...no, no. This is a good one, I promise.
We begin with the Doctor and Rose traveling through the time vortex after something that is mauve and dangerous (mauve being the universally recognized color for danger) after a few jabs at Star Trek (and a few more to come), the TARDIS lands in London. The Doctor and Rose go poking around, as one does, with the Doctor hitting up a night club to ask for information (and realizing he's in London during the Blitz in 1941) and Rose going after a mysterious child in a gas mask calling for his Mummy and taking a flight on a barrage balloon.
Also, as we get to see Rose actually show some compassion for another human being when she's worried about said child falling off the roof...eh...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,204
Yes...that did hurt to do after Father's Day. Of course, when Moffat writes Rose, he tends to write her as a character rather than a viciously jealous sociopath who only has stake in her own self-interest, so I suppose I'm inclined to be nice.
But the Doctor is laughed off at the club as a comedian when asking about objects falling from the sky and the air raid sirens go off. Yes! It's London during the Blitz! Now, one might ask why he didn't check the time period on the TARDIS scanners before leaving it...but it's very obviously so we can have this joke. Also, apparently neither the Doctor or Rose were at all able to look up and see the multitude of barrage balloons.
The Doctor runs off looking for Rose and laments to a cat about how he'll someday find someone who doesn't wander off...and the TARDIS phone rings. A phone that isn't connected to anything and, when the Doctor picks it up, he hears the voice of the child asking for his mummy. A mysterious woman, known later as Nancy, tells him not to answer it. When the Doctor asks for further information, she has pulled a Batman and vanished into thin air.
Heading off afterwards to find Rose, the Doctor finds a family heading into a bomb shelter during their dinner...and Nancy sneaking into the house to pillage from their food. Rose, meanwhile...is being watched by none other than Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Jack Harkness is a joint creation between Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies, showcasing - in my opinion - some of the best of their creative ability...provided you ignore a good bit of Torchwood. He's one of my favorite companions of the Revived Series and it's always a joy when he's on screen, bar none.
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| "Thank God, I got through Father's Day. Pass the glasses!" |
Nonetheless, after acknowledging that Billie Piper does in fact have a nice bum, he heads off to go get her off of the barrage balloon. Getting her caught in a light field, Jack pulls her down to his ship...where Rose promptly passes out. Jack, of course, just wears a knowing smile at the act. It's a natural reaction to being in close proximity to John Barrowman regardless of gender.
Nancy has a bunch of adorable Cockney misfits who sit down to dinner with her at the family's table. The Doctor returns Nancy's earlier Batman exit with a Batman entrance of his own and manages to get through the entire scene without making one Oliver! joke. He does applaud Nancy for her ingenuity in getting food to the homeless kids of London, asking about Rose and about the device that he and Rose followed through the vortex.
...and then the Child comes to the door, knocking and asking for his Mummy. Nancy explains that it is not, in fact, exactly a child...it's something else. She warns the Doctor not to touch him...because he'll make anyone who touches him just like him. She describes the Child as "empty" and thus, we have our title. He can also affect inorganic manner, such as making phones ring and battery-powered toys play on their own...all speaking his message of "Mummy!".
The Doctor tries to talk with it, and we get a very tense scene where he agrees to open the door and let it in...and there's nothing there when he does. The Doctor walks out into an abandoned street and it is astoundingly chilling. Top marks!
Back on Jack's ship, he presents the psychic paper to her and Rose calls him out on it...and then she hands it back and he reads her just as easily...finding out that she "sort of" has a boyfriend in Mickey, but uses the words 'available' and 'very' in reverse order.
...I've already dinged her for this, but...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,205
Jack heals Rose's rope burns with fantastic future medical tech called nanogenes. He also incorrectly labels both Rose and the Doctor as Time Agents. Rose and Jack have a moonlit waltz on top of Jack's ship right next to Big Ben (in the better of its two appearances this Series) in which Jack makes several passes on Rose and then Moffat remembers that he actually has a plot to get to and they go off to find the Doctor after Jack reveals what he parked that he wants to sell to the Time Agency - a Chula warship.
