15 years gone in the Blink of an eye
For a show that bills itself as entertainment for all the family, Doctor Who somehow had a unique ability to be scary, never more so than with Blink, an iconic episode which celebrates its 15th anniversary next week. Blink followed urban explorer Sally Sparrow as she unraveled a mystery spanning nine decades all the while fleeing from aliens that have taken the form of weeping angel stone statues – aptly named the Weeping Angels. These sculptures can move when not in your line of vision, edging towards prey in order to drain their life potential. Worse yet, drunk in their power, the Weeping Angels have a penchant for playing with their food, cruelly stalking Sally and several other victims over the course of the episode to tragic ends. Doctor Who is primarily a sci-fi adventure, most of its formula is and always has been a cat and mouse between the Doctor and his foes, monster of the week episodes hinging around creatures, but Blink was on a different level. It scared the hell out of me and it stayed with me to this day. So, as the show prepares for a reboot, with former showrunner Russell T. Davies back on board and Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa freshly cast as a new timelord, I thought I’d celebrate what made Blink so special and so terrifying, and look at what lessons it can give the new cast and crew as they try and give the franchise a much-needed shot in the arm… Doctor Who has lost me. As a child, sitting down at 6PM on a Sunday night to watch the show was a sacred ritual. I rarely demanded TV time for specific shows, but I wouldn’t miss Doctor Who for my life. I made it about as far as Peter Capaldi’s final season, albeit begrudgingly, before I staved off altogether, opting to only watch critically acclaimed episodes – and unfortunately for the brilliantly talented Jodie Whittaker, there have not been many. For me, there’s just something missing from the new seasons – or rather, multiple somethings – that episodes like Blink and its contemporaries had. The angels. they’re pretty spooky – but many Doctor Who villains are. What really elevated the Weeping Angels was all in the production.
‘Blink’ was directed by Hettie MacDonald (who was also the first woman to direct an episode since the show’s revival), and it’s a crying shame she never went on to direct another. MacDonald challenged many of the cinematic conventions of Doctor Who’s revival seasons. Aesthetically, the episode was cold and bleak rather than colorful and warm as most tend to be, aligning itself magnificently with its stone grey antagonists. The camerawork lends itself to the theme, too – you are caught in the same trap as Sally, desperate to look away from the horrors that chase her but paralyzed by the fear that you as the viewer have to maintain eye contact to protect her. The use of light, darkness, and surprise is dynamic, building immense amounts of tension before the inevitable jump scare. Much of the horror plays out off-screen, or just in the edges of our perspective as the viewer.
