Mark Carroll's Journal

True, I was puzzling over those episodes. Blink I like partly for Time Heist reasons of actually using time travel reasonably. Girl in the Fireplace is indeed surprisingly good given the deeply silly premise: perhaps it works more in terms of interpersonal drama than as science fiction.

Indeed, sometimes Old Who did construct interesting societies and what-if premises, and at other times the underlying idea was a bit weak (especially, when Earth-bound, yet another alien invasion with human collaborators). I wonder how well the kidnappings correspond with failure of underlying idea versus just being lazy drama serving narrative needs: for instance, to get a character somewhere else so that they can either get another party's perspective or escape once there to learn or do things in that location, or even just to generate another cliffhanger.