Blink (TV Story)

***Blink*** was the third serial of Season 34 of *Doctor Who*. It was written by Steven Moffat, directed by Hettie MacDonald, and starred Chloë Annett as Sally Sparrow.

It was also the first "Doctor-lite" story in *Doctor Who* history, having come about out of a need in the production schedule for double banking.

Moffat had intended to write a two-parter earlier in the series but was told by Colin Brake to settle for a concept only an episode long. Believing he had "messed everything up", Moffat offered to "throw [himself] onto the grenade of the unpopular episode", referring to the Doctor-lite concept. In a 2000 interview, he admitted that he had only just started realising that *Blink* was in fact "a really great episode". Because of its late submission, *Blink* was the quickest piece of writing Moffat had ever done, having gone straight from the second draft with no notes to the script and tone meetings before going into production ten days later. The scriptwriting process took such little time to produce that Moffat claimed that *Blink* was such a "tiniest sliver" of his writing career that he couldn't remember making it.

It has since received mass critical praise. In DWM 474, *Blink* was rated #2 by fans, among the very best television stories in *Doctor Who*'s then-50-year history.

## Synopsis

In an abandoned house, the Weeping Angels wait. The only hope to stop them is a young woman named Sally Sparrow and her friend Larry Nightingale. The only catch: the Weeping Angels can move in the blink of an eye. To defeat the ruthless enemy — with only a half of a conversation from the Ninth Doctor as help — the one rule is this: don't turn your back, don't look away and don't blink!

## Plot

Young photographer Sally Sparrow breaks into an old house (Wester Drumlins) and takes photos of fallen chandeliers and moss growing in fireplaces. Entering a room upstairs, she sees peeling wallpaper and the letters "BE" exposed underneath. She pulls back the corner and finds the 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."

Sally appears to return home, looking into her living room; there are numerous televisions; they show a tall man with a bow tie, although, on one screen, a young woman is butting into the scene. The man tells the viewer not to turn away, not to look away, and not to blink — "Blink and you're dead." Sally calls her best friend Kathy Nightingale, despite the late hour; she answers, groggily, but refuses to leave her home.

It's then revealed that Sally is in *Kathy's* home, having been given a key. Annoyed, Kathy gets ready to greet her friend; however, upon hearing the toilet, Kathy asks if Sally has met her brother, warning her that she's about to. Sally turns to the hall to see Kathy's naked brother, Larry, who desperately hoped he was wearing pants. Kathy walks in, shouting at Larry to get to bed; she then notices Sally isn't concerned by this, asking her what's wrong.

The next morning, Kathy and Sally return to the house; Kathy has a laugh that they are acting like detectives. 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 and time and give Sally Sparrow a letter. As Kathy spies on the conversation from in the room, she fails to notice the Weeping Angel moving whenever it isn't in sight; lowering its hands from its eyes, and creeping into the room and upon Kathy from behind.

When Sally asks the man who sent him, he replies that it was his grandmother, Katherine Wainwright, who specified that he explains that before marriage, she was known as Kathy Nightingale. At that moment, the door to the room Kathy is in slams shut. Sally calls to Kathy, which the man assumes is her wondering if he said the right name; he restates her full name, Katherine Constello Nightingale. Sally presumes she has figured out the joke and calls for her friend, but Kathy does not answer. When she goes back into the room where she left her, Kathy has completely vanished, and the Angel is back in its original spot and position outside.

Elsewhere, Kathy gets up in a field and asks a local lad where she is. He replies that she is in Hull, but she refuses to believe it until he shows her the local newspaper, which not only confirms her location but also shows the year to be 1920.

Back at Wester Drumlins, the man has become upset; he promised to fulfil this task for his grandmother, Kathy Wainwright, who died in 1987. This persuades Sally to take the letter, who reads it; this man is indeed Kathy's grandson, who swore to fulfil her last request. In anger, Sally flings down the letter and heads upstairs, only to find three more Weeping Angels. One of them has a Yale key in its hand. She takes it and heads out, only to find Kathy's grandson leaving with his promise fulfilled. As Sally leaves, she fails to notice the Angels uncovering their eyes and watching her as she takes the key and leaves.

