Blink: | ||
 | – | Let's get this out of the way first: I think we all agree that the Weeping Angels are a brilliant creation, but there's a slight problem with the "don't blink" restriction — why can't the Doctor & co just close one eye at a time? That way, the need to blink is sated, but "continuous observation" of the Angels can carry on indefinitely. (OK, it requires a continuous effort, but it's certainly easier than trying not to blink!) Or — an even better idea — put the Angels in a crowded place where you're pretty much guaranteed someone's eyes will be on them at all times. The middle of Piccadilly Circus perhaps? Or, since the Doctor says they freeze when "seen by any other living creature" — sounds like animals would do, or even insects! So why not set up some beehives around the Angels and you'd guarantee they'd have eyes on them at all times — bees don't blink! |
| – | In the very first shot (as Sally climbs over the gate), it's visibly raining. Then in the next couple of shots as she approaches and enters the house, the rain seems to have instantly stopped! |
| – | For a few moments, Sally stands there pondering the "duck now" message written on the wall, then suddenly she gasps and ducks. But the rock hadn't made any sound at this stage (it breaks the window, but not until an instant after she gasps), and she had her back to the Angel, so couldn't have seen the rock coming — so why did she gasp at all? |
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| – | OK, so we're meant to assume it's the Angel in the garden who throws a rock at Sally (presumably in an attempt to render her unconscious & do a "time zap" on her)... so what's that same Angel doing (or indeed the other Angels in the house) while Sally is wandering around the house casually snapping photos and ripping wallpaper? Why not try again to "get" her? Sally doesn't know the Angels are a threat at this stage in the episode (i.e. she isn't "observing" them), surely making it very easy for the stone meanies to do their thing? |
| – | Why are the Angels hanging around in that deserted house anyway? No wonder they're so hungry! Yes, if they positioned themselves in a more populated area, they'd have more difficulty moving about during the day... but at night, they'd have whole streets of sleeping 'non-observers' ripe for the picking! |
| – | What's that chandelier doing on the floor of the abandoned house? Most of it is wrapped in plastic, so we can't see the whole thing, but the top part poking out is remarkably new & shiny-looking, considering the state of the rest of the house — not a cobweb or speck of dust to be seen! Not only that, ask yourself why a nice-looking (and probably expensive) chandelier in good condition wasn't cleared out along with the rest of the furniture when the house was abandoned (or indeed why nobody had pinched it in the years following). |
| – | So Sally and Kathy have clearly been close friends for some time — close enough for Sally to have a key to Kathy's flat, for example. But Sally's never met Kathy's brother Larry before? |
| – | When Sally is sitting in the "Cappuccino!" shop reading the letter from Kathy, the words spoken by "Kathy" in voice-over don't quite match the words we see on-screen written in the letter. For example: "you would have liked Ben — he was the very first person I met in 1920" (spoken) vs. "you would have liked Ben — I wish you could have met him" (letter). |
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| – | Ignoring their size, we're clearly meant to assume the Angels followed Sally all the way from the abandoned house to the police station. (Which meant they would have followed her via the DVD shop too) But how exactly did they manage that? By crouching behind pillarboxes and posing nonchalantly in parks? And as we see in a minute, they even manage to get into the police garage with no trouble. That's a neat trick! I know a few criminals who'd be interested to find out it's that easy to sneak into a police impound unobserved... |
| – | When Billy shows Sally the "impounded" TARDIS, just as he says "Can't even get in it", he rattles the door handle to demonstrate. But watch carefully: When he shakes the handle we hear a rattling noise as if the door is shaking, but in fact the door stays rock solid and doesn't move a millimetre! |
| – | After Sally leaves the garage and Billy turns around to see a load of statues that weren't there a few seconds ago, isn't his reaction way too understated? He acts mildly mystified and a bit curious — whereas for most people, being suddenly subjected to strong evidence of either your own madness or something supernatural, wouldn't at least a gasp of astonishment be in order? Rub your eyes in disbelief? Stand there in shock for a while? Maybe even flee in terror?
