The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances

The new series seems to be starting out much like the first year or two of Big Finish did where we have a very high number of stories either on or near Earth. On the one hand, I can't complain with the resulting good stories they're getting, but on the other, I think it's getting to be about time we went across the universe and did as the aliens did. So, my heart sunk just a bit when we saw Earth as the destination at the beginning.

It didn't stay there long though as we plunged headlong into London during the Blitz and what's definitely the creepiest set-up we've had yet, and one the older episodes rarely if ever matched. One might think that during a war that the scariest thing that's going on is the war itself and the doomed future one's nation might have should it lose (I've been thinking that almost every day since 9/11/01). This story managed to find two stories of fear that are even better than that. One is very personal (to do with Jamie and Nancy) and one is a threat even greater than what the Axis powers were up to (zombie-fying virus going airborne and ready to turn the whole world into gasmask people). So, well done to Steven Moffat for being so creative and punching WWII both above and below the belt.

Speaking of below the belt, how about that Captain Jack, eh? He's ready, willing, and able to "dance" with anything that moves so long as it looks excellent to him. (And is it really coincidence they went for an actor who looks so much like Tom Cruise? ) Fortunately, his relaxed and futuristic sexuality is kept in proportion with the rest of his character, which is an oh-so-smooth con man with a terrific wit and a mystery or two, yet who seems friendly enough. I'm really warming to him, and I'm glad he joined the TARDIS crew at the end. If the one-liners he spouted in this story keep coming, I'll be very pleased. Top of them all has to be "Who looks at a screwdriver and says, 'ooh. This could be a little more sonic.'?"

The other main character who was introduced but regrettably didn't get to stay on was Nancy. Streetwise is too weak a word to describe her... more like streetgenius, the way she organizes the starving kids into stealing food from the house of someone she can blackmail, and in a big way. Streetstrong might be another one, since the war has hit her really, really hard, and yet she hasn't let how despondent she is about it all cripple her. She just gets on with things. I like that the Doctor and Rose twice try to cheer her up out of this... the Doctor with his patriotic speech and Rose by telling her that they're not going to lose the war. The first doesn't really work on her as far as we can see... the second sort of does since by then she's believing in anything. Getting her son back alive at the end of the story and seeing the whole plague end as well must have really turned her back around. The Doctor boasts later of having a really great day (where for once, no one died), but I think Nancy's got him beat here. Jamie, Dr. Constantine, and the others didn't do too badly either.

On now to plot matters, and Moffat's ingenuity shines again (except for one niggle I have for the end). If you make a list of the sci-fi elements in this story, they're actually not that great on paper. There's con man Jack setting up a little temporal con that's not all that original... and there's the nanogenes inside the Chula war ambulance that are lifted from either "Star Trek the Next Generation" or the SciFi Channel seasons of "Mystery Science Theater 3000"... and then there's Jack's own warship with the invisibility and the teleporter that only works for one person (except when it doesn't)... none of it's really that new. What made it all work so well was the way they're all presented and revealed, where in the first episode we both have and haven't got all the clues we need to figure out just why people are turning into gas mask zombies or why Jack's there and son on. Few of us successfully guess at the motives of this story because there are in fact no logical motives behind what's going on, but rather, three mistakes. "Make mistakes and confuse the enemy" as the Doctor once said, and it works on audiences too. The mistakes I speak of were a) Jack's mistake in thinking the ambulance was empty and bringing it there, b) what Nancy considers to be her own mistake in getting Jamie killed, and c) the nanogenes mistake in how they try to fix people up wrongly, with their gruesome consequences. The Doctor asks at the end of part one "What's the point?" and the reason he and we can't work it out is that there isn't one. It was just a series of unfortunate events. And that's why the story was so entertaining.

As for our regular characters, the Doctor and Rose, this is a story that achieved perfect balance between them. Rose gets to have her thrilling adventure, travelling over London by barrage balloon (even if it's a stretch that she didn't look up to see what the rope was attached to) and meet Captain Jack and swoon over him and banter with psychic paper and so on. Meanwhile, the Doctor gets to do some real investigating and uncovering of secrets like he always used to but doesn't seem to get as much time for in the new series, mostly because "part one" is missing from most of the stories. That wasn't a problem here, and Chris Eccleston really gets to shine as a result. The relationship between the two characters gets a chance to grow too, particularly in "The Doctor Dances," and some of that chemistry we were told these two were having before the series began really began to cook here in a way it perhaps hadn't before now... at least not as much as that between the Eighth Doctor and Charley. Again, I suspect this is a function of the time it takes to tell these moments in a story and how there just isn't enough in the one-parters. Anyway, I really enjoyed how Jack's presence gets the Doctor to have to come out of his own shell and be more approachable with Rose and actually try to dance with her, which he finally does at the end. His response line to Rose's invitation earlier is another classic. "Show me your moves," she says, and the Doctor answers, "Rose, I'm trying to resonate concrete."

It's almost like Steven Moffat has experience writing stuff like this. Hmm.

On to more superficial matters...

I _love_ James Hawes' direction, and think it's the best we've seen in the series so far. I'm very glad to hear he's coming back for more with at least the Christmas special to come. The ultra cold weather on the shoot actually helped as it made Nancy look even sadder than she would've normally done since you can see it in her face so well.

The music was much stronger than in earlier episodes, and in particular the scenes at the end where Nancy tells Jamie she is his mummy. At last Murray Gold is starting to prove the faith the producers had in him to give him the entire series to do. Maybe this is just a function of his having a little more time to work on it?

The CGI was _exceptional_. I can't recall ever seeing the Blitz shown on TV or film in such an awesome way anywhere else... I'm sure someone will correct me here and point out a film where it was done better, but nevertheless it was wondrous to behold. Kudos to the Mill!

I've only got two problems with the story... both in "The Doctor Dances," and they're both minor enough for me not to dock much from the point total below. Just a tenth I think. Anyway, the first one is the historical glitch where they had a magnetic tape player and recording of Jamie's therapy sessions in the hospital, several years before the first one was available in Britain. Maybe this is the Bad Wolf's doing in the same way that the errors in things like "Invaders from Mars" were the NeverPeople's doing, but somehow I doubt it. The other story issue I had is with Captain Jack at the end and the German bomb. Why didn't he fly his ship to an uninhabited area of Earth rather than into outer space? Had he done so, he could've just got out of the ship or teleported out of it and let the ship blow up with the bomb without having to worry about the fact he had no escape pod on his ship. This point needed some more work.

All in all then, 9.9 out of 10. Probably a classic in fact.