Revisiting Doctor Who - Series 1, Episode 10 - The Doctor Dances

Revisiting Doctor Who - Series 1, Episode 10 - The Doctor Dances

We begin by re-capping last week’s episode, getting more and more freaked out by gas mask people and Jamie, the child, in particular until…

The Doctor tells all of the patients creeping towards him, ‘Go to your room!’. He tell them how angry he is with them and repeats it, until we see Jamie walk off looking upset in the house, and the patients following his lead by returning to bed. The Doctor’s pleased that it worked – they would have been terrible last words.

Cue title sequence…

Watching Jamie walk away through the window, Nancy gets teary. Well, you would do watching your little brother who got his face turned into a gas mask walking away like an upset little boy, with your powerless to do anything. In the hospital, Rose asks why they’re wearing gas masks, but Jack points out that they’re really flesh and bone now. His con was to convince a Time Agent to buy the Chula ‘warship’, take 50% up front, then allow the German bomb to fall on it so he never learns the truth about it being an ambulance. Naughty Jack! He even jokes about Pompeii being a great place to pull the same con, but The Doctor isn’t in the mood for joking when Jack inadvertently caused this problem. The air raid sirens start up, and they leave the ward.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Nancy is about to leave the house when Jamie appears! Oh no, wait, it’s just another kid in a gas mask, but boy does he look similar. They all look the same these scary children with gas masks. As Nancy tries to flee the house, the owners return, shoving her into the shed. At the hospital, The Doctor leads them to Room 802 where Jamie was first taken – he makes Jack use his Sonic Blaster from the 51st Century to open the door, and we learn that The Doctor blew up the factory that made it. Not important, but a nice little aside. He also likes bananas. Rose, meanwhile, likes Jack’s gun.

Inside the room, it’s a bit of a mess. Clearly, either something powerful or angry was in here, or a teenager (I’m 27, I can make those type of jokes). In a side room, there are hundreds of drawings and children’s toys. Recordings of meetings between Doctor Constantine and Jamie reveal nothing new – the child wants its mummy. Those drawings of his mummy look awfully like Nancy, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Rose asks why the child doesn’t know if anyone is his mummy. The Doctor just stares ahead.

Back in the house, the owner is shouting at Nancy, asking if she’d like anything. She responds with a request for wire cutters and a blowtorch, and by pointing out that he seems to have rather a lot of food considering rations are in order. Turns out he’s been messing around with Mr Haverstock, the butcher. She lets herself out.

The Doctor paces round the room, asking Jack and Rose if they can hear something in the child’s voice, and that it’s coming out of the walls, and that humans have small brains. The child’s voice plays on throughout (did I just notice the tape has run out though and is flapping everywhere?). The Doctor speculates that one of the children who comes out at night might have been infected. The child calls out ‘I’m here!’ but they don’t notice. The Doctor realises that he sent it to its room, i.e. the room they’re in at that very moment. It calls ‘I’m here!’ again. Rose notices the flapping noise again. Uh-oh. He’s behind you. Jack tries to shoot it but his banana isn’t loaded – The Doctor swapped it for Jack’s gun a while back, and uses it to melt a hole in the wall. Bananas are a good source of potassium though, so The Doctor makes Jack bring it with him. The digital re-wind in the gun puts the hole back in the wall. Outside though, Jamie begins to smash his way through the wall, and the other patients appear to block them off from leaving. Whilst Jack and The Doctor argue over their sonic instruments, Rose decides to do something and melts a hole in the floor for them to drop through. They drop into another ward filled with patients though, so they have to flee into a side room. The Doctor and Jack argue a bit more, Jack and Rose flirt a bit more, The Doctor and Rose plan a bit more, and then with a twinkly noise Jack disappears.

Nancy, meanwhile, finds some of the children hiding in a building, although she’s irked because they aren’t meant to stay in the same place twice. One of them is typing too loud on a typewriter which annoys her more, but she calms down a bit and explains that she needs them to think clearly so they can look after themselves if she doesn’t come back. She’s off to the bomb site, realising that the child always comes for her specifically, not the other children. There are things he hasn’t, and can’t tell them. She proves that she needs to go, when the typewriter begins typing itself. No prizes for guessing the message.

