Doctor Who (2005) 1-09: The Empty Child

Episode:

705

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Serial:

164

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Writer:

Steven Moffat

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Director:

James Hawes

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Air Date:

21-May-2005

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching The Empty Child, the first part of Steven Moffat's very first story for Doctor Who. Unless you count the Comic Relief skit The Curse of Fatal Death, which I don't. Though I have to admit that it has an amazing cast, with most of them playing the Doctor.

It's probably fair to say that no writer has had more of an influence on modern Doctor Who than its first showrunner, Russell T Davies. He's the Gene Roddenberry of the revival. But Steven Moffat is a close second place and the guy still dominates 'Best Doctor Who Stories Ever' lists. People sometimes include episodes by other writers just for the sake of variety, but up at the top you'll find stories like Blink, Day of the Doctor, Heaven Sent, World Enough and Time, and occasionally The Empty Child.

But I've seen 40 of his stories now, enough to be extremely aware of his idiosyncrasies and tired of his gimmicks, so am I even going to enjoy it this time around? Did I really enjoy it that much to begin with? Keep reading and I'll let you know.

There will be SPOILERS below for The Empty Child and earlier stories, though if you're watching through the series for the first time you'll be fine as I won't mention anything that comes later. Except for all those episode titles I just mentioned.

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The episode beings in the middle of an action scene, with the TARDIS chasing a cylindrical metal object that's hurtling towards London... and this is the best screencap I could get of it, sorry. I think this is the first time we've seen the TARDIS flying through open space, though they do jump through the time vortex a bit as well. We see a blue vortex effect which means they're going backwards in time, so there's a clue to what kind of episode this will be.

This is a mauve alert situation, equivalent to a red alert on Earth... unless the Doctor's lying. He's definitely lying about the lack of danger, as there are lots of sparks coming from the console today. It's a pretty impressive firework display, though I'm sure it's hard to fully appreciate that when you're relying on this technology for your life. I know I wouldn't be grinning if my PC started sparkling, even if it would give me a break from writing about Doctor Who.

OPENING CREDITS

The Doctor and Rose step out of the TARDIS in London, witnessed by a creature staring at them with distorted vision. Oh, there's a joke here about how they keep ending up back on Earth every five days, which implies that there are days when they're not back here! We just never get to see them. There's also a joke about them having to drop by Earth to pick up milk, which gets a pay off in another Moffat story 20 years later. I should check later how many times I write the word 'joke' in this review.

They're within a mile and a month of where the mysterious cylinder came down, so now they need to search for it. Rose wants him to scan for alien tech, which he does sometimes. The guy is known for his homemade scanning gadgets that go ding when there's stuff. But today he'd rather pretend to be Dr John Smith, Ministry of Asteroids, and just ask someone. There's a locked door down the street which has music and people behind it so he's starting there.

Rose would've preferred him to be more 'Spock', which is an interesting thing to say. I mean this series has been written for people who don't know a thing about classic Doctor Who, but now it turns out that you do have to know about Star Trek!

Rose is right behind him... until she hears someone calling for "mummy".

She spots a figure on the rooftop, a kid in a gas mask, and goes to help. On the one hand you want to yell at her not to walk towards the obvious Doctor Who monster. On the other hand, would anyone really leave a kid up there just because he looks a bit scary? He may be actually be an unearthly child, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need help.

Meanwhile, the Doctor enters a nightclub and goes up on stage to ask if anyone's heard a large object falling from the air with a bang. Turns out that it's World War II, in the middle of the Blitz, so they mistake it for a comedy routine. Even when the Doctor's being serious it's a joke!

Incidentally, there's a room full of extras in costume here and a band playing, all for 90 seconds of story. It's not a particularly huge room, but that's still money that they didn't need to spend. The episode's done with this place now, it'll never come back, none of these people are important.

