The Empty Child

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168a - The Empty Child
Doctor	Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Writer	Steven Moffat
Director	James Hawes
Script editor	Elwen Rowlands
Producer	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young
Production code	1.9
Length	1 of 2 episodes, 40 mins
Transmission date	May 21, 2005
Preceded by	Father's Day
Followed by	The Doctor Dances
IMDb profile

The Empty Child is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on May 21, 2005. It is the first of a two-part story. The concluding episode, The Doctor Dances, was broadcast on May 28. This episode marks the first appearance of John Barrowman as Jack Harkness and, together with The Doctor Dances, won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.^[1]

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
4 Continuity
5 Production
6 Outside references
- 6.1 Historical details
7 References
8 External links
- 8.1 Reviews

[edit] Synopsis

Chasing a metallic object through the vortex, the Ninth Doctor and Rose arrive in London during the Blitz. There, they find homeless children being terrorised, dead bodies with unexplained marks on their hands, a strange cylinder guarded by the army, and the dashing Captain Jack Harkness.

[edit] Plot

"Are you my mummy?"

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The TARDIS chases a metal cylinder that is careening its way through space. As the Doctor struggles to keep up with it, he explains to Rose that the cylinder is mauve — the universal colour for danger (as opposed to red, which is too camp for anyone but humans). The TARDIS console sparks as the object jumps a time track, travelling back in time towards London.

The TARDIS materialises in a narrow alley between some brick buildings at night. The Doctor and Rose step out in search of the object; the Doctor notes that they have arrived a couple of weeks to a month after the cylinder's impact. Rose asks if the Doctor is going to scan for alien technology, and is disappointed when the Doctor tells her that he is just going to pose as Dr. John Smith from the "Ministry of Asteroids" and ask the locals if anything fell from the sky. She complains that it is "not very Spock". The Doctor hears music coming from behind a locked door and uses the sonic screwdriver to open it. He steps inside the building, but Rose hears a child calling for its mother. She looks up and sees a young boy wearing a gas mask on the roof.

The door leads to a makeshift cabaret. After the singer ends her set, the Doctor steps up to the microphone and asks them if any object had fallen from the sky in the last few days. He is puzzled when they start laughing, but then an air raid siren sounds, he spots a poster warning of German bombing and realises to his chagrin that he has arrived during the London Blitz. In the meantime, Rose has reached the roof of the building where the young boy is standing on a cargo container. A rope dangles in front of her, and she uses it to climb up, not realising that it is attached to a barrage balloon above. It rises, taking Rose clean off the roof with it and hanging on for dear life. There, Rose sees bits of the city of London in flames, spotlights sweeping through the sky, the sound of anti-aircraft fire and bombers flying right at her.

The Doctor returns to where the TARDIS landed, and sees no sign of Rose. He is puzzled when the exterior telephone of the TARDIS's police box disguise rings. He prepares to examine it with the sonic screwdriver when a young woman appears and tells him not to answer it. The Doctor asks her how the telephone can even be ringing, but when he turns back, she has disappeared. He picks up the earpiece, but all that comes through is a child's voice asking, "Mummy?" several times before it falls dead again. Hearing clattering down the alley, the Doctor looks over a wall into a residential garden and sees a woman ushering family into an air-raid shelter. He also spots the young woman he saw moments before entering the house. Once inside, she begins to raid the cupboards for tinned food.

Rose is still hanging by a rope over a blazing London. From a balcony below, a man dressed in RAF uniform peers through binoculars up at her, but they are binoculars of an advanced technological design. A British Army officer addresses him as "Jack" and asks if he is going to the shelter, but Jack is distracted by the sight of Rose's bottom in his sights. Jack grins at the officer and, speaking with an American accent, says that he has to meet a girl, but adds as he leaves that the officer has an excellent bottom as well.

Rose loses her grip on the rope and falls, shrieking before she finds her descent halted by a tractor beam. Jack's voice tells her to deactivate her cellular phone and to keep her limbs inside the light field as she slides rapidly down the beam into Jack's ship and his arms. Rose stares at the handsome Jack, managing to get out a couple of "hellos" before she faints.

Back at the house, the young woman has been joined by several other children, and they start to consume the dinner that has been left on the table. The sudden appearance of the Doctor, however, startles them. The Doctor deduces that all of them are homeless, but notes that as it is 1941, the children should have been evacuated to the country long ago. The children say that they were, but they returned to London for various reasons. Nancy, the young woman, finds them food this way, by waiting for families to hide in shelters before stealing their food.

