Geek Battle: Doctor Who Theory – How The Weeping Angels Captured The Doctor In Blink

Here’s a theory for Doctor Who fans that will blow your mind! Sally Sparrow, the main character in the episode Blink was the cause of the Doctor and Martha falling victim to the villainous Weeping Angels! Want to know how? Read on!

Of all the episodes of the new era of Doctor Who, the one that is perhaps loved most of all is the episode Blink. The thing that makes this position as such a loved story is even more incredible as the episode is what is known as a Doctor-lite episode. That’s right, the Doctor as played by David Tennant and his companion Martha are barely in the story.

Instead, the episode is centred around a new character called Sally Sparrow who was played by Carey Mulligan. She visits an abandoned house called Wester Drumlins and sees strange messages which warn her of ‘The Weeping Angels’.

The Weeping Angels, as we learn are a unique type of being that if observed by any other living creature will be frozen into a stone statue. So as soon as you look at them, they’re just a statue. By that same token as soon as you don’t look at them, including blinking they come to life and can attack you. The way they attack you is by sending you back in time and feasting upon your potential energy that you would have had if you had existed in the current time period.

Sally also sees the name The Doctor whilst in the house, and shortly afterwards a friend of hers, Kathy, who was at the house also goes missing having been attacked by a Weeping Angel.

Sally visits Kathy’s brother Larry, who tells her of a strange easter egg found on several DVDs that shows The Doctor having half a conversation. Very bizarrely Sally experiences that she can have a full conversation with the Doctor who is speaking on the DVD and we learn that the Doctor and Martha ran into the Weeping Angels themselves and were sent back in time and therefore separated from the Tardis. Whilst she has this conversation Larry notes down a transcript of Sally’s side of the conversation as he already had a transcript of what the Doctor said on the DVD.

At this stage, how the Doctor would know what to say to the viewer is a mystery, but he acknowledges that he has a transcript of what to say.

With the conversation between Sally and the Doctor on the DVD now complete they learn that they are in imminent danger from the Weeping Angels. Fortunately for Sally she was able to take the Tardis Key from an Angel earlier in the episode and now use it to enter into the Tardis. Once inside this sets off a trap set by the Doctor to force the Weeping Angels to all be facing each other. Upon doing this they are frozen in time forever and can never escape each other.

At the end of the episode a year has passed and Sally spots the Doctor, who she had only ever seen on the DVDs going past in the streets and she rushes out to him and Martha. Upon speaking to the Doctor she realises that because the Doctor is a time traveller she has actually now met him before the point in which the Weeping Angels sent the Doctor back in time.

Sally realises that it was her that warned the Doctor about the Angels and tells him that one day he will get trapped in 1969, and when he does make sure he has a folder with him that she gives to him. This folder contains the transcript of their DVD conversation, as well as photos of the Weeping Angels and a letter that Kathy sent her to say that she had been trapped in the past. The Doctor goes off and that is the last we see of Sally Sparrow and the last we know of the 10^th Doctor and his interaction with the Weeping Angels.

So, after this recap of what happened in Blink we should address how it was in fact Sally’s fault that the Doctor and Martha got captured by the Angels in the first place!

Well to answer this is quite simple, but we must look to the next Weeping Angels episode of Doctor Who which wouldn’t come until two seasons later and after David Tennant’s 10^th Doctor had regenerated into Matt Smith’s 11^th Doctor.

In Season 5 there is the two part story The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone where the Doctor, his new companion Amy Pond, and future wife of the Doctor River song meet aboard the crashed starship, the Byzantium.

River tells the Doctor that the ship contains a Weeping Angel and as part of the investigation into it, the characters observe some security footage of a Weeping Angel. Poor Amy doesn’t realise it, but she spends too long looking at the security footage and whilst doing this River and the Doctor make the discovery that even an image of an Angel can become a Weeping Angel!

Yes that’s right, an image of an Angel can become one. So just as Amy watching the Weeping Angel on the security footage enabled the Angel to grow in strength and become more than an image, I will remind you all what I said Sally Sparrow gave to the Doctor at the end of the episode Blink.

She gave him a folder that contained not only a transcript of their conversation on the DVD, and the letter Kathy had sent her, but it also contained several photographs of the Weeping Angels!

The image of an Angel can become an Angel.

Sally gave the Doctor a folder that basically was giving him one or more Weeping Angels. These would have been what would have sent the Doctor back in time and caused the threat to him and Martha in the first place!

It’s a shame that they didn’t connect these dots for us on the show itself to confirm it, but this is clearly the best explanation for how the Doctor and Martha would have encountered the Weeping Angels.

Problems With The Theory

This is a fairly solid theory, but if there is one major gripe, it is the same gripe that you may end up having with many time travel related stories and that is the problem with the paradox this scenario creates.

It would be impossible for Sally to have a photo of the Weeping Angel to give to the Doctor without his help to defeat them. And the only way he was able to help defeat them is because of the help that Sally gave the Doctor by giving him the photo. This is a classic chicken and the egg looped situation where there is no answer.

All it can mean is that there must have been an original version of events where the Doctor and Martha got trapped back in time by an Angel and were able to get a message to Sally to help them which within one or more loops of time would have evolved into an exchange of information where they ended up with a scripted conversation as seen in the DVD transcript.

The other issue with this theory regards why the 11^th Doctor may not have been aware that an image of a Weeping Angel can become a Weeping Angel if he had already experienced it. The simple answer here is that if he had the photo of the Weeping Angel that Sally gave him and it turned into a real Weeping Angel it may have happened so fast or unseen by the Doctor that he didn’t know this could happen.

So if this is the case why didn’t the 11^th Doctor have the realisation that ‘Of course, the last time I ran into these Angels it happened when I had an image of one.’ Well, the answer here is that the filmmakers probably didn’t deem it necessary to explain what happened in season 3 a couple of years later in season 5. There was a new Doctor in Matt Smith, a new companion and revisiting this plot point would have been great fan service, but wasn’t required.

There is a chance that maybe it would have been explored if things had worked out differently as Sally Sparrow was planned to become a companion of the Doctor, but Carey Mulligan apparently declined the offer to return.

So there you have it! Our theory for how it was in fact Sally Sparrow’s fault that the Doctor and Martha got captured by the Weeping Angels in Blink. Does this theory hold up for you? Or do you see alternative ideas? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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