One Good Day
Here we arrive at "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," the two-parter that competes with "Blink" for the title of creepiest episodes of the revived Doctor Who series. At the same time, we see the arrival of Jack Harkness and the Doctor having what turns out to be a very good day. Set within a compact time frame (a little over two hours), the Doctor begins the Road Back, truly starting to come to life again, take joy in his surroundings and even consider dancing.
As with some of the best episodes of this series, the plot is deceptively simple with a tremendous amount of character work. The Doctor sets the TARDIS hurtling after a large mauve object -- mauve being the galactic color of danger -- which starts jumping time tracks in its crazy flight. Rose wonders why the Doctor's so worried about it, but stops protesting when the Doctor points out the object is going to drop in the middle of London.
They land in London and there's a marvelous exchange where Rose asks if the Doctor is going to scan for alien tech and he tells her he's just going to ask the locals. It's a silly little bit of an argument, not really an argument even, but it's a sign of how comfortable they've become with with one another that they can bicker lightly about the little things. The Doctor head off for a building he hears music coming from, while Rose is distracted by a child wearing a gas mask calling for its Mummy. Her natural instinct is to see if the child is okay, but when she tries to get up to where the boy is, she finds herself holding on to the rope of a barrage balloon that's just been loosed from its tether. This sends Rose up into the middle of an air raid, which is not the place one wants to be, especially wearing a Union Jack t-shirt. Fortunately for her, Jack Harkness appears on the scene, having spotted her and decided that he might be able to a) get a little nookie and b) this is the person to spring his con on. He rescues her and whisks her off to his ship, where we learn that one must be careful about what one thinks when one is holding psychi paper, Jack keeps champagne on ice, we listen to a little Moonlight Serenade, and Jack propositions Rose. No, not that way; well, mostly not that way. He tells her he knows she's a Time Agent and he has what she's after, but she's only got two hours before a German bomb falls on it. Rose lets him know they need to see his partner.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, upon entering the makeshift cabaret he found, asks if anyone's seen big things fall from the sky lately and is puzzled as to why everyone laughs. It's when the air raid siren goes off that he realizes they're in the middle of the Blitz; lots of things fall from the sky. Outside, the phone in the front of the TARDIS rings (which it's not supposed to do) and just before the Doctor can pick it up, he is warned not to by a young woman. She won't tell him why except to say there's never anyone there. Before he can ask her anything else, she disappears and he picks up the still ringing phone. All that's there is a childish voice asking, "Are you my mummy?" When the Doctor says there are no mummys there, the line goes dead. Curious, the Doctor heads off in the direction he saw the young woman goes into a house just abandoned by the family who lives there (they've headed into their shelter). She raids the cupboards for food, and is joined by other children. They're obviously foraging, but the young woman is maintaining strict order, making them mind manners as they pass the food around.
The Doctor startles them by his sudden appearance at the table, but the young woman tells them to stay calm. He knows these children should have been evacuated to the country, but they've all come back for one reason or another. The young woman who serves as their nominal leader is Nancy, who scouts a different house each night to so they can sneak inside while the family is in the shelter and steal their food.
Now that he has their attention, the Doctor asks if the children have seen the cylinder he's chasing, but is interrupted by a knock on the window and the childish cry of "Mummy." This incites panics in the other and when the Doctor heads for the front door to investigate, Nancy bars it before he can open it. She warns him not to touch the child as it sticks its hand through the mail slot, revealing a scar on the back of his hand, or else he'll become just like the child --empty. Now the phone begins to ring and the radio plays as the child continues to call and Nancy flees. Alone, the Doctor tells the child he'll open the door, but when he does, the child is gone.
Never one to leave things alone, the Doctor goes after Nancy. He's betting that there's a connection between the cylinder he's hunting and this unearthly child Nancy's so afraid of. Reluctantly, she tells him something fell near the Limehouse Green station that's now guarded by soldiers and barbed wire. If he wants to know more, he should see "the doctor." (Great expression on the Doctor's face when he hears this.) In the Albion Hospital, the Doctor discovers bed after bed filled with corpses wearing gas masks. There is one living person there, Dr. Constantine, who appears to be slowly heading toward his own death. He tells the Doctor that the people are not dead, but changed and invites him to examine the bodies. All have the same injuries and all have the gas mask fused to their flesh.