Outside, Rose sees a rope swinging by and decides to make use of her gymnastic skills again in order to get up to the kid. Personally I would checked to see what the rope was attached to first before putting my weight on it. But Rose leaps before she looks and whoops now she's hanging off a loose barrage balloon drifting across the sky during an air raid. Wearing a Union Jack t-shirt.

I gotta say, this wasn't very Spock either. It was barely even Chekov.

It leads to a great looking shot though, with planes flying over the burning city of London. More money being spent.

The Doctor returns to the street to find Rose is gone, though there is a very chill cat sitting nearby so he decides to make them his new companion, talking to it about how they never get what "Don't wander off" means. That's basically the only thing in the universe that still surprises him... cue the phone in the TARDIS ringing!

(It probably wasn't ringing on set though, as I expect that cat would've jumped a mile.)

I think this is the first time in Doctor Who history, 27 seasons, that get to see the phone inside the phone box. Incidentally, the Mackenzie-Trench police boxes that the TARDIS is disguised as were in use from the '30s to the '70s, so this is a period of time where it actually blends right in.

A mysterious woman tells him not to answer it, and personally if my phone rang for the first time in 900 years I'd be kind of reluctant to anyway. Especially if it's wasn't a real phone, or really wired up to anything. But the Doctor eventually decides to pick up the earpiece and hears the child asking "Are you my mummy?" Moffat's starting right away with his repeated dialogue gimmick.

He's about to check if Rose is inside the TARIDS, but a crashing sound sends him rushing off down the street. He spies a family rushing into their bomb shelter, and the mysterious woman sneaking into their empty house. It's lucky that the right people are being the loudest tonight or else the Doctor wouldn't have a clue where to go.

Then she starts robbing the house... for food.

Meanwhile, in the skies above London, Rose is still hanging over landmarks watching planes fly around her.

Honestly, this probably is probably some kind of record when it comes to companions getting into trouble, as I can't think of anyone who's gotten themselves into danger this spectacular so quickly.

Cut to an RAF officer watching her with sci-fi binoculars, paying special attention to her ass.

I think Moffat knew what he was doing when he wrote this scene, as first he gets the audience groaning and then he throws them a curve ball when Jack also admires his male friend's backside. He's not just the first blatantly bisexual character in Doctor Who, he's also the most blatant.
 

Rose finally falls off the rope, but fortunately Jack's there to grab her with a tractor beam from his invisible spaceship! He's already figured that she's from the future, the phone gave that away.

He asks her to turn it off as it interferes with the tractor beam, so I guess the Empty Child won't be phoning her up at least.

Inside Jack's ship, a dazed Rose falls into his arms... and then falls into his arms again when she faints. I can really tell a switch from RTD's writing to Moffat's more Buffy-like dialogue here, with Rose responding to Jack's line about her looking dizzy with "What about you, you're not even in focus."

Back at the house, the mysterious woman (Nancy) notices that dinner is already out on the table and whistles her accomplices to join her. All of them young children.

Though they're a little shocked when they pass the plate and the Doctor takes a slice. I'm shocked too, as he never stays for dinner. Also it takes some real stealth skills to sneak up on a table surrounded on all sides by nervous children. Though I suppose that food does look very distracting.

He convinces them he's not a copper, because who'd arrest kids for starving? It's 1941 so there shouldn't even be kids in London, they should've been evacuated to the country (as seen in season 26's The Curse of Fenric, set in 1943).

The Doctor's actually pretty impressed with what Nancy's got going on here, even with the theft and the danger of getting bombed, though he's not sure "if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical". He's added 'mysterious phone call' to his list of things to investigate, but he hasn't forgotten to ask about the cylinder and Rose as well. Nancy seems a bit alarmed by the Doctor's diagram of the object that fell and I'm not surprised considering the state of the drawing. C'mon Doctor I know you're a much better artist than this.

They're interrupted by a knock and a voice asking if their mummy is in there. The "Always carry your gas mask" sign under the letter box is a nice touch.

