The Doctor Dances

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164b – "The Doctor Dances"
Doctor Who episode
Doctor Dances.jpg
The army of zombies marches out of the hospital.
Cast
Others
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 1.10
Series Series 1
Length 2nd of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast 28 May 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
"The Empty Child" "Boom Town"

"The Doctor Dances" is the tenth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 28 May 2005. It is the second of a two-part story and saw Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, join the Doctor as a companion. The first part, "The Empty Child", was broadcast on 21 May. Together with "The Empty Child", the episodes won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.[1]

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Continuing from the cliffhanger of "The Empty Child", the Doctor treats the beings like children, and faking a parent's anger, orders them to "go to their room" – thus causing them to return to their beds and, unbeknownst to him, saving Nancy from her brother Jamie. The Doctor, Rose and Jack go to Jamie's room where the Doctor realises that the being that was Jamie is still learning what it can do and soon will be too powerful to stop. The Doctor turns to discover Jamie, sent to his room by the Doctor's earlier orders, waiting in the doorway.

Escaping from Jamie and the other patients, they end up trapped in a room. Jack teleports back to his ship and uses Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" to prevent Jamie using the radio to track the Doctor and Rose. Challenged by Rose to dance while they wait, the Doctor accepts but is interrupted when they are transported to Jack's Chula ship. The Doctor uses the ship's nanogenes to heal a wound while Jack explains that he went renegade on the Time Agency when they stole two years of his memories.

Meanwhile, Nancy returns to the railyard to tell the other children they are not safe while they are with her. Telling them of her plan to head to the bomb site, Nancy does so but is captured by soldiers. Despite her pleas, she is left with a guard who has been infected and grows a gas mask on his face.

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack arrive at the bomb site and realise that the contagion is now airborne as the soldiers there begin to transform. Freeing Nancy, who saved herself by singing a lullaby to the transformed soldier, the Doctor investigates the 'bomb' which is actually the empty shell of a Chula medical transport. Realising that the ship also contained nanogenes, the Doctor deduces that the transformations are caused by nanogenes who have used Jamie's dead body in a gas mask as a template for all humans. Because the Chula were a warrior race and the transport was a battlefield ambulance, intended to return warriors to combat swiftly, the nanogenes have given the transformed beings enhanced abilities.

As they attempt to open the transport, it transmits a "call to arms" instructing all the altered humans to come to battle. The altered people from the hospital arrive at the railway station but stay at a distance, and the Doctor realises that since Jamie was the template, it is his mind that drives them, hence their collective obsession with finding a mother. A distraught Nancy claims that the situation is all her fault, and the Doctor realises that she is actually Jamie's teenage single mother, rather than his sister.

Jamie heads through the gate and approaches Nancy, still asking if she is his mummy. The Doctor instructs Nancy to tell Jamie the truth, and she tearfully does so, embracing her son. The nanogene cloud gathers around the two, and are able to identify Nancy's DNA as being that of a parent, and they reverse the transformation on Jamie, restoring him to life. The Doctor then scatters the nanogenes over the assembled zombies as he finally pulls off Jamie's gas mask, and they are all restored to perfect health.

As the German bomb falls onto the site, Jack uses his ship to capture it and remove it to the far reaches of space. Then the Doctor sets the medical transport to explode, thus destroying the technology and matching the historical records of an explosion at the site.

Aboard his ship, Jack finds he can neither stop the bomb from exploding nor abandon his ship, but is rescued when the TARDIS materialises at the rear of his ship. Joining the TARDIS crew, Jack watches as the Doctor and Rose dance in celebration.

[edit] Continuity

Jack mentions Pompeii as another ideal place for a con, although he jokingly says that one has to set the alarm clock for "Volcano Day". The Seventh Doctor and Mel visited the ill-fated city in the Big Finish Productions audio drama The Fires of Vulcan. The phrase "Volcano Day" is used again by the Tenth Doctor in "The Fires of Pompeii", which takes place at the event.[2]

It is established that Jack comes from the 51st century. This is a particularly significant period in the Doctor Who fictional universe, being the time of the Great Breakout, an expansionistic period where mankind headed for the stars (The Invisible Enemy) as well as the home era of K-9.[3] Other historical events of the 51st century include a new ice age, a near world war, early experiments in time travel, the establishment of the Time Agents and the rise and fall of the villainous Magnus Greel (The Talons of Weng-Chiang).[4] Parts of the Tenth Doctor episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" as well as the entirety of "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", and "Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", all written by Steven Moffat, take place in this era as well.[5][6][7] The Doctor identifies Jack's sonic blaster as coming from the Weapon Factories of Villengard and implies that he blew them up. He also notes that there is a banana grove where the factories were, and that "bananas are good" as a source of potassium. The Tenth Doctor repeats this sentiment in "The Girl in the Fireplace" and claims that he invented the banana daiquiri in 18th century France.[5]

As mentioned in Doctor Who Confidential, in this episode "dancing" is used as a metaphor for sex.[8] In this light, lines like "The world doesn't end if the Doctor dances," the Doctor being offended that Rose assumes that he does not dance, and the Doctor saying at the end that he remembers that he can, are references to the long-standing controversy regarding the Doctor's sexuality, and whether or not the series should address it. Moffat also alludes to this metaphor in "The Girl in the Fireplace" with the line "There comes a time, Time Lord, where every lonely boy learns to dance."[5]

Continuing the "Bad Wolf" references, the German bomb that Jack sits on has the words "Schlechter Wolf" stencilled on its shell which, literally translated from German, means "Bad Wolf".[9] Mickey's website, "Who is Doctor Who?" and the UNIT website both carry reports about unexploded "Schlechter Wolf" bombs in the present day, implying they may be something more sinister than just a German terror weapon.[10][11] The bomb as pictured is unusual, with thick fins and a non-aerodynamic nose. Also, the stencilling would be expected not to spiral round the casing.

