Doctor Who’s Blink is almost universally accepted to be one of the best Who stories of the modern era – fans even voted it their favourite in a RadioTimes.com poll to find the 10 best NuWho episodes.


But is there something incredibly clever in the episode that many of us might have missed? Whovian and blogger JenneralGeek seems to think so.

Remember that moment in the episode when Carey Mulligan’s Sally can’t help but call herself Sally Shipton when speaking to Billy Shipton, the police officer she just so happens to think is a bit of a dish? What if that wasn’t just a frightfully embarrasing Freudian slip?

What if it was wibbly wobbly timey wimey magic?

Allow us (or rather JenneralGeek – JG from here on in) to explain. JG begins by reminding us that Sally brought her pal Katherine Nightengale to Wester Drumlins, home of the Weeping Angels, in 2007. It was there that Kathy fell victim to their powers and was transported back in time to 1920.

Back in the modern day Kathy’s grandson brings Sally a letter, which reveals that she married a man called Benjamin Wainwright and had three children – the youngest of which, she named Sally. Given Katherine’s REAL age in 1920 (she wasn’t 18 as her gravestone suggested, Sally Sparrow revealed that much anyway), JG guesses Sally Wainwright could have been born anywhere from a decade to two decades after her mother arrived.

With us so far? Good. We’re not done.

So how does Sally Wainwright end up with a connection to Billy Shipton? Well, Billy – who was also examining Wester Drumlins when he enjoyed a good flirt with Sally Sparrow – ended up being transported back to 1969 not long after Mulligan’s Sally gives him her number.

When the pair meet again in 2007, as he’s lying in his hospital bed, he reveals he married a girl who was also called Sally back in the 1970s.

JG suggests that if you do the maths – 1920 + 15/20 years = anywhere between 1935 and 40 for a birth date for Sally Wainwright – you could logically place Sally Wainwright at the marrying age in the 1970s.

If she did, as JG highlights, turn out to be the same Sally that Billy Shipton married, then Sally Sparrow could have had a hand in creating the REAL Sally Shipton. If she’d never brought Katherine to Wester Drumlins she’d have stayed put in 2007, meaning little Sally Wainwright would never have existed.

Could this rather curious little theory prove true? Stranger things have happened in Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who offerings.

He even wrote his own fifteen year old fan theory into an episode once.


To read the theory in full check out JenneralGeek’s original blog post. And if your brain is bursting with wibbly wobbly timey wimey thoughts by the time you’re done processing it all, don’t forget to share them with us in the comments below.