Harry -
Our second two-parter of the Russell T. Davies era. Not only does "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" blow away the Slitheen caper, it may just have stolen the show on the entire first season up to this point. I like!
Sarah -
This two-parter is my hands-down favorite story of Series 1. When we started this project, I decided to avoid rewatching any future Doctor Who stories until it was time for us to cover them.
Harry -
Same here. This one felt so fresh again.
Sarah -
"The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" is one of the stories I have most looked forward to watching and it is absolutely as good as my memory of it.
Most significantly, this is Steven Moffat’s first story written for the series. It’s interesting to look back from this vantage point and see many of Moffat’s recurring themes presented for the first time.
Harry -
It begins with a wild ride in the TARDIS as the Doctor and Rose follow a mysterious space ship careening through the time vortex. Having left Earth following the events of "Father's Day", they head right back again as the object hurtles towards London.
Sarah -
The first scene reminded me how witty the script is. I laughed out loud when the Doctor explains to Rose that the universally recognized color for danger is mauve, not red:
“That's just humans. By everyone else's standards, red's camp. Oh, the misunderstandings. All those red alerts, all that dancing.”
Harry -
Landing in a quiet alley at night (another night time story, yay!), the Doctor and Rose take a look around. The Doctor enters a nightclub, while Rose hears a child that might be in distress, and they separate. She follows the child to a rooftop and takes hold of a rope -- only to be hauled straight up into the sky. The rope is attached to a barrage balloon. It's 1941, and the Luftwaffe is about to launch an air raid on the city.
Sarah -
The scene of the Doctor asking the nightclub patrons if anything has fallen from the sky lately is brilliant and sets the tone for the dark humor of the story.
Harry -
As the sound of sirens fills the air, the nightclub patrons scatter and the Doctor realizes when they have landed. Back outside, he discovers that Rose has wandered off -- and then another freaky moment happens. In the last episode, we saw the shocking image of the TARDIS hollowed out. This time, the exterior telephone starts ringing. I remember being freaked out when that happened -- as was the Doctor by his reaction.
Sarah -
It’s a frightening moment, which comes just after the Doctor discovering Rose has wandered off, “You know, one day, just one day, maybe, I'm going to meet someone who gets the whole don't wander off thing. Nine hundred years of phone box travel, it's the only thing left to surprise me.”
Cue the TARDIS phone. Just chilling.
Harry -
Upping the chill was the voice of the child coming through the phone. Amazing how a simple repeated line can be so effective.
Sarah -
Meanwhile, Rose is clinging to the barrage balloon rope, which filled me with a whole other level of horror -- and we’re only 10 minutes into the story!
Harry -
I love the aerial shots here. They captured the chaos and panic of an air raid and it holds up on repeat viewing today.
Sarah -
Right? The teenager scoffed at my reaction to the scene, stating it was obviously not real. I don’t know if that kid deserves proper Doctor Who.
Harry -
And hello John Barrowman!
Sarah -
Hello, Sexy!
Harry -
We get our first sight of him using some anachronistically powerful binoculars to spot Rose hanging for her life.
Sarah -
Speaking of anachronisms, I was really bothered that the RAF building was all lit up with its windows uncovered, while Jack stood on a balcony in the middle of a air raid. A small point, I know, but it’s irritating to history majors everywhere. (Or maybe just me.)
Harry -
He catches her with an even more anachronistic tractor beam and guides her down into, naturally, his invisible spaceship tethered to the clock tower at Westminster. Captain Jack Harkness, what an introduction! After having her hands healed by some on-board nanogenes, Rose joins Jack for a drink beside the face of Big Ben. From terror to romance in mere minutes (seconds?).
Sarah -
Jack is working it, but that’s just how he communicates.
Harry -
Interesting that this is the third male character who will follow the Doctor and Rose into the TARDIS this season. From Mickey to Adam to Jack, RTD stuck to the idea of having a "third wheel" present in the dynamic between the lead characters. While the Doctor usually refers to them as "boyfriends", Rose never really displays a strong bond to any of them. In fact, their main function seems to be to irk or downright infuriate the Doctor.
Sarah -
And Jack may be the most infuriating of all, having captured Rose’s interest at first sight. I don’t think we’ve seen her look at anyone the way she looks at Jack!
The flirtation is on when he presents psychic paper, identifying him as introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness, an American RAF volunteer:
ROSE: Liar. This is psychic paper. It tells me whatever you want it to tell me.
