Why I like Nancy
In general I try to keep this blog pretty non-partisan and pan-whovian. That is, rather, the point. But in honor of Moffat Appreciation Week, I want to take a look at Nancy, the hero and lead of "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances." A lot of sweeping generalizations are made about "Moffat's Women," and Nancy is the first woman he ever (officially) wrote for the show (since "the Curse of Fatal Death" while excellent is outside the scope of this project).
When we meet her, Nancy seems little more than a child, although she is older than she looks: the leader and mastermind of a clan of London street urchins during the Blitz. She's got a frankly brilliant scheme going of using the cover of the air raid warnings to commit petty larceny in the temporarily vacated homes. Which is to say she and the children under her care sneak in and help themselves to supper. And...it's not that they're no worried about the bombs. Nancy understands he reality of the threat better than anyone. But comfort now is more valuable than a safety that is by no means assured. The bombs might kill you tonight, but hunger definitely will eventually.
In Nancy we see this fascinating mix of compassion and utter ruthlessness. And of course careful planning. She cases the homes she hits very carefully, and is perfectly willing to blackmail and threaten the people who get in her way. She's got a bit of the same "shaming of the powerful by the powerless" schtick and social commentary that we see again with Mercy Hartigan - but Nancy uses her knowledge and power not for revenge against the institutions that have wronged her but rather for the protection of those similarly wronged. All er powers are focused on giving her little family of urchins the best life, the most stable and comfortable, that they can possibly have, and she will use every weapon at her disposal in aid of that cause. She's more than a little terrifying.
She's also more than a little terrified. People often hold up the titular Empty Child as one of the most frightening things in all of Doctor Who, for good reason. In addition to being a very effective monster build in its own right, the Empty Child is rendered scarier still by how scared the characters are of it, and Nancy in particular. For one thing, anything that manages to scare Nancy, already established as cool-headed to the point of calculating, who doesn't back down from the threat of the bombs or social retribution, must in fact be incredibly scary. For another, Nancy's fear comes from a place of expertise. Fear is so often fear of the unknown, and easily defused when pulled out into the light. But Nancy knows exactly what and who the Empty Child is, where it came from, what it can do, and has a pretty fair guess at what it wants: her. The only piece she's missing is the mechanism. Nancy knows more about what's going on than anyone else in the story and it only serves to make her more frightened (and therefore frighten us along with her). And what Nancy knows is that the Empty Child is uniquely hers. What is more terrifying than a monster made just for you, carrying with it all your guilt and fear and pain? Nancy is haunted by her own very real demon. And, while that's a common enough trope in semi-sympathetic late-reveal villains, it's actually a pretty rare one in heroes.
This is the third time I have referred to Nancy as not just a hero, but as the Hero of the piece. But look at it like this. It's not the Doctor - he and Rose function almost entirely as catalysts in this story, filling the gap between Jack and Nancy, the two halves of the puzzle. It's certainly not Jack, who if anything is the Villain of the piece, the direct source of all the problems - his arc is one of redemption (Redemption Equals Death, no less) rather than personal growth. But while Jack causes all of the problems, everything that happens in the story is about Nancy. She has all of the information. She provides all of the tools for pursuing the mystery, from backstory to wire cutters. She's the Guide. And she ultimately saves the day. She is the one who, at the ultimate moment of crisis, steps forward to confront the monster and her own demons, and she is the one who defeats it, naming it, claiming it, and making it her own. It's a job literally no one else can do. It is the archetypal hero's journey, right down to walking open-eyed and open-armed towards the thing she fears most in the universe.
"The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" runs significantly off of the Powered By A Forsaken Child trope. Children create the universe - they're inherently terrifying. It is therefore appropriate that the titular Empty Child stops being powered when it stops being forsaken. There's a line in The Never-Ending Story: "You cannot destroy the Emptiness - you can only fill it with Love." Nancy succeeds where Frankenstein fails: she is able to Love Her Monster. She lets go of all her pain and fear and guilt - as I said above, she names him and claims him: naming him Jamie, claiming him as her own - and in so doing becomes the template for wholeness, combatting a contagion of brokenness. It's a comparatively rare trope but one I find extremely compelling - that of embracing your darkness rather than rejecting it, and thereby transforming it to light. (See also: A Wizard of Earthsea.) To stop running from the monster and instead to turn around and LOVE it. And that which is loved can no longer be a monster - just a frightened child who needs his mummy.
Nancy as an incredibly strong, incredibly compelling character, and (despite my efforts) does not reduce easily to a pile of tropes or archetypes. She's a frightened child. She's a woman who has seen too much. She's fierce and ruthless. She's compassion and capital-L Love. She can out-sass the (Ninth!) Doctor. She's the Hero in the classical sense. She exists at the border of society, in the liminal spaces of the world. She is the absolute and uncontested center of the narrative. She is just a really wonderful and complex character, too easily overlooked, but always great.