There's a tremendous undercurrent of loss to this scene. Dr. Constantine tells the Doctor that when the war started, he was a father and a grandfather. Now he is neither, but he is still a doctor and he will still care for those who need him. The Doctor says that he understands the feeling very well, a reference to his own loss. For once, the Doctor seems to have empathy, seeing in Constantine a bit of himself. There is also respect for a man struggling against grief and an unknown force that is changing the people around him, trying to hold back the darkness in the face of impossible odds.
Constantine fills in the details the Doctor needs, that a bomb dropped and claimed a single victim, but soon those who come in contact with that victim soom suffered the same injuries, the effect spreading like the plague. Even as he tells the Doctor to go to Room 802 where the first victim, Nancy's brother was housed and that Nancy knows more than he says, Constantine himself begins to transform, his features changing into a gas mask. At this point, Jack and Rose arrive and Rose introduces Jack to "Mr. Spock." The Doctor is somewhat appalled, but more interested when he learns Rose has told Jack they're Time Agents and Jack has a Chula warship. The Doctor wants to know more, but Jack says it has nothing to do with the plague, that the cylinder was just an ambulance he was trying to pass off as valuable to con them out of their money. This isn't enough because human DNA is being rewritten by "an idiot" and it began when the cylinder fell. The question is, why?
Elsewhere, Nancy has returned to the house to forage for more food and encounters the child. She tries to get away, but as the child approaches her, the patients in the hospital, including Constantine begin to move, calling for their mothers and heading straight for Jack, Rose and the Doctor. At the last moment, the Doctor steps forward and tells the children to go to their room, that he's very cross with them. His voice is stern, parental and leaves no doubt the Doctor has played that role before (Nine is clearly channeling his inner Hartnell here). The ruse works and the patients, like naughty children, hang their heads and shuffle their way back to their bed, just as the child shuffles away from Nancy. The Doctor is relieved it worked because those would have been a terrible set of last words. (Best break for opening credits ever.)
Safe for the moment, Jack explains how his con works. Throw space junk through time, convince a Time Agent it's worth something and get half up front before a German bomb destroys the evidence. The Doctor is not amused and says the victims are the consequences of Jack's con. Again, Jack pleads innocence, that he even made certain the cylinder wouldn't land on anyone. The all clear sounds, indicating the air raid is over.
Nancy hears the signal as well, but is caught by the family whose house it is before she can escape. Nice moment of shock when she sees a boy in a gas mask, only to realize it's the family son. Mr. Lloyd, the owner, wants to call the police, but Nancy threatens him, telling him she knows he's dealing in black market food because there's more on the table than should be there. In exchange for silence, she wants wire cutters, a torch, food, and a chance to visit the bathroom before she goes. Unhappily, Lloyd complies.
At the hospital, the Doctor, Jack and Rose had found Room 802 where the child was taken. And the testosterone starts flaring up again. Jack uses his sonic blaster to impress Rose open the lock and complains about the factory being destroyed so he can't get another. The Doctor knows where the factory is, when it is -- and implies he had something to do with the destruction and subsequent banana grove. The room itself is a disaster, smashed glass and damaged furniture along with toys and childish drawings in crayon. Between this and the tape recording they play of Dr. Constantine questioning the child (who just keeps asking for his "mummy"), the Doctor begins to piece the story together. The child they've been seeing is one of Nancy's lot and was somehow affected by whatever was within the ship Jack crashed. The child is also very powerful, which it doesn't realize yet, but is bound to eventually. It's angry, it's powerful...and the Doctor sent it to its room, which is where they are now standing.
Sure enough, the child has found them and the Doctor has the presence of mind to grab Jack's blaster to put a hole in the wall so they can escape. Once outside, Jack reverses the setting and reforms the wall, sealing the child in for a minute or so. The problem is, the child begins to break through the walls and the other victims approach. Jack and the Doctor begin to argue about whether or not a sonic screwdriver constitutes a weapon and Rose points Jack's blaster at the floor and cuts a hole just before the gas-masked shuffling hordes get to them. Since the victims in the ward downstairs also wake up, our intrepid trio makes another escape into another room and seal the door with the sonic screwdriver. Not surprisingly, given the luck they've been having, it's a a storeroom with bars on the windows and no way out. To make matters worse, Jack disappears.