The Doctor asks the children if they have seen the cylinder, drawing them a picture, but before any can answer, there is a knocking on the window, accompanied by a child's voice asking for its mother. Outside is a child in a gas mask, and it slowly wanders over to the front door, still repeating its query. Nancy hurriedly bolts the door before it can get in. Nancy tells the Doctor that it is not "exactly" a child, and then orders the other children to leave by the back way. The Child sticks its arm through the mail slot, and a strange, lightning-shaped scar can be seen on the back of its hand.

Nancy tells the Doctor not to let the Child touch him, or he will become just like it — empty. The telephone on the mantelpiece rings, and when the Doctor picks it up to hear the same plaintive request for its mother, Nancy grabs the receiver and hangs up. The Child has the ability to make telephone calls, just as it did with the TARDIS exterior telephone. The radio starts up, playing music and the Child's request, and a toy monkey starts to bang its cymbals together as Nancy leaves the house. The Doctor asks the Child through the door why the other children are frightened of him, but he keeps asking to be let in, claiming to be scared of the bombs. The Doctor agrees to open the door, but when he does, the street is empty.

Rose wakes up in Jack's ship, which she says is very "Mr Spock", a reference he does not understand. He introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness, an American volunteer with No. 133 Squadron RAF. He hands her an identification card which Rose identifies as psychic paper — it shows her whatever he wants her to see, which is apparently that he is single and works out. At the same time, to Rose's embarrassment, Jack reads the paper as showing that Rose has a boyfriend but considers herself "very" available. Jack uses his ship's nanites (which he calls "nanogenes") to treat Rose's hands for rope burns. He also tells her to stop acting, he can spot a "Time Agent" a mile away and had been expecting one to turn up. Jack invites her for a drink on the "balcony"; opening the hatch, they step out onto the invisible hull of the ship which is floating tethered to Big Ben.

Nancy makes her way across an abandoned rail yard to a locomotive, where she unloads the tins she took from the house. The Doctor surprises her again, having followed her. He has made the connection between the fallen cylinder and the empty child, and Nancy tells him about a bomb falling near the Limehouse Green station "that was not a bomb". It is now guarded by soldiers and barbed wire. Nancy says if he wants to find out what is going on, he needs to talk to "the doctor".

On top of his ship, Jack and Rose continue to flirt, dancing to the strains of Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" as bombs fall on London around them. He used to be a Time Agent, but has since gone freelance. He tells her that he has something the Time Agency might want to buy and asks her if she is empowered to negotiate. Rose plays along, saying that she should talk to her "companion" first. He tells her that what fell on London was a fully equipped Chula warship, the last of its kind, and offers to get it for her if the Agency names the right price. However, the deadline for a decision is in two hours, because that is when a German bomb will fall and destroy it. He proceeds to look for her "companion" by scanning for alien technology, to which Rose gives an approving smile.

The Doctor uses his own binoculars to monitor the crash site from a distance with Nancy. She encourages him to go speak to the doctor at nearby Albion Hospital. The Doctor remarks that Nancy is looking after the children to make up for something, and she admits that it is because her brother Jamie died during an air raid. The Doctor observes that at this point in history, Hitler has been unstoppable, until one "tiny damp island" said no, and praises Nancy's people for their indomitability. He tells her to go do what she has to do, and walks towards the hospital.

In the wards, the Doctor finds the beds apparently filled with corpses wearing gas masks. An elderly man in a doctor's coat appears, telling the Doctor that there are hundreds of them. Dr Constantine invites the Doctor to examine the masked people, warning him not to touch their flesh. The Doctor finds that, impossibly, all of them have identical injuries to the skull and chest cavity. The gas masks are also seemingly fused to their flesh, although there are no burns or scarring. They also have a lightning-shaped scar on the back of their hands. Constantine also has the same scar, but the Doctor does not notice.

Constantine explains that when the "bomb" dropped, it claimed one victim, and those who were in contact with it soon suffered the exact same injuries; the symptoms themselves spreading like a plague. The Doctor asks what killed them, but Constantine explains that they are not dead. With a rap of his cane against a table leg, the "corpses" come to life.

