Previously: Rose tried to change history and it caused a little hay fever.
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The Empty Child
Sweeney: We begin with the Doctor and Rose frantically chasing something with the TARDIS. It’s mostly a lot of frantic camera motions and the Doctor explaining to Rose that “mauve” is the universally recognized by-everyone-who-isn’t-human color for danger, and what they are chasing is totally mauve. Also it’s headed for the center of London, as dangerous wibbly wobbly timey wimey things tend to do.
This gif continues to be my favorite part of the show. Thank you, Tumblr.
They land the TARDIS and joke a bit about their continued returns to Earth when there’s all sorts of other cool, interesting places to go.
Kirsti: I kind of love Rose’s joke about how they can only go five days away from Earth before they run out of milk. There’s something endearingly British about it. “ALL OF TIME AND SPACE!!! But need milk for tea.”
Sweeney: Rose is also super annoyed when the Doctor’s investigation plan is to just ask and not use any cool alien-scanning tech. The Doctor breaks into a place where he hears music and people but Rose doesn’t follow because she hears a child calling out, “Mummy,” and after he’s gone she spots the kid on the roof of another building wearing a gas mask.
The Number Gods and I used to have such a good relationship. I’m sure I missed some sort of regular ritual sacrifice and I’m now being punished with the creepy children episode.
Marines: Did I forget to send you the invite?
Sweeney: Rude.
Inside, the Doctor follows a waiter with a tray of wine glasses (definitely the man to follow) into a lounge where a lounge singer and band are performing. Outside Rose is running up to the child. As soon as the performance finishes inside, the Doctor runs up to the microphone to ask the audience if anything recently fell from the sky. The audience stares blankly for a minute and then starts laughing.
Outside, Rose is getting closer to the gas mask child. A rope conveniently drops down for her to climb. (M: Dear, sweet Rose. One should not climb sudden ropes.)
Inside, people continue laughing until sirens go off. They all get up and leave the room and the Doctor spots a poster warning people about Hitler and he realizes that he’s in WWII London.
Outside, the rope Rose is clinging too turns out to be attached to a zeppelin which starts floating off. I’ve had nightmares like this. Sans time travel and Nazis and stuff, but the uncontrollable floating away thing? A recurring nightmare of mine. I’m distracted on account of how badly I want to be sleeping. Rose probably wishes this were a dream because shit’s super real up their in the sky where she is holding on with her remarkable grip.
K: I mean, I know she has a medal for under sevens gymnastics. But why the hell does she suddenly have insane upper body strength?! I would die in two seconds flat. Although I’d probably also be smart enough not to grab onto a barrage balloon while wearing a Union flag t-shirt (it’s only the Union Jack when it’s flown at sea, kids! #TMYK)
Mari: Mostly I’m just thinking of the Spice Girls.
Sweeney: Samesies.
The Doctor is hanging out in the alley and finds a cat. Suddenly the TARDIS starts ringing and he’s super confused. A girl appears and tells him not to answer it because she’s super sure it’s not for him. (K: I flail a little because it’s Clary from The Cazalets! Otherwise known as a show that I’m pretty sure no one but me and a bunch of middle aged ladies watched…) He turns back to it to wonder how the hell it’s even ringing but when he turns around again she’s gone. Without her there looming over him, he answers. There’s silence and eventually we hear the creepy, “Mummy? Mummy? Are you my mummy?” child. The Doctor tries to ask the creepy child how it even called, but to no avail.
He wonders if Rose is in the TARDIS but then runs out of the alley to investigate noises. He watches a couple bicker about having to go into their bomb shelter and eventually sees the ominous girl again. She sneaks into the couple’s house to steal some of their food.
Rose, meanwhile, is dangling on a rope in front of a terrible green screen. A+ hanging on skills, though! Is success at rope climbing in gym a requirement for being a companion? (M: I hope not. My dreams will be ruined.) Down on the ground, a guy with binoculars is oogling Rose as her life is on the line, because pervs gotta perv and can’t be bothered with tact and respect and stuff. Binocular Perv decides to go maybe help Rose or something and I realize that he is John Barrowman. I don’t have any concept of whether he is good or bad only that he is ~*significant*~ and will be seen again. Maybe. Unless he just goes straight from here into his spin off? Don’t answer that – I don’t actually care. John Barrowman heads off and slaps his buddy’s ass on his way out. Slapping random asses today, making out with Spike tomorrow.
K: I’d totally forgotten about that storyline and the fact that I told you guys about that storyline when I was watching Torchwood while we recapped Buffy, so when I saw that comment, I laughed for about five minutes straight. And then flailed because JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!