Jack hasn't actually disappeared, but transported up to his ship. He calls the Doctor and Rose over a disconnected radio via his ship's Om-Com tech and tells them his teleport is keyed to his molecular structure only, but he's trying to override the security on the nav computer (by now, it's obvious Jack didn't necessarily come by this ship honestly). Turns out the child has the same ability as Jack's ship and his voice comes over the radio, saying he's going to find them. Jack jams the signal with Glen Miller's "Moonlight Serenade," asking Rose if she remembers. The Doctor sniffs and sets to resonating the concrete with his screwdriver, hoping to break it down to they can escape without Jack's help.
Now we reach the scene which is really the heart of this episode as Rose and the Doctor spar over whether or not the Doctor can dance. Rose assumes he can't, which offends the Doctor, and the huffy male reaction seems to spur Rose on. She's the one who drives the conversation, taunting the Doctor into revealing that he has indeed "danced" before (and the metaphor for sex is rather obvious). Playing the coquette, she holds out her hand and asks him to dance with her, saying the world won't stop just because he does.
This is hot and controversial stuff here. Although I'm a relatively recent convert to Who fandom, I've had some familiarity with the show since the late seventies and a number of my circle then were big, big fans. Let me assure you, when we were first seeing the episodes then, there was no thought within the group that the Doctor ever danced, no matter how short Teegan's miniskirts were. Maybe with Romana II, but she was another Gallifreyan and we knew that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward had married. And, yes, some of us were adults. I remember the outrage on the part of some fans when the Doctor kissed Grace Holloway in the 1996 film because that's not what the Doctor did. There are fanboys who've tied themselves into knots to prove that Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, wasn't his biological granddaughter. There is a school of thought that Time Lords were "loomed" and came forth physically fully-formed (as if from the head of Zeus?), but that theory was pretty much shot down in "The Sound of Drums."
So here we are in a concrete store room, they're in mortal danger, the world could end, and the Doctor's new assistant holds out her hand and propositions him. After some hesitation, the Doctor accepts. There, just the two of them, they dance, so caught up in one another that they don't notice they've been teleported to Jack's ship until he says something. And the Whoverse is never the same. (I can think of forums that must have melted following this episode's original airing.)
Mind out of the gutter and back to the story. Once the Doctor and Rose are on Jack's ship, the nanogenes in the atmosphere heal a burn on the Doctor's hands, just as they healed the damage on Rose's hands earlier. Suddenly, the Doctor has the missing piece of the equation; all he needs now is confirmation. This is also where we learn that Jack is more than just a simple con man; he was a Time Agent and left them when he discovered two years of his memory had disappeared. The Doctor may be right not to trust him.
Nancy has left her group of lost boys (and girls) and headed for the bomb site, using the extorted wire cutters to get through the barbed wire. Just as she reaches the ship, though, she is captured, put under arrest and chained to a table in a room with a sick soldier who has the same scar on the back of his hand as the child. She pleads not to be left alone with him, but is left with no choice but to watch the sick man transform.
When the Doctor, Rose and Jack reach the crash site, there's a brief discussion between Jack and the Doctor about distracting the commander. Rose tugs on her shirt, but Jack points out he knows the commander, Rose isn't his type, and goes off to think of England. The Doctor calmly tells Rose that things have changed in the 51st century as humanity's spread out among the stars -- "so many species, so little time" -- and people are more flexible about whom they dance with. Clearly, the Doctor doesn't have any problem dealing with other people's sexuality. Besides, I think he enjoys shocking Rose a little. Just as Jack tries his pick up lines on the commander, though, the officer collapses and turns into a gas mask zombie. Hearing singing, the Doctor finds Nancy, who's trying to keep the solder who just changed quiet. Quickly, the Doctor unties her and the group heads for the transpo
Jack tries to open the transport and sets off the alarm, which wakens all the zombies. Awake zombies are mobile zombies, and they start moving toward the bomb site. The group quickly works to secure the area within the barbed wire and Jack finally gets the transport open. See? Empty. The Doctor tells Rose what she should expect on a Chula medical transport and Rose makes the connection: nanogenes, just like on Jack's ship. The Doctor says the ship was full of them, ready to heal whatever they came across. But they weren't familiar with human DNA and used the first human they came across as the pattern: a dead child wearing a gas mask. Everything else they contacted was changed to conform to that baseline. There's another problem; the nanogenes have given incredible power to a frightened child looking for its mother -- a child able to tear the world apart to find what it wants.
