Doctor Who Series 1: Episodes 9&10
The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances
The TARDIS is in hot pursuit of an inter-temporal May Day, when the Doctor and Rose arrive in a Blitz-battered London in 1941.
Stephen (Jekyll) Moffat's background is comedy -- his main claim to fame until this was as the creator of Coupling -- and it shows in the many witty moments in The Empty Child, but what Moffett really showed with this fine two-part episode was how deft also was his ability to alternate laughter with terror -- and added in the process a national catchphrase amongst Britain's kids -- "Are you my mummy?"
The Doctor and Rose quickly separate in search of the mysterious capsule, he to wander into a nightclub and onto stage, to ask to general merriment whether anyone has seen anything fall from the sky, she in pursuit of what looks like a child in a gas-mask standing on a tall roof.
Before long Rose is in mortal peril, from which she is rescued by inter-galactic time-traveller Captain Jack Harkness -- lately of the RAF -- who spots her as a woman also out of her time. When she tells him of her companion, he immediately seeks an introduction. Rose is extremely attracted, and much of the first episode is spent with Rose disparagingly comparing the Doctor to this handsome stranger. He tells her that a fully armed Chula warship has been parked in London, and in two hours a bomb will fall on it.
Meanwhile the Doctor has encountered a young woman burgling the houses of families cowering in their shelter. She is feeding a pack of feral children, and the Doctor joins them at the now deserted meal-table, when there is a knock at the door. "Mummy! Are you there, mummy?" Cries a child's voice.
"It's not exactly a child," The girl, Nancy says. "You mustn't let him touch you! You'll end up like him!"
Phones ring, the radio starts to play, but over it a child's voice says, "Mummy, mummy, mummy."
Through the door the Doctor can see a child's silhouette. It is wearing a gas mask. Reluctantly he leaves the child in search of answers.
Nancy leads the Doctor to a hospital. She tells him, "There was a bomb that wasn't a bomb." As she is about to leave, he says, "Who did you lose? You lost someone didn't you? That's why you look after those kids, isn't it? Because you lost someone."
"My little brother," Nancy says. It's clear that he was hit by the bomb.
The Doctor breaks into the hospital, where he meets Doctor Constantine (Richard Wilson) who is fighting a losing battle to look after his patients. There has been outbreak of people being brought in wearing gas masks -- except that in this case, the gas masks have moulded to their faces. The patients show no life signs. Then doctor begins a slow, horrible transformation, a gas mask erupting from his mouth to cover his whole face.
The Doctor realizes that Captain Jack's Chula warship is in fact a hospital ship, filled with nanobytes that are rewriting human DNA. Captain Jack is in fact a con-man whose ploy has gone horribly wrong. They have two hours in which to get to the 'bomb' and disarm it before the 'idiot' Chula nanogenes rewrite all human DNA in the image of a already dead five-year-old child.
The whole two-part episode is an absolute revelation, a roller-coaster mixture of comedy and terror, and towards the end Captain Jack has the chance to redeem himself, and at the end theres is a moment of sublime pathos, as theDoctor cries joyfully, "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, they all live!"
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