10th Doctor
Blink
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Executive Producers
Julie Gardner
Russell T. Davies

Producer
Phil Collinson

Script Editor
Helen Raynor

Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Hettie MacDonald
Incidental Music by Murray Gold

Carey Mulligan (Sally Sparrow), David Tennant (The Doctor), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Lucy Gaskell (Kathy Nightingale), Finlay Robertson (Larry Nightingale), Richard Cant (Malcolm Wainwright), Michael Obiora (DI Billy Shipton), Louis Mahoney (Old Billy), Thomas Nelstrop (Ben Wainwright), Ian Boldsworth (Banto), Ray Sawyer (Desk Sergeant).


A young woman called Sally comes to regret breaking into an old, abandoned house. There the Weeping Angels wait. As people begin disappearing, Sally intercepts cryptic messages from a mysterious stranger known as the Doctor, who's trapped in the year 1969. But can she make sense of them before the Angels claim their prize?

Original Broadcast (UK)
Blink		    	June 9th, 2007			7h00pm - 7h45pm
Notes:
 
  
 
 

On a dark wet night Sally Sparrow sneaks into an old abandoned house. Making her way through the dark and decaying corridors she takes pictures of the ruined interior. Arriving in one empty room she finds some writing behind a peeling piece of newspaper.

Pulling the paper from the wall she finds more words written on the walls, including her own name. The message tells her to duck and sure enough, seconds later, a rock is thrown through the window toward her head. She avoids being hit but finds the only thing outside is a statue of a crying angel.

She looks back at the wall and peels away more paper, revealing the name of the message writer…the Doctor (1969).

Blink
(drn:43'38")

Later that night Sally returns to the home of her friend Kathy Nightingale, where she finds a room full of television screens, all showing the same young man in a brown suit. She phones her friend, who is still in bed, using her mobile phone and tells her to come downstairs.

Asking about the screens Kathy warns Sally that her brother Larry is in the house, and sure enough when Sally turns round she finds a young naked man waiting for her. He dozily greets her as Kathy comes downstairs, asking what has happened.

The next day the two women return to the abandoned house and as they walk through the various rooms they look again at the message, which not only warns Sally to duck, but tells her to beware the Weeping Angels. The two friends look to the statue in the garden and Sally claims that it has moved since the previous night, it is closer to the house.

Moments later there is a ring at the door and Sally goes to answer it, leaving Kathy in upstairs. The caller is a middle-aged man with a letter for Sally Sparrow, claiming he has been told to deliver at the message at this exact moment in time.

Meanwhile, Kathy looks around the house, unaware that the angels outside are watching. At the doorway the man hands over the letter, claiming that it has been sent by Kathy Nightingale. Sally looks on in disbelief and calls to her friend, but to no reply.

Kathy finds herself transported from the house to a field in the countryside, asking a local man where she is. He claims she is in Hull, in 1920. In the present day the man explains that Kathy Nightingale is his grandmother, and inside the envelope Sally finds a photograph of her friend. She runs about the house trying in vain to find her friend, but only the Weeping Angels are to be found. One of them holds a key, which Sally takes before fleeing the house, the statues watching from the windows.

The letter itself reveals that the two women are indeed the same, Cathy having left the message to be delivered to Sally on the day she disappeared. In the letter she asks Sally to tell her brother Larry that she is gone, hoping she will think of something to cover up the truth.

Sally makes her way to a DVD shop elsewhere in London and in the back room she finds another television screen, on which is displayed the same man she saw the night before. Larry enters and Sally gives him the message, claiming Kathy has had to go on a trip for work and will be gone for some time.

She asks Larry who the man on the screen is and he explains that he is an Easter Egg, a hidden special feature on a DVD. The same short film is found on seventeen different DVDs but nobody knows how or why he got there. Larry goes to the front of the shop as Sally watches the film, listening as the young man talks about time.

She comments on what he says and oddly enough he appears to reply to her remarks, which causes her to pause the disk in shock. Larry then returns with a list of the DVDs on which the extra is found, and she leaves the shop, making her way to the police station.

Her statement to the desk sergeant appears to have no effect, and she is left to glance out of the window at a pair of angel statues perched on a nearby church. She is somewhat unnerved when they appear to disappear in the blink of an eye, and is left unaware that they now stand outside the window by which she stands.

A young policeman named Billy enters, ready to listen to her story. He takes her down to a garage below the building and explains that all of the cars inside have been found by the house, the owners disappearing upon entering the house. Sally looks around and finds a tall blue police box sitting in one corner of the room, another item found in the house, which the police themselves have failed to open.

Billy turns his attention to trying to get Sally to go on a date with him but she is reluctant. However, she gives him her phone number and leaves with his promise to phone her. Once she has gone the young Detective Inspector turns to find a group of angel statues surrounding the blue box. He walks over to investigate but finds no sign of life. Approaching one statue he faces the weeping figure, again finding no sign of life, but in the blink of an eye the creature strikes.

Outside, Sally remembers Billy’s comment about not being able to open the box and retrieves from her pocket the key she found at the house. She turns back toward the police station and rushes away through the falling rain. However, when she arrives she finds the box, and Billy, have gone.

