History Recap / DoctorWhoS29E10Blink

'''Original air date:''' June 9, 2007

'''Production code:''' 3.10

Written by Creator/StevenMoffat.

** We also never find out what the Doctor and Martha had been doing to get themselves stranded in 1969 without the TARDIS.

** When Sally asks the Doctor ''how'' she's supposed to send the TARDIS back in time to him, he pauses and then: "And...that's ''it,'' I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking but I can guess. They're coming."

* FunTShirt: Larry has a T-shirt with "The Angels Have the Phone Box" on it. [[{{Defictionalization}} You can get one too.]][[invoked]]

* StealthPun: Larry's full name is presumably Laurence -- which would make him [[UsefulNotes/FlorenceNightingale Laurence Nightingale.]]

* StealthPun: Larry's full name is presumably Laurence -- which would make him [[Useful Notes/FlorenceNightingale Laurence Nightingale.]]

* BittersweetEnding: Our introduction to and then immediate goodbye to Kathy and Billy. They lose their present, but had a future in the past. They both had long, loving lives, but Sally never got to see any of it, and Larry will never see his sister again.

* PoliceAreUseless: Averted. When Sally goes to the police, despite her outlandish tale, they take her seriously - both the desk sergeant, and Billy - as this is just the latest in a string of disappearances in and around the Wester Drumlins house.

* BittersweetEnding: Our introduction to and then immediate goodbye to Kathy and Billy. They lose their present, but had a future in the past. They both had long, loving lives, but Sally never got to see any of it.

** "Why's it pointing at the..." ''[lightbulb flickers]'' "light?"

The episode received a sequel in the form of the 2021 puzzle game ''The Lonely Assassins'' in which the player finds themselves in possession of Larry's phone after he'd gone missing and must piece together what happened to him. [[labelnote: Spoilers...]][[spoiler: Wester Drumlins gains a new landlord who decides to renovate the basement. You know, the one with all the Angels in it. Larry's wife decided to investigate after seeing how distressed Larry was about it and ends up getting zapped to the past, and Larry goes after her. After the 13th Doctor saves him from an Angel attack she takes him to be with his wife in the past.]][[/labelnote]]

Young photographer [[Creator/CareyMulligan Sally Sparrow]] breaks into an old house somewhere in London called Wester Drumlins, and takes photos of fallen chandeliers and moss growing in fireplaces. Entering the conservatory on the ground floor, she sees peeling wallpaper and the letters "BE" exposed underneath. She pulls back the corner and finds the whole message: "BEWARE THE WEEPING ANGEL". She tears off more wallpaper, revealing: “OH, AND DUCK!”; and beneath that: “NO, REALLY, DUCK!” It is only when she reveals the words "SALLY SPARROW, DUCK NOW" that she actually does so, narrowly avoiding a rock that would have hit her head. She looks out the window, from where the rock was thrown and sees the statue of an angel with its hands covering its eyes, as if weeping. She peels the rest of the wallpaper off to reveal the writer of the message — "Love from the Doctor, 1969."

[[MindScrew The Doctor mentions that he has a copy of the transcript on his autocue, which is how he knows everything Sally is saying.]] He warns of that the statues are not what they seem: they are creatures from another world, the "Lonely Assassins", aka the Weeping Angels. They are incredibly fast, and they can send people back in time by merely touching them, feeding off the days a person might have spent in the present while their victim dies in the past, which is how he and Martha have gotten stuck in 1969. What makes these aliens so dangerous is their unique defence mechanism: they are "quantum locked"; they do not exist when they are being watched. If any living thing looks at the Angels, they immediately turn to stone until they are no longer looked at. This explains the "weeping"; they cannot look at each other since it has the same effect. Since a statue can't look away or blink, the Angels who see each other never move again. Realising the serious danger that they are in, Sally tells Larry to keep an eye on the Angel in the garden, and so he stops filling in the transcript. The Doctor warns them that right now, [[MemeticMutation the Angels have the phone box]], and if they can get in it, they'll be able to feed on the time energy inside... and do enough damage to switch off the Sun. Sally has the key, so it's up to her to open the TARDIS first and send it back to the Doctor in 1969. When she asks how, [[ThatWasTheLastEntry he states that he has run out of transcript]]:

Sally finds the mansion's basement and calls out for Larry to follow her, hoping for a way out, and they make their way down the stairs, finding the TARDIS surrounded by the other three Angels. However, the Angel from upstairs follows them and creates intervals of darkness by feeding on the electricity powering the single lightbulb so all the angels can advance under the cover of pitch blackness. Sally and Larry make it inside the TARDIS just as the Angels reach them. However, they are now completely surrounded by the angels on all sides of the police box.

