An Hour of Who a Day: 01/06/15

January 6: "The Empty Child"

And so, sixteen years after the show first dipped its toe into the waters of World War II with The Curse of Fenric (a story, you might recall, about vampires attacking a British army base in the northeast part of England while a small Soviet force tried to steal a computer), Doctor Who dives headfirst into the subject in "The Empty Child", set in London during the Blitz.

Except...it doesn't. This is set during the Blitz, certainly, and we get some details here and there to support that, but Steven Moffat (who you might remember from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death -- he's gone and done Coupling since then and thus at this point is also quite a big name in British television) is more interested in the Blitz as a backdrop rather than an event. Instead, we get a suspense-filled episode as a child wearing a gas mask goes around following people in London -- and those who've encountered him are terrified of him. That's really the main thrust of this first part: the Doctor does some investigating, which leads to the discovery that anyone who's come into contact with the boy develops the same symptoms -- physical trauma and a gas mask (why the gas mask gets fused to the body and not any of the other clothes is left unanswered). It's a really creepy idea that they do a good job of selling -- director James Hawes makes good use of angles and lighting to enhance his shots. But perhaps the most impressive part of this main storyline is the scene around the dinner table, where Christopher Eccleston shows just how good he is with children. We've never really seen this Doctor interact with kids before, but there's something magical about this moment, as he jokes with them but also gets information from them -- it gives you a look into why Eccleston took the job in the first place.

And while that's going on, Rose clings to an unmoored barrage balloon while a German air raid is happening, only to be rescued by a charming man named Captain Jack Harkness, who is emphatically not from 1941 (seeing how he has a spaceship and all). John Barrowman makes a strong debut as Jack, oozing charm and rakishness, and even though he reveals himself to be a con man and may have inadvertently caused the gas mask plague, you still can't help but root for him. Rose certainly seems taken with him -- and she seems more pleased with his actions (doing things like finding the Doctor by searching for alien technology) than with the Doctor's (asking around about things falling from the sky). (And her comments about "Spock" are the first overt references to Star Trek in televised Doctor Who.) Jack in fact seems here to be written as almost the opposite of the Doctor -- both "freelancers" but behaving in different ways. We'll have to see if they carry this through to the second part.

It's a very good set-up episode -- the empty child is incredibly effective in its eeriness, and his plaintive cries of "are you my mummy?" are deservedly memorable, a juxtaposition of the helpless with the deadly. The moment where Dr. Constantine succumbs to the plague is really quite horrific, and the final scenes in the hospital, where Jack finally meets the Doctor and describes the con, are also good -- and the cliffhanger is really effective as well. And look, they've moved the "next time" trailer to after the credits (supposedly at Moffat's insistence), to avoid spoilers for anyone who wants to remain ignorant of the next episode's events. (Although this trailer isn't nearly as "spoiler"-y as the one after "Aliens of London" was.)