Back in the side room, the radio clicks on and Jack appears, telling them he activated his ship’s emergency transport. He can connect to anything with a speaker grill, just like the child. Jamie proves it by suddenly informing them that he’s coming to find them, and his mummy. So not creepy…like, at all…like, I wouldn’t be scared if that happened…no way…

Nancy begins cutting her way through the wires around the bombsite. Wow, that’s a very short sentence. I think I’ll pad it out a bit to make it longer, more worth your time in reading it. If it was only one sentence, would it even count as a paragraph? It wouldn’t seem right to stick it in the middle of the previous paragraph and this next one, so it had to go on its own really. But it still seemed pretty short. Oh well, on we go.

Rose listens to the music that she and Jack danced to on top of his ship, as The Doctor uses his screwdriver to try and loosen the window bars. Rose says that, as well as saving her life in the same way dental floss does, Jack reminds her of The Doctor, which is why she trusts him. Except The Doctor involves less dating and dancing. He assures her that he most definitely does dance, and even though he’s busy resonating concrete, he’s about to prove it when he notices that she doesn’t have burn marks on her hands from when she hung from the barrage balloon. She explains that Jack fixed her, and teases The Doctor when he appears to suffer ‘Captain-envy’. One minute they’re just starting to sway, the next they’re suddenly in Jack’s ship. The Doctor tells Jack to take them to the crash site, but he needs to repair the navi-comp first.

Nancy makes her way into the crash site, and reaches theship, only for a bunch of lights to flash up and focus on her, as well as several guns belong to soldiers from the British army, who tell her not to move.

Jack reveals that he used to be a Time Agent, but now works as a conman because the Time Agency stole two years of his memory and he wants them back – for all he knows, The Doctor is right not to trust him. The computer comes back on line.

Nancy is brought into a warehouse, where a soldier who is clearly about to turn into a gas mask-face. The soldier calls his superior ‘mummy’, and then begins to change as Nancy pleads for him to let her go. The Doctor, Rose and Jack arrive outside the site, and Jack assures them that he has a better chance than Rose of distracting the guard in charge. However, when he reaches him, he too begins to change. Jack tells the other guards to stay away, as The Doctor realises that the gas mask virus has become airborne. There’s only a few hours left for the human race. They notice singing coming from the shed, and The Doctor finds Nancy singing to keep the soldier asleep. He uses the sonic screwdriver to free Nancy from her handcuffs, and then they all remove the covers from the Chula ambulance. Jack causes it to spark when he tries to get in, activating the emergency protocols and a siren following the crash. Jamie and the other infected patients all begin to head for the crash site. They move quickly to secure the area, as Rose lets Nancy know that they are all time-travellers – she’s seen enough to believe them. Rose assures her that everything will be alright despite the war, although Nancy has a hard time believing this part.

Back at the ship, The Doctor informs them that he’s figured out what’s happened – Jack’s ship was also a Chula ship, and so the crashed ship has the same nano-genes. When it crashed, they were released and are trying to do their job – rebuild damaged matter. However, the first person they found was Jamie, who had been killed whilst wearing his gas mask. They’ve never seen humans before, unable to tell the difference between flesh and gas mask, so after fixing Jamie they head off to ‘fix’ the rest of the human race, as they believe they all should be like him. Bit of a mistake then Jack, all that conning. Should have known it would lead to this really. The Doctor says there’s nothing anyone can do. The ambulance is a battlefield ambulance, and therefore has super-powered Jamie, meaning that all the other gas mask patients are now soldiers under his command. He’s a terrified child looking for his mummy, with all the power in the world to make it happen, and no-one to stop him. As Nancy declares that it’s all her fault, the bombs begin to drop around them, and Jack teleports away (you COWARD Jack! I loved you!), we learn that Jamie isn’t her brother at all – it’s Nancy that’s his mummy. She hid the truth because she was only about fifteen when she gave birth. The Doctor tells her to trust him, and tell Jamie that yes, she’s her mummy. Although he doesn’t understand to start with, when she gives him a hug the nano-genes appear around them, healing all the damage. He’s back to being a little boy. The Doctor nearly cries, as he explains that the nano-genes recognised Nancy’s DNA as the superior information – mother knows best! To top it all off, Jack appears with his ship to capture the bomb in its tractor beam before it could fall onto them and the ship – I knew you were a good guy really Jack! I knew it! Bless you! He flies off, but not before flirting one last time with Rose (he likes her t-shirt). The Doctor sends the nano-genes onto all the other patients, declaring that ‘Just this once Rose, everybody lives!’ in a rather scary, maniacal manner. But still, he’s happy. All the patients look a bit confused, especially the lady who only had one leg before this happened. The Doctor sets the Chula ambulance to self-destruct, as history recorded an explosion and he might as well make one happen.