In a coffee shop, Sally reads the letter fully, learning Kathy led a full and happy life, with Ben, the first person she met in Hull with a family. She includes photographs of her and her children (with her daughter named after Sally), and grandchildren. Sally reads Kathy's joke about living to an exceptionally old age and her request to tell Larry, who works at a local VHS shop, something; her parents are gone by this time, so he's really her only close family. Sally goes to Kathy's grave to pay her respects to her dead friend (having a laugh that Kathy lied to Ben, claiming to have been younger than she was), then leaves for the VHS shop. Sally fails to notice one of the Angels from Wester Drumlins spying on her in the graveyard.

When Sally gets to the VHS shop, she goes into the back to find Larry. She, unconvincingly, explains to him that Kathy has had to go away due to work and that it's nothing to worry about. She also honours her friend's request to tell her brother that she loves him. Larry smiles at that and then wonders if that's an indication that something is wrong with her or whether it is all just a joke but Sally assures him that everything is fine. She sees the tall man with the bow tie who was giving the blinking warning on the screens in the Nightingale's flat on a TV which Larry has been studying. He explains that the man is an Easter egg found on seventeen VHSs and no one, not even the manufacturers or the publishers, knows how it got there. He simply sits there and makes random remarks; it's like listening to half a conversation. Larry and his friends have been constantly trying to figure out the other half. As he and Sally are talking, the VHS keeps un-pausing itself, and the tall man with the bow tie continues with his random phrases, two of which fit with Sally comments; much to her shock. In the end, Larry gives her a list of the seventeen VHSs that have the Easter egg on them. She leaves the shop, having gotten an idea from a comment said by Larry's co-worker ("Why does nobody ever just go to the police?") about what to do next.

Sally goes to the police station, and mentions the house's name. While waiting, she sees two of the Angels on the church across the street. While watching them, she blinks and they have disappeared. She doesn't see that they are now above 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 motors still running) and all of their owners vanished without a trace. He shows her a fake police phone box, with a lock that will not open. Billy charms Sally to give him her phone number before she leaves. After she leaves, Billy finds the Weeping Angels have appeared in the room with him, surrounding the phone box. While examining them closely, he blinks.

Outside, Sally finds the key she took from the Angel's hand in her coat pocket. She heads back to the garage to try it out, but Billy and the police box have gone, and the outside door is broken. Someone has broken through it with great force.

Billy gets up to see the Doctor and Lena, who tell him he is in 1969, because of the "touch of an Angel"; most likely the same one as he is in the same year that they are. The Doctor advises him not to go swimming for an hour as time travel without a capsule is disorientating. He remarks that the Weeping Angels are the only psychopaths that "kill you nicely"; they send their victims into the past and feed off the days they might have had. Billy does not understand any of this but Lena advises him to nod when the Doctor stops for breath. The Doctor explains to Billy how he found him by showing off his Timey-wimey detector - a modified lunch box, which detects when someone comes from a different time - "and can cook an egg from 20 paces, whether you want it to or not." Because of this, he actively avoids chickens, as it's not pretty when they blow up. The Doctor explains that normally, he would have offered Billy a ride home; however, someone's nicked his motor. After they talk, the Doctor asks Billy to give Sally Sparrow a message and apologises that it will take "a while" to get the message through.

Back in the present, Sally gets a phone call. She goes to visit an old and dying Billy at the hospital. They have a laugh that Billy managed to marry a Sally, who has already passed away. Billy goes on to explain that he often thought of contacting her before tonight, but says it would have "torn a hole in the fabric of space and time and destroyed two thirds of the universe." She asks where he got that from and he replies there was a man he met in 1969 called the Doctor who asked him to pass on a message to her - "look at the list". She is not sure what this means and he says that it's a list of seventeen VHSs. Billy reveals that he didn't stay a policeman back in the '70s; he instead got into publishing, then videos and eventually VHSs. Sally realises that he was the one who put the Easter eggs on the VHSs. She is curious as to how the Doctor knew she had the list considering she has not had it long. Billy replies that he asked the Doctor but he couldn't tell him; only saying that she would understand one day, but that he won't. She offers to come and tell him once she has figured it out but he solemnly says that the Doctor told him that this would be their last meeting before he dies. She decides to stay with him until the end. He thanks her and says he only has until the rain stops.