Now the child and the others affected have been summoned by the ship to protect it, Jack's attempts to get inside interpreted as an attack. Nancy begins to cry, saying this is all her fault. That's when the Doctor finds the last piece. Nancy isn't the child's older sister -- she's his mother, who's done what many a young woman likely would do in that era in her situation. She lied, pretending they were siblings, keeping the secret even from Jaime, her son. The Doctor tells her she needs to answer the question Jamie has been asking. Nancy finally answers yes, she is his mummy and always will be.
As they embrace, the nanogenes surround them and do just what the Doctor hoped they would: they recognized the genetic connection, recognize Nancy as the parent and use her as their new baseline, now having the information they previously lacked. With great joy, the Doctor unmasks Jamie and lifts him up, showing that he is now alive and whole.
Remember the con Jack was trying to pull? Time the deal so a bomb fell on the transport before the mark discovered they'd purchased a worthless piece of junk? Well, the bomb is getting ready to fall. Just before Nancy answered Jaime, Jack took off after the Doctor told him to do what he needs to do. Now, just as the bomb streaks toward them, Jack's ship appears and captures the ship in its tractor beam. Once again, the Doctor has caused someone to be better and Jack's caught the bomb in stasis, but warns that detonation has begun, so it won't last. The Doctor tells him to get rid of the bomb as safely as he can. jack says he understands and tells Rose goodbye before he teleports back to his ship.
The Doctor summons the nanogenes and says he's applying a software patch. He then hurls the nanogenes toward the zombies and shouts triumphantly, "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once - everybody lives!" Exuberantly, he greets Dr. Constantine as the doctor and other victims return to normal -- and better. One woman's regrown the leg she'd lost. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor is grinning from ear to ear, saying he needs more days like this. The reprogrammed nanogenes will fix their previous damage then deactivate, Nancy and Jamie will get help from Dr. Constantine, and the transport will self-destruct, fulfilling the historical record that a bomb exploded on that site at that time. This is probably the happiest he's been since Gallifrey was lost and this is the moment where you can see he believes in it all again. He's not just existing from day to day, but reveling in life.
Rose introduces the one thorn in the picture. What about Jack and the unexploded bomb?
Somewhere else in space, Jack discovers that an escape pod is not standard equipment on his model of Chula warship. Jack, being Jack, orders an emergency martini and Jack, being Jack, gets one with a bit too much vermouth as he recounts one last saucy story before the end comes. That's when he hears the strains of Glen Miller and there's a wonderful pullback from his cockpit all the way into the TARDIS, where Rose and the Doctor are attempting to dance to "Moonlight Serenade". I say "attempt" because the Doctor is having a bit of a problem with the concept of how to turn Rose under his arm while they move.
Jack steps in and the Doctor tells him to close the door because Jack's ship is going to blow and there'll be a draft. Jack is happy to do so, and clearly has intention of picking up where he left off outside Big Ben with Rose. However, at that moment, the Doctor shifts the music to the more up tempo "In The Mood" and tells Rose that he's just remembers that he does know how to dance. Rose says that she thinks Jack wants this dance. The Doctor agrees, but also asks, "But who with?" This time, he's the one who holds out his hand and the episode ends with the Doctor and Rose dancing around the console.
This is the episode where you can, in my opinion, point to the Doctor and Rose and say, "There will be a ship." There were signals they were coming close before, but always the Doctor seemed to keep a distance between them, even when he nearly lost her to the Dalek. What he needed was the victory, the chance to have that good day to remind him Rose wasn't the only spark of light in the universe. Realizing there are others, he can rediscover his joy, and once he's done that, he's ready to move out of the very dark place he's been in and forward into something new.
Things that stood out for me:
* The Doctor's delicate little dance with the phone in the front of the TARDIS, gingerly reaching out to pick up the receiver.
* The Doctor's quick sketch of the object he's looking for really looks like a quick sketch.
* Rose's pleasure at Jack scanning for alien tech. "At last. A professional."
* "It's Volcano Day."
* "Rose, I'm resonating concrete here."
Things I didn't like:
* Rose's Union Jack t-shirt -- the cross is placed to it makes her look chunky across the chest. Of course, that may be why Jack likes it...
* What sort of idiot lights up Big Ben during the middle of an air raid just to impress a girl? Oh, wait. It's Jack. (I love Jack, but there were honestly a few times I wanted to smack him in these two episodes.)
