In the past I've been rather quiet about the BBC's rebooted Doctor Who. This is because my feelings about the series vary drastically based upon the recent quality of the episodes. As a result, when I saw "The Christmas Invasion" I was so enraged about what passed for decent SF on British television that I may have said some rather unkind things about series executive producer Russell T. Davies before suggesting a course of action that would only be possible for him if he were to have extensive genital surgery. I was also not a huge fan of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood.
However, my relationship with Nu Hu, as it is referred to in some places, has not been entirely negative as after catching the Hugo nominated episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" I happily watched the rest of the season and thought it was great. In fact, I think that the Steven Moffat-penned episode stands up quite happily to any single piece of genre TV in the last decade. Buffy and Firefly included. When the new series of Doctor Who started I had high hopes but after more Daleks and more silly running around and tiresome will-they-won't-they romantic sub-plots, I began to lose interest around the time of the Eurovision Song Contest break. However, unfortunately for my download ratio, that man has done it again, Steven Moffat has again delivered one of the strongest episodes in Doctor Who's entire run... and the Doctor's hardly in it!
"Blink" begins with Sally Sparrow (a charismatic Carey Mulligan) standing in an old abandoned house. Peaking out from behind the fraying wallpaper is the word "Duck". Puzzled, she peels off more and more of the paper and it becomes clear that these messages are somehow addressed directly to her. Sally grasps this and ducks just as a rock comes sailing through the window towards her, she spins around and sees a statue of a weeping angel looking in at her from the garden. It turns out that this angel is in fact a member of a race of aliens who are capable of moving only when they are not perceived by any living being. understandably freaked out, Sally visits her friend who promises to return with her to the house only for her to disappear just as a man appears at the door to deliver a letter, Back to the Future explaining that Sally's friend was zapped back to the year 1920 and lived out her life peacefully. This leads Sally to seek out her friend's brother Malcolm (a geekily unkempt Finlay Robertson) who reveals DVD easter eggs that appear to feature the Doctor having one half of a conversation... because he knows exactly what Sally is about to say. the Doctor is trapped in 1969 and he needs Sally's help to send the TARDIS back but first she must unlock the TARDIS before the weeping angels kill her in the blink of an eye.
Plot-wise, "Blink" uses many of the tricks and tropes that we have come to associate with time-travelling. Aside from the idea nabbed from Back to the Future we also have the perfect foreknowledge schtick used so well in Mary Gentle's 1610 : A Sundial in a Grave and self-sealing paradoxes of Red Dwarf and many others. In fact, the only trope it doesn't use is the idea of differently time-shifted versions of the same person all running around at the same time as used so confusingly in Shane Carruth's excellent Primer (arguably the best time travel film of recent years). However, what "Blink" lacks in tropic originality, it more than makes up for thanks to its flawless writing and pacing.
Unlike many recent Doctor Who episodes that devolve into chasing and running, "Blink"'s high-concept aliens allow for a different kind of tension, not the tension that the weeping angels might catch the couple, but that the couple might blink or avert their eyes long enough to allow the aliens to kill them. The sequence in which Malcolm has to stare at an angel whilst struggling not to blink for interminable minutes is easily one of the most tense and effective action sequences I've ever seen on British TV. Much has been made of the influence of Buffy on this incarnation of Doctor Who but usually the influence extends no further than soapy romantic elements and the occasional pop cultural reference. Not so with "Blink" as the high-concept nature of the threat can't help but recall the classic fourth series Buffy episode "Hush".
Aside from a great time-travel plot and inspired baddies, "Blink" also benefits from a nice moment of pathos when Sally meets Billy Shipton (Michael Obiora), a police inspector who shows her the TARDIS before being thrown back in time by the angels. The two characters are supposed to feel an instant attraction and it is obviously present on screen. Obiora and Mulligan mesh perfectly and the attraction seems perfectly believable, making Billy's exile to the past and his reunion with Sally as a dying old man all the more poignant. Unfortunately (if understandably) Louis Mahoney's old Billy lacks the charisma of the Obiora and the chemistry and therefore the mood is lost, making the segment's pathos feel slightly heavy. But even if the scene doesn't work, the idea of the angels living off of the potential of possible lives is a nice one and the idea that two people can have the potential to be together only for one to be snapped away is genuinely intriguing.
Simply put, this is an episode of Doctor Who where everything goes right. Moffat has delivered the strongest episodes in every series of Doctor Who (he also wrote series one's double-header "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" proving that despite being better known for being the writer of early 00's sitcom Coupling, he has the soul of a great SF writer. This bolds well for Moffat's upcoming series, Jekyll, a modernised adaptation of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Exemplary.
Not a huge Who fan, never was, but I caught this episode and really enjoyed it. Will have to keep my eyes open for Jekyll.
Posted by: Fence | June 13, 2007 at 10:08 AM
The question is, why can't all the episodes be this good? Surely when RTD reads the scipts he must see the standout ones? Surely he has no shortage of writers wanting to write for Doctor Who? Why can't they have a stricter quality control? (Production schedules maybe?)
Posted by: James | June 13, 2007 at 10:59 AM
I think, to be fair, that Moffat's episodes are so good because he only writes one or two every series. So he has plenty of time to dot the i's and cross the t's so to speak.
Also, you have to bear in mind that before they launched Nu Hu, The BBC hadn't done SF for years. In fact, none of the writers for Nu Hu have a track record of writing SF for TV. Moffat's SF track record before the relaunch was writing Who fan fiction for their annual.
I think that the problem is that they just don't have the manpower and the expertise to produce X number of excellent scripts in the allotted time frame. This situation is not helped by the fact that the bloke running the series is also arguably their weakest writer.
It'll be interesting to see whether Moffat can keep the quality up for a whole series.
Posted by: Jonathan McCalmont | June 13, 2007 at 11:11 AM