After the rain has stopped, Sally calls Larry. She has realised what the VHSs on "the list" all have in common: they are all owned by her; specifically, they are the only VHSs that she owns, which means that the Easter egg is meant for her though he is more shocked by the fact she only owns seventeen VHSs. She ignores this and asks him meet her at Wester Drumlins and to bring a portable VHS player.

Larry does so and brings two copies of the VHS. One has a slightly better picture but he opts for the one with the best sound. They play it and see the full message from the Doctor. He makes the same random comments from the video store, but now they fit perfectly into what Larry and Sally are saying. Realising this, Sally thinks he can hear them, but Larry explains that he always says it and that he has got a transcript of the Easter egg with him. As the Doctor gives his message, everything Sally says seems to fit in, so Larry, now very excited, begins to add her words to the transcript.

The Doctor mentions that he has a copy of the transcript on his autocue. That is how he knows what she 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, which is how he got 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. "Their greatest asset is their greatest curse". They are looking to get into the TARDIS, which contains a world of time energy, which the Angels could feast on forever but the damage they could do could switch off the sun. And since Sally has the key, the Angels are after her now.

The Doctor is stuck in 1969, so he is relying on Sally to send the TARDIS back to him. When she asks how, he states that he has run out of transcript, but he can guess why: he surmises that the Weeping Angels are closing in, forcing her to flee and so left the transcript unfinished. Indeed, Larry has stopped writing. He says what Sally has already heard; she must keep her gaze on the Angels; she mustn't turn away, look away, or even blink – the Angels can move with incredible speed when unobserved; "Blink and you're dead." Once the message has ended, Sally screams for the Doctor not to go so Larry offers to rewind it but that would be of no use. They both realise at the same time that neither is looking at the Weeping Angel anymore. They look up. The Angel is now in the room with them, baring sharp teeth in a savage snarl and outstretching clawed fingers towards them.

As a terrified Larry keeps his eyes fixed on the Angel to stop it getting any closer, Sally searches for a way out. As she tries all the doors in the house, only to find the Angels have locked them in while they were watching the Doctor's message, Larry is growing increasingly restless and fearful that the other Angels could come up behind him. Larry turns around for a split second, and the Angel moves to right in front of him. Keeping his eyes on it, he slowly backs out of the room. Sally finds an unlocked door to the cellar, and calls out to Larry to give him the news. Larry willingly flees to rejoin with Sally.

Larry and Sally descend into the cellar to find a way out. They find the TARDIS, along with the other three Weeping Angels. They head towards the door, keeping their eyes on the Angels. As they get to the TARDIS, the fourth Angel has appeared by the stairs and is pointing at the light. The light starts to flicker, and Sally and Larry realise in horror that the Angel is draining the light so that the Angels will be able to attack in the darkness. With each flicker, the Angels move towards Sally and Larry with their claws out and their teeth showing, as they frantically try to unlock the TARDIS door. At the last second, they open it and flee inside and lock the Angels out just in time.

As the two look around at the TARDIS interior in amazement, a hologram of the Doctor activates and says that the TARDIS has detected an authorised control tape, valid for one journey only. It is the other copy of the VHS that Larry brought, which is now glowing. But the Angels outside begin shaking the TARDIS on each side, looking for a way in. Larry puts the VHS into the console and the TARDIS begins to dematerialise. But as the TARDIS begins to fade away around them, Sally realises the TARDIS is leaving, but she and Larry are not going with it. She screams at the Doctor to help them, even as the TARDIS fades, leaving them crouching in the middle of the circle of Angels. Sally yells to keep looking at them, but Larry stands up slowly and realises that the Doctor tricked the Angels - they've been left looking straight at each other, freezing them permanently.