JACK: How do you know?
ROSE: Two things. One, I have a friend who uses this all the time.
JACK: Ah.
ROSE: And two, you just handed me a piece of paper telling me you're single and you work out.
JACK: Tricky thing, psychic paper.
ROSE: Yeah. Can't let your mind wander when you're handing it over.
JACK: Oh, you sort of have a boyfriend called Mickey Smith but you consider yourself to be footloose and fancy free.
ROSE: What?
JACK: Actually, the word you use is available.
ROSE: No way.
JACK: And another one, very.
ROSE: Shall we try and get along without the psychic paper?
SNAP! Rose brings out her seasoned time traveler persona and matches Jack flirt for flirt and bluff for bluff.
Harry -
Jack decides it's time to get down to business. He has possession of a Chula warship and is willing to sell it for the right price. Rose demurs and tells Jack that she delegates a lot of her business to her companion, the Doctor, and so they set off to find him.
During all of this, the Doctor has made the acquaintance of Nancy, a young woman who looks after a gaggle of children in the area. During air raids, she leads the children into houses where the residents have taken shelter, and they help themselves to dinner and provisions.
Sarah -
The scene of the children at the dining table is devastating. Nancy serves as the mother figure, reminding them of their manners and to share the food equally. But it isn’t long before a dark underside is revealed. Many of the children had been evacuated to the country, but returned to London because it felt safer than where they were. One boy recounts that he was sent to a farm, but “there was a man there.” It’s a heartbreaking moment, but I appreciate its inclusion, which counters the “Keep Calm and Carry On” mythology.
Harry -
The Doctor joins them for a meal, only to have the scene broken up by the arrival of the pleading child in the gas mask. The children flee while the Doctor stays to study what's happening. The "child" is able to project its voice through telephone and radio. It's all brilliantly creepy.
Sarah -
This is classic Steven Moffat, taking ordinary things and making them terrifying.
The Doctor’s compassion towards Nancy is touching. He recognizes her as a fellow survivor who has also lost people, but he knows there’s more to the story than she’s telling.
Harry -
On Nancy's suggestion, the Doctor visits a hospital near where the alien ship had crash landed weeks before. There, he finds dozens of bedridden victims -- humans who are not dead, but no longer alive, with gas masks fused over their faces. They all come alive just as Rose and Jack arrive at the hospital.
Sarah -
Talk about body horror! The moment when Doctor Constantine, who has been tending the victims, succumbs to the contagion still terrifies me. We joke a lot about hiding behind the sofa, but this is one of the few stories that makes me want to do it!
Harry -
It was horrifying to watch, even when you know it's coming.
After a quick introduction, Jack once again attempts to sell the Chula warship, but the Doctor has already put two and two together. Some kind of contagion has leaked from the ship, and that's what has infected the people in the hospital.
Sarah -
In the middle of all this terror, I laughed out loud when Jack derided the Doctor’s U-Boat captain look.
Harry -
Definitely some tension beneath the repartée. Somewhat quickly, Jack backs down, admits he's a conman, and reveals that the warship is actually an ambulance that he intends to blow up. In attempting to set someone up for his con, he has inadvertently released something that could destroy humanity. The Doctor, he mad!
Sarah -
Meanwhile, the patients are awake and closing in on the trio of time travelers. Now that’s what I call a cliffhanger!
Harry -
Have to admit, the "Go to your room!" gambit was an unexpected resolution. Even the Doctor was surprised: "I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words."
Sarah -
The hospital patients get back into bed and Jamie, who had been closing in on Nancy, turns and walks away.
Meanwhile, the Lloyd’s, the family whose house they’re in, emerge from their shelter to discover Nancy in the house. Mr. Lloyd rants at Nancy about how hard he works to put food on the table until Nancy threatens to reveal his secret: “It's an awful lot of food, isn't it, Mister Lloyd? A lot more than on anyone else's table. Half this street thinks your missus must be messing about with Mister Haverstock, the butcher. But she's not, is she? You are.”
So many secrets and lies in those “good old days.”
Harry -
The arrival of the empty child at the hospital triggers another round of slow pursuits and escape scenes that made the second part of this story breeze along to its conclusion.