In between the scenes there, we have Nancy getting found out by the Doctor, who points her in the direction of the hospital after making cracks about him having a big nose and ears. He does want to see the bomb that isn't a bomb first, but she insists that he needs to see...the Doctor. She leads him there, showing him the bomb site and the hospital nearby. Also, Eccelston uses a neat little set of binocular bifocals that are really nifty. I'm kind of sad we haven't seen them since.
We also learn that Nancy lost someone in the Blitz, her younger brother, Jamie. He was, in fact, the first person to be hit by the bomb that wasn't a bomb. The Doctor has a nice "humans are fantastic" moment when talking about the British resistance to the Nazis, and we get another chilling by of the Child pursuing her before the Doctor heads into the hospital.
Inside, he finds...the Doctor, a Doctor Constantine...who is sadly not chain smoking and casting out demons. More's the pity. Under his direction, again being told not to touch anyone, the Doctor examines the people in the Ward...all of them wearing the gas masks and all of them with the same injuries. The Doctor believes that they're all dead...but Constantine smacks his cane against a trash bin and reveals that - no, they are all quite alive. They jolt up in unison in yet another horrifying scene.
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| "He's not dead, Jim!" |
Apparently, it all comes back to Nancy's brother, Jamie. He was the first victim...and everything spread through him and now...it's an epidemic. Even Constantine himself has been infected...and is slowly turning into one of the gas mask zombies himself. He does give the Doctor a room number to look into, but...soon...he is gone. Admittedly, the CGI as the mask overtakes the face is a bit wonky...but the final result is quite the bit of body horror indeed.
Finally, Rose and Jack link up with the Doctor...or as Jack has been told his name, "Mr. Spock" and we get a jab at the name of the show. Eslewhere, Nancy continues to root through the house of the family who headed into their air raid shelter as the Child closes in on her yet again. Hiding under the table...we only get to see the feet as it passes.
Back at the hospital, Jack comes clean about some things that happened...namely that the ship that they followed through the time vortex was a harmless shell...a Chula ambulance. But it seems that this is entirely his fault...as the virus came from the ship.
Nancy hides under the table from the Child, utterly frightening it is, and she gets trapped when she tries to escape...the Child able to telekinetically close a door. As he does...the zombies at the hospital all rise, getting up and moving menacingly toward the Doctor, Rose, and Jack...backing them against a wall...the episode ending with that long, drawn out request for "Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummy!"
Steven Moffat absolutely shines in the scripting of this first part. We have some good humor that will become one of the many hallmarks of his era, makes the already creepy thing of the gas mask even creepier by adding a very human edge to it all - a child obsessively looking for his mother.
Now, how the Child also has a bunch of unexplained superpowers as a result of exposure to what is supposed to be healing technology is...not really explained, either in this part or in the next, The Doctor Dances, but I do have a theory on that. It has been noted in Doctor Who that humans possess some psychic potential (it's come up a few times) and we've seen an example of that this season with Gwyneth in The Unquiet Dead. What I theorize is that the Chula technology not only did work on the kid's body, but also the mind as well...hence with the Child has powers like telekinesis and projecting itself through electronics that the other zombies don't seem to have. That particular upgrade just didn't get to them for whatever reason. Also, it was able to replicate the gas mask...so it potentially can affect organic matter as well. This is sort of confirmed in the next part The Doctor Dances with the child considered as "the commander" of the zombies, but it's not a 100% match with the idea. Or, at least, it's not said onscreen.
On the whole, however, this is a great episode and that minor complaint that I've sort of headcanoned away wouldn't exactly ruin it for me if I hadn't. Great atmosphere, a good Eccleston performance, and of course the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness. Is there more you could ask for? Probably. Do you need it? No.
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| "Are you my mummy?" |
Next time, we see the second part. How will the Doctor, Rose, Jack, and Nancy get out of this one? Come back next week, where The Doctor Dances.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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