The Empty Child

164a – "The Empty Child"
Doctor Who episode
Doctor Constantine succumbs to the same symptoms his patients exhibit.
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companions Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) John Barrowman (Jack Harkness)
Others Kate Harvey – Nightclub Singer Albert Valentine – The Child Jamie Florence Hoath – Nancy Cheryl Fergison – Mrs Lloyd Damian Samuels – Mr Lloyd Robert Hands – Algy Joseph Tremain – Jim Jordan Murphy – Ernie Brandon Miller – Alf Richard Wilson – Dr Constantine Noah Johnson – Voice of the Empty Child Dian Perry – Computer Voice
Production
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
Series	Series 1
Length	1st of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast	21 May 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "Father's Day" "The Doctor Dances"

"The Empty Child" is the ninth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 21 May 2005. It is the first of a two-part story. The concluding episode, "The Doctor Dances", was broadcast on 28 May. The two-part story won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

This episode marked the first appearance of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness.

Synopsis

The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, chase a metal cylinder marked as "dangerous" through the time vortex. The cylinder skips out of the vortex, and the Doctor lands the TARDIS near the same space-time coordinates, in London during The Blitz air raids of World War II. The Doctor is intrigued by a young woman, Nancy, who warns him away from answering the phone that is part of the TARDIS disguise; doing so anyway, he hears a young boy asking for his "mummy" before the line drops. The Doctor follows Nancy to a well-to-do home, where she along with several other homeless children are partaking of a meal left by the homeowners before they left for shelter during a raid. A young boy in a gas mask knocks on the front door, and Nancy warns the Doctor not to let him in or even touch him, else he will become like the boy, "empty". As the rest of the children flee the house with the air raid over, the Doctor tracks down Nancy, a vagrant like the other children who knows that the boy is tied to what she believes was a bomb-like object that fell near Limehouse station, now under armed guard. Nancy also admits that her caring for the other children is a result of losing her brother Jamie in a recent air raid. After giving Nancy hope that the war is almost over, the Doctor leaves to investigate the hospital near the crash site, meeting Dr. Constantine. Constantine shows the Doctor a number of live patients, each unresponsive with a gas mask seemingly fused to their faces and marked with a scar on their hand, and then demonstrates that each respond identically and simultaneously to a loud noise. As Constantine starts to explain the first patient with this symptom was Nancy's brother, he transforms in front of the Doctor into another gas-mask wearing being.

During these events, Rose has seen the same boy on nearby rooftops, and tries to climb up a nearby rope to help him. Instead, she finds herself hanging precariously from a barrage balloon. She is rescued by Captain Jack Harkness, a freelance time agent himself with his own Chula spaceship, currently posing as a member of the RAF. Jack recognizes Rose as a time traveler herself, and after caring for rope burns on her hands using the ship's "nanogenes", starts to negotiate on the price of an item he has to sell. Rose bluffs, and asks Jack to take him to her partner, the Doctor. En route, Jack explains that the object is a Chula warship, which will be destroyed in another air raid in two hours.

Rose and Jack arrive in time to save the Doctor from the transformed Constantine and other patients. Escaping deeper into the hospital, Jack again attempts to sell the warship to the Doctor, but the Doctor calls the bluff. Jack admits it is only a Chula medical ship, and denies it has anything to do with the current outbreak. The episode ends as the three are trapped in a room as the transformed patients verge upon them, all asking for their "mummy", while Nancy, having returned to the house for more food, is similarly cornered by Jamie.

Continuity

• The Doctor notes when the TARDIS lands how they always bump into Earth.
• 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. He then reappeared in the Series 3 finale, "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords", and the series 4 finale "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End". He also featured in a cameo appearance for the 2009 special, The End of Time.
• 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.
• 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. Also, the UNIT website changed its secure password from "buffalo" to "badwolf". 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", "The Doctor Dances", "Midnight" and "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" are the only Doctor Who stories strongly connected with an alien race in which none of its members or representatives are actually seen.
• The Doctor Who Confidential for this episode 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 longstanding one, first appearing in The Wheel in Space and then several times during the course of the show, 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?".
• Dr. Constantine remarks that before the war, he was a father and a grandfather, and now he is neither — but is still a doctor. The Doctor says "I know the feeling", a reference to his granddaughter Susan Foreman (and her unnamed father or mother), who is implied to have died in the Time War along with the rest of the Doctor's family.
• In "The Poison Sky", the Doctor jokingly repeats the line "Are you my mummy?" when he puts on a gas mask.
• The music that Jack plays as he and Rose dance on top of his spaceship is "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller. This music was also playing in Revelation of the Daleks when Peri met the DJ.

Production

• This episode had the working title "World War II".
• 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 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 cliffhanger for that episode spoiled. This trend has continued for most two-part stories in the new series.
• 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.
• Location filming took place at the Barry Tourist Railway.
• Barry Island and its now-demolished Butlins holiday camp had previously been the filming location of the Seventh Doctor serial, Delta and the Bannermen.

Outside references

• Frequently in this episode, Rose makes references to the Star Trek character 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. This meeting was videotaped, and is available on the DVD release of Doctor Who — The Complete First Series.
• When the Doctor explains the way Nancy operates to feed the children of London he says "I don't know if it's Marxism in action or a west end musical." this is a reference about the musical Oliver! in which Nancy is the name of a character who is the 'big sister' figure to Fagin's gang.^{[citation needed]}
• The Doctor's praise for Great Britain's wartime resilience concludes with a line similar to a quote attributed to the Duke of Wellington: "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me".^{[citation needed]}

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. No. 12 Group of the RAF covered the Midlands and East Anglia. He holds the rank of Captain (wearing the four band insignia of a Group Captain). This would have been equivalent to a USAAF (full) colonel and would be unusual since The Eagle squadrons were commanded by British or Commonwealth squadron leaders (equivalent to a USAAF major) with volunteers not holding a rank any higher than a flight lieutenant which is equivalent to a USAAF captain.
• 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.

Reception

"The Empty Child", along with its conclusion "The Doctor Dances", won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form).

In a poll conducted by Doctor Who Magazine in 2009, the two-part story was ranked the fifth best episode of Doctor Who. The Daily Telegraph named the story the fourth best of the show in 2008. In 2011 before the second half of the sixth series, The Huffington Post labelled "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" as one of five essential episodes for new viewers to watch.

External links

• The Empty Child on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "The Empty Child" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "The Empty Child" at TV.com
• Doctor Who Confidential — Episode 9: Special Effects
• "Are you my mummy?" — Episode trailer for "The Empty Child"
• "The Empty Child" at the Internet Movie Database

Reviews

• "The Empty Child" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide