Blink, the series three episode of Doctor Who is regarded by many as the greatest episode of the long running British sci-fi show. The episode introduced fans everywhere to the Weeping Angels, which are without a doubt the best received and most famous of the new era Doctor Who enemies.
Some consider Blink one of the best sci-fi stories ever told. What makes it quite extraordinary for an episode of Doctor Who, is that the episode barely features the character of The Doctor, and instead has a brand new character in its lead role.
But today we will discuss a different reading for this episode which will mean you never watch it in the same way again. And you may look at the episode’s lead in a different light as well.
The episode works as a stand alone sci-fi story which barely needs the Doctor and the history of the show to work and with a few tweaks could have worked as it’s own thing unattached to the Doctor Who franchise.
The story instead follows Sally Sparrow, a character who goes into an old abandoned house with her friend Kathy Nightingale and strange things start to happen. To start with she sees massages written under wallpaper which warn her to duck so she isn’t hit by throwing that is thrown in through the window. How could these messages warn her? Her friend then disappears and much like the conclusion of Back to the Future 2 a man turns up with a letter written to Sally supposedly from the friend she was just with.
The letter tells Sally that Kathy was transported back in time and has lived out her life trapped in the past. Sally goes to the police where she learns that many have vanished from this same location and this includes a strange police box that the police are unable to open. This of course is the Doctor’s TARDIS.
Sally meets with Kathy’s brother Larry who shows her a DVD Easter egg which shows her the Doctor. The Doctor appears to be responding to the things Sally is saying, again giving her warnings and information just as the writing under the wallpaper had at the start of the episode.
The culprits of Kathy being trapped in the past, along with The Doctor, his companion Martha and a police officer who is friendly to Sally are all the same. A race of alien being who appear like statues and cannot move…but only when you look at them. These are the Weeping Angels.
Or are the Weeping Angels not actually to blame? I’m about to propose a theory to you all where you’ll no longer point the finger of blame squarely at the Weeping Angels and will instead start to look at Sally Sparrow as the cause of much of the trouble the Doctor, Martha and Sally’s own friend and live interest went through.
If you recall at the end of the episode The Doctor has assists Sally and Larry to help her trick the angels into facing each other, and therefore freezing them all in time. they surround the TARDIS and when it travels through time and vanishes the angels are fixed facing each other.
The Angels here have not been killed, but instead are only defeated. A defeat they could easily escape from if anyone was ever to try to move these statues from their position or cover their eyes. Arguably the angels would be able to move as soon as it gets dark enough in the room they are in, unless it’s claimed that the Angels can see in the dark. It wouldn’t matter that they’re facing each other in the pitch black after all.
But I digress.
Some amount of time passes and Sally becomes aware of The Doctor and Martha travelling through the streets and she rushes out to meet them. When she addresses the Doctor it becomes apparent that this is a point in time before The Doctor and Martha had ever encountered the Weeping Angels and so didn’t know who Sally is.
Sally realises that the Doctor she is meeting is a version that exists before he knows of her existence and proceeds to give the Doctor a warning of his own future. A warning that she will get trapped in the past and she gives him all the documentation he’ll need to know how to help her defeat the Angels. This includes the transcript of what the Doctor has to say to Sally to be planted in the DVD Easter eggs, and some photos of the Weeping Angels…
And it is this that perhaps explains how the Doctor falls victim to the Angels in the first place.
If we look at the saga of the Weeping Angels as a whole and what we learn about them in their next appearance in Doctor Who there is something very revealing that sheds new light on what happened to the Doctor and Martha.
In the two part Matt Smith era episodes The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone we learn something that changes the meaning of the end of Blink. Amy Pond, who is the companion to the Eleventh Doctor watches security footage of an Angel whilst the Doctor and River Song try to figure out what to do about the Weeping Angel threat. The Doctor questions why a book with information about the Angels doesn’t feature any illustrations of photographs and we are suddenly introduced to the idea that “the image of an Angel is an Angel”
The Angel that Amy is watching on the security footage suddenly takes a physical form and is able to do so because Amy was starring at the image of an Angel.
Hopping back to Blink, and we can now look at the choice of Sally giving the Doctor photographs of the Angels and see what a mistake that was. We don’t know how The Doctor and Martha first came to fall victim to the Weeping Angels, but this revelation appears to confirm a clear way The Angels we’re able to get the jump on the Doctor. Because if you think about it, how else would the Angels get the upper hand over the Doctor expect that he didn’t know that having an image of one was actually inviting an Angel to take him and Martha as victims.
The image of an Angel is an Angel, and Sally gave the Doctor an image of an Angel. Suddenly we can look at fan favourite Sally and say it’s her fault that everything that happened in Blink happened.
Well obviously the Weeping Angels still do need some blame, but for today I’m going to blame Sally!
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