This explicit LampshadeHanging leads her to take the counter-jockey's inadvertent advice, and Sally heads over to the police station. While waiting, she sees two of the Angels on the church across the street. Watching them, she blinks, and they have disappeared. She doesn't see that they are now beside the window she is looking out of. She then meets DI Billy Shipton. He shows her a collection of cars with something strange in common: all of them were found outside the Wester Drumlins house (some with their engines still running), and all of their owners vanished without a trace. The prize of the collection is [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall an imitation police box built entirely to scale which nobody can manage to open despite having an ordinary Yale lock]] (they know it's fake because [[FandomNod the phone's just a dummy and the windows are the wrong size]]).

Sally responds to Billy's come-ons by giving him her phone number — "Just a phone number" — and then leaves. Billy turns back to the garage to find it infested with four Weeping Angels, one of which is trying to open the door of the TARDIS. The camera zooms in on his face until he blinks, at which point he disappears.

When Billy opens his eyes again, he's in a back alleyway, where he is promptly greeted by the Doctor and Martha, who have been waiting for him. They tell him that he's landed in 1969, having been sent back by the same Weeping Angel that sent them back. After the Doctor rambles a bit about the Weeping Angels ("the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely"), he explains that they found him via a [[TimeyWimeyBall Timey Wimey detector]] which detects when someone comes from a different time, "and can cook an egg from 20 paces, whether you want it to or not."[[note]]Because of this, he actively avoids chickens, as it's not pretty when they blow up.[[/note]] The Doctor asks Billy to deliver a message to Sally Sparrow. Apologetically, he warns Billy that [[TheSlowPath it's going to take him a while]] to send it.

In the conservatory at Wester Drumlins they set up a portable DVD player and, on noticing the Angel in the garden, Sally tells Larry to keep an eye on it. The following sequence is one of the biggest TimeParadox {{Mind Screw}}s you will ever encounter, with Sally and the Doctor carrying on an extended conversation even though the Doctor is speaking to a film camera thirty-eight years in the past.

[[MindScrew The Doctor mentions that he has a copy of the transcript on his autocue, which is how he knows everything Sally is saying.]] He warns of that the statues are not what they seems: they are creatures from another world, the "Lonely Assassins", aka the Weeping Angels. They are incredibly fast, and they can send people back in time by merely touching them, feeding off the days a person might have spent in the present while their victim dies in the past, which is how he and Martha have gotten stuck in 1969. What makes these aliens so dangerous is their unique defence mechanism: they are "quantum locked"; they do not exist when they are being watched. If any living thing looks at the Angels, they immediately turn to stone until they are no longer looked at. This explains the "weeping"; they cannot look at each other since it has the same effect. Since a statue can't look away or blink, the Angels who see each other never move again. Right now, [[MemeticMutation the Angels have the phone box]], and if they can get in it, they'll be able to feed on the time energy inside... and do enough damage to switch off the Sun. Sally has the key, so it's up to her to open the TARDIS first and send it back to the Doctor in 1969. When she asks how, [[ThatWasTheLastEntry he states that he has run out of transcript]]:

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: The Angels can't move when anyone is looking at them. This includes ''the audience''. And then, the episode ends on the Doctor's warning about the Angels, with a montage implying that ''every statue ever'' is an Angel...

Young photographer [[Creator/CareyMulligan Sally Sparrow]] breaks into an old house called Wester Drumlins, and takes photos of fallen chandeliers and moss growing in fireplaces. Entering the conservatory on the ground floor, she sees peeling wallpaper and the letters "BE" exposed underneath. She pulls back the corner and finds the whole message: "BEWARE THE WEEPING ANGEL". She tears off more wallpaper, revealing a message telling her; telling her to "duck, Sally Sparrow." It is only when she reveals the words "duck now" that she actually does so, narrowly avoiding a rock that would have hit her head. She looks out the window, from where the rock was thrown and sees the statue of an angel with its hands covering its eyes, as if weeping. She peels the rest of the wallpaper off to reveal the writer of the message — "Love from the Doctor, 1969."

* TheFilmOfTheBook: "Blink" is based on Moffat's short story and shares several common elements; the heroine in both is Sally Sparrow (though the story's Sally is somewhat younger), there are elements of finding messages left by the Ninth Doctor trapped in the 1960s behind peeling wallpaper, and concludes with Sally finding a video tape, having a similarly strange conversation with the Doctor through the tape, and eventually helping to reunite him with the TARDIS. However, the story lacked much of the terror that "Blink" had involving the Weeping Angels and being sent back through time, since the Doctor being stuck was simply because of the TARDIS malfunctioning.