Nancy rushes to click the door shut and we get a tiny bit of Doctor backstory as he reveals that he knows what it's like to be the last kid left outside in the cold. Nancy gets everyone out through the back door and only one kid has the sense to grab food on the way out.

But she comes back to save the Doctor, warning him not to let the gas mask child touch him. It'll make him empty like he is.

And then the telephone rings.

I like this shot by the way, it shows off how nice even Digibeta could look. The Dutch angle works for it, as it's definitely a time for things to be askew. Especially as the voice starts coming out of the radio next, and then a toy monkey is set off.

The Doctor goes back to the door to talk and it turns out that the kid is able to communicate about things that aren't his mummy. He's just not responding to what the Doctor's saying.

Christopher Eccleston does a fantastic job here of showing the wheels turning as he processes all the weirdness in the moment. A empty kid with a gas mask and a cut on his hand hacking phones and radios to ask for his mummy, an apparent risk that he'll become empty if he touches him... lots of puzzle pieces but it's hard to figure out how they fit. So I'm not too annoyed with him for opening the door and letting the kid in, he knows what he's doing (I hope).

But the kid's gone.

Rose has woken up by this point, but she's still a little dazed by Jack's charm.

He's Captain Jack Harkness, 133 Squadron, Royal Air Force. Except not really. Rose can see right through his psychic paper... mostly because it says that he's single and works out. Later on in the series the gag with the paper is that the Doctor is surprised by what other people believe it says, here it's that Jack's thoughts are leaking out. And Rose's thoughts say that she kind of has a boyfriend called Mickey, but not really. Damn, poor Mickey. She's even stringing him along in her mind.

Rose has got burned hands from the rope, so Jack gets to show off his ship's healing technology: nanogenes. It's like the nanotech that Marvel characters use to avoid having to carry their helmets, except these particular tiny robots repair damaged tissue.

Jack reckons that she must be a Time Agent, which is why he was so keen to save her. He's been waiting for one of them to show up... though not by balloon. I've done a quick mental check through every episode I've seen and I think this is the first mention of time agents. Besides the Time Lords I mean.

With her hands healed he'd like to get right to business, and the first step is going outside and having a drink together on the invisible ship... which is parked in front of Big Ben. First rule of active camouflage: park somewhere you remember. I know that from Star Trek 4.

If this shot seems weirdly familiar to you, that may be because you've seen the episode before. Or it could be that you've seen earlier episodes, as this series of Doctor Who seems to be struggling to escape the immense gravitational pull of Westminster Bridge.

Doctor Who (2005) 1-04: Aliens of London

We're 60 years before Aliens of London, and yet we've barely moved an inch. At least the clock face is the right way around this time.

Anyway, don't drink when you're standing on top of a spaceship parked 50 meters above the ground. Nothing happens to Rose and Jack, they're fine, it's just good advice.

Nancy goes off to a rusty old train with her bag of stolen food and is surprised to find the Doctor's crept up on her again. The guy's worse than the gas mask kid! She's not too freaked out though, and even takes the time to mock his nose and ears. Moffat loves insulting his actors in his scripts.

We're seeing the advantage of the Doctor's approach here, as by talking to people he's learning more about the situation. Nancy's backstory is far more important to solving this crisis than the location of the cylinder, though he manages to get that from her as well: Limehouse Green Station. Soldiers have put up barbed wire around the crash site so Nancy doesn't think he'll be getting through to it. But if he's going to try he'll need to speak to someone else first: the Doctor.

It seems to me that when a writer sets up a mystery with the intent to subvert the viewers' expectations they need to give them a surprise of equal value to what they led them to believe they were getting. For example if a writer gets people's hopes up for a Batman crossover, having Iron Man turn up instead would be a suitable twist.

So stay tuned to see if Moffat can come up with something equally as interesting as another Doctor making a cameo.

