You've got to wonder about the team behind the new Doctor Who when, towards the end of the third series, they've already recycled several ideas from series two.
First, they treated us to 42, very nearly a heavily condensed, blow by blow rehash of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit minus the big scary CGI monster. Now we have been presented with Blink, effectively very similar to Love & Monsters in premise and because The Doctor is hardly in it.
Let's look at that part first.
The Doctor isn't in Blink until the final few minutes, apart from his fleeting appearance on TV screens. The Doctor isn't in Love & Monsters until the final couple of minutes apart from fleeting appearances in chase scenes. The reason for this? Are the writers becoming daring, and coming up with interesting stories in which The Doctor can safely become a minor character? Well, in the case of Blink, they could use that excuse, but it's actually down to something far more practical: Scheduling conflicts.
Somehow, they've managed to schedule the filming of series two and three so that David Tennant has to be filming elsewhere while one whole episode is being put together, so he only has time for a brief appearance. Isn't that a bit... sloppy? Especially when the two episodes that he's in so little have so much in common?
A quick breakdown:
Series 2, Love & Monsters
Features the Abzorbaloff, a monster which feeds on life and is after The Doctor because a Time Lord's many lives would make a great meal, and a main character searching for The Doctor. The Doctor, meanwhile, is just going about business as usual, having adventures with Rose, making only fleeting appearances until the end, when he meets the main character. Everyone around the main character starts to fall victim to the Abzorbaloff.
Series 3, Blink
Features 'The Weeping Angels', a group of monsters which feed on life ('potential energy' - they send their victims back in time, then take the energy of what would have been their remaining days in the present... Eh?) which are after the Tardis, as it would make a great meal. The main character, meanwhile, stumbles upon them while photographing a 'haunted house', and happens upon a message written by The Doctor, to her, back in 1969, where he's trapped because of an encounter with The Weeping Angels. Several people around the main character fall victim to the Angels, only to leave her messages to help her on her quest. The Doctor makes fleeting appearances on TV screens until the end, when he meets the main character.
Um. Yeah.
Blink is far better than Love & Monsters, and in so many ways... Not least because it features neither Peter Kay, nor the suggestion of a man having a love life with a sentient paving slab. Blink is cleverly written - the writer adapted a short story he wrote for a Doctor Who annual - while Love & Monsters was a farce. The Abzorbaloff wasn't remotely scary and, aside from being smaller than intended, was an accurate representation of the creature which won the Blue Peter competition. The Weeping Angels, meanwhile, are a cleverly thought out race of creatures, whose premise is designed to scare and unsettle the viewer: While they are being observed, they are stone statues... as soon as you look away or blink, they come to life and move with impossible speed. There was a very clever sequence toward the end of the episode where one of them made a light bulb flicker, meaning they couldn't be seen while it was out, leading to a sequence of flickering images of them approaching the episode's protagonists as they tried to get into the Tardis. They were defeated because they ended up looking at each other.
Even so, I feel somewhat cheated. That it was a great episode in its own right does not make up for the fact that it's the second time series three has rehashed ideas from series two. That said, I'd be perfectly happy (in so many ways) if the series two episode Love & Monsters had never happened. Conversely, given the choice between series two's double bill of The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit versus series three's tired, clichéd and clumsy 42, I'd go for the older offering every time.
You know, I'd quite like to write an episode of Doctor Who one of these days... Hum.
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