Sally Sparrow


 * For Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who Annual 2006, see separate entry.

Sally Sparrow indirectly assisted the Doctor, and encountered the Weeping Angels.

Profile
Sally was a photographer from London, whose hobby led her to Wester Drumlins one night. While taking photographs, she found strange messages addressed to her left by someone called the Doctor. She went to her close friend, Kathy Nightingale, for advice; this led her to meet Kathy's brother Larry Nightingale for the first time. On a second visit to the house (with Kathy this time), Sally briefly met Malcolm Wainwright, who claimed to be Kathy's grandson. Baffled by this, Sally went to ask Kathy for an explanation, only to find that she had vanished from the area. Malcolm gave Sally a packet of letters and photographs from his grandmother. Sally read the letter, in which Kathy asked Sally to tell her brother Larry that Kathy loves him. Sally went to the bookstore where Larry works, and talked to him. She told Larry that his sister had gone on a trip when she had been transported to Hull in 1920 by the Weeping Angels. She saw a mysterious man on a TV screen that seemed to be replying to what she said. Larry explained that this man is on seventeen completely unrelated DVDs, and gives Sally a list of the DVDs.

Sally also met Billy Shipton, a police officer, and he asked her out. Billy was sent by the Weeping Angels back to 1969 and given instructions from the Doctor to tell Sally an important bit of information: 'look at the list'. She sat with him on his last night of life, in a hospital.

Afterward, Sally looked at the list of seventeen DVDs, and realized their connection: they are all seventeen DVDs that she owns. She realized the messages on the DVDs were meant for her. She called Larry and told him to meet her at Wester Drumlins. They found the Weeping Angels and are warned by the Doctor not to blink, because the Angels move when they are not seen. On one of the DVDs, the Doctor told Sally about the Weeping Angels. Sally and Larry found and trapped the Weeping Angels and returned the TARDIS to the Doctor and Martha.


 * Originally, the episode was to include a caption indicating that a year had passed between the defeat of the Angels and later events, but this was not included in the broadcast or DVD release. (CORRECTION: A caption titled, "One Year Later" *does* appear on the Region 2 DVD for this episode, so a year has indeed passed between these events.)

Afterwards, Sally and Larry took over the video store Larry had been working for, and converted it into a used book-and-DVD store. While Larry wanted to pursue a relationship, Sally remained distant as she compiled detailed notes of her experience, knowing that one day she would meet the Doctor. Some time later, she met the Doctor and Martha in person and delivered her important package of information. Only then did she finally allow herself to pursue a relationship with Larry. (DW: Blink)

Behind the scenes
Blink writer Steven Moffat had originally created the character of Sally Sparrow for his short story What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who Annual 2006. This Ninth Doctor adventure (unusually sans Rose Tyler) depicted Sally as a young girl who communicates with the Doctor via pre-recorded messages, much as in Blink. The implied setting of the first story and Sally Sparrow's age in it, as well as the similarity between the stories, make it hard to reconcile the characters as the same (unless multiverses or alternate timelines are taken into account). In the short story, Sally grows up to become a spy.

Sally serves a similar function to Marc Cory in DW: Mission to the Unknown and Elton Pope in DW: Love & Monsters, in that she is a one-off guest character who serves as the protagonist of the story. She is sometimes considered a companion in that, unlike Cory and Pope, she finds herself working for the Doctor in an indirect way, and unlike the other examples also gets to (briefly) experience the TARDIS.