@kevinwho
It’s not that it was uninteresting, but that a browse through the archive would see how heavily the ground has been covered.
You may find it useful browse the blogs from a couple of years back about Buffy. Even non-fans know about the silent episode, the bonkers dream episode, the musical episode and the Willow-in-leather episode (OK, that last one might just be me). But even fans will cede there there are a few quite forgettable episodes along way in what remains one of the most important TV shows of the past 20 years. It is massively influential on RTD’s reboot of Doctor Who.
It tends to be the episode that operate at a personal level – the frightened teen Mum in the London Blitz (rooted in true stories of orphaned blitz kids); The haunted artist doomed to die (as good and age-appropriate study of depression as you will ever see); the courtesan haunted by a ghostly visitor and clockwork monsters (still, for me, the finest single episode of Who ever, BG or AG, because of how it so clearly brought the Doctor’s state of existential loneliness into focus); Amy being confronted with an impossible – and in the end deceitful – choice.
And on the two cops you are simply wrong.
Billy Shipton was central to the plot of Blink – without him, specifically, it would have fallen apart.
The cop in Rosa was what Hannah Arendt called the Banality of Evil. Nothing interesting about him. He was just doing his job. If it had been another cop – or any other authority figure – the outcome would have been much the same. Nothing about him mattered that didn’t apply to pretty well every authority figure in Montgomery. He was a throughly banal racist, with a side-arm and a night stick.
The bus driver, on the other hand…
That said, Moffat is exceptionally gifted at economically fleshing out side characters (compare how we feel for Proper Dave, Other Dave and Miss Evangelista, compared to all of the side characters in 42). But that really is a rare gift and with most writers the heavy lifting is left to the actors.
BTW, @jimthefish on the subject of Buffy we have:
The one with superpowers;
The one who is handy in a scrap (with police skills rather than witch-fu);
The one who is awkward, but will always give his best;
The wise old fella with a strong moral compass.
Too many in the Tardis? I don’t think so.
