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Family, friendship and loss are recurrent themes of latterday Doctor Who. Blink was suffused with them, but managed to be much less mawkish than many of the previous efforts. Steven Moffat has a knack for writing believable relationships, whether between friends, between brother and sister (the Kathy/Sally/Larry interaction in the flat at the start of the episode was superbly economical but set up so much for the rest of the story) or between the Doctor and his companion - it's absolutely appropriate that the Doctor would send Martha to get a job to support him, confirming that he's still a would-be Edwardian gentleman scientist-adventurer beneath the estuary glibness.
The casting of Kathy's grandson was surely intended to add a frisson of eerieness for thirtysomething viewers. There is something not-quite-familiar about him, a feeling that Sally must have... and then one sees the name of Richard Cant in the cast list and realises that the actor is the son of someone who had an influence on my childhood comparable to Eric Thompson, Oliver Postgate and Tom Baker. (How many other acting dynasties have been represented in two generations in Doctor Who? I can think of the Troughtons and the Watlings at the moment.) There's something of a disdain for the historical past that sits oddly with the depiction of 'Hull' as open fields; perhaps it was thought returning to St Fagan's for a period scene straight after Human Nature/The Family of Blood would have stretched audience credulity.
It wasn't until I watched Doctor Who Confidential that I realised that the Weeping Angels weren't props, but were played by actors; who would have thought that some of the most effective supporting performances in this series would come from actors who had to remain absolutely still?
There were a few neat foreshadowings here; Kathy's northern accent and idea that Sparrow and Nightingale could be a series on ITV, in the context of Doctor Who's assertive modernity and BBC-ness, perhaps makes her look old-fashioned. Later on, the Doctor says that the power of the Weeping Angels, once they had consumed the TARDIS, could turn off the sun; and as Sally and Larry try to enter the TARDIS, the Angel manages to interrupt the light. Moving laterally, Banto is the smaller of this week's nods to interstitial Doctor Who, as Banto Zame was a character in a Big Finish CD co-created by Clayton Hickman, editor of the book in which Sally Sparrow herself first appeared.
This still didn't have quite the effect on me which the previous story had - I found HN/FoB more disturbing - but it was another welcome change of tone, and is competing with Gridlock to be my second favourite episode. Next week we are promised one of the turning points of Doctor Who's mythology, and (pleasing many of those reading) the return of Captain Jack.
The casting of Kathy's grandson was surely intended to add a frisson of eerieness for thirtysomething viewers. There is something not-quite-familiar about him, a feeling that Sally must have... and then one sees the name of Richard Cant in the cast list and realises that the actor is the son of someone who had an influence on my childhood comparable to Eric Thompson, Oliver Postgate and Tom Baker. (How many other acting dynasties have been represented in two generations in Doctor Who? I can think of the Troughtons and the Watlings at the moment.) There's something of a disdain for the historical past that sits oddly with the depiction of 'Hull' as open fields; perhaps it was thought returning to St Fagan's for a period scene straight after Human Nature/The Family of Blood would have stretched audience credulity.
It wasn't until I watched Doctor Who Confidential that I realised that the Weeping Angels weren't props, but were played by actors; who would have thought that some of the most effective supporting performances in this series would come from actors who had to remain absolutely still?
There were a few neat foreshadowings here; Kathy's northern accent and idea that Sparrow and Nightingale could be a series on ITV, in the context of Doctor Who's assertive modernity and BBC-ness, perhaps makes her look old-fashioned. Later on, the Doctor says that the power of the Weeping Angels, once they had consumed the TARDIS, could turn off the sun; and as Sally and Larry try to enter the TARDIS, the Angel manages to interrupt the light. Moving laterally, Banto is the smaller of this week's nods to interstitial Doctor Who, as Banto Zame was a character in a Big Finish CD co-created by Clayton Hickman, editor of the book in which Sally Sparrow herself first appeared.
This still didn't have quite the effect on me which the previous story had - I found HN/FoB more disturbing - but it was another welcome change of tone, and is competing with Gridlock to be my second favourite episode. Next week we are promised one of the turning points of Doctor Who's mythology, and (pleasing many of those reading) the return of Captain Jack.
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