{"id":1508,"date":"2017-06-02T08:33:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T08:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=1508"},"modified":"2017-06-02T09:30:53","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T09:30:53","slug":"blink-of-an-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2017\/06\/02\/blink-of-an-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Blink of an eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago, I was in a Broadcasting House studio with Steven Moffat, the cast of his comedy Joking Apart<\/a> and also DVD producer Craig Robins<\/a>. Craig is remarkable: he became a DVD producer, he formed a company and he bought the rights to this sitcom all out of his own pocket and all because he so loves the show.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s Craig, literally invested in his project, and there\u2019s Moffat plus actors Fiona Gillies, Robert Bathurst, Tracie Bennett, Paul Raffield and TV producer Andre Ptaszynski. \"\"<\/p>\n

And me. At this distance I\u2019ve not a clue why I was there: I wrote a booklet for the second season DVD<\/a> and I think I must surely have been there to interview people for it. But all I remember is being a spare pair of hands: it was I who brought people up from BH reception to the studio, for instance.<\/p>\n

I should also say that I remember having a very good time: the commentaries are funny and informative. But of course as with any recording of anything, there is a lot of hanging about. Not just for me doing nothing much, but for the commenters.<\/p>\n

Which is why I\u2019m telling you this now.<\/p>\n

I can remember word for word a thing Steven Moffat said in that studio. I can\u2019t quote him for you because while there isn\u2019t a single syllable that I imagine he\u2019d have a problem with, he didn\u2019t say it to me. I wasn\u2019t even in the room: he was in the studio and at that moment I was in the gallery so I just caught it over an open mic.<\/p>\n

Plus, my head must surely have been focused on interviewing about Joking Apart because this was a Doctor Who comment of no use to me.<\/p>\n

Except it\u2019s a Doctor Who comment that has really stuck with me and which definitely did so because of what happened slightly later. Ten years ago to the month \u2013 9 June 2007 \u2013 the Doctor Who episode Blink aired<\/a>. It’s a one-hour drama that jumps out of the screen and through sheer force of vitality and energy grabs you by the neck. There’s a repeated line in the episode about how you shouldn’t blink, “don’t even blink, blink and you’re dead” and there is not one single pixel of a chance that you ever could because it’s such a compelling tale. <\/p>\n

\"\"If you know the series, you know this episode and there\u2019s a decent chance you think it\u2019s at or near the best thing Doctor Who ever did. If you don\u2019t know the series then no, sorry, you do: this is the story that introduced the Weeping Angels.<\/p>\n

They are genuinely frightening monsters in a series that seems to have to have a new alien baddie every week. Perhaps that constant introduction of new monsters is why I\u2019m usually disinterested in them, including when I write Doctor Who radio dramas for BBC\/Big Finish<\/a>. But I think I\u2019m just automatically more interested in people than, say, tentacles.<\/p>\n

Yet Blink is equally exquisite with its characters. Carey Mulligan stars as Sally Sparrow and she really stars in every sense: for once the guest actor outshines the Doctor. That\u2019s no criticism of the then-Doctor, David Tennant, but rather to how he isn\u2019t in the episode much.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if this is still the case, but ten years ago each season of Doctor Who had to have one episode in which the Doctor doesn\u2019t appear very much at all. It\u2019s specifically so that the actor can be off filming a different Doctor Who episode. As I understand it, this was the sole way to get each season\u2019s 13 episodes made in time.<\/p>\n

Fine, only from a writing and acting perspective, this puts an enormous load on whoever is doing the Doctor-less or Doctor-lite episode. And that\u2019s what Moffat mentioned in the studio.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d delivered the script to Blink and I don\u2019t believe the episode had been filmed yet or at the very least he hadn\u2019t seen it. So there we are, some short while before the episode airs, and I\u2019m hearing Moffat talking about how he\u2019d tried his best with it. The sense was that he thought it would be okay, that the show would make it well, but that it wasn\u2019t going to be great.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the comment has stuck with me. Here\u2019s one of the most successful and doubtlessly one of the busiest writers in British television. Here\u2019s someone who I think has found compelling depths to the Doctor and whose writing can be magical. I don\u2019t know how many episodes he\u2019s written of Doctor Who, I couldn\u2019t begin to add up those plus Joking Apart, Coupling and the rest. But by any measure, Blink is one of his finest moments.<\/p>\n

I saw an interview recently in which he expressed mild bafflement at the praise this episode gets and I don\u2019t know if he was being modest. Equally, when he told the Joking Apart studio that this forthcoming Blink episode wasn\u2019t brilliant, he could\u2019ve been just saying it.<\/p>\n

I believed him at the time, though, and I still do. I\u2019m just not sure why I find that lifting. I think this was a writer doing something great and not fully realising it so if someone that good writing something this delicious can\u2019t see that, well, it\u2019s confirmed that all writers are screaming crazy eejits and we’re in good company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago, I was in a Broadcasting House studio with Steven Moffat, the cast of his comedy Joking Apart … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1058,1052,1060,1053,945,1055,1050,1059,1057,1049,1054,1056,1048,603,1051,180],"class_list":["post-1508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apart","tag-blink","tag-broadcasting-house","tag-carey","tag-commentary","tag-craig","tag-doctor","tag-dvd","tag-joking","tag-moffat","tag-mulligan","tag-robins","tag-steven","tag-studio","tag-who","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-ok","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}