[Or am I just a big girl's blouse? Billy's a police officer after all: perhaps he's made of sterner stuff!] |
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| – | When Sally realises the 17 DVDs are hers and asks Larry to come and meet her with a portable DVD player, why in God's name does she suggest meeting in the abandoned house (in the middle of the night, to boot!) when she has a pretty good idea of the danger involved, i.e. seeing her friend Kathy disappear from the very same house...! Why not meet Larry somewhere safer? To make matters worse, then they spend ages faffing around "chatting" with the Doctor on DVD while the Angels wait politely to attack. |
| – | Larry transcribes Sally's half of the conversation with the Doctor, that much is obvious. But notice that he doesn't start transcribing until he figures out that he should be doing so — i.e. he misses at least a minute at the beginning of the conversation. Then he stops transcribing when Sally tells him to look at the Angel outside the window, but the DVD easter egg continues for another minute until the Doctor proclaims that's where the transcript stops. How did the missing bits of the transcript get down on paper? (And not just the words, but the timing too, so the Doctor would know how long to pause between Sally's lines) |
| – | Why doesn't Larry figure out the meaning of the DVD easter egg sooner? It makes no sense to us viewers when we first see it in the episode, because we only see random snippets — but when we see the whole thing on DVD (as Larry and his Internet buddies must have done) it's a lot easier to understand, even without Sally's side of the conversation! For example, the Doctor clearly explains that he's a time traveller stuck in the past, and then proceeds to give a very thorough description of the Angels... etc etc! |
| – | Maybe it's just me, but soon as they work out that the Angels are a danger, why does nobody think to get hold of a ruddy big sledgehammer and knock the heads off all the statues — just to be on the safe side? As the Doctor says, "You can't kill a stone"... but you can smash a statue to pieces, can't you?
[Or as the US Navy SEALs say: "There are few things in life that cannot be overcome with judicious use of high explosives!"] |
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[OK, you could argue Larry & Sally blinked in the meantime, but the rest of the Angel doesn't appear to have moved between shots, so why would it only have made such a tiny movement?] |
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| – | Never mind the discontinuity, there are also some gaps in logic in this scene. Setting aside the question of why exactly Sally leaves Larry on his own while going to try the doors (she was in a panic, after all), the bigger gaffe is when she finds both the back and front doors are locked. Instead of trying to break the doors open (the back door in particular looks a pretty flimsy affair), or even trying to slip out through a window, what does she suggest? Retreat further into the bowels of the dangerous house by going down to the cellar! Of course! Why didn't I think of that? |
| – | So obviously we're meant to assume the Angels transported the TARDIS from the police garage to the basement of the house. But how on earth could they have done this without being spotted? Especially since it was daylight when they set off from the garage!
[Whatever about a solitary angel statue being an unremarkable sight, 4 angels carrying a 1950s police box would be pretty remarkable! Nobody would be able to take their eyes off a spectacle like that!] |
| – | Speaking of the Angels and the TARDIS, aside from the question of how the Angels got a key to the TARDIS in the first place, how did they not have time to use the key to get into the TARDIS before the police came and carted it off? Failing that, why didn't they nick the TARDIS from the impound before Sally took the key? They seemed to have no problem tracking Sally around the city, so why couldn't they have followed the police in the same way? |
| – | OK, the idea of how to trap the Angels at the end is a good one (force them to look at each other) and Larry proclaims "they're never going to move again!" — but he has a short memory: they were all freely moving about in the dark a few minutes ago while looking in each other's direction (i.e. when the lightbulb blinked out) — so what's to stop them escaping next time when the light goes out? Lightbulbs don't last forever, you know! |
| – | Speaking of lightbulbs, this would be a good time to ask why a long-abandoned (and condemned) building still has a working electricity supply...! |