Doctor Who “Blink”

Ah yes, the newest and most impressive of the various new Doctor Who aliens…at least until they got possibly overused.  I don’t know.   But I do know they make a hell of a first appearance.

And the Doctor barely does anything.

Instead, we get a young photographer named Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan.  So, that was cool.  She’s looking around an old house, sees a TV playing a video of the Doctor saying seemingly random things, and there’s an angel statue outside that seems to move a little when no one is looking.  She goes back later with her friend Kathy, but Kathy disappears.  A man Sally’s age, claiming to be Kathy’s grandson, shows up just before then with letters and photos showing Kathy somehow ended up back in 1920.  She lived a long and apparently happy life before dying of old age and with a message to Kathy’s brother Larry, a DVD shop employee.

It’s actually rather clever how the statues, later revealed to be the Weeping Angels, can only move when no one is looking at them, and that includes the home audience.  These things do move when Sally passes in front of them in small ways, but they’re fast.  And they do kill…sort of.  They send their victims to the past and then feast on the lost potential of their lives.  That happens twice here, to Kathy and a flirtatious cop, though both get married and don’t seem too upset about what happened.  The cop ends up helping because he’s back in 1969…where the Doctor and Martha happen to be.  They just don’t have the TARDIS.

See, normally he could fix everything with the TARDIS, but since the Doctor doesn’t have it, he has to slip Easter Eggs onto Sally’s DVD collection, with help from the cop, and that Larry would know about, and somehow they have a conversation about wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff because the Doctor somehow knew what she was going to ask.  He explains the Angels are assassins that turn to unkillable stone when any living thing looks at them.  There are four, and they feed off time energy, so they really want the TARDIS.  And they move very fast, so don’t blink.

They were nice enough to bring the TARDIS into the old house.  And they were likewise good enough to lock the doors and play with the lights so they can move in the dark.  They just weren’t as clever as the Doctor since Larry and Sally manage to get inside, turn the TARDIS on, and send it to get the Doctor and Martha.  Sally and Larry stay put, but the Angels are forever frozen…looking at each other.  Oops.

All that’s left is to give the Doctor a transcript of the conversation he and Sally have since he hasn’t been sent to the past without the TARDIS yet.  Sally does that, though I would love to know why the Doctor and Martha are armed with bows and arrows in that last scene.  Feels like there’s something cool happening nearby.

But then, a few questions provoked by the Doctor…how many statues out there are really harmless statues and how many are, well, something else?

Better not blink.  These things are creepy.