Keep in mind that those posts were made within about a month of Turn Left's first broadcast. Not that they've all necessarily changed their mind, Turn Left's great, but it was dripping with new car smell when this thread started.

Personally, although I think Blink is great, the reason I find Turn Left a slightly more rewarding experience is probably due to the characters rather than the scripts. I think both scripts are high quality, mind. By that stage in the series, I was heavily invested in Donna and Wilf as characters and just thought the story was brilliantly acted. (Said before on this forum, I think Tate's performance in this is my favourite by any companian in the programme's history.) Sally Sparrow was a good character as a one off, though.

Take that and party, mboon.

I shall...but no giant plastic beetles are invited!

I see. Sizist, Entomphobic and, um, Autonophobic, eh. Shame on you.

I've never sat down and worked out which episode was my favourite in the whole of Who, mainly because it does depend on my mood that particular day.
But..
Blink is probably in my top 5 and in my opinion sits well in the company of Genesis of the Daleks, Spearhead from space, The Daemons et al.
It really benefitted from being "Doctor lite" as it gave Carey Mulligan a chance to give a luminous performance as Sally Sparrow. The rest of the cast was also of the same high standard and had room to 'breathe' as the Doctor wasn't taking all the air in the room.
The script was witty, and built well to a satisfying conclusion.
It's interesting that the show had "Blink", one of my favourite episodes of all time and yet in the same era also had "Fear her" one of my least favourite..

That is true but he was missing from certain episodes during the course of those stories. In The Celestial Toymaker he was missing for two whole episodes and only part of the other two, and The Massacre he was written out almost completely for plot purposes so he has been missing for long periods before.

As for Blink, it was a massive improvement on the awful Love and Monsters and showed if you can tell a good story you can get away with your lead character having a reduced role.

I loved the 'timey wimey' aspect of it and unlike some people I loved Sally Sparrow and it's a shame she never got to be a full companion.

Ha! Ha! Ha! I like that!

But also keep in mind that there are people who have posted in the last day or so citing turn left as better (examples below) so don't assume every post preferring turn left is old and biased, it's just that some people do prefer it. They are both great episodes though .

Donna and Wilf are alright in Turn Left. For the most part it was nice to see Donna not once resort to any screeching comedy moments as she was always better when she didn't and Wilf played the terribly sympathetic doe eyed old chap as well as he always did. Oh and the Italian guy was very good if not a little unchallenging in his portrayal. But the rest of the acting is beyond appalling and it features some of the worst 'extras' to have been ever given dialogue in an episode whether Classic or New. I can't find a clip but the comedy 'simple minded menial working superstitious peasant' character would be offensive if it wasn't so hilariously rubbish. Even Hammer would have asked for a few retakes if one of their 'scared villagers' in a Dracula film had given such a poor reading. I've detailed my other issues with this episode before so won't rehash but why anyone rates this episode so highly is baffling to me.

Its not 'Fear Her' bad as its mostly well written and is full of pleasing fan service and throwbacks. Its just that its essentially B-movie quality but takes itself so terribly seriously. Which is unusual for an RTD script. Utterly humorless from start to finish which wouldn't be a problem if it was truly high art but it just isn't. Aims for big serious gravitas and misses by a country mile.

The scene where the dead doctors hand conveniently slips out from under the sheet and he lets go of the sonic ( which he's been clutching with an iron grip despite being drowned and decides to drop at the precise moment Donna spots him? Ok then) sums it up.

It looks like "Turn Left," could do with a similar thread to this! Is it classic or tosh?

Personally, I'm surprised as to how well received it is. Yes, it is probably Tate's best performance in the show and who doesn't love Wilf, so its always great to see him. But for me the only really stand-out moment was Donna's "Bad Wolf," reveal at the very end, which just had me wetting my fanboy pants!

For me, one of its biggest problems is how much of an impact the space-Titanic crashing into London had. Yes, a spaceship decimating London would have such an impact, but seeing as I absolutely detested the utter garbage that was the space-Titanic and everything associated with its stupidity, that kinda ruined any attempt at me feeling this devastated UK was a real and dramatic place. Its like trying to make me emotionally invested in a situation where the UK was brought to its knees because a giant haddock fell out of the sky and squashed the government. I just can't take it seriously!

Indeed. Not only does it have a massively dramatic impact but it apparently drives Britain towards creating what are strongly implied to be concentration camps. Oh please! I'm sure this seemed a great idea at the time of writing to add some extra darkness and gravitas to a crap episode but with hindsight its almost offensively stupid and sticks out like a sore thumb. Rather bad taste. I'm all for a bit of dark unpleasant reality in Doctor Who but if you're going to do it then do it well. Not one bit of that storyline has even the slightest ring of truth about it. Its utterly ludicrous. The whole things so lazily simplistic its almost insulting.

Couple that with the haunting version of the Doctors theme, yes very atmospheric and chilling.

Blink, overrated, just a bit probably.
Modern masterpiece? Probably, it is an excellent episode, no doubt about that, but there have been many excellent episodes that have been more excellenter........



But as with all Steven Moffat's RTD era episodes it is hard to watch them without seeing the many thing that were later on regurgitated and repackaged for his own era that always leaves me with the feeling 'Did it better then'

Belatedly replying to this. Great episode, wouldn't call it a masterpiece but I really loved it.

