While exploring an abandoned house called Wester Drumlins, Sally Sparrow is intrigued when she notices some writing hidden behind the peeling wallpaper. Her curiosity turns to bewilderment when she reveals a message left in 1969 by someone called “the Doctor” -- a message addressed directly to her. The puzzle turns deadly serious when Sally's friend, Kathy Nightingale, goes missing in Wester Drumlins after encountering a sinister statue. Stranger still, Kathy's brother, Larry, has been investigating the Doctor after discovering hidden clips of him on several DVDs... all warning of the mysterious Weeping Angels.

With 2005's The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances and 2006's The Girl In The Fireplace, Steven Moffat had quickly established himself as one of Doctor Who's most reliable writers. Executive producer Russell T Davies was eager to secure another Moffat script for Season Twenty-Nine, and proposed a two-part Dalek story set in Depression-era New York. However, Moffat was now serving as the writer and executive producer of the six-episode drama Jekyll, which was due to air in 2007. As a result of his responsibilities to his new programme, he was forced to decline the offer of the Dalek adventure; the assignment would instead go to Helen Raynor, and the result was Daleks In Manhattan / Evolution Of The Daleks. Davies next suggested that Moffat develop a different two-part serial, in which a library in space was menaced by angelic stone statues. This was a concept which they had originally discussed following the completion of The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, but Moffat remained unable to commit to two scripts. The library element would ultimately appear in 2008's Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead.

Undeterred, Davies remained optimistic that he could at least persuade Moffat to write a single episode for the season. He initially hoped that this could be one of the season's early adventures, but a final draft would have been required within the timespan when Moffat was still too busy on Jekyll. Finally, around March 2006, Moffat concluded that he would be able to write a script for the latter part of the Season Twenty-Nine production schedule. In gratitude for Davies' willingness to accommodate his availability, Moffat offered to write the year's “Doctor-lite” episode. This had become a necessary component of the schedule with Season Twenty-Eight, in order to provide time to make a Christmas special alongside the regular thirteen programmes. Two production blocks would run in parallel, one of which would necessarily feature the Doctor and his companion in only minor roles. For 2006, Davies' Love & Monsters had fulfilled this function, and was double-banked with The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.

Steven Moffat's script was based upon a short story he had written for the Doctor Who Annual 2006

To help speed things along, Moffat decided to base his script upon a short story he had written for the Doctor Who Annual 2006, released by Panini Publishing in August 2005. Entitled “What I Did On My Christmas Holidays By Sally Sparrow”, it concerned a twelve-year-old girl who discovered messages addressed to her hidden behind wallpaper, in old photographs, and on a videocassette. They had all been left by the Doctor -- in his ninth incarnation -- who was stranded in 1985. The TARDIS had jumped twenty years into the future, and he needed Sally to pilot the time machine back to him. Since this narrative already marginalised the Doctor's presence, Moffat began work on an expanded version.

The original short story lacked an antagonist, but Moffat knew that a forty-five-minute teleplay would require more drama than a short story told over just a handful of pages. He recalled the angelic statues he had discussed with Davies the year before, which had been inspired by memories of a family holiday to Ickworth, Suffolk where the hotel had been close to a condemned churchyard and cemetery. The new monsters, called the Weeping Angels, also drew upon the children's game sometimes known as Grandma's (or Grandpa's) Footsteps, in which players tried to tag a target, but were only permitted to move while that person's back was turned. For a time, Moffat struggled to devise a way for the Weeping Angels to be defeated. The ultimate resolution was suggested by his friend and fellow Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss, taking advantage of Moffat's intention to include several Weeping Angels in the narrative.

Reasoning that children preferred to watch protagonists older than themselves, Moffat decided to make the screen version of Sally an adult. He deposited the Doctor and Martha farther back in time -- in 1969, rather than 1985 -- so that the appearance of the aged Billy Shipton would be more dramatic. At one point, Sally would have been visibly pregnant at the episode's conclusion, but Moffat decided that it was more effective to delay the inception of Sally and Larry's romance until after her meeting with the Doctor and Martha.

“Sally Sparrow And The Weeping Angels” was originally intended to form the season's sixth production block. When it was decided to move up the recording dates, it became Block Five. Moffat's adventure would be made alongside the story preceding it in the broadcast schedule, Paul Cornell's Human Nature / The Family Of Blood. The director was Hettie MacDonald, a newcomer to Doctor Who whose 1996 film Beautiful Thing had deeply impressed producer Phil Collinson. Cast in the pivotal role of Sally Sparrow was Carey Mulligan, who had appeared in programmes such as Bleak House and The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, as well as the 2005 movie adaptation of Pride & Prejudice with Keira Knightley. Mulligan would go on to make a number of critically-lauded films, earning Academy Award nominations for both 2009's An Education and 2020's Promising Young Woman.

Around the time that production began, Moffat decided to rename his adventure Blink. To justify the unusual title, Davies encouraged him to trawl through the script and insert as many instances of the word “blink” as he could. Meanwhile, the first shot recorded for the episode was the Doctor's hologram, performed on the standing TARDIS set at Upper Boat Studios on November 7th. Filming resumed on November 20th in Cardiff, when the old National Westminster Bank served as the police station. Later the same day, it was from West Bute Dock that Sally called Larry after recognising the list of seventeen DVDs. Footage of Kathy calling Sally from a pub was also recorded at the nearby Bute Dock Hotel, but was later dropped in editing. Another Cardiff location for Blink was the Coal Exchange, where scenes in the police garage were taped on the 21st, alongside the DVD Easter eggs. On November 22nd, the material in Billy's hospital room was taped at the Caerphilly District Miners' Hospital in Caerphilly.

MacDonald's team was fortunate to locate the ramshackle Fields House in Newport, an edifice built in 1860 which could serve as Wester Drumlins with very little alteration by the design crew. Three days were spent there, from November 23rd to 25th, although the building's derelict state made the experience uncomfortable at times. November 27th started with Sally reading Kathy's letter at Oddverse Cafe in Newport, then shifted to Diverse Vinyl, which posed as Banto's DVD Store. The shop was redressed on the 28th to reflect its transformation into Sparrow & Nightingale. After the work at Diverse Vinyl was completed, MacDonald filmed Billy's arrival in 1969 at Newport's Charterist Tower. On November 29th, the graveyard scene was recorded at St Woolos Cemetery in Newport before cast and crew moved back to Fields House, where production continued to the next day.

As December dawned, the material in Kathy's apartment was filmed at a residence on Llanfair Road in Cardiff. The remainder of the 1st was spent at Upper Boat, for the sequence of Sally and Larry inside the TARDIS. Studio recording continued on December 2nd, with attention turning to the scenes in the Wester Drumlins cellar. On December 9th, Kathy's appearance in 1920 was completed at Cwm Ifor Farm near Caerphilly, and shots of appropriate statues for the closing montage were taken in Cardiff. Finally, MacDonald recorded various inserts at Upper Boat on January 9th, 2007.

• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #17, 22nd November 2007, “Episode 10: Blink” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #56, 2016, “Story 186: Blink”, edited by Mark Wright, Hachette Partworks Ltd.