Off to "Boomtown" and hopefully the slight change in schedule will give me a chance to get back on track with the schedule. It doesn't hurt that we're about to head into episodes I'm far more familiar with, having been catching the re-runs on BBC America over the past couple of months.
As with some of the best episodes of this series, the plot is deceptively simple with a tremendous amount of character work. The Doctor sets the TARDIS hurtling after a large mauve object -- mauve being the galactic color of danger -- which starts jumping time tracks in its crazy flight. Rose wonders why the Doctor's so worried about it, but stops protesting when the Doctor points out the object is going to drop in the middle of London.
They land in London and there's a marvelous exchange where Rose asks if the Doctor is going to scan for alien tech and he tells her he's just going to ask the locals. It's a silly little bit of an argument, not really an argument even, but it's a sign of how comfortable they've become with with one another that they can bicker lightly about the little things. The Doctor head off for a building he hears music coming from, while Rose is distracted by a child wearing a gas mask calling for its Mummy. Her natural instinct is to see if the child is okay, but when she tries to get up to where the boy is, she finds herself holding on to the rope of a barrage balloon that's just been loosed from its tether. This sends Rose up into the middle of an air raid, which is not the place one wants to be, especially wearing a Union Jack t-shirt. Fortunately for her, Jack Harkness appears on the scene, having spotted her and decided that he might be able to a) get a little nookie and b) this is the person to spring his con on. He rescues her and whisks her off to his ship, where we learn that one must be careful about what one thinks when one is holding psychi paper, Jack keeps champagne on ice, we listen to a little Moonlight Serenade, and Jack propositions Rose. No, not that way; well, mostly not that way. He tells her he knows she's a Time Agent and he has what she's after, but she's only got two hours before a German bomb falls on it. Rose lets him know they need to see his partner.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, upon entering the makeshift cabaret he found, asks if anyone's seen big things fall from the sky lately and is puzzled as to why everyone laughs. It's when the air raid siren goes off that he realizes they're in the middle of the Blitz; lots of things fall from the sky. Outside, the phone in the front of the TARDIS rings (which it's not supposed to do) and just before the Doctor can pick it up, he is warned not to by a young woman. She won't tell him why except to say there's never anyone there. Before he can ask her anything else, she disappears and he picks up the still ringing phone. All that's there is a childish voice asking, "Are you my mummy?" When the Doctor says there are no mummys there, the line goes dead. Curious, the Doctor heads off in the direction he saw the young woman goes into a house just abandoned by the family who lives there (they've headed into their shelter). She raids the cupboards for food, and is joined by other children. They're obviously foraging, but the young woman is maintaining strict order, making them mind manners as they pass the food around.
The Doctor startles them by his sudden appearance at the table, but the young woman tells them to stay calm. He knows these children should have been evacuated to the country, but they've all come back for one reason or another. The young woman who serves as their nominal leader is Nancy, who scouts a different house each night to so they can sneak inside while the family is in the shelter and steal their food.
Now that he has their attention, the Doctor asks if the children have seen the cylinder he's chasing, but is interrupted by a knock on the window and the childish cry of "Mummy." This incites panics in the other and when the Doctor heads for the front door to investigate, Nancy bars it before he can open it. She warns him not to touch the child as it sticks its hand through the mail slot, revealing a scar on the back of his hand, or else he'll become just like the child --empty. Now the phone begins to ring and the radio plays as the child continues to call and Nancy flees. Alone, the Doctor tells the child he'll open the door, but when he does, the child is gone.
Never one to leave things alone, the Doctor goes after Nancy. He's betting that there's a connection between the cylinder he's hunting and this unearthly child Nancy's so afraid of. Reluctantly, she tells him something fell near the Limehouse Green station that's now guarded by soldiers and barbed wire. If he wants to know more, he should see "the doctor." (Great expression on the Doctor's face when he hears this.) In the Albion Hospital, the Doctor discovers bed after bed filled with corpses wearing gas masks. There is one living person there, Dr. Constantine, who appears to be slowly heading toward his own death. He tells the Doctor that the people are not dead, but changed and invites him to examine the bodies. All have the same injuries and all have the gas mask fused to their flesh.
There's a tremendous undercurrent of loss to this scene. Dr. Constantine tells the Doctor that when the war started, he was a father and a grandfather. Now he is neither, but he is still a doctor and he will still care for those who need him. The Doctor says that he understands the feeling very well, a reference to his own loss. For once, the Doctor seems to have empathy, seeing in Constantine a bit of himself. There is also respect for a man struggling against grief and an unknown force that is changing the people around him, trying to hold back the darkness in the face of impossible odds.
