Doctor Who 3x10: Blink
I've been writing up post after essay after ramble, but not sending anything through - I've been stuck in kind of a low-energy mental fidgeting mood. I don't trust myself to have the energy to be interesting enough to talk to people if I don't already know them well enough to be sleepy and low energy around them (or to form sentences, jesus), but I still want to play with concepts and ideas and mess about with things. I'm lifting up from that, though, and will hopefully smash together some of the posts into something coherent and send that through eventually. There are people saying very Interesting Things about all manner of topics right now and I keep kind of flailing in their direction going 'right! yes! thing! but - agh, words are hard'. Also I have an embarrassing backpile of Heroes timeline natter. (I like timelines, you guys. This is like my year of liking timelines.)
Speaking of timelines (when am I not speaking of timelines?): *flails* That was my favorite Doctor Who episode ever! Oh my god!
One - every character? I loved every character. And - I'm a sort of dark blonde, with brown eyes? And, basically, you never see that on TV. Which sounds dumb, okay, and it is, but everyone knows humans really, really appreciate seeing representations of themselves, especially when they're younger, which is why it's so deeply important to see minority representations in media. And, okay, no, blonde/brown eyes is not a minority in that sense, but, whatever, I never see that, and Sally Sparrow, my god, aside from that dumb little bit about the same coloring? I adored her. I adored her, oh my god.
And her friend, the Nightingale girl? And, oh, Billy, poor lovely Billy, and there's no way to change any of it that we see because it's all in a lock. And, the Nightingale brother! Oh, god, I loved that, what a wonderful character, a bit of a dork but in exactly the right ways. 'When you say 'the guys' you mean the internet, don't you?' 'How did you know that?' 'Spooky, isn't it?'
Oh my god I loved the writing here. I'm not a very - well, you know the jokes, about watching Doctor Who or whatnot, behind the couch? And how people have trouble with Supernatural, because it's scary? I don't get the scary! It's not that I'm a brave and glorious person, I just don't see the scary. The only Supernatural episode that unsettled me was the prison episode, with the super-scary eye-close-up of the ghost? Eyes scare me, apparently. But this episode? Oh, god, it terrified me! And I really, really like that we never see the angels in motion, that us watching, our gaze, becomes part of what keeps them locked.
I love that the Nightingale brother and Sally curl in terror in the TARDIS as it travels away from them, and that he - just, instinctively, curls around her. Protects her. I love everyone in this episode, and how rare is that? Every character here, I really appreciate or relate to.
And at the end - Sally coming across the Doctor and Martha running off to deal with four things and a lizard, and Martha isn't rude but is in very much of a rush, and same with the Doctor, and - 'I have a very complicated life', things don't always happen in a logical order - and, right, exactly, and if anyone really, really loves the idea of that, I absolutely recommend the book The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, which, like Doctor Who, mostly deals with the endless fascinations of time travel, without the terrifyingly rigid attention to potential paradox. It's also a wonderful serious lovely novel in its own right, but, I mean, time travel. You guys know by now I have a thing for time travel, yes? And timelines?
Okay, oh, god, Sally. Getting so stuck on that experience, and collecting everything from it, in a little purple folder, and - as the Nightingale brother says, maybe getting too stuck there, and not moving forward, and letting other things happen. And she meets the Doctor, and runs to - thank him, to get an explanation, and she is so clever. She is that clever, she understands, right off - none of it's happened yet. It's her. Everything she didn't understand about how the Doctor knew things - that's her. And oh, god, the clarity of that, at the end - the Nightingale brother taking the transcript (look to your left), and - oh, oh, oh.
My god, I loved every little bit of this. I loved Sally, I loved the camerawork, I thought the angels were terrifying and beautifully conceived (and the end, with the statues? Yes, yes, yes, yes), and - every bit of it! I never have anything to say at the end of Doctor Who, and in a big way it doesn't feel like my show - which is fine, I have shows that feel more like My Show, but I do enjoy Doctor Who, and to have an episode like this, which is so top-to-bottom clever - I love it. I love it, I love it. And no, the timeline doesn't fully explain or resolve itself, but then nothing ever does. And it is a non-Doctor episode, but I find that really okay and so, so far-and-away superior to the other non-Doctor-focused episodes we've seen in New Who.
