10. The Doctor Dances

In the second part of 'The Empty Child' story, the Child's plague spreads throughout.  Wartime London with its zombie army on the march.  The Doctor and Rose form an alliance with Captain Jack, but find themselves trapped the abandoned hospital.  The answer lies at the bombsite, but time is running out…

- DR. WHO COLLECTORS' EDITION EPISODE GUIDE

As the previous episode ended with the empty child closing in on Nancy, and the empty patients surrounding the Doctor, Rose and Jack, this episode begins amusingly with the Doctor ordering them, "to go to your room!"  The child/ patients obey.  The child leaves Nancy alone, and the patients all return to their beds. The Doctor has saved the day again… for the moment. 

The Doctor blames Jack for what is happening, holding the crashed Chula warship responsible.  Jack responds that the Chula warship couldn't possibly be the reason, as it was in fact a Chula Ambulance, not a warship.  Jack confesses that he's a con artist, he was trying to con the Doctor and Rose to buy the worthless space junk as it was empty when he found it, and he deliberately put it in front of the TARDIS to attract their attention. The Doctor comes up with the astute analysis that human DNA is being rewritten by an idiot. 

The Doctor, Jack and Rose find the room in the hospital where the empty child was first kept, and find everything in disarray from when the child escaped.  The Doctor plays the recording of Dr. Constantine trying to talk to the child, with the never ending words, "are you my Mummy?  Mummy!  I want my Mummy!" But then just one small problem arises… the Doctor sent the child to its room, and now they are in its room.  "I'm here!" the child sings out.  Rose panics and asks the Doctor if he can hear that, and the Doctor says yes, and it's no longer the recording, as the tape finished seconds ago… the three turn around and find the empty child blocking off the only door in the room.  Jack pulls out his sonic gun and creates a new doorway in the wall for the three to escape through, with a bonus feature to his device, that it can also put the wall back.  As the Doctor, Rose and Jack race through the hospital trying to escape from the empty child and its zombies, they become trapped in a storage room with no way out. 

Jack teleports out of there, leaving the Doctor and Rose behind.  Then Jack's voice comes through a disused radio in the room, and Jack apologizes for leaving them behind and that he will reprogram his computer to teleport them next.  But while he does that, he puts on Glen Miller, calling it his and Rose's song, to block the child's signal so that it can't find them. 

Rose is confident that Jack will get them out, but the Doctor isn't so sure.  He takes out his sonic screwdriver and tries to resonate the concrete to loosen the bars on the window to get out.  Rose goads the Doctor into sharing this dance with her, pointing out, "the world doesn't end because the Doctor dances." As he and she begin to dance, they next find themselves on board Jack's ship.  Jack teases the two, commenting that they make a sweet couple as usually people notice when they're teleported.  The Doctor looks about him and recognizes the technology to be a Chula, which Jack agrees.  He tells the Doctor and Rose how he used to be a Time Agent, but left the Agency because they stole 2 years of his memories and now he's trying to get them back. 

Nancy goes back to the bomb site where the Chula ship is and where her little brother Jaime died.  There she is arrested by the Army for breaking in.  She is handcuffed with a sick soldier, who begins muttering the dreaded words, "are you my Mummy?" She pleads with the officer in charge, Algie who we saw in the previous episode having drinks with Jack before he saved Rose from falling from the barrage room, but Algie doesn't listen to her. 

When the Doctor, Rose and Jack go back to the bomb site so the Doctor can see the Chula Ambulance, Jack recognizes that it's Algie on duty.  Rose at first offers to go to distract the guards, but Jack laughs and tells her "trust me, you're not his type."  Then as he goes off to do the distracting much to the surprise of Rose, the Doctor tells her, "relax.  He's just a 51st Century guy.  He's just a bit more flexible when it comes to dancing."

To Jack's own surprise, Algie turns around towards him and says, "are you my Mummy?" All of the English soldiers on the bomb site are turning into more empty Zombies.  Then the air raid siren goes off again, letting us know that the German bomb that's meant to destroy the Chula Ambulance is on its way.  When Jack shows the Doctor the Ambulance and the Doctor tries to use the controls to open it, which sets off an alarm, bringing all of the zombies and the empty child to their location.  The Doctor is able to break into the Ambulance and Jack points out that it looks empty.  The Doctor shakes his head and retorts back with, what did Jack expect?  Bandages?  The Ambulance was in no way empty and Rose cottons on to what the Doctor means… the nanogenes! The subatomic robots that healed her hands from the rope burn, was what 'healed' Jaime and turned him into the empty child.  But since the nanogenes had never seen human DNA before, they got it wrong, creating the empty child instead. 

They rescue Nancy and the Doctor has another one of his brilliant deductions, that the reason why the empty child follows Nancy around everywhere, asking constantly, "are you my Mummy" is because Nancy is actually Jaime's mother.  She was a young single mother, which in that era is a hard thing to be, so she masqueraded as his older sister.  As the four are surrounded by the empty child and its zombie army, all crying out "Mummy, are you my Mummy?" the Doctor tells Nancy to go to him, to tell him the truth.  As Nancy does this, the Doctor hopes the air born nanogenes will recognize their similar DNA. 

Bingo! The nanogenes do recognize the DNA of mother and child, and the empty child is no longer empty anymore, and the Doctor gleefully takes off the child's gas mask and hold up the now alive and well little boy in the air.  The Doctor sends off the nanogenes to the rest of the infected victims, and everyone is restored to normality.  The Doctor tells Dr. Constantine not to try to explain what has happened, but instead just tell everyone what a great doctor he has been.  As Dr. Constantine tries to do just that, one of his patients, an elderly woman hobbles up to him.  He greets her with, "Mrs. Harker, how much better you're looking."  Mrs. Harker replies baffled, "my leg's grown back.  When I come to the hospital, I had one leg."  With which Dr. Constantine humorously tries to deflect, "well, there is a war on.  Is it possible you miscounted?"

Jack, who teleported back to his ship, uses his ships' tractor beam to catch the German bomb before it hits the Chula warship and harms everyone at the bomb site.  Jack bids his farewells to his newfound friends, and then he and the bomb teleport onto his ship and he flies off.  Then as the Doctor and Rose return to the TARDIS with the Doctor ecstatically crying out, "everybody lives!" Rose asks the Doctor about Jack, and why would he say goodbye like that?  The Doctor stops smiling. 

Back on board Jack's ship as it's cruising through space, he asks his  computer if they can eject the bomb, which the computer replies it can't.  Next he asks if they can teleport it again, which the comoputer replies not with out setting the bomb off.  Then he asks about an escape pod, which he finds out there is none aboard.  Jack is resigned to his fate, and instructs the ship to implement a pre-programmed emergency procedure, and a martini appears. Then just as Jack is enjoying his last meal/ drink, he hears a voice, "well hurry up then!" He sees the doors to the TARDIS now in his ship, and he enters the Doctor's vessel as Rose is trying to teach the Doctor how to dance.  Then the music changes and the Doctor suddenly remembers… that he can dance, and the two bop away with their new companion now on board.