The Doctor takes a startled step back, but Constantine tells him they are harmless: they just sit there, have no signs of life, but they just do not die. All Constantine can do is make them comfortable, but he suspects the Army has a plan to blow up the hospital and blame it on a German bomb, as isolated cases are breaking out all over London. He directs the Doctor to Room 802, where the first victim, Nancy's brother, was housed. Constantine says that Nancy knows more than she is saying but before he can say anything else, he grabs his neck and starts to choke out the words, "Are you my mummy?" Before the Doctor's eyes, Constantine's features shift and change into a gas mask and he slumps in his chair.

Rose and Jack enter the hospital, and Jack introduces himself to the Doctor, calling him "Mr Spock" to the Doctor's puzzlement. Rose privately tells the Doctor that she had to tell Jack they were Time Agents and give him a false name, and tells the Doctor about the Chula warship. The Doctor demands to know from Jack what kind of warship it is, but Jack insists that it has nothing to do with the plague. Jack confesses that the cylinder was just an ambulance — an empty shell which he was trying to pass off as valuable. Jack realises now that Rose and the Doctor are not really Time Agents. The Doctor explains that human DNA is being rewritten by an idiot, but for what purpose?

Meanwhile, Nancy has returned to the house to get more food, but the radio turns itself on and from the speakers comes the cry of the Child. She tries to hide when she sees it has entered the house. When her hiding place is discovered, she makes a break for the door but the child points a finger and shuts it from a distance. Suddenly, at the hospital, all the patients, including Constantine, sit bolt upright and climb out of their beds, calling for their mothers. Nancy backs up as the Child approaches. She calls it Jamie, and tells it that it's dead. At the hospital, the trio of time travellers are also being backed into a corner, as the gas-masked virus carriers get closer and closer...

[edit] Cast

Doctor Who — Christopher Eccleston
Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
Nightclub Singer — Kate Harvey
The Child — Albert Valentine
Nancy — Florence Hoath
Mrs Lloyd — Cheryl Fergison
Mr Lloyd — Damian Samuels
Jack Harkness — John Barrowman
Algy — Robert Hands
Jim — Joseph Tremain
Ernie — Jordan Murphy
Alf — Brandon Miller
Dr Constantine — Richard Wilson
Voice of the Empty Child — Noah Johnson
Computer Voice — Dian Perry

[edit] Continuity

This episode is the first to feature the character of Captain Jack Harkness as portrayed by John Barrowman, who recurs in the remainder of the episodes of the 2005 series. He also appears in the New Series Adventures novels and his own series, Torchwood.
As the Chula ship jumps the time track, on the console screen it is shown to be in the time vortex as seen in the credits. The TARDIS jumped a time track in the First Doctor serial The Space Museum (1965), giving the Doctor and his then companions a glimpse into their apparent future.
The Doctor is surprised to hear the police box telephone on the TARDIS ringing. In the animated webcast Scream of the Shalka, the unofficial "Ninth Doctor" (voiced by Richard E. Grant) uses a mobile phone that is detached from the telephone compartment of the TARDIS exterior. A fake police box telephone was seen in Logopolis, although that particular one belonged to the Master's TARDIS, which had adopted a police box disguise for the start of that story. At the end of World War Three, the Doctor uses a fixed telephone inside the TARDIS console room.
The Doctor seems uneasy using the police box telephone, even though he used one cheerfully in World War Three. Presumably the difference is because the telephone in that episode was part of the TARDIS console room's interior equipment, whereas the police box telephone is merely a nonfunctional part of the TARDIS's camouflage.
According to a police officer in the Torchwood episode Everything Changes, Captain Jack Harkness failed to report for duty and disappeared on 21 January 1941. This would suggest that this story takes place in January 1941.
A later episode of Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness is set not long before this episode.
There is no explicit reference to "Bad Wolf" in this episode, but there is one in The Doctor Dances, similar to there being only one explicit reference in the two-part Aliens of London/World War Three story. Nancy does comment on the size of the Doctor's ears and nose, as Little Red Riding Hood does to the Big Bad Wolf. Also as of this week, the UNIT website changed its secure password from "buffalo" to "badwolf".^[2] See Bad Wolf references in Doctor Who.
Albion Hospital, in reality the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, also appears in the episode Aliens of London.
The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances are the only Doctor Who stories strongly connected with an alien race in which none of its members or representatives are actually seen.
Dr Constantine remarks, "Before the war, I was a father and grandfather. Now I'm neither, but I'm still a Doctor," to which the Doctor replies, "I know the feeling." It is possible to interpret this as alluding to the fate of the Doctor's granddaughter Susan in the aftermath of the Time War. In Father's Day the Doctor said his whole family was wiped out.
This week's Doctor Who Confidential describes Jack as a former Time Agent from the 51st century. In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the villainous Magnus Greel is a time traveller from the 51st century who fears pursuit from Time Agents. The Time Agents appear in the spin-off novels Eater of Wasps by Trevor Baxendale and Trading Futures by Lance Parkin, and their origins in the aftermath of the wars of the 51st century are described in Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward.
The Doctor's use of the alias "John Smith" (with or without the title "Doctor") is a long standing one, first appearing in The Wheel in Space and then several times during the course of the series, in particular the Third Doctor's time with UNIT.
At one point, frustrated at not knowing his real name, Rose asks: "Doctor who?" The Doctor's actual name has been a running gag in the series since the very first serial. Examples include The Curse of Peladon and The Five Doctors (and later Boom Town). For other aliases used by the Doctor, see "Doctor who?".

