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This week's story is an incredibly creepy period piece taking the show's (and the Doctor's) ongoing abandonment/orphan paranoia -- and preoccupation with war -- to a whole new level in 1941 London. Fathers are replaced, this week, with mothers, and everybody's a substitute for everybody else: the Doctor meets a great new candidate for Companionship; Rose finds a sexier, flashier Doctor; and we meet a brave and overwhelmed counterpart to the Doctor himself tending the victims of this newest horror. While attempting to track down a crash-landed artifact, the Doctor and Rose are separated, and separately menaced by an unearthly child wearing a gas mask and looking for its mummy. While the Doctor makes the acquaintance of a clever and brave young lady named Nancy, Rose falls ass-over-teakettle into the arms of one Captain Jack Harkness, a time-traveling con man and regulation hottie who wants to sell them the remains of the crash-landed ship. Rather than dealing with any of the time, space, danger or ghostly issues happening all around them, not to mention the bombs dropping all over the place, Rose and Jack go on a sexy little date in midair outside Big Ben. Jack likes to dance, and also make out with everybody all the time. After a very rough run-in with the child, the Doctor visits Albion Hospital (last seen housing a pig dressed as an alien and a scientist in heels in "Aliens Of London") on a tip from Nancy, and learns that the child's viral touch is transforming people into empty creatures just like the child, with gas masks for faces. Before succumbing to the curse, the informant, a Dr. Constantine, reveals that the boy is Nancy's brother, who died in the bombings. Once Jack and Rose hook back up with the Doctor at Albion, all the victims housed in the hospital attack, while Nancy is menaced out in the Blitz by the original child. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I just caught part of an old-school black-and-white (Second Doctor, I think) episode and was shocked by how current the theme song sounds. It's really the same song! That's so cool. I assumed it would sound much different. If I wasn't watching this season so crazily much, I don't think I would have realized just how close it is to the original.
Anyhow. We begin with the TARDIS shooting through space, following a space-age-looking cylinder. Inside, Rose is wearing a Ginger Spice long-sleeved shirt that's one big Union Jack. The Doctor informs her that the reason he's so oxygenated about this particular piece of space junk is that "it's mauve," and explains that this is the "universally recognized color for danger." Apparently, only humans think red is a big deal: "By everyone else's standards, red's camp. Oh, the misunderstandings, all those red alerts..." That's funny. The Doctor points to the mauve thing on the monitor and says that it's got a basic flight computer, to which he's connected the TARDIS directly, so they'll follow it wherever it goes. "And how safe is it?" asks Rose. Totally, he explains, and then of course the TARDIS disagrees and a portion of the console goes up in sparks. The Doctor revises down: "Reasonably." The thing keeps hurtling, and the Doctor wigs that it's "jumping time tracks" and getting away from them, even though...well, I guess it's just the flight computer the TARDIS is using for its directions. Never mind the nitpicks. Rose: "What exactly is this fing?" The Doctor doesn't know, but he does know why they're following it: "It's mauve and dangerous. And about thirty seconds from the center of London." Interesting.
Credits. Episode written by Steven Moffat, currently known as the guy who wrote the Season 2 episode "The Girl In The Fireplace," which would seem to be either the best thing in the world, or the worst, with a small area in the bell curve devoted to "whatever." We TARDIS in behind some yucky houses, and disembark talking about how Rose and the Doctor always freaking end up in London. Rose says that they seem to end up on Earth every five days: "Or is that just when we're out of milk?" He tells her, and I have no idea throughout this episode when anybody is joking, because there's a silliness that sits to the freakiness holding its hand, that the only place in the universe where you can get milk is Earth cows. (If I link that up to the importance and specificity of mommies in this story, then I'd have to also point out the strange obsession with bananas as "gun" substitutes week, and we're not going there. Freud, get thee behind us for this one.)