Constantine fills in the details the Doctor needs, that a bomb dropped and claimed a single victim, but soon those who come in contact with that victim soom suffered the same injuries, the effect spreading like the plague. Even as he tells the Doctor to go to Room 802 where the first victim, Nancy's brother was housed and that Nancy knows more than he says, Constantine himself begins to transform, his features changing into a gas mask. At this point, Jack and Rose arrive and Rose introduces Jack to "Mr. Spock." The Doctor is somewhat appalled, but more interested when he learns Rose has told Jack they're Time Agents and Jack has a Chula warship. The Doctor wants to know more, but Jack says it has nothing to do with the plague, that the cylinder was just an ambulance he was trying to pass off as valuable to con them out of their money. This isn't enough because human DNA is being rewritten by "an idiot" and it began when the cylinder fell. The question is, why?
Elsewhere, Nancy has returned to the house to forage for more food and encounters the child. She tries to get away, but as the child approaches her, the patients in the hospital, including Constantine begin to move, calling for their mothers and heading straight for Jack, Rose and the Doctor. At the last moment, the Doctor steps forward and tells the children to go to their room, that he's very cross with them. His voice is stern, parental and leaves no doubt the Doctor has played that role before (Nine is clearly channeling his inner Hartnell here). The ruse works and the patients, like naughty children, hang their heads and shuffle their way back to their bed, just as the child shuffles away from Nancy. The Doctor is relieved it worked because those would have been a terrible set of last words. (Best break for opening credits ever.)
Safe for the moment, Jack explains how his con works. Throw space junk through time, convince a Time Agent it's worth something and get half up front before a German bomb destroys the evidence. The Doctor is not amused and says the victims are the consequences of Jack's con. Again, Jack pleads innocence, that he even made certain the cylinder wouldn't land on anyone. The all clear sounds, indicating the air raid is over.
Nancy hears the signal as well, but is caught by the family whose house it is before she can escape. Nice moment of shock when she sees a boy in a gas mask, only to realize it's the family son. Mr. Lloyd, the owner, wants to call the police, but Nancy threatens him, telling him she knows he's dealing in black market food because there's more on the table than should be there. In exchange for silence, she wants wire cutters, a torch, food, and a chance to visit the bathroom before she goes. Unhappily, Lloyd complies.
At the hospital, the Doctor, Jack and Rose had found Room 802 where the child was taken. And the testosterone starts flaring up again. Jack uses his sonic blaster to impress Rose open the lock and complains about the factory being destroyed so he can't get another. The Doctor knows where the factory is, when it is -- and implies he had something to do with the destruction and subsequent banana grove. The room itself is a disaster, smashed glass and damaged furniture along with toys and childish drawings in crayon. Between this and the tape recording they play of Dr. Constantine questioning the child (who just keeps asking for his "mummy"), the Doctor begins to piece the story together. The child they've been seeing is one of Nancy's lot and was somehow affected by whatever was within the ship Jack crashed. The child is also very powerful, which it doesn't realize yet, but is bound to eventually. It's angry, it's powerful...and the Doctor sent it to its room, which is where they are now standing.
Sure enough, the child has found them and the Doctor has the presence of mind to grab Jack's blaster to put a hole in the wall so they can escape. Once outside, Jack reverses the setting and reforms the wall, sealing the child in for a minute or so. The problem is, the child begins to break through the walls and the other victims approach. Jack and the Doctor begin to argue about whether or not a sonic screwdriver constitutes a weapon and Rose points Jack's blaster at the floor and cuts a hole just before the gas-masked shuffling hordes get to them. Since the victims in the ward downstairs also wake up, our intrepid trio makes another escape into another room and seal the door with the sonic screwdriver. Not surprisingly, given the luck they've been having, it's a a storeroom with bars on the windows and no way out. To make matters worse, Jack disappears.
Jack hasn't actually disappeared, but transported up to his ship. He calls the Doctor and Rose over a disconnected radio via his ship's Om-Com tech and tells them his teleport is keyed to his molecular structure only, but he's trying to override the security on the nav computer (by now, it's obvious Jack didn't necessarily come by this ship honestly). Turns out the child has the same ability as Jack's ship and his voice comes over the radio, saying he's going to find them. Jack jams the signal with Glen Miller's "Moonlight Serenade," asking Rose if she remembers. The Doctor sniffs and sets to resonating the concrete with his screwdriver, hoping to break it down to they can escape without Jack's help.