[edit] Production

This episode had the working title World War II.^[3] In the French language version of the show, this episode has the title Drôle de mort ("Strange/Funny Death"), referring to the Drôle de guerre (Phoney War).
Early versions of this script quoted this episode's title as being An Empty Child. This is a reference to "An Unearthly Child", the very first episode of Doctor Who. The episode's television listings information and the DVD cover also mention that "London is being terrorised by an unearthly child".
The sound of Dr Constantine's skull cracking as his face changes into a gas mask was considered too horrific in its full form by the production team and was cut before broadcast. However, writer Steven Moffat claims on the DVD commentary to this episode that the sound was discussed but never put on. According to the Doctor Who Confidential episode "Fear Factor", the effect was added in the version of the episode presented on the The Complete First Series box set.
Unlike previous episodes, the "next episode" trailers were shown after the end credits instead of immediately preceding them, possibly in reaction to comments after Aliens of London about having the cliff-hanger for that episode spoiled.
Captain Jack's line explaining the nanogenes was not audible in either the original or repeat broadcasts on CBC Television in Canada. It was also removed from the UKTV Gold and US Sci Fi Channel broadcasts, although the lines were still present in the subtitles. This adds some confusion to Rose's next line, "Well, tell them thanks!" The cause for this change is unknown.
Features a guest appearance by Richard Wilson. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.
Several scenes of this story were filmed at the Vale of Glamorgan Railway sites at Plymouth Road on Barry Island in January 2005. Barry Island was used for location filming for the 1987 Doctor Who serial Delta and the Bannermen.

[edit] Outside references

The idea of mauve being the universal colour for danger is similar to a joke concerning a "mauve alert" used in Red Dwarf episode Dimension Jump.
Frequently in this episode, Rose makes references to the Star Trek character of "Mr. Spock". This is the first televised Doctor Who story to make a direct reference to Star Trek, although there had been previous references in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and original novels.
Writer Steven Moffat says in the DVD commentary for this episode that the Doctor's reply to Rose asking him what she should call him ("Doctor who?") was originally going to be, "I'd rather have Doctor Who than Star Trek," a metafictional dig at the latter programme.
The Chula ships are named after Chula, an Indian/Bangladeshi fusion restaurant in Hammersmith, London where the writers celebrated and discussed their briefs on the scripts they were to write for the season after being commissioned by Russell T. Davies.^[4]

[edit] Historical details

Rose is carried away on a rope attached to a barrage balloon. World War II barrage balloons were actually tethered by steel cables to winches anchored to the ground and not by ropes. They were operated by RAF and WAAF Balloon Command personnel.
Jack Harkness claims to be an American volunteer with 133 Squadron. Group 12, No. 133 Squadron RAF — one of the "Eagle squadrons", so-called because of their American complement — was formed in July 1941, but was not based in the London area and disbanded in September 1942. His rank of "Captain" is also unusual as they used RAF ranks. It would be equivalent to a Squadron Leader or a United States Air Force Major. (Flight Lieutenant is the equivalent RAF rank to a USAF Captain). The Eagle squadrons had British or Commonwealth squadron leaders.
The gas masks shown in the programme are not normal civilian-issue masks, which had a single wide "window". They are closer to the Special Air Service mask, but lack the slightly conical rubber valve at the "nose". In Doctor Who Confidential it was stated that these were custom masks specially designed by the production team and not replicas of any period equipment.