Sarah -
The scenes of the Doctor, Rose, and Jack escaping from Jamie and the infected patients are delightful. The budding Time Team have some of their snappiest exchanges while trying to get out of the hospital. The battle of the sonics is particularly wonderful:
JACK: Who has a sonic screwdriver?
DOCTOR: I do.
JACK: Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooo, this could be a little more sonic?
DOCTOR: What, you've never been bored? Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?
Harry -
Everyone converges on the site of the crashed ship. The Doctor, Rose and Jack, and Nancy, and the shuffling victims. We see that soldiers continue to succumb to the ship's effects. The Doctor finally has his moment as he discovers the nanogenes that have been "repairing" humans and inadvertently creating the gas-masked creatures in their place. It falls to Nancy to reveal the truth about her relationship with the empty child -- who is Jamie, her son, killed when the ship crashed and the template by which the nanogenes have been working. Nancy's admission that she is the boy's mummy is the final piece for the nanogenes to restore Jamie to full life again.
Delighted, the Doctor directs the nanogenes towards the other victims, and they are restored too. Just this once, everybody lives! I love that line not because it's exuberantly delivered in a fashion that begs to be mimicked, or even that it might be a bit cheesy, but because we see Christopher Eccleston's Doctor so utterly happy. He's had this lasting image among fandom as the surly, haunted Doctor, so it's the moments where he breaks that type that I find extra enjoyable.
Sarah -
I love that moment. You’re right, it could have easily been cheesy, but Eccleston sells it. When the Doctor says, “Give me a day like this. Give me this one.” you can feel all he’s been through. This moment is the emotional highpoint of series one and we should savor it. There aren’t many truly happy endings in Doctor Who.
Also, I love the woman who’s confused that her leg grew back!
Harry -
That was hilarious. And how better to wrap it up than with a TARDIS Dance Party!
I don't know if the whole dancing thing was a metaphor on the part of Moffat or RTD, but it did make for some more brilliant lines back at the hospital:
ROSE: Doesn't the universe implode or something if you dance?
DOCTOR: Well, I've got the moves but I wouldn't want to boast.
ROSE: You've got the moves? Show me your moves.
DOCTOR: Rose, I'm trying to resonate concrete.
Sarah -
“Dancing” is pretty much the least-subtle metaphor in Doctor Who history.
DOCTOR: We were talking about dancing.
JACK: It didn't look like talking.
ROSE: It didn't feel like dancing.
And so we have our first TARDIS love triangle -- the Time Lord, the Earth Woman, and the Omnisexual Con Man. What could go wrong?
Harry -
We know Jack is special because the Doctor didn't let his fury get the better of him, unlike with Adam. Jack took responsibility for his screw-up with the Chulu ambulance, and used his ship's tractor beam to stop the bomb landing on it. Unfortunately, the bomb will detonate the moment he tries to jettison it -- leaving Jack trapped on his ship with no escape.
Until... the TARDIS doors open and Jack is permitted on board. You know the Doctor is in a good mood. As he and Rose trip the light fantastic, Jack looks on and we've got another new companion for Team TARDIS.
Sarah -
I was delighted all over again when Jack was invited into the TARDIS.
Harry -
This story put Steven Moffat front and centre among writers of new Who. For the rest of the RTD era, Moffat's stories would be looked forward to as sure-thing season highlights and he never disappointed. "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" is right up there with "Dalek" as one of the highlights of the Eccleston era.
Sarah -
I still love this story so much. I can’t believe we only have three episodes before we close the books on the Eccleston era. Are you ready?
Bad Wolf tracker: "Schlechter Wolf” is written on the side of the Nazi bomb.
Harry -
It's going by so quickly. It's a shame that we only got one season with this Doctor.
Best Line: I have to go with Captain Jack's "Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooo, this could be a little more sonic?"
Favourite Moment: the Doctor's unbridled joy that everybody lived.
Lasting Image: Rose hangs on for her life over London
9/10
Sarah -
Best Line: The Doctor’s conversation with Dr. Constantine.
CONSTANTINE: Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I am neither. But I'm still a doctor.
DOCTOR: Yeah. I know the feeling.
Favorite Moment: Rose telling Nancy that the Allies will win the war. We now tend to think of WWII as inevitably ending in the Nazis' defeat, but it sure didn’t feel that way to the people living through it.
Lasting Image: Jamie in his gas mask. “Are you my mummy?”
10/10
Our marathon continues with Story #165: Boom Town...
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