The Doctor Diaries III.10c:

“Blink” and you'll miss it

 

As if I haven't written enough about “Blink,” here's one final go. It's such a good episode, it deserves all this attention, I think. I want to touch on one more topic.

You know the saying “Blink and you'll miss it”? Well, as the writers of Doctor Who so often do, they took the concept behind this phrase and literalized it into plot and characters.

In the story, if you blink while looking at a Weeping Angel, you will be taken out of your proper timeline and put into another: wrenched from your life, your loved ones, your possessions, your ambitions, and your work. In Billy's case, his life was put back just so far that he could then see, after opening his eyes from the blink, what he had missed. He was 40 years away, and could glimpse the life he should have had.

In our lives, doesn't think happen? We “blink” and find we've missed something huge.

We've stopped paying attention, and children have grown up and we've missed their childhoods.

We've looked away, and found a marriage or a friendship has died from lack of care.

We've gotten busy, blinked, and suddenly discovered we're too old to have kids, or to go back to school, or to run a marathon, or to learn how to dance, or to climb a mountain.

We blink, and we're on our deathbed, never having repented, though we meant to, we meant to, we meant to change and live a good life and love God and others.

But we blinked.