Sweeney: Girl, we were told about that storyline by you and every single Traumateer. I’m pretty sure that clip got dropped into the Buffy comments at least a dozen times in the two years we spent recapping that show.
Back in the house, Ominous Girl walks by the dining room on her way out and gets an idea. She steps outside to whistle for some people and back inside to take over the full fledged feast the couple was having. Two boys come in, wide-eyed, and confirm that there are other kids out there. She begins carving the meat and telling the boys to be patient because they have the whole air raid to eat.
Outside, Rose has finally lost her amazing grip and is falling. She’s saved by a blue glowy orb tunnel thing and John Barrowman’s voice. I mean, probably she just hears his voice, but let’s go ahead and assume his voice also saves her. (M: I’m sure that fanfiction exists.) He tells her to chill while he does stuff with his instruments to save her for realsies. In…whatever he’s in…a computer tells him that Rose is clearly “not from around here.”
Rose comes flying down the blue orb slide and into John Barrowman’s arms. She swoons a little and he puts her down. She faints.
Lost Boys Feast. Ominous Girl has now got a whole gaggle of children at her commandeered dinner table. I feel like she needs a better nickname because she’s kind of badass. As she is telling the boys to mind their manners and stuff, their meal is interrupted by the Doctor. The kids freak out but she tells them to sit back down because he shouldn’t be there either. The Doctor asks why all these kids haven’t been evacuated from London yet. They have, but terrible things happened to them in the homes they were sent to, so now they’re back in the city and this girl waits for the sirens to go off for opportunities like this to feed everyone.
K: I love her. She’s fabulous. Can we give her Sandy Cohen Eyebrows? Because she deserves Sandy Cohen Eyebrows.
Sweeney: Absofreakinglutely. She’s my favorite part of this episode. She can have all the Eyebrows she wants. Probably she’d rather have food, but we don’t have any of that to give her, so she’ll have to work with what we’ve got.
The Doctor starts asking everyone questions, like about the phone magically ringing, but she’s not interested in answering his questions. None of them can recall seeing Rose. He pulls out a drawing that looks like random ass scribbles to me, but which I guess is supposed to be the thing they chased to this place and time. It also seems to be filled with meaning for Ominous Girl. This is interrupted by the creepy gas mask child knocking on the window calling out for his mummy. Ominous Girl asks everyone if they closed the front door and she runs to lock it. The Doctor is surprised by this, as it seems pretty cold and inconsistent with her whole Robin Hood shtick. She says it’s not exactly a child, but doesn’t explain further because she’s gotta hurry the kids out the back door.
The Doctor lingers in the foyer rather than following her to find out what’s going on, which is stupid. Fortunately for him, Nancy (that’s her name! Woo names!) comes back and throws something at the child’s hand reaching through the mail slot.
K: Welcome to the post-watching The Empty Child world where any time you hear a child calling out for its mother, you secretly panic a little bit.
Sweeney: The good news is that I won’t have many occasions to hear British children calling out for their mothers. I’ll be on high alert the next time I’m in Europe, though.
Nancy continues to be the best because she’s also NOPEing right on out of there. The Doctor talks to the child through the door, finally resolving to open the door, but when he does, it’s gone.
John Barrowman’s spaceship/time machine. Rose wakes up and he introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness and hands her an ID which is meant to prove he’s an American volunteer with British forces but Rose realizes immediately that it’s psychic paper. She knows both because she’s seen it before and because the paper he showed her reveals that he’s single and he works out. She hands the paper back and he teases her about how it reveals that she’s “very available.” They conclude that they’re both not from around there in the time traveling sense. He notices that she burned her hands on the rope and he gets very close to her to push some buttons and cause some orby robot magic to heal her.
He knows she’s a time agent and invites her up to the roof for a drink to talk business. Up on said roof she realizes that the ship is invisible and tethered to Big Ben. “First rule of active camouflage – park somewhere you’ll remember. ” He pops the champagne and Rose continues to be swoony as he pours it.
Elsewhere, my BFF Nancy is out hiding the loot she stole. She’s interrupted by the Doctor who says that clearly her and the other children are being hunted by this thing that looks like a boy but isn’t a boy. He guesses that it started a month ago – when the thing he’s looking for came. Nancy confirms, nervously, that there was a bomb-that-wasn’t-a-bomb. She won’t take the Doctor to where it fell because it’s being guarded by tons of soldiers and barbed wire and stuff. He presses, though, and she says that if he really wants to know, he needs to talk to someone first – “The Doctor.” “Say what?” says both the Doctor’s face and also me.