Oh, totally! I completely agree, I said the same myself, "Not that they've all necessarily changed their mind." I might even pick Turn Left myself, not really decided yet, I'm just saying TL's probably a bit overrepresented in this particular thread.

I also think Blink had a pretty convincing relationship story for Modern Who.

Sally Sparrow fighting against the typical role for a female character to just fall in love with some hero or even anti-hero type. Yes, to have a bit of a flirt with the detective which was great stuff to watch, that was never meant to be anything serious in her life just a bit of fun!

The Doctor (or lack of Doctor) effectively put a block on her life though, stopping her move on with her life and just appreciate the company or admit to her feelings for that video shop guy. She basically sets up shop with him, but like he says her obsession got in the way "other things". A character theme revisited with Amy/Amelia Pond to whom Rory was pretty much invisible to her in that way, all her early life because she cold only think about the Doctor whom she met a s a child. The Doctor had to correct this when he came back and met her as an adult and again when he later realised they were drifting apart (asylum of the Daleks)

Waffle over.

I personally love that scene. It would have been one thing to say the doctor is dead, but it was so dramatic in my opinion to have someone saying that and at the same time seeing his cold, lifeless hand drop down, making gravity dislodge the screwdriver from the hand that had obviously been clutching it tightly as he went to his death, perhaps still hoping that he could still use it to save himself, whatever was happening at the second of his demise. For me it's one of those things that showcase RTD's ability to evoke emotion.

Suppose you can look back on it and say the whole way it happened at the exact time that donna (and then shortly after rose) were nearby is a bit convienient and coincidental, but at the first time of watching it was just like 'woah, the doctor is dead'. It was such a shocking thing to see, despite the fact you knew he wasn't 'dead,dead' (as in wouldn't be by the end of the ep)

well yes as a visual it worked and if I didn't hate the episode I wouldn't mind it but when the rest of it doesn't grab you then its easier to start nit picking.

Such as Rivers dive into the Tardis- I loved that episode so much that even such a ludicrous moment worked for me. If I didn't like the rest then that would stand out as more annoying.

I know what you mean. If an episode dosen't grab you it is easy to write the whole thing off as trash.

I personally really liked the fact that the threat was really quite a laughable one. It was wholly and original and different - showing that not every threat will come in the form of calculating supervillains and razor-sharp teeth. I think it was a nice and rather uplifting sort of episode, which in light of the back end of Series 3 and Voyage of the Damned was sorely needed. Plus I think the Adipose are cute as hell

__

As for Blink it's such a unique episode of Doctor Who, cited for its excellence but not actually featuring The Doctor (or Martha) very much at all. It was undeniably well written, the characters were superb and the Weeping Angels were a novel concept. It was nice to finally get a 'haunted house' kind of story...we hadn't really had one at that point. It deserves a lot of the praise it gets, and is definitely one to remember (and so in essence a 'classic') - we've had a selection of episodes that are either Doctor or companion-lite and they're all very difficult to compare as they're very different from each other.

I don't think that Blink is without fault though. Above all else the episode is quite reliant on the scares and jumps of the angels themselves - it doesn't impress as much with repeated viewings, not that it is disposable or anything like that. I do also think the ending could have been dealt with better - just handing over the folder of information to the Doctor leaves a lot of room for error in the timey-wimey aspect of the story and I think it was a bit of a preview of the greater issues I'd have with timey-wimey further down the line in Series 6 and 7. There's a handful of other small points the episode struggles to address such as an explanation for the limitations of the Angels quantum-locking - does it still come into effect if a spider looks at them, for example? A few unanswered concepts that though relatively small, do leave a potential plot point the episode could have picked up on along the way.

Blink is brilliant. It doesn't make my top five, but it sits up there as an episode I'd probably mention as a 'great'.

I just had a thought. A silly one, mind, but one that made me smile.

The Atraxi must be the Weeping Angels biggest nemesis. I giant eyeball with no eyelids! That's got to be the Angels' worst nightmare!

I thought Blink was amazing, but I always thought they missed a trick by not filming the story from the other side, showing what the Doctor did whilst stuck in 1969 whilst the TARDIS was awol, or how he came to be running down the street where Sally meets him and gives him the DVD script.

I've never really liked it as a Doctor Whoo episode. It's ok as a sci-fi programme, but it's the most 'lite' of the Doctor-lite episodes (I don't count his pieces to camera). It's one of the episodes I rewatch the least.

Off the top of my head, even without counting the 'to camera' scenes the doctor features in blink an equal amount as love and monsters. In blink there's a scene in the middle where the policeman billy shipton gets transported to the 60's with the doctor in it, and another at the end where sally sparrow gives him the file. Similarly, in love and monsters there is a silly alien chase scene with the doctor and rose at the start and then a scene with them at the end, so about equal really, although I personally would count those 'to camera' scenes in blink as they do feature the doctor, either I wouldn't say it's the most doctor lite. In fact turn left has two doctor scenes as well, so I'd say all three are about equally matched.

It was a good episode one thing though. Sally is upset to lose both Kathy and Billy who are aged to death by the weeping angels. However she later goes into buissness with and maybe even starts a relationship with Kathys brother Lawrence. How could he not wonder where his sister has gone ?. Sally gave a brief mesage from Kathy that she loved him that was it. How could she keep it a secret from him ?. " Really sorry but your sister got beamed back to the 1920s by the same angels who nearly killed us, she met a nice man they got married and had 3 kids but she died of old age in the 80s your great nephew gave me the information about her and I found her grave".