Another Shining Gem of Outstanding Brilliance

Research. There’s a good word and one no writer should be without. For any writer, the greatest excuse for procrastination has to be that it was all in the name of research. I’ll redirect your memories back to the first season of Spaced in which Daisy Steiner passes off her inactivity as research into the psyche of the unemployed - vital research for an article which she had planned to write. Writers have as many great ideas as they have means of wasting time.

So, in order to justify watching episode after episode of Doctor Who, I’ll impose a retrospective mission upon my past self. I wasn’t just wasting time - not me! I was actually trying to discover, for YOU, dear reader, which episode was the best one.

And I found it, by God!

If you’ve never watched Doctor Who, I’ll bet that it was for one or all of the following reasons:

- It’s childish.
- It’s silly.
- It’s low-budget, poorly-plotted, two-dimensional pap.
- It’s another excuse to sell more lunch boxes and pencil cases.
- It’s hard to get emotionally involved when you know that any potentially fatal situation can be escaped by adjusting the settings on the Sonic Screwdriver.
- The TARDIS’ capacity for all-encompassing salvation is equally unbelievable.

Let’s face it, with all of his toys, the Doctor is pretty much invincible. Even if he does happen to die, he just morphs into somebody else and carries on like nothing happened, thereby making the franchise itself endless.

Remember Doom? Remember how much of the appeal was lost once God Mode was activated?

Without the possibility of death, life has no meaning.

That said, I’ve been told that a Time Lord can undergo a maximum of 13 regenerations.

Is that true?

Anyone?

I’m straying from the point, however.

My point is that the best episode of Doctor Who, since it’s revival in 2005, has to be ‘Blink’, the tenth episode of the third series and the only one in the series written by Steve Moffat, winning him a Hugo and a couple of BAFTAs.

It’s my firmly-held belief that even the greatest critic of the show would find this episode compelling, frightening and very, very clever.

To my limited knowledge, no other episode has used the possibilities of time travel to their full potential in the way that Blink does.

The story revolves around Sally Sparrow who must defeat four statues. It doesn’t sound that difficult, but these statues are actually the Weeping Angels, a race of quantum-locked humanoids who cease to exist when they are being observed.

According to the Doctor (in this case, played by David Tennant, the best Doctor so far, in my ignorant opinion) they kill in the most humane way possible - by transporting their victim back in time where they are allowed to live to death. Meanwhile, the Weeping Angels feed off of the potential energy in the years that would have otherwise been lived.

You’re safe enough as long as you are looking at them but as soon as you avert your gaze, they’ll be on top of you faster than …well… the blink of an eye. Next thing you know, you’ve landed in 1920, with no hope of return.

That’s beside the point though.

The real genius of this episode is the way in which timelines are manipulated. The first victim is Kathy Nightingale, Sally’s friend, who disappears at the exact moment that the doorbell rings. When Sally answers the door, she finds Kathy’s grandson bearing a letter, written by her decades previously, explaining what had just happened.

To say much more about the story would be to spoil the experience but that is just a taste of how messed up this episode eventually becomes before, inevitably, making perfect sense…in a messed up kind of way. If you’re not already convinced, it’s only because I’m not explaining it properly. I urge all of you Doctorsceptics out there to give it a shot, if you only watch one episode in your lives. If you really hate the Doctor that much, you’ll be glad to hear that he’s virtually absent for the whole 45 minutes.

So, there you have it. Your intrepid researcher has trawled the depths of the TV mire to bring you yet another shining gem of outstanding brilliance.

Don’t thank me.

I’m just doing my duty.