Now we reach the scene which is really the heart of this episode as Rose and the Doctor spar over whether or not the Doctor can dance. Rose assumes he can't, which offends the Doctor, and the huffy male reaction seems to spur Rose on. She's the one who drives the conversation, taunting the Doctor into revealing that he has indeed "danced" before (and the metaphor for sex is rather obvious). Playing the coquette, she holds out her hand and asks him to dance with her, saying the world won't stop just because he does.
This is hot and controversial stuff here. Although I'm a relatively recent convert to Who fandom, I've had some familiarity with the show since the late seventies and a number of my circle then were big, big fans. Let me assure you, when we were first seeing the episodes then, there was no thought within the group that the Doctor ever danced, no matter how short Teegan's miniskirts were. Maybe with Romana II, but she was another Gallifreyan and we knew that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward had married. And, yes, some of us were adults. I remember the outrage on the part of some fans when the Doctor kissed Grace Holloway in the 1996 film because that's not what the Doctor did. There are fanboys who've tied themselves into knots to prove that Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, wasn't his biological granddaughter. There is a school of thought that Time Lords were "loomed" and came forth physically fully-formed (as if from the head of Zeus?), but that theory was pretty much shot down in "The Sound of Drums."
So here we are in a concrete store room, they're in mortal danger, the world could end, and the Doctor's new assistant holds out her hand and propositions him. After some hesitation, the Doctor accepts. There, just the two of them, they dance, so caught up in one another that they don't notice they've been teleported to Jack's ship until he says something. And the Whoverse is never the same. (I can think of forums that must have melted following this episode's original airing.)
Mind out of the gutter and back to the story. Once the Doctor and Rose are on Jack's ship, the nanogenes in the atmosphere heal a burn on the Doctor's hands, just as they healed the damage on Rose's hands earlier. Suddenly, the Doctor has the missing piece of the equation; all he needs now is confirmation. This is also where we learn that Jack is more than just a simple con man; he was a Time Agent and left them when he discovered two years of his memory had disappeared. The Doctor may be right not to trust him.
Nancy has left her group of lost boys (and girls) and headed for the bomb site, using the extorted wire cutters to get through the barbed wire. Just as she reaches the ship, though, she is captured, put under arrest and chained to a table in a room with a sick soldier who has the same scar on the back of his hand as the child. She pleads not to be left alone with him, but is left with no choice but to watch the sick man transform.
When the Doctor, Rose and Jack reach the crash site, there's a brief discussion between Jack and the Doctor about distracting the commander. Rose tugs on her shirt, but Jack points out he knows the commander, Rose isn't his type, and goes off to think of England. The Doctor calmly tells Rose that things have changed in the 51st century as humanity's spread out among the stars -- "so many species, so little time" -- and people are more flexible about whom they dance with. Clearly, the Doctor doesn't have any problem dealing with other people's sexuality. Besides, I think he enjoys shocking Rose a little. Just as Jack tries his pick up lines on the commander, though, the officer collapses and turns into a gas mask zombie. Hearing singing, the Doctor finds Nancy, who's trying to keep the solder who just changed quiet. Quickly, the Doctor unties her and the group heads for the transpo
Jack tries to open the transport and sets off the alarm, which wakens all the zombies. Awake zombies are mobile zombies, and they start moving toward the bomb site. The group quickly works to secure the area within the barbed wire and Jack finally gets the transport open. See? Empty. The Doctor tells Rose what she should expect on a Chula medical transport and Rose makes the connection: nanogenes, just like on Jack's ship. The Doctor says the ship was full of them, ready to heal whatever they came across. But they weren't familiar with human DNA and used the first human they came across as the pattern: a dead child wearing a gas mask. Everything else they contacted was changed to conform to that baseline. There's another problem; the nanogenes have given incredible power to a frightened child looking for its mother -- a child able to tear the world apart to find what it wants.
