I'll go first.

Winner:
Breaking Bad, season 3 episode 10, "Fly"

Honorable mention:
Community, season 3 episode 10, "Cooperative Calligraphy"

PS: I'm having a hard time categorizing these as real bottle episodes since they don't feel cheap or "fillery" at all, but they are at least spatially and plot wise confined.

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[–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Doctor Who reboot, season 3 episode 10: Blink. Minimal Doctor action, great villain and introduced Carey Mulligan to mainstream audiences.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    Midnight, from a few seasons later, is my personal pick. The Doctor is there the whole time, but he's just stranded on a bus with a few strangers. Great example of that "nothing is scarier" type of horror.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

    Blink is great, but it is not a bottle episode.

    Edit: I stand corrected. Abed led me to believe a bottle episode happens in one place, but it's any episode designed around minimizing cost.

    https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bottle_Episode

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Which was still not Blink. Blink was designed to allow two episodes to be shot simultaneously but it is not a bottle episode. It uses new locations and new characters (almost exclusively, even)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

    Reading the Wikipedia page for Blink, I can't see any justification whatsoever for calling it a bottle episode. I assumed from the upvotes, people knew something I didn't, but, no, they just liked the episode so they upvoted the comment.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    It's listed in the link you posted as a bottle episode, so I'll stand by it. 🍾

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Well, I guess it's time to get involved with a wiki project, because I'm calling bullshit.

    Effects

    Moffat joked that "since I was a kid, I've been thinking of Doctor Who monsters, just now when I do, it costs the art department […] a lot of money".[8] To create the rigid structure of the angels' dresses, prosthetics supervisors Rob Mayor soaked fabric in fibreglass resin, which was then painted over.[8] Although they are never shown moving on screen, all of the Weeping Angels were played by actresses Aga Blonska and Elen Thomas wearing makeup and prosthetics.[2][8] The actresses wore two distinct masks: one that was more docile looking, and one with fangs bared.[8] Blonska later noted that "I'm partly painted, partly glued into the costume, but it's quite comfortable."[23] Although the actresses were slightly "wobbly" when they stood still, the producers used digital effects to, in essence, freeze the angels on film.[9] Moffat was very pleased with the results, and called them "fantastic".[8] Mulligan later called the effects "so good" and "really creepy".[8]

    The argument seems to be based entirely on Tenant t being absent, and fewer special effects than otherwise. Since INTENT seems to matter--for instance the Seinfeld bottle episode of the chinese restaruant was intended as a bottle episode but the budget ballooned due to set construction--I think we need either a statement of intent from the creators in cases where the bottley nature of the episode is not immediately obvious, and I don't think Blink is at all obvious.

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