According to a police officer in Torchwood episode "Everything Changes", Captain Jack went missing on 21 January 1941.[12]

[edit] Production

The working title for this story was "Captain Jax".[13] In the DVD commentary for this episode, writer Steven Moffat reveals that up until a very late stage, the nanogenes in this story were called "nanites". However, script editor Helen Raynor decided this name sounded too much like similar nanotechnological devices in Star Trek: The Next Generation.[14] Moffat had first used the line "Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh" in the second series of his 1990s sitcom Joking Apart. He reused it here as he thought it was a good line, but laments that people quote lines from this episode instead of that one.[14][15] 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.[14][16]

The climactic scene of the episode at the alien crash site was filmed on Barry Island, Wales.[17] Several scenes of this story were filmed at the Vale of Glamorgan Railway sites at Plymouth Road on Barry Island.[18]

Anachronistically, Jamie's voice is recorded on tape. While compact magnetic tape recorders were developed in Germany in the 1930s, the technology did not make its way to the rest of the world until after World War II. Wire recording was used by the BBC during this period, but recording gramophones, using wax discs as a medium, were more common. Steven Moffat acknowledges this mistake in the DVD commentary for "The Doctor Dances", but jokingly suggests that an ancestor of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart stole the machine from Germany to help with the war effort.[14]

Both songs heard in the episode are by Glenn Miller. They are "In the Mood" and "Moonlight Serenade". In a reference to Dr. Strangelove, Jack Harkness rides the bomb while it is held in stasis.[citation needed]

[edit] Reception

"The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form).[1]

The scene where the child surprises the Doctor, Rose, and Jack in Room 802 was voted television's "Golden Moment of 2005" by viewers, as part of the BBC's 2005 TV Moments programme.[19] In a poll conducted by Doctor Who Magazine in 2009, the two-part story was ranked the fifth best episode of Doctor Who.[20] The Daily Telegraph named the story the fourth best of the show in 2008.[21] In 2011 before the second half of the sixth series, The Huffington Post labelled "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" as one of the five essential episodes for new viewers to watch.[22]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Hugo and Campbell Awards Winners". Locus Online. 2006-08-26. http://www.locusmag.com/2006/News/08_HugoCampbellWinners.html. Retrieved 2006-08-27. 
  2. ^ "The Fires of Pompeii". Writer James Moran, Director Colin Teague, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, Cardiff. 2008-04-12.
  3. ^ The Invisible Enemy. Writers Bob Baker, Dave Martin, Director Derrick Goodwin, Producer Graham Williams. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, London. 1 October 1977–22 October 1977.
  4. ^ The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Writer Robert Holmes, from an idea by Robert Banks Stewart (uncredited), Director David Maloney, Producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, London. 26 February 1977–2 April 1977.
  5. ^ a b c "The Girl in the Fireplace". Writer Steven Moffat, Director Euros Lyn, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, Cardiff. 2006-05-06.
  6. ^ "Silence in the Library". Writer Steven Moffat, Director Euros Lyn, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, Cardiff. 2008-05-31.
  7. ^ "Forest of the Dead". Writer Steven Moffat, Director Euros Lyn, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, Cardiff. 2008-06-07.
  8. ^ "Weird Science". Doctor Who Confidential. BBC. BBC Three. 28 May 2005. No. 10, series 1.
  9. ^ "Bad Wolf: Clues". BBC. http://badwolf.org.uk/clues.html. Retrieved 2012-02-20. 
  10. ^ Defending the Earth! Because friends stick together
  11. ^ Top Secret: Unit
  12. ^ "Everything Changes". Writer Russell T Davies, Director Brian Kelly, Producers Richard Stokes, Chris Chibnall. Torchwood. BBC. BBC Three, Cardiff. 2006-10-22.
  13. ^ Sullivan, Shannon (2009-08-17). "The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances". A Brief History Of Time (Travel). http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/2005ij.html. Retrieved 2012-02-20. 
  14. ^ a b c d "The Doctor Dances", DVD audio commentary
  15. ^ Steven Moffat, Joking Apart, Series 2 DVD audio commentary, Replay DVD
  16. ^ "Waking The Dead" featurette on Doctor Who Series 1 DVD, 2Entertain
  17. ^ "Walesarts, Barry Island Railway". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/doctor-who-wales/alllocations/barry-island-railway. Retrieved 2010-05-30. 
  18. ^ "The Empty Child - Location Guide". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/tours/events/pages/doctorwho_s1e9.shtml?1. Retrieved 2012-02-20. 
  19. ^ "2005 TV moments". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/tvmoments/winners.shtml. Retrieved 2012-02-20. 
  20. ^ Haines, Lester (2009-09-17). "Doctor Who fans name best episode ever". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/17/best_who_ever/. Retrieved 2011-08-09. 
  21. ^ "The 10 greatest episodes of Doctor Who ever". The Daily Telegraph. 2008-07-02. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3674193/The-10-greatest-episodes-of-Doctor-Who-ever.html. Retrieved 2012-02-11. 
  22. ^ Lawson, Catherine (2011-08-09). "Catch Up With 'Doctor Who': 5 Essential Episodes". The Huffington Post. http://www.aoltv.com/2011/08/09/doctor-who-5-essential-episodes/. Retrieved 2012-02-12. 

[edit] External links

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