One of the scariest monsters encountered by the Doctor in Doctor Who was the terrifying Empty Child. The Empty Child was the product of some confused nanogenes – a bacterial form of medical repair found inside a Chula ambulance warship. The Ninth Doctor and Rose chased the Chula ambulance warship through the time vortex to London 1941, baited by con man and ex 51st Century Time Agent Captain Jack Harkness. The nanogenes escaped the capsule and began repairing the body of a 5-year old boy called Jamie who was wearing a gas mask – he becomes the Empty Child. The confused nanogenes begin transforming humans in WWII London into gas mask zombies, believing that this is how human beings are supposed to look like. The net result is a plague of creepy gas mask zombies across the Blitzed London.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

★★★★★

TX: 21/05/2005 – 28/05/2005

Written by Steven Moffat    Directed by James Hawes

The Empty Child is lost and looking for his mother, so he repeats a chilling phrase: “Are you my mummy?” The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack eventually make it to the crash site of the chula ambulance warship, which the army believe to be an unexploded German bomb. The Doctor talks to Rose about dancing in the past which is a subtle reference to his sexual history. You should be able to talk about sex in Doctor Who because it is not a kids show, it is a family show that adults watch too (sorry Mary Whitehouse, but Philip Hinchcliffe was right!). The Doctor manages to reunite the Empty Child with his real mother Nancy, a young teenage woman who pretended to be Jamie’s brother and also looked after homeless kids during the bombings on war-torn London. The clever nanogenes deduce that this is the mother that the Child was searching for and recognise that they share the same genetic information. The nanogenes then put the child and all the other gas mask zombies back to normal so that “everybody lives”! The Doctor and Rose leave in the TARDIS before rescuing Captain Jack whose invisible spaceship is destroyed by an onboard unexploded German bomb. It would be a good idea to bring back the Empty Child to Doctor Who after 20 years, possibly in a Maze of the Doctor’s worst nightmares! Richard Wilson, John Barrowman, Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston all give incredible performances in this iconic story. Eccleston is on the podium of Doctors!