Who Review: The Empty Child
The TARDIS chases a cylindrical vessel as it hurtles through space, jumping time tracks, making its way toward Earth. When the TARDIS lands, it’s in a London back-alley, a month after the vessel made impact. The Doctor enters a building by the back entrance, and asks the assembled audience if they’ve seen anything odd falling from the sky. Then he sees the posters. It’s 1941, the middle of the Blitz. Nazi aircraft are dropping “odd” things from the sky on a regular basis. Rose makes the same discovery when she sees a boy in a gas mask on a roof top calling out for his Mummy. She climbs a rope to get to him, and discovers that rope is attached to a barrage balloon, and she is now swinging over London, while bombs explode and aircraft tear past her. She is rescued by Captain Jack Harkness, who claims to be a former time agent. He joins the Doctor and Rose as they investigate the ship that crashed. But something strange is happening to the people in London. For the last month, an infection has been spreading, turning ordinary people into zombies with gas masks looking for their Mummy. Somehow the little boy is at the center of things, and the Doctor, Rose, and Jack need to find out how before they become his next victims…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
The third guest writer for New Series season one was another long-time Whovian who had already had some success as a television writer. Prior to Doctor Who, Steven Moffat’s credits included teen drama “Press Gang,” and the comedy series “Coupling.” He also wrote the 1999 Comic Relief Who parody, “Curse of Fatal Death,” in which the Doctor’s companion gives a stirring speech about how much the universe needs him (a thinly-veiled plea for the series to return, no doubt), and Joanna Lumley is the Thirteenth Doctor (what were you trying to tell us, Moffat?). Steven Moffat quickly became the most celebrated writer of the Russell T. Davies era, and this two-parter one of the most popular stories, not only of the re-boot, but of all time. Yes, this is “Must-See” viewing, and it easily ranks alongside “Dalek” as the best of the season.
In this first installment of the story, the Doctor and Rose chase after a space craft and find themselves in London during the devastating bomb attack launched by Germany in 1941 known as The Blitz. At the center of the story is “The Empty Child,” a boy in a gas mask who goes around asking “Are you my Mummy?” The child sounds pitiful, but he’s dangerous. Everyone he touches becomes like him. He also has this eerie ability to communicate through radios, telephones, anything with a speaker. When he “calls” the Doctor on the TARDIS phone–i.e., the police box phone that’s part of the TARDIS’s disguise–the Doctor is genuinely shocked. That phone has never worked, and it’s not supposed to work.
“The Empty Child” introduces us to Captain Jack Harkness played by American-English actor John Barrowman. Jack became a staple of the show, even getting his own spin-off series, “Torchwood.” Here, he is a con-man posing as an ex-time agent, posing as an air force captain. He seduces Rose, and tries to sell her and the Doctor the space craft that crashed. At first he said it was a Chula warship, but the Doctor calls his bluff and he admits that it’s an ambulance of some kind. Jack hastily adds that the ship was empty when he directed it to land on Earth. He was hoping to time the sale of the craft so the German bomb would hit it right after he had pocketed the money. Now he finds himself caught up in the mystery of the gas mask boy, and why he is converting all these people into gas mask zombies, chanting “I want my Mummy! Are you my Mummy?”
There is so much to like about these stories, and I’ll gush some more when we discuss part two, “The Doctor Dances.” The dialog is sharp, witty, and natural. The pacing is just right. The characters are three-dimensional. Even Nancy and her group of kids come alive. And it’s genuinely creepy. Great “behind the sofa” material. But what I particularly admire is the way Moffat seamlessly weaves important plot points into the narrative. Everything is there for the viewer to understand the mystery; we just have to make the connections. When we get the final reveal at the end of “The Doctor Dances,” it all makes sense. This is how to write a good mystery story.
As I said at the beginning, this is “Must See” Who. It won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short-Form, so I’m not alone in my opinion. Whether or not you’re a Whovian, this and “The Doctor Dances” are well worth 90 minutes of your time.