Here's something I never thought about before: the episode makes a point of mentioning that Rose is carrying a phone and wearing a liquid crystal watch, but she has to ask Jack what the time is because of course they'd both be wrong. Also it's an excuse for a gag where Jack lights up the low-resolution clock behind them.

Rose points out the air raid that is clearly still going on all around them, but he's too focused on being charming to care and they both end up dancing to Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller on top of his spaceship. It could be the most romantic scene involving people called Rose and Jack on a ship ever seen in a historical drama set in the early 20th century.

Though he does point out that he has the last Chula warship nearby and in two hours it'll get obliterated by a bomb, so that's her deadline to buy it. Unfortunately Rose got lost in his eyes and didn't really pick up that he was using language just now.

It's kind of interesting that no actual Time Agents show up in the episode to buy the Chula ship. Maybe they just don't know where to look. At least Jack has an idea of how to find Rose's companion: he'll scan for alien tech. So now she really loves him.

Though the Doctor's using tech too, as he uses some sci-fi binoculars of his own to scope out Limehouse station... and the spooky hospital up on the hill. That's Avalon Hospital, the same place they took the fake alien in Aliens of London. Nancy strongly encourages him to go to there before checking out the 'bomb'.

In real life the crash site and the hospital are two separate locations in Cardiff, so they had to do some compositing work to construct this creepy scene. It looks like something out of a horror movie.

The Doctor's asks her who she lost to make her go out of her way to look after so many kids. It turns out that it was her little brother Jamie, who followed her out during an air raid.

He's got a really nice speech here about Britain standing against the Nazi war machine like a mouse in front of a lion, the one country that refuses to fall. He may be slightly exaggerating how much of an underdog we were, seeing as we had the biggest empire in the world and all that, but basically yeah.

He cheers Nancy up at least, and he didn't even subvert it with a joke. You know, Dalek might be the episode that gave Eccleston the most room to stretch his acting muscles, but this might be where he impresses me the most as the Doctor.

Man, the lighting in this episode works so well! Though it helps that you're seeing tiny images, as the resolution ain't so great.

As Nancy leaves, we get another first person view of the Empty Child following her. Then we get a crane shot of Albion Hospital's gate as the Doctor enters the dark and abandoned building. Well, abandoned aside from beds of patients wearing gas masks and a single doctor played by Richard Wilson!

He's Doctor Constantine and the Doctor... is going to avoid giving his name for now as it gets awkward in hospitals.

Constantine turns out to be a fantastic source of exposition, as he explains that they're not wearing gas masks, they weren't caught in the blast, and they're not dead. Also he's dying of something himself, or at least he will be when he can get around to it. Honestly, I'm not disappointed at all that this guy is 'the Doctor' Nancy mentioned.

We get a rare example of the Doctor showing off his medical knowledge as he examines the bodies. The victims all have identical injuries, including the wound on the hand... which Constantine has too. The entire hospital has been infected by this plague.

There's a horror moment when Constantine hits a bin with his stick and gets everyone sitting up in response. No heartbeat, no signs of life, they "just don't die". And no one's doing anything to help because nothing can be done.

Constantine mentions that before the war he was a father and a grandfather. Now he's neither, but he's still a doctor. Great line that, and the Doctor drops some lore for new viewers saying that he knows how he feels. In fact the Doctor's granddaughter Susan was his first companion in the series. There's some obscure trivia for you.

He points the Doctor to room 802 and also says he should find Nancy again, seeing as her brother was the first victim. Jamie is the Empty Child.

That's all the exposition that the Doctor's getting out of Constantine though as he finally succumbs to the plague. He fights the urge to say "Are you my mummy?" before a CGI gas mask forming out of his face in an effect that looks way too good for 2005. It was never going to be 100% convincing, as it's very unnatural thing to happen, but it's convincing enough for me.

Well that was Richard Wilson's time in the episode. I don't know how much he was paid but he gave them their money's worth.

Jack finally reunites Rose with the Doctor, and it turns out that all these bodies with gas masks on their faces was definitely not part of his plan.