Oh, man, if you have any interest in Doctor Who, or, well, even in just really, really well-acted and well-filmed and well-crafted and clever and in places very creepy time travel stories? This is the episode for you, you guys. (This is not, however, the post for you, if you don't like run-on sentences and commas.)
Speaking of timelines (when am I not speaking of timelines?): *flails* That was my favorite Doctor Who episode ever! Oh my god!
One - every character? I loved every character. And - I'm a sort of dark blonde, with brown eyes? And, basically, you never see that on TV. Which sounds dumb, okay, and it is, but everyone knows humans really, really appreciate seeing representations of themselves, especially when they're younger, which is why it's so deeply important to see minority representations in media. And, okay, no, blonde/brown eyes is not a minority in that sense, but, whatever, I never see that, and Sally Sparrow, my god, aside from that dumb little bit about the same coloring? I adored her. I adored her, oh my god.
And her friend, the Nightingale girl? And, oh, Billy, poor lovely Billy, and there's no way to change any of it that we see because it's all in a lock. And, the Nightingale brother! Oh, god, I loved that, what a wonderful character, a bit of a dork but in exactly the right ways. 'When you say 'the guys' you mean the internet, don't you?' 'How did you know that?' 'Spooky, isn't it?'
Oh my god I loved the writing here. I'm not a very - well, you know the jokes, about watching Doctor Who or whatnot, behind the couch? And how people have trouble with Supernatural, because it's scary? I don't get the scary! It's not that I'm a brave and glorious person, I just don't see the scary. The only Supernatural episode that unsettled me was the prison episode, with the super-scary eye-close-up of the ghost? Eyes scare me, apparently. But this episode? Oh, god, it terrified me! And I really, really like that we never see the angels in motion, that us watching, our gaze, becomes part of what keeps them locked.
I love that the Nightingale brother and Sally curl in terror in the TARDIS as it travels away from them, and that he - just, instinctively, curls around her. Protects her. I love everyone in this episode, and how rare is that? Every character here, I really appreciate or relate to.
And at the end - Sally coming across the Doctor and Martha running off to deal with four things and a lizard, and Martha isn't rude but is in very much of a rush, and same with the Doctor, and - 'I have a very complicated life', things don't always happen in a logical order - and, right, exactly, and if anyone really, really loves the idea of that, I absolutely recommend the book The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, which, like Doctor Who, mostly deals with the endless fascinations of time travel, without the terrifyingly rigid attention to potential paradox. It's also a wonderful serious lovely novel in its own right, but, I mean, time travel. You guys know by now I have a thing for time travel, yes? And timelines?
Okay, oh, god, Sally. Getting so stuck on that experience, and collecting everything from it, in a little purple folder, and - as the Nightingale brother says, maybe getting too stuck there, and not moving forward, and letting other things happen. And she meets the Doctor, and runs to - thank him, to get an explanation, and she is so clever. She is that clever, she understands, right off - none of it's happened yet. It's her. Everything she didn't understand about how the Doctor knew things - that's her. And oh, god, the clarity of that, at the end - the Nightingale brother taking the transcript (look to your left), and - oh, oh, oh.
My god, I loved every little bit of this. I loved Sally, I loved the camerawork, I thought the angels were terrifying and beautifully conceived (and the end, with the statues? Yes, yes, yes, yes), and - every bit of it! I never have anything to say at the end of Doctor Who, and in a big way it doesn't feel like my show - which is fine, I have shows that feel more like My Show, but I do enjoy Doctor Who, and to have an episode like this, which is so top-to-bottom clever - I love it. I love it, I love it. And no, the timeline doesn't fully explain or resolve itself, but then nothing ever does. And it is a non-Doctor episode, but I find that really okay and so, so far-and-away superior to the other non-Doctor-focused episodes we've seen in New Who.
Oh, man, if you have any interest in Doctor Who, or, well, even in just really, really well-acted and well-filmed and well-crafted and clever and in places very creepy time travel stories? This is the episode for you, you guys. (This is not, however, the post for you, if you don't like run-on sentences and commas.)