Sally Sparrow

Sally Sparrow indirectly assisted the Tenth Doctor, and encountered the Weeping Angels.

For Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who Annual 2006, see separate entry.

Biography

Sally was an 18 year old photographer from London. She had an interest in "urban exploration" (the hobby of entering abandoned buildings to take photographs) which led her to explore Wester Drumlins one night. While taking photographs, she found strange messages addressed to her left by someone called the Doctor. She went to her close friend, Kathy Nightingale, for advice; this led her to meet Kathy's brother Larry Nightingale for the first time. On a second visit to the house (with Kathy this time), Sally briefly met Malcolm Wainwright, who claimed to be Kathy's grandson. Baffled, Sally went to ask Kathy for an explanation, only to find that she had vanished. Malcolm gave Sally a packet of letters and photographs from his grandmother. Sally read the letter, in which Kathy asked Sally to tell her brother Larry that Kathy loved him. Sally went to the DVD store where Larry worked, and told him that his sister had gone on a trip when she had been transported to Hull in 1920 by the Weeping Angels. She saw a mysterious man on a TV screen that seemed to reply to what she said. Larry explained that this man was on seventeen completely unrelated DVDs, almost like an "easter egg" and then gave Sally a list of the DVDs.

Sally also met Billy Shipton, a police officer, and he asked her out. Billy was sent by the Weeping Angels back to 1969 and given instructions from the Doctor to tell Sally an important instruction: "Look at the list". She sat with him on his last night of life, in a hospital, as Billy had said that that would be the last day that Sally and he met.

Afterward, Sally looked at the list of seventeen DVDs, and realised their connection: they were all seventeen DVDs that she owned; the messages on the DVDs were meant for her. She called Larry and told him to meet her at Wester Drumlins. They found the Weeping Angels and were warned by the Doctor not to blink, because the Angels moved when they were not seen. On one of the DVDs, the Doctor told Sally about the Weeping Angels. Sally and Larry found and trapped the Weeping Angels and returned the Doctor's TARDIS to the Doctor and Martha Jones.

Over the next year, Sally and Larry took over the video store Larry had been working at and converted it into a used book-and-DVD store. While Larry wanted to pursue a relationship, Sally remained distant as she compiled detailed notes of her experiencer. Some time later, she met the Doctor and Martha in person and delivered her important package of information. Only then did she finally allow herself to pursue a relationship with Larry. (DW: Blink)

For reasons unknown, international broadcasts and DVD releases of the episode omit a "One Year Later" caption prior to the epilogue which is included in the original BBC One broadcast.

Behind the scenes

Blink writer Steven Moffat had originally created the character of Sally Sparrow for his short story What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who Annual 2006. This Ninth Doctor adventure (uniquely sans Rose Tyler) depicted Sally as a young girl who communicates with the Doctor via pre-recorded messages, much as in Blink. The implied setting of the first story and Sally Sparrow's age in it, as well as the similarity between the stories, make it hard to reconcile the characters as the same (unless multiverses or alternate timelines are taken into account). In the short story, Sally grows up to become a spy.
Sally serves a similar function to Marc Cory in DW: Mission to the Unknown and Elton Pope in DW: Love & Monsters, in that she is a one-off guest character who serves as the protagonist of the story. She is sometimes considered a companion in that, unlike Cory and Pope, she finds herself working for the Doctor in an indirect way, and unlike the other examples also gets to (briefly) experience the TARDIS.