Random Thoughts: Blink
Oh, bugger, I've just thought of a problem with "Blink."
(And I know plenty of other people have tossed some in as well, but most of those are really stuff that was either (a) explained in the episode if you look hard enough (b) left to the viewer as a gap-filling exercise, which as long as the gaps aren't insurmountable is really very common and acceptable in fiction. You're assumed to be part of the story, here. The author HAS to TRUST you a little bit. Anyway.)
If being thrown back to 1969 with the Doctor and Martha sucked all the present-day life out of Billy, and he lived an entire life until dying in 2007, why didn't the same thing happen to our two heroes?! The Doctor has plenty of years to go, I guess, but wouldn't Martha be a sixty-year-old woman as well? You could even come up with some idea whereby they could just hide in the TARDIS, which no longer had a motor but possibly was still "immune to time" in some way, BUT they do not HAVE the TARDIS. The TARDIS is in 2007.
Dammit, and suspension of disbelief worked SO well for the other things. The paradox of time travel, that's a common one. Peripheral vision -- that takes care of a lot of difficulties. But Steven! Steven Moffat! Did you not think of this?!
I suppose if you think about it in a circular way, as they did in "The Parting of the Ways," you get the idea that everything IS happening at the same "TIME" as far as you perceive it, which means that Martha is a 60-year-old woman in 2007 just as she is a twenty-year-old still in 1969. Which means that when the TARDIS got back to 1969 (and the Doctor and Martha) twenty-year-old Martha jumped back in and the rest of her history in that timeline was erased.
Whoa.
Psychadelic.
It also helps if you've seen the Back to the Future trilogy.
And that doesn't really explain why Old Doctor and Old Martha couldn't just find Sally Sparrow and be like, "Look, there's this thing going on" -- or why Old Doctor and Old Martha couldn't actually just GO TO THE HOUSE and TAKE THE TARDIS KEY FROM THE WEEPING ANGELS.
Is there a time-traveller-gets-out-of-jail-free card like there was in Army of Ghosts / Doomsday? Well, that wasn't so much a get-out-of-jail-free card as "YOU WILL NOW POWER THE DALEKS SO WE CAN OPEN THE GENESIS ARK AND EXTEEEERMINATE" but I'm just digressing now.
You see, as much as we beg, this is why nobody does episodes that hardcore play with the space-time continuum. It's just boggling. We could all stand in a circle around Steven Moffat and just shout questions until he cried, but that wouldn't be very much fun. He's a good guy. Except for that whole I-spit-in-the-general-direction-of-emotional-continuity thing.
(And I know plenty of other people have tossed some in as well, but most of those are really stuff that was either (a) explained in the episode if you look hard enough (b) left to the viewer as a gap-filling exercise, which as long as the gaps aren't insurmountable is really very common and acceptable in fiction. You're assumed to be part of the story, here. The author HAS to TRUST you a little bit. Anyway.)
If being thrown back to 1969 with the Doctor and Martha sucked all the present-day life out of Billy, and he lived an entire life until dying in 2007, why didn't the same thing happen to our two heroes?! The Doctor has plenty of years to go, I guess, but wouldn't Martha be a sixty-year-old woman as well? You could even come up with some idea whereby they could just hide in the TARDIS, which no longer had a motor but possibly was still "immune to time" in some way, BUT they do not HAVE the TARDIS. The TARDIS is in 2007.
Dammit, and suspension of disbelief worked SO well for the other things. The paradox of time travel, that's a common one. Peripheral vision -- that takes care of a lot of difficulties. But Steven! Steven Moffat! Did you not think of this?!
I suppose if you think about it in a circular way, as they did in "The Parting of the Ways," you get the idea that everything IS happening at the same "TIME" as far as you perceive it, which means that Martha is a 60-year-old woman in 2007 just as she is a twenty-year-old still in 1969. Which means that when the TARDIS got back to 1969 (and the Doctor and Martha) twenty-year-old Martha jumped back in and the rest of her history in that timeline was erased.
Whoa.
Psychadelic.
It also helps if you've seen the Back to the Future trilogy.
And that doesn't really explain why Old Doctor and Old Martha couldn't just find Sally Sparrow and be like, "Look, there's this thing going on" -- or why Old Doctor and Old Martha couldn't actually just GO TO THE HOUSE and TAKE THE TARDIS KEY FROM THE WEEPING ANGELS.
Is there a time-traveller-gets-out-of-jail-free card like there was in Army of Ghosts / Doomsday? Well, that wasn't so much a get-out-of-jail-free card as "YOU WILL NOW POWER THE DALEKS SO WE CAN OPEN THE GENESIS ARK AND EXTEEEERMINATE" but I'm just digressing now.
You see, as much as we beg, this is why nobody does episodes that hardcore play with the space-time continuum. It's just boggling. We could all stand in a circle around Steven Moffat and just shout questions until he cried, but that wouldn't be very much fun. He's a good guy. Except for that whole I-spit-in-the-general-direction-of-emotional-continuity thing.