Segue Magic back to the roof of Captain Jack’s space ship. (As an aside, my brain just went to a different Captain Jack and will now be playing this song on repeat as I try to finish this recap.) (K: A+ selection) He asks if Rose is in a position to pay because he’s got information the agency will definitely want. Rose awkwards that she’s gotta go ask her companion about that and Captain Jack switches to full on flirt mode. Rose questions the wisdom of his timing, but doesn’t actually want the flirting to stop. (Fair.)
K: Her smugness over Jack doing what she suggested the Doctor do makes me laugh, but mostly this scene gives me endless feels because Glen Miller’s In the Mood was my grandmother’s favourite song and we played it at her funeral and I can’t hear it without tearing up. THANKS, DOCTOR WHO…
Mari: I love, love that song and will now play it to get Michael Bolton out of my head. THANKS, SWEENEY.
Sweeney: I still can’t get it out of my head so I’m not even a little sorry for inflicting that on everyone else.
Nancy takes the Doctor to the thing he’s looking for and it is, indeed, heavily guarded. She points to a building just past it and says that’s where “the Doctor” is and he needs to go talk to that guy first, mostly so he can be talked out of this whole plan. Nancy’s gotta go, though – she’s got to get back to feeding every orphan in London. The Doctor asks her who she lost, who she’s trying to compensate for. It was her little brother, the same night the thing fell. Her little brother stayed with her when she was looking for food and got killed during the air raid. The Doctor waxes poetic about how the British turn the tide of the war, “a mouse in front of a lion,” saying that the whole lot of them are incredible. Nancy is strengthened and encouraged by this as she heads off to save the world, one group of orphans at a time.
Mari: I also loved this here speech. I know you haven’t been a big fan of the Doctor’s speeches, but it’s like he goes around to all these times and places, spreading bits of hope or sometimes morality. I think part of the reason this episode works as well as it does is because of the WWII background, which kind of serves as an anchor to the other absurdity. “Country after country, falling like Dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing until one tiny, damp little island says “no”. No, not here.” It’s filled with not only national pride, but the sort of, “GO HUMANS!” pride that keeps the Doctor willing to protect this species even when they are being awful.
Sweeney: This is one of the few (first?) that I liked, though I suspect it’s some combination of the speech itself and the fact that it emboldened my BFF Nancy. Also, it helped that this is the only one we got in this episode. My problem with the Doctor speeches is that they tend to either stand in for actual show-not-tell plot development or outright undermine it. When half of his lines are these speeches, your plot clearly isn’t communicating what you want it to. In addition to this being the only such speech in the episode, it also serves an actual function. This wasn’t just the Doctor soliloquizing for the audience’s benefit – Nancy needed that little speech.
The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to get into the hospital where “the Doctor” awaits. Inside, he goes through the wards finding the beds full of empty people. This other doctor appears, saying that there are hundreds of them. This other doctor is Dr. Constantine and as soon as THE Doctor says that Nancy sent him, Dr. Constantine knows he was asking about the bomb. Dr. Constantine explains that all he knows about the bomb is what it’s done. Not one of these people was actually hit by the blast. Dr. Constantine coughs a lot and has to sit down because he’s quite ill. He invites the Doctor to examine the bodies. With the help of the sonic screwdriver he deduces head wounds, lungs collapsing, and that these gas masks have been fused to the flesh, but without any burns. The Doctor keeps examining patients and realizes that they all have the exact same injuries, right down to the scar on their hands (which the creepy kid had) and the Doctor says this is impossible. I mean, except for the fact that it actually happened so it’s clearly possible, but OK. Dr. Constantine explains that after the bomb there was only one patient. By the following morning, it had spread to all the nurses who had touched him and then to everyone in the ward and eventually to the entire hospital. “Physical injuries as plague.” Dr. Constantine says that there’s also no cause of death because the people aren’t dead.
K: I honestly don’t know how any children made it through this episode, because the Empty Child and its infecting others thing scare the living shit out of me.
Sweeney: I think the whole creepy children thing is a more adult fear – creepy kids are less creepy when you’re a kid. They represent something a lot closer to the familiar. Creepy Children as horror trope prey on twisting otherwise beaming, nostalgic notions of childhood. When childhood is still just “life” that warping doesn’t play the same. The infection, too, I think is a more adult fear, though I can’t articulate that as well. (Would be curious for theories/explanations in the comments, though!)
