The Empty Child (TV story)

The Empty Child was the ninth episode of series 1 of Doctor Who.

It was the first part of a two-part story, and writer Steven Moffat's first episode of Doctor Who. Furthermore, it introduced Captain Jack Harkness into the Doctor Who universe. The idea of alien interference during the Second World War would be revisited later in the Eleventh Doctor story Victory of the Daleks.

It's the first of the Revived Series to have a child being responsible for the bizarre goings-on in the episode, due to gaining some kind of extraterrestrial powers. This pattern would be repeated in future stories such as Fear Her. and Night Terrors.

Synopsis
Chasing a metallic object through the Time Vortex, the Ninth Doctor and his companion, Rose Tyler, arrive in London during the Blitz. While Rose meets "Captain Jack Harkness", the dashing Time Agent responsible for bringing the object, the Doctor finds a group of homeless children terrorised by Jamie, an "empty" child wearing a gas mask.

Plot
The Doctor's TARDIS chases a metal cylinder displaying mauve alert, which prompts Rose to ask why they are chasing it. The Ninth Doctor explains that mauve is the universally recognised colour for danger, and that "red's camp" — only humans considered red a colour for danger. "Oh, all those red alerts. All that dancing and misunderstanding" the Doctor says, reflecting back to when he didn't know this. The Doctor hacks into the flight program of the cylinder and keeps the TARDIS locked on it. However, the cylinder begins jumping time tracks. Coming out of the vortex, they find the cylinder is thirty seconds from the centre of 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 they have arrived a couple of weeks to a month after the cylinder's impact — it was jumping time tracks, which made it hard to keep up. He hears music coming from behind a locked door and uses the sonic screwdriver to open it. He steps inside, but Rose hears a child calling for his mother. She looks up and sees a young boy wearing a gas mask on the roof.

The door the Doctor enters leads to a makeshift cabaret. After the singer ends her set, the Doctor steps up to the microphone and asks if any object had fallen from the sky in the last few days. Everyone laughs, and the Doctor finally spots posters showing that it's 1941 — the middle of the Blitz — and closes his eyes in embarrassment.

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. She uses it to climb up, not realising that it is attached to a barrage balloon above. It rises, taking Rose with it, clean off the roof and hanging on for dear life. 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 the TARDIS and sees no sign of Rose. Petting a stray cat, the Doctor rather sarcastically remarks that one day, he'll get a companion that actually does what he says. He pulls up short when the exterior telephone of the TARDIS rings; it's not a real phone. 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 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? Are you my 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. 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 mutters, "Excellent bottom", and grins at the officer, before saying (with an American accent), that he has to meet a girl, "but you've got an excellent bottom too."

Rose loses her grip on the rope and falls, screaming, until she finds her descent halted by a blue beam. Jack's voice tells her to deactivate her mobile 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 and gets out a couple of "hellos" before she faints.

Back at the house, the young woman has been joined by other children. They start to eat the dinner left on the table. The Doctor appears suddenly and deduces that all of them are homeless, but notes that, as it is 1941, they 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 who told him not to answer the phone earlier, finds them food this way, waiting for families to hide in shelters before stealing their food. The Doctor thinks it a great idea, but isn't sure if it's "Marxism in action or a West End musical".

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

Nancy tells the Doctor not to let the child touch him or he will become just like him — empty. The telephone on the mantelpiece rings. 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.

The Doctor asks the child through the door why the other children are frightened of him, but he keeps asking to be let in, saying he is 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 "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. 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 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, floating next 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. 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. 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. Rose gives an approving smile — the Doctor had earlier refused to do just that.

The Doctor uses his own binoculars to monitor the crash site from afar 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.

In the wards, the Doctor finds the beds apparently filled with corpses wearing gas masks. An elderly man in a doctor's coat appears. He tells 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 lightning-shaped scars on the backs of their hands. Constantine has the same scar, but the Doctor does not notice.

Constantine explains that when the "bomb" dropped, it claimed one victim. Those in contact with it soon suffered the exact same injuries, the symptoms spreading like a plague. The Doctor asks what killed them. Constantine responds by telling him that they are not dead. When he raps his cane against an empty pail the "corpses" come to life.

The Doctor takes a startled step back, but Constantine tells him they are harmless: they just sit there. They have no life signs, but they do not die. All Constantine can do is make them comfortable. Constantine states that before the war, he was a father and a grandfather; now he is neither, but still a doctor. The Doctor, having been through a similar experience, tells Constantine that he knows what it's like. He suspects the Army has a plan to blow up the hospital and blame it on a German bomb, as isolated cases are now 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, as he slumps in his chair.

Rose and Jack enter the hospital. 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. She 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?

Back at the house, Nancy has returned to raid the kitchens, but the child gets inside. She does her best to hide, but the child eventually finds her in the dining room and asks her, "Are you my mummy?" Nancy backs away, calling the child "Jamie" and pleading, "But you're dead!"

In the hospital, the gas-mask virus carriers suddenly get up and start advancing on the trio of time travellers, all calling for "Mummy"...

