And You'll Miss It

Steven Moffat has pureed my brain. Again. Moffat wrote "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances," the first great two-parter for the revived Doctor Who in its first season, then in season two he penned "The Girl in the Fireplace," the poignant tale of how the Doctor met Madame Pompadour. He wrote Jekyll, the BBC's intriguing retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story. Both "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Jekyll played with timelines and flashbacks, but not to the degree that he does in "Blink," the latest episode of Doctor Who. There are a couple of reasons I'm not even going to try and describe the plot. First, if you haven't seen it, then you should experience it fresh. It's that kind of a tale. You should be allowed to gasp and giggle at every revelation. Second, the story is kind of like a soap bubble. It's beautiful and exquisitely formed, but try to grasp it and it will burst in your hand.

All time travel stories have holes. That's just a fact. Time travel stories like "Blink," stories of the "shifting-sands-of-time" subgenre, in which characters go backward and forward and sideways and around and down until they run out of ground on the edge of town, have multiple holes and even contradictions. The most you can ask is for the emotional sweep, narrative momentum, or character interaction to carry you over the rough spots like a great guide navigating through Level 5 rapids. If you're a hard-core nitpicker, "Blink" will give you plenty to gripe about, but if you're that sort of person, you're probably not enjoying Doctor Who anyway.

Just as "The Shakespeare Code" was this year's historical DW, analogous to "Tooth and Claw" and "The Unquiet Dead", "Blink" is this season's answer to "Love & Monsters." It's the episode where the Doctor is offstage, allowing another, one-off character to tell the story. Where "Love & Monsters" was a shaggy-dog affair that ended up being very sweet (thank you, Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson), "Blink" tosses up questions about the past, the future, free will, determinism, coincidence, and video technology in a concoction both dense and airy. It also has a shot of Martha Jones running down the sidewalk with a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. That may be the highlight for some of you.

While it's not the point of the story, and not necessary to see it this way, Moffat even fits in a couple of instant attraction/unrequited love beats that can be read to obliquely contrast with and illuminate the season-long Doctor/Martha arc. Russell T Davies has said that Martha's story is unrequited love. The Old Billy Shipton/Sally Sparrow scene made me think even more about that. Old Billy and Sally give us a look at just how sad Martha's fate could be if she doesn't wise up. The Doctor would still be young and vital while Martha developed (to twist Old Billy's line) "old woman's hands." At the end, when Sally takes Larry's hand, that's what Martha wants, but what she'll never get. Just because it works out once in a while doesn't mean it will work out for everyone. While I chafed at Martha's character development early in the season, as it plays out I'm beginning to think that it was simply the deadening effect of "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks." Take away that rather stultifying two-parter and Martha's character makes a lot more sense and is much more consistent. Her brief screen time in "Blink" reinforces the initial presentation of her as a smart, take-charge woman who has, in this one instance, revealed a fateful, if not fatal, Achilles heel. She's simply fallen head-over-heels for the wrong guy.

The episode creates a surprising amount of suspense, using the Weeping Angels' stop-action nature to deliver some very effective jolts of fear. This was the scariest Doctor Who ever. I yipped at least three times and my daughter asked if she could sleep with the lights on. Often the writing on Doctor Who is praised at the expense of or as apology for the technical aspects, but visually and FX-wise this was a treat. Carey Mulligan turns in a top-notch guest performance, easily carrying the story as Sally Sparrow. All in all, "Blink" is outstanding Doctor Who and plain brilliant by any standard. It would be a thrilling story if you plugged in "anonymous time traveler B." That's what makes it great; it's not dependent on the Doctor's quirks or our knowledge of the series. It's awesome and solid on its own; the Doctor is lagniappe And that's some tasty gravy