Now the child and the others affected have been summoned by the ship to protect it, Jack's attempts to get inside interpreted as an attack. Nancy begins to cry, saying this is all her fault. That's when the Doctor finds the last piece. Nancy isn't the child's older sister -- she's his mother, who's done what many a young woman likely would do in that era in her situation. She lied, pretending they were siblings, keeping the secret even from Jaime, her son. The Doctor tells her she needs to answer the question Jamie has been asking. Nancy finally answers yes, she is his mummy and always will be.
As they embrace, the nanogenes surround them and do just what the Doctor hoped they would: they recognized the genetic connection, recognize Nancy as the parent and use her as their new baseline, now having the information they previously lacked. With great joy, the Doctor unmasks Jamie and lifts him up, showing that he is now alive and whole.
Remember the con Jack was trying to pull? Time the deal so a bomb fell on the transport before the mark discovered they'd purchased a worthless piece of junk? Well, the bomb is getting ready to fall. Just before Nancy answered Jaime, Jack took off after the Doctor told him to do what he needs to do. Now, just as the bomb streaks toward them, Jack's ship appears and captures the ship in its tractor beam. Once again, the Doctor has caused someone to be better and Jack's caught the bomb in stasis, but warns that detonation has begun, so it won't last. The Doctor tells him to get rid of the bomb as safely as he can. jack says he understands and tells Rose goodbye before he teleports back to his ship.
The Doctor summons the nanogenes and says he's applying a software patch. He then hurls the nanogenes toward the zombies and shouts triumphantly, "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once - everybody lives!" Exuberantly, he greets Dr. Constantine as the doctor and other victims return to normal -- and better. One woman's regrown the leg she'd lost. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor is grinning from ear to ear, saying he needs more days like this. The reprogrammed nanogenes will fix their previous damage then deactivate, Nancy and Jamie will get help from Dr. Constantine, and the transport will self-destruct, fulfilling the historical record that a bomb exploded on that site at that time. This is probably the happiest he's been since Gallifrey was lost and this is the moment where you can see he believes in it all again. He's not just existing from day to day, but reveling in life.
Rose introduces the one thorn in the picture. What about Jack and the unexploded bomb?
Somewhere else in space, Jack discovers that an escape pod is not standard equipment on his model of Chula warship. Jack, being Jack, orders an emergency martini and Jack, being Jack, gets one with a bit too much vermouth as he recounts one last saucy story before the end comes. That's when he hears the strains of Glen Miller and there's a wonderful pullback from his cockpit all the way into the TARDIS, where Rose and the Doctor are attempting to dance to "Moonlight Serenade". I say "attempt" because the Doctor is having a bit of a problem with the concept of how to turn Rose under his arm while they move.
Jack steps in and the Doctor tells him to close the door because Jack's ship is going to blow and there'll be a draft. Jack is happy to do so, and clearly has intention of picking up where he left off outside Big Ben with Rose. However, at that moment, the Doctor shifts the music to the more up tempo "In The Mood" and tells Rose that he's just remembers that he does know how to dance. Rose says that she thinks Jack wants this dance. The Doctor agrees, but also asks, "But who with?" This time, he's the one who holds out his hand and the episode ends with the Doctor and Rose dancing around the console.
This is the episode where you can, in my opinion, point to the Doctor and Rose and say, "There will be a ship." There were signals they were coming close before, but always the Doctor seemed to keep a distance between them, even when he nearly lost her to the Dalek. What he needed was the victory, the chance to have that good day to remind him Rose wasn't the only spark of light in the universe. Realizing there are others, he can rediscover his joy, and once he's done that, he's ready to move out of the very dark place he's been in and forward into something new.
Things that stood out for me:
* The Doctor's delicate little dance with the phone in the front of the TARDIS, gingerly reaching out to pick up the receiver.
* The Doctor's quick sketch of the object he's looking for really looks like a quick sketch.
* Rose's pleasure at Jack scanning for alien tech. "At last. A professional."
* "It's Volcano Day."
* "Rose, I'm resonating concrete here."
Things I didn't like:
* Rose's Union Jack t-shirt -- the cross is placed to it makes her look chunky across the chest. Of course, that may be why Jack likes it...
* What sort of idiot lights up Big Ben during the middle of an air raid just to impress a girl? Oh, wait. It's Jack. (I love Jack, but there were honestly a few times I wanted to smack him in these two episodes.)
Off to "Boomtown" and hopefully the slight change in schedule will give me a chance to get back on track with the schedule. It doesn't hurt that we're about to head into episodes I'm far more familiar with, having been catching the re-runs on BBC America over the past couple of months.