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

The Doctor

 * The Doctor knows what it's like being the only child left out in the cold.
 * One of the kids thinks the Doctor is a "copper".
 * The Doctor chuckles nervously after Nancy tells him to speak to "the doctor" at Albion Hospital and avoids giving his name until realising Dr Constantine is not one of his incarnations.
 * The Doctor mentions 900 years of "phone box travel", and that, nine centuries in without a name, he's coping.

Individuals

 * Rose wears a Union Jack T-shirt.
 * The Doctor states that if he was Hitler, he would be scared of Britain.
 * The Doctor's jacket matches the style worn by U-boat captains.
 * Rose uses the word "flash" as slang.
 * Rose tells Jack that the Doctor's name is Spock.

Mammals

 * The Doctor says about milk, "Of all the species, in all the universe, it has to come out of a cow."
 * The Doctor talks to a cat about his companions "wandering off".
 * The Doctor describes the United Kingdom standing up and fighting against Germany as "a mouse in front of a lion".

Foods and beverages

 * The children eat turkey inside a home during the air raid.
 * Jack and Rose drink champagne.

Music

 * Moonlight Serenade and In The Mood are heard.
 * Jamie makes "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" play on the radio. The Doctor then references the song name to Jamie, soon correcting himself — this chicken — when he realises the song's stopped playing.

Technology

 * Jack Harkness uses a pair of futuristic binoculars to zoom in on Rose hanging from a balloon, while the Doctor uses a similar pair of opera glasses to spy on the crash site.
 * Jack has on board his ship a small silver device that hums to check Rose's injuries, and a small silver remote with a blue light to activate several features around him.

Psychic paper

 * The Doctor's psychic paper says that he's Doctor John Smith from the Ministry of Asteroids when Rose reads it.
 * Jack possesses his own psychic paper; Rose mentions that one's mind cannot wander while handing it over: it says that Jack works out and is single, while it claims that Rose has a "sort of" boyfriend but is "very available".

Story notes

 * This story introduces John Barrowman as Jack Harkness. Although slated to become a companion, Barrowman's name is not added to the opening credits. The notion of adding a third name to reflect an "expanded roster" would not be introduced until Barrowman's return to the series two years later in Utopia.
 * The only words the Empty Child says not in relation to his mummy are "balloon" and a mention of his fear of "bombs".
 * The Empty Child shows an ability to make telephones ring even when they are not really connected to anything, such as the fake police box phone. Steven Moffat would later reuse this device in his series, in which Mr Hyde develops the ability to make his alter ego, Tom Jackman, believe that phones are ringing even if they are turned off or disconnected, and can then communicate with Jackman through these phones.

Ratings

 * 7.11 million viewers (UK final)

Filming locations

 * Barry Island
 * Cardiff Royal Infirmary, Cardiff.

Production errors

 * When the Doctor opens the TARDIS' telephone compartment, it's blue but both the inside of the TARDIS doors and the phone compartment are white.

Continuity

 * Jack is a Time Agent. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, The Pandorica Opens, PROSE: Eater of Wasps, Trading Futures, Human Nature)
 * Jack will later return to an earlier point in World War II and meet the real Jack Harkness. (TV: Captain Jack Harkness)
 * The Chula ambulance jumps time tracks. (TV: The Space Museum)
 * According to Gwen Cooper's police colleague, Yvonne, a detailed search of UK records revealed that Captain Jack Harkness failed to report for duty on 21 January 1941. (TV: Everything Changes)
 * The Tenth Doctor quips "Are you my mummy?" when given a gas mask to wear, (TV: The Poison Sky) as does the Twelfth Doctor when he sees the mummy-like Foretold. (TV: Mummy on the Orient Express)
 * The Doctor relates to Constantine's statement that he was once a father and a grandfather, but is still a doctor despite being neither now. In doing so, the Doctor indirectly references his own granddaughter, Susan. (TV: An Unearthly Child et al.) The Doctor would later offhandedly tell Rose that he used to be a dad. (TV: Fear Her)
 * During his first incarnation, the Doctor and Susan also visited London during the Blitz in 1941. (AUDIO: The Alchemists)
 * While Rose hands Jack the psychic paper it says she has a "sort of" boyfriend but that she considers herself to be available, alluding to the stress on her and Mickey's relationship travelling with the Doctor has caused. (TV: Rose, Aliens of London/World War Three) It will be brought up again in TV: Boom Town.

DVD releases

 * This story was released on a vanilla DVD with The Long Game, Father's Day and The Doctor Dances.
 * It was also released as part of the series 1 DVD box set.
 * This episode and Father's Day were the focus of the Series 1 Volume 3 front cover.
 * This story was also released with Issue 5 of the Doctor Who DVD Files.

Blu-Ray releases

 * This story was released in the Series 1 Blu-Ray set in November 2013 along with the rest of the series. Despite not being filmed in HD, the Blu-Ray features an upscaled picture and fewer compression artefacts.
 * This release was initially bundled with the first seven series of the revived Doctor Who.

Digital releases

 * This story is available for streaming via Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime. It can also be purchased on iTunes.
 * In 2015, it was released by BBC Worldwide on BitTorrent and iTunes, in A Decade of the Doctor bundle to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the new series. It included introductions by Peter Capaldi, Earth Conquest: The World Tour and an episode guide.