A year later, Sally and Larry are running the VHS store together but Sally cannot let all that has happened to them go as she still doesn't know how the Doctor got all the information he possessed. Sally is shown to now have everything she recorded, including the transcript, the photos of the wall and the list of DVDs in a folder which she keeps on her at all times. Larry subtly hints that her obsession with this is preventing them from having a relationship but she insists that they merely run a shop together. He then goes out to get some milk. Sally then glances outside as a taxi pulls up and the Doctor and Lena get out. She rushes over to talk to them, only to find that the Doctor doesn't recognise her as the events of her past are still in his future. Sally suddenly realises that she is the one who gives the Doctor the information he needs to retrieve the TARDIS and save her from the Weeping Angels. Sally then hands over the folder telling him that, at some point, he's going to be stuck in 1969 and he'll need to ensure he has it on him when he is. The Doctor is in a rush, still in the middle of another adventure, but asks Sally's name and tells her its nice to meet her. Larry returns right at that moment with the milk and can only stare at the Doctor and Lena in stunned amazement. The Doctor is in a hurry and cannot stay, so he and Lena eventually head off to take care of "four things and a lizard", while Sally clasps Larry's hand and goes back into the shop, Sparrow and Nightingale's antiquarian books and rare DVDs.

However, the scene shifts to montage across the public statuary, punctuated with the Doctor's recorded warnings, as though to warn us that there might be other Angels lurking among the statues...

*"Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And DON'T. BLINK. Good luck."*

## Cast

* The Doctor - Stephen Fry
* Lena Haigh - Emma Fielding
* Sally Sparrow - Chloë Annett
* Kathy Nightingale - Valerie Gogan
* Larry Nightingale - Cal MacAninch
* Malcolm Wainwright - Peter Mullan
* Billy Shipton - Gary Beadle
* Old Billy - Louis Mahoney
* Ben Wainwright - Steven Mackintosh
* Banto - Phill Jupitus
* Desk Sergeant - Ray Sawyer

## Worldbuilding

* While trapped in 1969, the Doctor builds a timey-wimey detector that "goes ding when there's stuff".
	+ It is assembled from items including a Blackpool postcard.
* The Weeping Angels are quantum locked, meaning that they cannot move when within anyone's sight.
* When Kathy calls her and Sally "Sparrow and Nightingale", Sally says it's "a bit ITV."
* Larry compares Wester Drumlins to "Scooby Doo's house".
* Sally's disc triggers Security Protocol 712 in the TARDIS.
* The Doctor and Lena are heading to "Red Hatching".
* Sally has a UK drivers licence, which states that she was born in England.
* Larry has a sticker on one of his files advertising "Cunard White Star to Europe".
* VHS's on display at Banto's VHS store include *Dance of Days*, *Falling Star*, *Mean Teens*, *Civilization Zero* and *Banana Shots*. Posters are shown for VHSs including *Acid Burn*, *Candy Kane* and *City Justice*.
* A Palm Beach Bar inflatable is on display in the back room of Banto's.
* Sally and Larry own a shop called Sparrow & Nightingale.
* On the same street as Sparrow & Nightingale are Shapes Hair, Josef's Hair Stylist and a Newsagent's shop which advertises Wall's and the National Lottery.