He rattles something to wake them up and all the patients sit up but they won’t actually do anything. Dr. Constatine is getting sicker by the minute and he tells the Doctor where to find Patient Zero and tells him to also go find Nancy because Patient Zero was her brother. She knows more than she’s admitting and Dr. Constantine speculates that maybe the Doctor can get her to talk. Dr. Constantine doesn’t get to say any more, though because he morphs into another empty person.
Mari: Okay, still not the best special effects of all time, but it’s almost all the more freaky because of it. By the time the eyes start growing I need to look away…
Sweeney: The eyes just look like googly eyes to me…
The Doctor hears John Barrowman calling out to him in the halls. As he and Rose approach, she helpfully explains that she had to tell John Barrowman about them being time agents. John Barrowman is very pleased and eager to meet Mr. Spock. As John Barrowman continues down the hall, the Doctor and Rose have a side argument about his lack of a name. “Don’t you ever get tired of ‘Doctor’ – Doctor WHO?” As Rose breezes on about her evening, she asks him what a Chula warship is and the Doctor pauses to ponder that.
Back at the original house, Nancy is collecting the remnants of the feast when suddenly the radio clicks on again with the child’s voice. She turns around and sees the child’s shadow approaching in the hall. Panicked, she hides under the table and watches its feet stroll past.
Hospital. John Barrowman can’t fathom how this could possibly happen. He goes on to say that it can’t have anything to do with the ship because it was just an empty ambulance – he made sure of it. He threw it at them to bait them and was just trying to convince them it was valuable. The whole thing was a con and more importantly he’s certain it is not responsible for all this. Speaking of this, the Doctor explains that its human DNA being rewritten into this nothingness, but he can’t figure out what the point is.
Feast House. Nancy’s still hiding under the table when the child comes in. She loses her grip on the food and an apple rolls to the other end of the table. She uses that as her opportunity to flee, but isn’t quick enough. The child manages to close the door with his mind. He points at Nancy asking if she’s his mummy.
Hospital. Suddenly, all the empty people are awake and getting out of bed, approaching the time traveling three, saying the same things as the little boy with Nancy. the back into a corner and the Doctor cautions the others not to let the people touch them, lest they catch the virus.
Feast House. Nancy is telling her brother that it’s Nancy, his sister, and he’s dead. We get a whole bunch of quick cuts of all the faces before we go to end credits.
Guys, this episode didn’t suck! I have an Angel-esque aversion to writing these posts, which is why this took so long. (It did wonders for my ability to accomplish other things, let me tell you. All the stuff I usually blog to procrastinate? DONE AND DONE.)
This show struggles with recapping, mostly because it seems to be a “the flaws are charming!” kind of show which is great except not because when you’re really thinking about them they’re just flaws. That said, this episode only kicked off with a lot of the major contrivance of previous episodes (I got 7 minutes in and took a 4 day break from writing) but once the pair were set on their respective paths, the story mostly seemed to flow nicely. It also helps a lot that I really dug the two major extra players in this episode (Nancy and John Barrowman). Admittedly, I was actually more interested in both of them than in either of our main characters, but that’s not the point.
The point here is that after 9 episodes I can finally say that I actually want to watch the next one. A major milestone. (Except actually I’m about to go to sleep. I’m not to must watch right away yet, but want to watch is a long way from where I’ve been.)
K: This episode is, I suspect, a turning point for a lot of people. It was for me. I liked the show after The Unquiet Dead and I was fairly committed to watching the whole thing. But it wasn’t until this episode and the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness that I truly fell in love with the show. Now, if someone could get Steven Moffat back to doing this kind of stuff, that would be EXCELLENT.
Mari: My sister had the same, “well at least now I want to know what happens next,” reaction to this episode. I liked so much of the dialogue here and the range of emotions, from the serious WWII stuff to this big empty person stuff to the Doctor being silly with the kids at the table and Rose and Jack dancing in front of Big Ben. I liked all the little stories and the way the intersected at the hospital, all in time for the cliffhanger.
Sweeney: To go back to my point about the Doctor speeches – that’s sort of indicative of my feelings about the storytelling as a whole. Where the previous 8 episodes (and the beginning of this one…) suffered from very hamfisted storytelling, this episode worked because the story was given the room/freedom to actually tell itself and unfold without pausing every few minutes to beat us over the head with something.
Next time: The Doctor figures out what’s causing the gas mask thing and he finds the kid’s Mummy in Doctor Who S01 E10 – The Doctor Dances.
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