Doctor Who: Don't Blink

 I have come to admire about the Doctor Who show has been their creative ability to make some of the most brilliantly subtle characters with the budget they have. One of my favorite episodes from the third season is called Blink. This episode I admire on few different levels.

For one this episode barely features either The Doctor or his companion, but rather focuses on the lives of the everyday people that may occasionally find themselves sucked into his world of aliens and monsters. This style of storytelling I'm sure has been done done in one of the previous seasons of Doctor Who. But what makes this one stand out is how the Doctor is remains in background through a series of DVDs that give the present day protagonist the instructions on how to deal with enemies for the episode.

The Full Speech on DVD

But the main thing that I enjoyed about this episode were the Weeping Angels that played the antagonists for the episode. The Weeping Angels are a race of extremely fast aliens that can only move when you're not looking at them. When you do they become frozen in their statute positions as part of a genetic defense mechanism. What makes these angels so terrifying is that whenever you blink at one of them they are able to move closer to you.

At first I thought the Angels were statutes that the people in production design had created in a variety of posses but I later discovered that they were actually done by actresses. From what I've gathered the make up department made a series of casts on the actresses faces in an array of facial posses: neutral, shock and feral. Afterwards after getting into their stone like costumes, all the parts of their skin that weren't covered already were painted over the various shades of stone grey.

I've come to think of these Angels to be almost like the Xenomorph Aliens from the 1986 Ridley Scott film. The reason I say this is because both of these creatures blend perfectly into the background.

Not sure if there were any in this particular shot
But a lot of them did tend to hide like this

Little changes in expression to keep on your toes.

Doctor Who

I think it's no secret that one of my favorite shows of all time is Doctor Who. I love the story, the actors, the writes, and even the hard artists behind it because I believe that special effects isn't just about what you can do in Adobe After Effects. It's about the costume artists and the make up designers who sculpt these ideas from scratch and then the motion graphic effects get added afterwards. What is even more amazing is that you can watch how they do it through the show Doctor Who Confidential. I've never encountered a show like this. It airs immediately after every new episode. You can watch what they do to the show and how they do it and this isn't something you can get all of the time.

My favorite part of the special effects in Doctor Who is how real it seems. These people put so much work and time into every little detail just get make people believe that's real, but isn't that the point of shows similar to Doctor Who? Shows like Being Human, Misfits, Primeval (Thought not as likely). Simply because of that, I'm really impressed. (And incase anyone was wondering, the company Doctor Who uses for their special effects is called The Mill, I don't know why I know this, but I do). Everyone should check this show out, it's definitely worth it.