Comic Enthusiastic

From an outside vision, one would expect that the first season of the resurrection of this show was a bit drab, rough around the edges, everyone involved was struggling to understand the material and to adapt to a more modern era of television, well that wasn't the case ! This was not when the show began and Sidney Newman was pulling Verity Lambert to the side and saying to her make a show like this it will be great success, and Lambert had to scramble what she had to make the first episode of the show even work, you wanna see a show grow and metamorphosed in front of you, watch the first season from 1963, but in 2005 Doctor Who was still big even in Limbo, and we also have a bunch of fans of the property working on its resurrection that also have written for Doctor Who while it was it’s wilderness years, Russel T. Wrote one of the Virgin Novels, Damaged Goods, and Moffat wrote a short story named Continuity Errors, and also wrote the parody The Curse of Fatal Death, and we also have Mark Gatiss that also wrote for the Virgin Series and Paul Cornell that not only wrote some of the most acclaimed books from the Virgin series, but also wrote the animated tribute of 40 years of the show Scream of Shalka, that is disregard of the canon, that that anyone cares really ! Cornell wrote the previous episode before the one we are gonna talk about here, Father’s Day, so with all of that we have a very solid foundation that gets Doctor Who and it’s able to get to work in this new format that it is, they do farting aliens at one point, but they do understand that they are doing farting aliens and somehow make that somewhat work into the show. This first season is also regarded as one the best seasons of the show as well, so clearly we are in good hands, can’t say that much about the future, we might as well say that the new-new-new Doctor Who is gonna be an even rough mess then it could be.

So in an already very steady season, following Father Day’s Steven Moffat present us a Two parter episode set in London during World War two, The doctor and Rose chase an object through time, that he deems to be dangerous, they arrived a month later the object fell, both of them quickly are separated, The Doctor goes off to follow a Girl named Nancy that warns the Doctor to not answer the fake phone in the Tardis start to ring, clearly knowing that she knows more than she tells him, While Rose, pass the good portion of this episode flirting with Captain Jack Harkness, that saved her just before she fell from a gangling rope attached to one the Zeppelin around London, All of that with a creepy child wearing a gas mask appearing through the episode asking “Are you my Mommy” in every one of his appearance, the titular Empty Child of the tittle. This first episode being more of a creepy one then the one that follow it’s, being that the first time we hear the voice of the child in the fake phone in the TARDIS be creepy and uncanny, something that the show tries time and time again to do and somewhat succeed at times, the fact that most of the story happens at night and nearly everything is bathed in shadows help to bring the creepy that mood. The second still tries to bring somewhat of terrifying mood when the child ambushes The Doctor and Nancy at a house and manages to project its voice through the radio of the house asking the same question, and then it turns into a very solemn scene when we have The Doctor trying to communicate with the child through the mail box of the front the door, an incredible scene that serves not only to sympathize with this child, but to show the mark on its hand that becomes a pivotal detail later in the episode, it’s a trade mark of basically cleverness in the stories of Moffat, show something to the audience that will later be rewarded when they notice later on when we notice when Doctor meets with Doctor Constantine in the hospital near the crash site, where all the patients are with the same injuries as the Child and with gas masks fused with their flesh, the scene ends showing the horrifying transformation of Constantine face into a gas mask, even with the somewhat dated CGI it’s still horrifying.

As it’s the most interesting parts of this episodes are the scenes with the Doctor and Nancy what this story primarily is for is the introduction of Jack Harkness to the show, a character that would be an iconic part of modern Doctor Who gaining even his own show later on, all that thanks to the charisma of actor John Barromow, that would later would ostracize of the show because allegations of sexual harassment, which doesn’t goes well considering that Jack is protatiet as casanova thay goes flirting with every person he encounters, in his first scene he is show observing Rose dangeling from the rope and the focus in her ass saying “nice behind” and then paying the same complement to his military friend, for 2005 this might explodingly progressive, now that every fucking show goes out their way to show how inclusive their are, back in it’s beginnig Doctor Who was not shy of doing a character like Jack and that show how much more trangessive the show was at the time, all that might hit sour with it’s actor actions now ! 

Leaving John Barromow aside, Jack is a suave and charismatic character, presenting himself as a time agent only to Rose see through his antics, strengthening her character as flirts and deceives Jack into thinking she is a time agent, all the sexual elements that happen in this episode and the rest of the series are better be put in the next entry, since it’s more suitable there, Jack also confirm that he was the one that launched that object to bait her and the Doctor to bring them there, which for him was a simple con act to get a quick money turns into a disaster when both of them reunite with the Doctor at the hospital as he realise that what he brought to this place is causing, the episode ends with Nancy being ambushed by the Child what makes all the Patients in the hospital get up and circle the three characters there, a cliffhanger much like the better ones from the classic serie were Doctor is in immediate danger and seem to have no way to escape, but not of the cliffhanger of does episodes are that good, the crappy ones outweigh the good ones, I think it is in The Visitation first episode that ends with a closing behind them and Nyssa goes “Doctor” and credit rolls, the are worse ones really !!

The second part begins with a quick recap of the last episode tied into the Doctor's solution to the situation he is trapped in where he orders like an angry parent telling the Child to go back to his room, which surprisingly to him works, at this point we see that the Doctor doesn’t always know what to do. Since most of the two parts follow a dynamic that in the first episode we are present with its major character and the problem at hand, the second follows the exploration and solution for said problem, most of the second episode follows the distrust that The Doctor has with Jack as they are pursued by the Child and the transformed patients, the story reaches its conclusion at the crash site of the object were it explained that thing is a Futurist Ambulance filled with Nanogens (It’s weird they put Nanogens and not nanomachines but whatever) that mistook the human form for one of the dead Child with The Mask and it’s rewritten the sick people and the ones that made contact with the child to that horrifying form. Everything comes to a close when the Patients and the Child converge at the crash site, Nancy is also there, a bomb is about to fall and kill everyone and the Doctor as no idea of what to do, expect another revelation is brought up Nancy said that the Child was her Brother Jaime in the last episode, as the Child keeps asking the question to Nancy the Doctor Figures it out That Nancy is actually Jaime’s Mother, as she tells him the truth and embrace Jaime a miracle happens, The Nanogens begin to alter themself figuring the parental Relation between Nancy and Jaime they are able to restore him back, Using this as a preset, The Doctor reconfigures the Nanogenes and cures everyone that had been transformed, and Jack stops the bomb from falling with his ship, The pivotal moment of this story being the Doctor beaming with joy saying “Just this once Rose, everybody lives” what started as a grim story set in the middle of World War Two, gets a joyful and hopeful ending as everyone in the story is saved, unlike previous episodes so far, no one need to die or sacrifice themself to Doctor save what who as left, No this Time The Doctor get a good day and manages to save everyone even Jack out of his needless sacrife with the bomb in his ship. 

Despite the hopeful ending of this, Moffat would be less generous to his character later on in his stories, but still bring this magical and clever vision to his stories. Now that bring us to the problem of Selecting all this episodes, of course the first two place have no contest in between them, the only argument is to be made for the rest of them, The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances is his first and more then solid entry, it’s a classic and surely deserve to at the top ten of this list, but for now it will remain at the sole initial entry.