Series 1 (Season 27), Episodes 9 + 10: The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances

The Doctor tries to find an object which has fallen from the sky, if only he had read the blog!

New-who's second multi-part story, written by Steven Moffat, was the highlight of Series 1. It received a Hugo award for 'Best Drama Presentation, Short Form' whilst simultaneously scaring children and adults alike across the nation. Cries of 'Are you my mummy?' were going up from children for the rest of the week after the scary monster introduced in this episode were heard to use the catchphrase. The Torchwood team is now almost complete as John Barrowman debuts as Captain Jack Harkness, the multi-sexual, ex-time agent from the 51st century.

Synopsis: The Doctor and Rose chase a mysterious object in distress flying through the time vortex to London in 1941. In the heart of the Blitz Rose and the Doctor get separated, both meeting rather unusual people. As Rose finds herself hanging from a barrage balloon she is picked up by Captain Jack Harkness who wishes to discuss a deal. Meanwhile the Doctor is busy chasing a mysterious young woman named Nancy who seems to know a lot of information, about the crashed object and the mysterious little boy, but isn't telling. The Doctor is directed towards an old hospital where he meets Constantine, who shows the Doctor how the gas masked patients have been physically changed. Once the Doctor and Rose are reunited, along with Jack they are cornered by the Gas Masked Zombies who all want to know 'Are you my mummy?'.

Featuring: The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Rose (Billie Piper) and Captain Jack (John Barrowman)

Enemies: The Empty People

Afterthought: This episode doesn't actually stack up to its full potential. The jokes continually clash with the creepiness of the story and the German air raids were impossibly fake. It's nice to see the addition of Captain Jack to the TARDIS crew after the failure of Adam earlier in the season. I would have preferred to see Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways receive the Hugo award as it turns out much better than this.

Verdict:

Story: 4/5, Very cleverly written!

Effects: 1/5, The nanogenes are quite cool, shame about everything else.

Humor: 3/5, While very funny, it clashes terribly!

Mark Campbell: 5/5, I think he needs to have a word with his mummy!

TOTAL SCORE: 13/20

Elsewhere:

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empty_Child and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctor_Dances

Official Site  - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074ds9 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074dsp

Are you my mummy? Next Time: Boom Town

Gas masked zombies attack!