is played by Carey Mulligan, who I am currently in love with, who also supports the bulk of the work in the episode.  That’s the thing.  I love the show, especially David Tennant’s Doctor, but he’s barely in this one!  The Doctor is second banana to Mulligan and the idea of time travel itself. It is also the first use of the coolest baddies the series has yet to come up with, the Weeping Angels.

If you aren’t aware, Doctor Who sometimes features alien beings who live in the abstract.  The angels have developed two noteworthy and crazy attributes. One, when they are seen, they are statues.  Actual statues. But when you take your eyes off of them, even during a blink, they can move at near-lightning speed.  It’s a sci-fi game of “red light, green light”. But what they do to you once they reach you is even better.  A touch from a Weeping Angel sends you back in time forever.  Maybe 100 years, maybe 50, who knows?  They do this to feast on your “potential energy”; the life you left behind.

Dude.

Not to mention, when they get frozen in mid-attack, they go from angels with hands covering their faces, to full-on demon head monster fangs.   But you can’t look away, or they’ll get you!  Such a great idea. 

Ah man, I want to write about the thing with the DVD’s!  The note on the wall…the doctor’s messages. Shit.  I shouldn’t have even broached this subject.  To explain it would kill chunks of the plot…damn it.  I’ll try.

Okay, so…Mulligan receives a message from the past.  Her friend…no, shit.  That blows it, too. Crap. I can’t really tell you anything.

Screw this.  You have to just see it.  If you’ve never watched the show before, this is as standalone as the episodes get.  All you need to know is that The Doctor travels through time in a big blue box with a companion, and, as described in this episode: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it is more like a big ball of wibbily-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff.”