Young photographer [[Creator/CareyMulligan Sally Sparrow]] breaks into an old house called Wester Drumlins, and takes photos of fallen chandeliers and moss growing in fireplaces. Entering a room, she sees peeling wallpaper and the letters "BE" exposed underneath. She pulls back the corner and finds the whole message: "BEWARE OF THE WEEPING ANGELS". She tears off more wallpaper, revealing a message telling her to beware of the Weeping Angels, and telling her to "duck, Sally Sparrow." It is only when she reveals the words "duck now" that she actually does so, narrowly avoiding a rock that would have hit her head. She looks out the window, from where the rock was thrown and sees the statue of an angel with its hands covering its eyes. She peels the rest of the wallpaper off to reveal the writer of the message — "Love from the Doctor, 1969."

The next morning, Kathy and Sally return to the house; Kathy has a laugh that they are acting like detectives, "Sparrow and Nightingale". Sally shows Kathy the message on the wall and the Weeping Angel, but thinks it is now closer to the house than before. Someone rings the doorbell; Sally answers it, and Kathy waits in the room where the writing on the wall is, "in case of incidents". Sally answers the door to discover a man who is looking for her. He says that he was told to come to this place on this exact date at this exact time and give Sally Sparrow [[WriteBackToTheFuture a letter]]. As Kathy spies on the conversation from behind a door, she fails to notice the Weeping Angel advancing on her whenever it isn't in sight; lowering its hands from its eyes, creeping into the room and upon Kathy from behind.

At Wester Drumlins they set up a portable DVD player and, on noticing an Angel in the garden, Sally tells Larry to keep an eye on it. The following sequence is one of the biggest TimeParadox {{Mind Screw}}s you will ever encounter, with Sally and the Doctor carrying on an extended conversation even though the Doctor is speaking to a film camera thirty-eight years in the past.

[[MindScrew The Doctor mentions that he has a copy of the transcript on his autocue, which is how he knows everything Sally is saying.]] He warns of creatures from another world, the "Lonely Assassins", aka the Weeping Angels. They are incredibly fast, and they can send people back in time, feeding off the days a person might have spent in the present while their victim dies in the past, which is how he and Martha have gotten stuck in 1969. These aliens have a unique defence mechanism: they are "quantum locked"; they do not exist when they are being watched. If any living thing looks at the Angels, they immediately turn to stone until they are no longer looked at. This explains the "weeping"; they cannot look at each other since it has the same effect. Since a statue can't look away or blink, the Angels who see each other never move again. Right now, [[MemeticMutation the Angels have the phone box]], and if they can get in it, they'll be able to feed on the time energy inside... and do enough damage to switch off the Sun. Sally has the key, so it's up to her to open the TARDIS first and send it back to the Doctor in 1969. When she asks how, [[ThatWasTheLastEntry he states that he has run out of transcript]]:

It is at this moment, [[ForegoneConclusion of course]], that Sally and Larry realise that the panic of the Doctor's message stopping diverted their attention from the angel in the garden. After a moment's pause, they look up to see it standing only a few metres away, poised to attack with its fangs and claws showing. Sally goes to look for an exit, leaving Larry to stare at the Angel. The music gets more and more off-kilter until it starts playing in reverse as Larry stares at the Angel, trying not to blink. He slowly feels the need to. His eyes water either from strain and sheer terror, and he sobs a tearful "''[[OhCrap Oh god...]]''" He looks away for a moment to see where the door is, while also getting in a split-second blink, and when he looks back, the Angel is right in his face, its hands are inches away from his neck.

Sally finds the mansion's basement and calls out for Larry to follow her, hoping for a way out, and they make their way down the stairs, finding the TARDIS surrounded by several angels. However, the Angel from before follows them and creates intervals of darkness by feeding on the electricity powering the single lightbulb so all the angels can advance under the cover of pitch blackness. Sally and Larry make it inside the TARDIS just as the Angels reach them. However, they are now completely surrounded by the angels on all sides of the police box.

* TheFilmOfTheBook: "Blink" is based on Moffat's short story and shares several common elements; the heroine in both is Sally Sparrow (though the story's Sally is somewhat younger), there are elements of finding messages left by the Ninth Doctor trapped in the 1960s behind peeling wallpaper, and concludes with Sally finding a video tape, having a similarly strange conversation with the Doctor through the tape, and eventually helping to reunite him with the TARDIS. However, the story lacked much of the terror that "Blink" had involving the Weeping Angels and being sent back through time.

->''"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They're fast. Faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck."''

The one that plays NobodyHereButUsStatues for horror.