Everybody lived? Hmm. That bomb that Jack took with him?It’s going to explode and there’s no chance that he can get away. Uh-oh. No more Barrowman. There’s just time for one last drink before the ship explodes.

No, wait, the TARDIS appears to rescue him. Rose and The Doctor are dancing as the familiar 40s music plays, as Jack comes on board. The Doctor welcomes him to the TARDIS, as they get down to a bit more dancing. All good fun.

I’m sure this is because I’m now a parent, but watching The Doctor tell Jamie to go to his room, and seeing the child walk away with his head down is strangely heart-breaking. Couple it with the fact that, as far as we know at this point, he’s just a scared child who misses his mummy, and it doubles in its heartbreakedness (awesome word I’ve just invented there, I must say). As Nancy begins to break down at the crash-site because he’s just a scared little boy who misses his mummy, and we learn that she IS his mummy, it really highlights just how powerful an episode this is. How can a scared little boy be the bad guy? And what a quote – ‘There isn’t a little boy born who wouldn’t tear the world apart to save his mummy.’Fantastic stuff. It’s topped off by Nancy telling him that yes, she’s his mummy, and she always will be. Christ, I nearly burst into tears. It’s wonderful.

Even with all the flirting between Rose and Jack, when she tries to make The Doctor dance you can still tell where her heart truly lies. The connection between them isn’t as fully formed as it will be, come the end of Series 2 of course, but all the groundwork is being laid. It’s almost as if she’s testing the water when she says that Jack is like The Doctor, but with dating and dancing. She’s definitely in full on tease-mode when she accuses him of having ‘Captain-envy’.  There’s a nod to the audience as well, when Jack notes that ‘most people notice when they’re being teleported’, but they were so caught up starting to dance that they didn’t.  The whole sequence is ended brilliantly with the following exchange:

Jack: You two get back to whatever it is you were doing.

The Doctor: We were talking about dancing!

Jack: It didn’t look like talking…

Rose: It didn’t feel like dancing!

According to The Doctor, in the 51st Century mankind is spread out amongst the stars, where their whole mission is to seek new life and ‘dance’. No wonder Jack is so charming.

Barrowman continues to excel, and shows that he can do regret just as well as charm, when he realises that all this mess is technically his fault. He’s also hilarious, especially with his bit about how the last time he was sentenced to death he drank a load of vodka, and woke up with both his executioners the next day, who also stayed in touch. It would have been easy to have killed him off, destroying The Doctor’s delight that everybody was saved, but I’m so glad they didn’t. I understand how Barrowman could irritate people, but I love him. Captain Jack should have his own show…

I had to laugh when Jack produced the banana instead of a gun, and then The Doctor wouldn’t let him leave it behind as it’s ‘a good source of potassium’. That’s a doctor for you. Also, watching them arguing over their sonic devices is great fun (apparently The Doctor made his sonic screwdriver when he was bored one day). A screwdriver isn’t really thatthreatening, is it? ‘At a pinch, you could put up some shelves.’ Ah Captain Jack.

For once, The Doctor gets to declare that ‘everybody lives!’ This is probably especially important to him following the Time War, and highlights just why we love The Doctor – he really does care about everyone, and he really does try to save them.

Bad Wolf Sightings

The bomb that is scheduled to hit the Chula ambulance, before Jack tractor beams it away, is labelled ‘SchlechterWolf’, which is German for ‘Bad Wolf’.

How It Fits Into The Series As A Whole

Captain Jack Harkness joins Rose as a temporary companion of The Doctor. He will, of course, go on to have his own show, commanding Torchwood 3 in Torchwood.

Overall

A wonderful end to a wonderful two-parter, it’s a powerful and emotional episode that is all about re-uniting a lost child with its mother. Some excellent humour interwoven with a dark plot, and the (temporary) addition of Captain JackHarkness to the TARDIS crew. It’s dark, moving, and one of the best double-episodes of all-time.

10/10