## Notes

* This episode is a Doctor and companion "light" episode, and the first in *Doctor Who* history. The Doctor and Lena were purposely not featured in this story so Stephen Fry and Emma Fielding could concentrate on the final three episodes of season thirty-four.
* This episode won a Hugo Award in 1998.
* The story is ultimately an ontological paradox: the Doctor has all the information, the transcript of the conversation, the contents of the message behind the wallpaper, etc, because Sally gives him that information at the end of the story — but Sally gets that information from seeing the wall the Doctor wrote, watching the VHS the Doctor made and so on. The information never really "starts" anywhere — the Doctor knows what to say in the conversation because he's reading Larry's transcript, which Larry made thirty-eight years later by watching the conversation. The information is in an endless loop.
* Despite only appearing in cameos, Stephen Fry and Emma Fielding are still credited as the main stars rather than Chloë Annett in the episode's main role of Sally Sparrow.
* Banto's VHSs were fake titles created for the episode, complete with VHS covers and poster designs.
* This is the first episode to be directed by a woman after a twelve-year interval. The previous one was *The Mark of the Rani*.
* For reasons unknown, while the original BBC One broadcast and subsequent Region 2 DVD release of the episode includes a "One year later" on-screen graphic prior to the epilogue scene, broadcasts of the episode in North America, as well as Region 1 DVD release, omit this.
* Billy can be seen in the police station with a patch on his jacket depicting a sparrow, a possible joke on the main character's last name.
* The story was originally titled *Sally Sparrow and the Weeping Angels*, but Colin Brake didn't like the title. Steven Moffat suggested Blink as an alternative, which Brake loved, but wanted the word "Blink" in the script "like a cheesy 50s trailer".
* Rather than being inanimate props, the Angels were portrayed by real actresses covered in make up and prosthetics. But standing completely still is a great challenge even for the most accomplished of actors. It was revealed on the DVD commentary that a special digital effect was used to freeze them in place so that if they did involuntarily move, it wouldn't be noticed.
* Steven Moffat originally had a different, and much darker, ending in mind for this episode. It would have seen Sally give the Doctor the folder and then step back inside the store to find an Angel inside. Larry then steps in and notices that Sally is not there. He then looks more closely at the painting on the wall and realises the person smiling and waving in it is Sally, having been sent into the past by the Angel. After reflecting on the episode for its 10th Anniversary, Moffat stated that "It makes me wonder why an Angel never sent her back in time. All these years later, I wonder why I didn't end it like that."
* Billy Shipton comments that the police box isn't a real one as, "the phone's just a dummy, and the windows are the wrong size". This is a reference to the fact that the TARDIS props over the years have been scaled down versions of the real thing.
* One humorous deleted scene would have formed part of the pre-credits teaser. After Sally discovered the message behind the wallpaper, Steven Moffat had requested the sound of cliched horror movie music. This would turn out to be Sally's mobile phone ringtone, and it was actually Kathy calling her friend from a pub.
* Steven Moffat initially wrote placeholder dialogue in the script for the scene where the Doctor tells Sally that he can hear her in the DVD shop, because he knew the lines that appeared would have to play "double duty later on" and be authentic and fresh both times.
* Steven Moffat claims that the Weeping Angels were inspired by the children's game 'Statues', which he found "frightening".
* The scene wherein the Doctor talks to Sally via a VHS extra was created by writing a conversation, removing Sally's lines, then having Stephen Fry record his lines. Steven Moffat felt that this one-way filming made the performance more convincing.
* To create the rigid structure of the angels' dresses, fabric was soaked in fibreglass resin, which was then painted over.
* To create the effect of the Angels rocking the TARDIS, Chloë Annett and Cal MacAninch threw themselves around the ship's set. The camera's operator then shook the camera in the opposite direction that Annett and MacAninch threw themselves.
* At one point, Sally would have been seen to be pregnant at the episode's conclusion, but Steven Moffat decided that it was more effective to delay Sally and Larry's romance until after her meeting with the Doctor.
* Steven Moffat had held the idea of the Weeping Angels since seeing an angel statue in a graveyard whilst on a family holiday.
* Originally, the producers considered having Gary Beadle play both the young and old version of Billy Shipton. However, it was decided that Beadle in makeup would look too fake.
* The first draft of the script is very close to the finished episode with the exception of the ending. Instead of taking off by itself, the TARDIS brings Sally and Larry to 1969 where they meet the Doctor and Lena. After returning them to the present, the Doctor reveals that he learned everything from a book called *Sally Sparrow and the Weeping Angels*. He asks Sally to sign it and she sees that the author's name is Sally Nightingale. Also, Kathy was originally named Jenny.
* A scene cut from the epilogue had Larry revealing that he regularly checks to ensure that the Weeping Angels are still petrified.

## Home Video & DVD Releases

### VHS

* This story was released alongside TV: *Vampire Science* on VHS in 1999.

### DVD

* This story along with the other stories in Season 34 were released as *Doctor Who: The Complete Thirty-Fourth Season* in 2011.

### Blu-ray

* This story along with the other stories in Season 34 were upscaled in 1080i50 high definition and were released as *Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 34* in the UK.