Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Blink: Difference between revisions

*Sometimes they look away from the Angels many times but they don't move.

::In many of these cases, this can be explained by the meta-fictional nature of the Weeping Angels. They cannot move while being observed by any living thing and this includes the audience. An example of this can be seen when Sally is upstairs with the three Angels and blocks our view of one of the Angels, which has moved when we see it again.

::Yes, the Doctor says they move quickly. But so does a cat, after spending 20 minutes sitting motionless watching the fly on the wall before it pounces.

::Plus, until the end, they often had no urgency in sending their victims back.

*The Doctor says that the Weeping Angels become stone whenever they are observed by ANY living thing. This would include other living things like wild mammals and, more importantly, insects. The chance that the Angels would not be observed by ANY living thing, especially when outside within the view of a countless number of insects, with the possible exception of the basement scene, is incredibly slim. This could be used to explain those times that no one, save the audience, is looking at Angels, yet they are turned to stone.

::Nearly all insects do not 'see' in the same manner we do. Many have light-sensory organs, but nothing that suggests they could accurately detect a lifeform which does not (as far as we know) emit infra-red radiation. Also, there are no other animals visible in the areas where the Angels are seen so it could be argued that there weren't any anyway.

::::I think you mean "sapient" here, because things like wild animals are sentient. More importantly, I think at least wild animals, if not insects, probably do count, in order to explain some of the other times the Angels couldn't move (as mentioned elsewhere on this page). Anyway, since even physicists who believe in the "active" version of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics (observation causes collapse of the waveform) can't come up with a good definition of what counts as an "observation," I don't think you can fault Moffat too much for not solving an 80-year-old problem in the script.

*How would catching and touching Sally have helped the Angels at all? It would have sent her back in time with the key where they couldn't have gotten the key and therefore the TARDIS.

::The angels can move faster then a person can blink, this means they could easily catch up to Sally, remove the key from her and send her back in time without ever being seen. It is also possible that since the Angels are described as a race of assasins, that their time travel ability is something seperate to their natural Quantum-locking ability, much like a knife or gun is not a natural part of a human.

*The Doctor said that the Angels are faster than you can believe and could kill you in the blink of an eye. So how was Larry able to get to the cellar without the Angel catching up to him?

:::It's equally possible they were deliberately herding the couple to the basement for an easier "kill", or that they didn't want to risk zapping Sally to the past with the TARDIS key in her hand. Perhaps they wanted to ensure that the door to the TARDIS was opened before zapping.

*Martha makes a comment that she had to start working in a shop to look after the doctor, this has two problems:

:*Why couldn't the Doctor get a job? His mental and physical abilities are beyond that of humans, so it doesn't make sense that he couldn't get one, especially as he is a doctor, a job that at the time (and to this day) is very much in demand.

::The pay you get from working in a shop would be enough to get by on, and to keep your clothes clean.

:::You do realise that lots of people work in shops, pay mortgages, raise children? Shopworkers are not unkempt and grubby when not at work.

*It is highly likely that the easter egg was filmed in 1969 but there were no DVDs in 1969 and video publishing was probably not widely used either.

::The Doctor was able to manufacture a Betamax tape recorder during the Queens coronation ceremony - 50 years before the real technology was developed, using nothing but spare parts in an electronics store. There is nothing stopping the Doctor from building a camera and a basic film reel to store his recording on for later use when real motion cameras were invented. He could then have given it to Billy Shipton would could then have transferred the data onto the 17 DVDs.

*When the Doctor reads the transcript, Sally turns around and sees the shadow of three Weeping Angels moving. But if she is observing part of them they shouldn't be moving''. ''

*They [the characters] look away from the angels many times but they [the angels] don't move. Someone or thing is watching them. Some have proposed, semi-jokingly, that they are reacting to the camera and the viewer observing them.

::This is an excellent (and very elegant) example of the self-referentiality device (widely used in many television shows, movies and books), by which the audience becomes part of the action. The episode deliberately breaks the "fourth wall" between the action and the audience. As a television criticism junkie, I am endlessly tickled by the beauty of this device and the subtlety with which it's used here. Come weigh in on the subject on my blog, at http://bit.ly/4W6rxA!