Doctor Who Fans Need To Stop Doing One Thing
One of the few nerd corners of pop culture my tastes prove frustratingly resistant to is the one inhabiting BBC‘s iconic time-hopping Doctor. At the urging of good friends I watched two full seasons of the Doctor Who revival, but failed to become a fan. Because of this experience, I want to urge all Whovians everywhere to rethink telling potential recruits what I was told, and what I see or hear every invested Whovian who has crossed my path tell every interested potential fan: stop telling those uninitiated Doctor Who fans to start with the episode “Blink.”
Doctor Who fans need to stop recommending “Blink” as the entry point for the uninitiated.
I’m not saying you should tell them to skip “Blink” — I’m saying stop telling them, “Well if you want to know why Doctor Who is awesome, just go watch ‘Blink.'” It is a response that seems as predictable as an old school Star Wars fan naming The Empire Strikes Back as their favorite movie, or a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan saying their favorite character is Garak, and their favorite episode is “In the Pale Moonlight.
I’m not saying that “Blink” isn’t a great episode, by the way. In fact, of every episode I watched when I gave Doctor Who its shot, “Blink” was without a doubt the most impressive hour of television I experienced.
I’m clearly not alone. Not only can I testify to the praise I’ve heard and read for it online and in person from Doctor Who fans, but on IMDb “Blink” has the highest user rating, 9.8, of any episode in the series.
Which is exactly why Doctor Who fans need to stop telling their recruit hopefuls to start with “Blink.”
“Blink” is a fantastic, Doctor-lite episode of the series. It’s set in 2007 — the same year the episode was released — but The Doctor (David Tennant) has been stranded in 1969. The heroics of the episode are instead chiefly in the hands of Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan) and Larry Nightingale (Finlay Roberston), who are forced to face some of the most terrifying bad guys to ever show up on a TV screen, the Weeping Angels.
It was like asking someone who knew nothing about Marvel, Thor, or the rules about Thor’s hammer to get excited about Steve Rogers being able to use Mjolnir in Avengers: Endgame. Why would they care?
Moving only when their victims’ eyes are closed–including when they blink–the Weeping Angels are the villains who stranded The Doctor and who are now trying to take over his TARDIS. Sally and Larry are forced to face the bad guys with nothing but clues sent from The Doctor in things like DVD Easter eggs or writing behind wallpaper.
No other episode of Doctor Who is quite like “Blink,” which is why it’s a bad idea to suggest it as an introduction to the series. If you want to recruit someone to a fandom, you give them an idea of what the subject of the fandom is like, not what it’s almost never like. Give them a chapter of Doctor Who that is more or less what you expect from most solid episodes.
When I told another friend that Doctor Who had failed to win me over in spite of the genius of “Blink,” she insisted I watch “The Doctor’s Wife” before I give up. I watched it, and could not for a second figure out why she suggested it.
Not only are most episodes of Doctor Who nothing like “Blink,” most are not as good as it. That’s not me trashing the show; the “best” episode of any series will be better than most, otherwise what’s the point of calling it “best?”
Which means if a potential new Doctor Who fan watches “Blink” first, like I was convinced to do, it’s all downhill from there.
If you want to turn someone on to your fandom, you need to remember that–as much as you may want them to–they are not going to be able to see it through your eyes. They are going to see it through the eyes of someone with zero emotional investment in the stories, which is miles and miles away from you.
When I told another friend that Doctor Who had failed to win me over in spite of the genius of “Blink,” she insisted I watch “The Doctor’s Wife” before I give up. I watched it, and could not for a second figure out why she suggested it.
The big moment of the episode comes when, for the very first time, The Doctor (Matt Smith this time) is able to speak to the TARDIS. Since I was not an invested fan, it didn’t matter. It was like asking someone who knew nothing about Marvel, Thor, or the rules about Thor’s hammer to get excited about Steve Rogers being able to use Mjolnir in Avengers: Endgame. Why would they care?
I can also say, with a good deal of experience, another thing Doctor Who fans should stop doing, along with the “Blink” recommendation, is insisting that if you aren’t into the show, it means you didn’t give it a chance. Most fans will tell me that, in spite of sitting through two seasons of the thing, I couldn’t have possibly given it a fair chance because I didn’t watch every. Single. Doctor.
Dude. I don’t care if your favorite Time Lord is recast more often than Spider-Man and regenerates more often than Wolverine’s knuckle skin. If I watch two seasons of a show, I gave it a fair chance.
