Billy Shipton
Detective Inspector Billy Shipton was a police detective working in London during the early 21st century, who after being sent back in time by a Weeping Angel became involved in the video production industry in the late 20th century.
Biography
Investigations
Stationed in London, Shipton began investigating the disappearance of multiple individuals near an abandoned estate called Wester Drumlins. Eventually, anyone who reported someone missing in the vicinity would be automatically referred to Shipton. During Shipton's investigations, numerous automobiles were impounded, their occupants missing. Dubbed the "Wester Drumlins Collection", the impounded vehicles even included the Doctor's TARDIS, which Shipton could identify from its errors in construction was not a real police box, and its Yale lock not being openable. (TV: Blink [+]Loading...["Blink (TV story)"])
Meeting Sally Sparrow
In the 2000s,[nb 1] Shipton's investigations led him into contact with Sally Sparrow, who was herself investigating the disappearance of her friend Kathy Nightingale from Wester Drumlins. Sally and Billy immediately hit it off, with Shipton giving her the nickname "Gorgeous Girl" and convincing her to give him her telephone number, after showing her the "Wester Drumlins Collection." (TV: Blink)
Life in 1969
A few minutes after Sparrow's departure, however, Shipton was touched by the Weeping Angels and sent back in time to 1969 where he was found by the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones and learnt his destiny was to send a message to Sally Sparrow when he eventually had lived his life back to the 2000s. Billy received the knowledge of when he would eventually die. (TV: Blink)
Marriage and Easter egg
In the ensuing decades, Shipton married a woman who was also named Sally, with dark hair, and eventually became involved in the video publishing industry, including, eventually, DVDs. It was through his efforts that a videotaped message from the Doctor eventually ended up as an Easter egg on seventeen different DVD releases, sparking interest on Internet communities to which Sparrow's friend Larry Nightingale belonged. (TV: Blink)
Death
Near the end of his life, Shipton found himself hospitalised not far from where his younger self was working at the police station and meeting Sally for the second time. For Sally only a few minutes had passed from her discovering that Billy had gone missing from the station's parking garage and receiving a phone call from the now-elderly Billy. She joined him in his hospital room, and he gave her the message: "look at the list". Sally stayed with Billy until he died. Soon after, she realised that the "list" in Billy's message was a list of her complete DVD collection, leading her forward into resolving the paradox. (TV: Blink)
Footnotes
- ↑ While Blink itself uncontroversially sets its main setting in 2007 and "twenty minutes to Red Hatching" a year later in 2008—as Kathy Nightingale's letter describes taking "one breath in 2007 and the next in 1920", and the Tenth Doctor's side of his conversation with Sally Sparrow in 1969 happens 38 years before Sally says hers—these are contradicted by heavily conflicting dates in the Redacted audio series later on regarding both Kathy's disappearance and the Red Hatching. In Angels, Abby McPhail identifies 2008 as the year of Kathy's disappearance, which suggests 2009 as the year of the Red Hatching. In Salvation, the Thirteenth Doctor recognises the Red Hatching as the cause of death of Andy Proctor, who was last seen by his daughter Cleo "nearly 20 years" before 2022 according to Recruits.