Billy finds himself in a dark alleyway and drops to the floor exhausted. He finds himself confronted by the young man from the DVDs and his female companion, who explain to him that he has been transported to 1969. The man, alias the Doctor, tells him that the culprits are the angels, an ancient race who kill people by sending them back in time with a single touch, and then feed on the potential energy left behind from the lives their victims might have led.

Billy is still confused by his ordeal but the Doctor continues, claiming that he must send a message to Sally Sparrow, only it will take some time before it can be delivered.

In the present day, Sally receives a phone call from Billy, and follows his directions to a nearby hospital. She finds him alone in one of the wards, an elderly man with a message. As the rain falls outside he reveals that it was he who managed to place the Doctor’s messages on the seventeen DVDs using his job as a DVD publisher as a cover. He then tells her the message he as given nearly forty years ago; look at the list.

He explains to her that there is a trend in the DVDs that she must somehow figure out, and then cryptically recalls that the Doctor knew in 1969 that Sally would have obtained the list by now. She promises to find out the trend and return to tell Billy but the old man confesses that the Doctor told him one other thing when they met in 1969; the time he and Sally would meet again would be the night he died.

“I have until the rain stops”

Some time later, when the weather has changed and Sally is left alone in the ward, she looks at the list again and with a determined look, leaves the building. She calls Larry and explains to him that the link between the seventeen DVDs are that they are the only ones she owns, the message the Doctor recorded and Billy distributed was meant for her.

They arrange to meet at the old house and using Larry’s laptop play the Doctor’s message. As before it appears the Doctor can reply to what Sally says despite having reordered the message thirty-eight years previously. Larry produces a transcript of the Time Lord’s speech he made some time ago and fills in Sally’s words, which complete the second half of a coherent conversation.

The Time Lord explains that he has the transcript of the conversation, and obtains it some time in the future before encountering the Angles and getting stuck in 1969 like Billy. He then explains to her that the Weeping Angels are not statues; they only turn to rock when being observed by another living being, but come to life when someone looks away, when someone blinks. As he speaks Larry turns to find one standing in the corner of the room

He tells her that she must send the blue box back to him, before the Angels access the energy it contains. He then claims that his transcript has finished, and can only guess that this is the point when the Angels come after Sally and Larry. With a parting message he warns them:

“Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck”

Sally protests and Larry rushes to help her. They realise that neither of them is looking at the Angel in the corner and when they turn to look at it they find it has moved closer. The lock their sights on the creature and back away, Sally departing to try and find a way out. Larry remains in the room to stare at the Angel as Sally moves to the front door. She finds it locked and instead searches for another way out, realising that the Angels are after her because she holds to the key to the Doctor’s blue box.

Larry fails to resist the urge to turn his head and in the split second that he does the Angel advances on him, bearing down on him with bared fangs and stone-cold eyes. He begins to back away to join Sally, who discovers a light coming from the basement. Together they venture down the stairs, finding the blue box, and a group of silent Angles, waiting for them.

Sally removes the key from her pocket and along with Larry moves toward the box, turning only to discover that the Angel from upstairs has followed them, and is now pointing at the light bulb. The bulb flickers and Sally realises that the Angels are trying to turn off the lights so that they cannot be seen, thus allowing them to close in. Sure enough as the light flickers fleeting glimpses of the creatures reveal that they are moving in for the kill.

Larry panics as Sally struggles to open the box, the Angels moving ever closer. Eventually they manage to get inside and close the door. Amazed by the massive interior inside, a hologram of the Doctor appears, claiming that the ship has detected an authorised travel disk, permitting one journey.

Larry removes a DVD case from his jacket and finds the disk inside is glowing. He places it into a slot in the console in the centre of the room and as the Angels begin to shake the ship in an attempt to get inside, the machine is set in motion.

However, all is not as it seems and as the ship departs the interior fades, leaving the young humans behind. They return to the basement but discover that the Angels, gathered around where the box once stood, have been tricked into looking at each other, trapped and unable to move again.

One year later Sally and Larry are running the DVD shop together, Sally still pouring over a folder of information regarding the mystery of the Angels. Larry claims that the problem is over but Sally still cannot understand how the Doctor knew what she would be doing thirty eight years in the future.

Larry leaves to buy some milk and Sally gazes out of the window, amazed as the Doctor and Martha arrive outside. She rushes outside to speak to him but he appears not to recognise her, and she realises that all of these events happen in his future. She hands him the file and warns him that one day he will become trapped in 1969, and on that day he will need the file. He thanks her and dashes away to deal with another problem. Larry returns to see him go and hand in hand, he and Sally return inside.

Yet although for Sally and Larry the case of the Weeping Angels is over, hundreds of statues still remain all over the city, all over the world. And to all those who see them the Doctor has a message:

“Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. Don’t turn your back, don’t look away and don’t blink. Good luck…”

Source: Dominic Smith

Continuity Notes:
  • It looks like these two stories cannot be reconciled, as the young Sally travels in the TARDIS but the adult Sally fails to recognise it in Blink. It may be that What I did on my Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow occurs before the Time War and this particular timeline has, like that of Human Nature, been deleted as the result of that particular conflict, meaning that a similar but not indentical incident occurs later in the Doctor's life. Or it may simply be a different Sally Sparrow...
 
 
 
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