He admits that the Chula warship he was selling to them is really more of a Chula ambulance, and it's empty. The idea was he'd lure some Time Agents in, sell them the ship and then let it get destroyed before they discovered it was space junk.

Unfortunately they're just a pair of freelancers like he is, and he realises that the clues were right there.

Like how Rose is dressed as a flag and the Doctor's dressed like a U-boat captain.

I've always thought it was a smart idea to have the Doctor make barely any effort to blend in. Granted a lot of the time that's because he's got no idea where he's ended up, but back in the Third Doctor era he was stranded in one place and time and he still didn't dress like he belonged there. He doesn't want to look like everyone else, whether they're humans in 1941 or aliens in the year 5 billion, and this means he stands out in any scene.

I was never keen on him going full-on 'clown coat, cricket jumper, question marks on everything and celery on his lapel' eccentric, but it works when he's moderately and consistently 'a bit off'.

Suddenly all the patients in the hospital sit up and ask for their mummy. They walk slowly towards the cornered heroes. Meanwhile Nancy returns to the empty house where she's corned by Jamie, who also inquires about his mother. She tries to make a run for it, but he uses his power to make the door slam shut.

Surprise, it's another secret two-parter like Aliens of London! This time the ending is a little different however. Sure both stories end on a cliffhanger with every character getting trapped by the bad guys simultaneously, but this time the resolution wasn't immediately spoiled by the next episode trailer! They'd got that figured out by this point.

Though there is still a trailer after the credits and I think that demonstrates an inadequate amount of faith in the quality of the cliffhanger and of the mystery. I mean, this whole episode was basically a teaser trailer to get people hyped for the next one.


CONCLUSION

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I think 80-90 minute serials are where Doctor Who is most comfortable. There are plenty of great single-part stories, but the two-parters (and four-parters back in the classic era) give the stories room to stretch their legs and settle in. The Empty Child doesn't feel slow exactly, but it's in no rush either, so its able to spend a bit of time with its characters.

The Doctor and Rose are separated for most of the episode, so they're off on their own adventures. The Doctor takes the time to talk with Nancy and Dr Constantine and listen to what they have to say, while Rose hangs off a balloon, passes out, gets drunk and goes dancing on a spaceship during an air raid while wearing a flag. Both approaches turn out to be equally valid in the end, which shows why the Doctor and Rose make such a good team.

They're not entirely the Doctor and Rose in this one though. They're a slightly quippier, funnier version of themselves, with Steven Moffat's fingerprints all over their dialogue. This is a guy who wrote four seasons of a sitcom about dating adventures and mishaps, and you can absolutely tell. I mean Rose spends the whole episode getting charmed by Captain Jack, who incidentally makes a strong first impression.

But if it's the funniest episode so far, that's mostly because there's fewer misfires like farting aliens and burping wheelie bins. It's just as much a horror as it is a comedy and it treats its central mystery seriously. Well, as seriously as you can treat a kid in a gas mask asking everyone if they're his mummy. This is Doctor Who playing to its strengths, being scary enough for kids and smart enough for adults, with a villain few other series would be capable of pulling off.

It helps that the production team took the job of recreating WWII London absolutely seriously and the cinematography is often far too good for an episode shot on SD digital video. Every department nailed it this time around, it's as if they knew they were working on something special.


RATING

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I'm someone who became a fan during the Matt Smith era, when Steven Moffat was the showrunner, so this kind of tone and this kind of wit is proper Doctor Who for me. So it's not going to come as a huge shock that I'm giving The Empty Child...

 9/10.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, back to new Doctor Who with the first part of the epic season 2 finale: Wish World! I'm just making an assumption about its epicness, I haven't seen it yet, but it would be kind of strange if it wasn't. The Disney+ money hasn't ran out yet.

If you've got any opinions about the first part of the epic The Empty Child two-parter, leave a comment below.