When we meet her, Nancy seems little more than a child, although she is older than she looks: the leader and mastermind of a clan of London street urchins during the Blitz. She's got a frankly brilliant scheme going of using the cover of the air raid warnings to commit petty larceny in the temporarily vacated homes. Which is to say she and the children under her care sneak in and help themselves to supper. And...it's not that they're no worried about the bombs. Nancy understands he reality of the threat better than anyone. But comfort now is more valuable than a safety that is by no means assured. The bombs might kill you tonight, but hunger definitely will eventually.
In Nancy we see this fascinating mix of compassion and utter ruthlessness. And of course careful planning. She cases the homes she hits very carefully, and is perfectly willing to blackmail and threaten the people who get in her way. She's got a bit of the same "shaming of the powerful by the powerless" schtick and social commentary that we see again with Mercy Hartigan - but Nancy uses her knowledge and power not for revenge against the institutions that have wronged her but rather for the protection of those similarly wronged. All er powers are focused on giving her little family of urchins the best life, the most stable and comfortable, that they can possibly have, and she will use every weapon at her disposal in aid of that cause. She's more than a little terrifying.
She's also more than a little terrified. People often hold up the titular Empty Child as one of the most frightening things in all of Doctor Who, for good reason. In addition to being a very effective monster build in its own right, the Empty Child is rendered scarier still by how scared the characters are of it, and Nancy in particular. For one thing, anything that manages to scare Nancy, already established as cool-headed to the point of calculating, who doesn't back down from the threat of the bombs or social retribution, must in fact be incredibly scary. For another, Nancy's fear comes from a place of expertise. Fear is so often fear of the unknown, and easily defused when pulled out into the light. But Nancy knows exactly what and who the Empty Child is, where it came from, what it can do, and has a pretty fair guess at what it wants: her. The only piece she's missing is the mechanism. Nancy knows more about what's going on than anyone else in the story and it only serves to make her more frightened (and therefore frighten us along with her). And what Nancy knows is that the Empty Child is uniquely hers. What is more terrifying than a monster made just for you, carrying with it all your guilt and fear and pain? Nancy is haunted by her own very real demon. And, while that's a common enough trope in semi-sympathetic late-reveal villains, it's actually a pretty rare one in heroes.
This is the third time I have referred to Nancy as not just a hero, but as the Hero of the piece. But look at it like this. It's not the Doctor - he and Rose function almost entirely as catalysts in this story, filling the gap between Jack and Nancy, the two halves of the puzzle. It's certainly not Jack, who if anything is the Villain of the piece, the direct source of all the problems - his arc is one of redemption (Redemption Equals Death, no less) rather than personal growth. But while Jack causes all of the problems, everything that happens in the story is about Nancy. She has all of the information. She provides all of the tools for pursuing the mystery, from backstory to wire cutters. She's the Guide. And she ultimately saves the day. She is the one who, at the ultimate moment of crisis, steps forward to confront the monster and her own demons, and she is the one who defeats it, naming it, claiming it, and making it her own. It's a job literally no one else can do. It is the archetypal hero's journey, right down to walking open-eyed and open-armed towards the thing she fears most in the universe.
"The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" runs significantly off of the Powered By A Forsaken Child trope. Children create the universe - they're inherently terrifying. It is therefore appropriate that the titular Empty Child stops being powered when it stops being forsaken. There's a line in The Never-Ending Story: "You cannot destroy the Emptiness - you can only fill it with Love." Nancy succeeds where Frankenstein fails: she is able to Love Her Monster. She lets go of all her pain and fear and guilt - as I said above, she names him and claims him: naming him Jamie, claiming him as her own - and in so doing becomes the template for wholeness, combatting a contagion of brokenness. It's a comparatively rare trope but one I find extremely compelling - that of embracing your darkness rather than rejecting it, and thereby transforming it to light. (See also: A Wizard of Earthsea.) To stop running from the monster and instead to turn around and LOVE it. And that which is loved can no longer be a monster - just a frightened child who needs his mummy.
Nancy as an incredibly strong, incredibly compelling character, and (despite my efforts) does not reduce easily to a pile of tropes or archetypes. She's a frightened child. She's a woman who has seen too much. She's fierce and ruthless. She's compassion and capital-L Love. She can out-sass the (Ninth!) Doctor. She's the Hero in the classical sense. She exists at the border of society, in the liminal spaces of the world. She is the absolute and uncontested center of the narrative. She is just a really wonderful and complex character, too easily overlooked, but always great.