The Doctor Dances

"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"

Writer: Steven Moffat 

Format: TV 

Broadcast: 28th May 2005

Series: 1.10

Featuring: Ninth Doctor, Rose, Captain Jack

Synopsis 

The plague of the Child is spreading throughout Wartime London with its zombie army on the march. The Doctor and Rose form an alliance with Captain Jack, but find themselves trapped in the abandoned hospital. The answer lies at the bombsite, but time is running out...

Verdict 

The Doctor Dances is a superb conclusion to the already brilliant story started in The Empty Child. It's obvious why this story always scores highly in the polls charting the best stories in DWM and on the internet - because it's brilliant! After the superb cliffhanger of the previous part, I adored the resolution with the Doctor standing up to the gas mask wearing hospital patients and told them, as any angry parent would, to go to their room! Marvellous. With the Child looking for his mummy, he would listen to the obedient parent figure in the Doctor. The irony was though that the Doctor had sent the Child straight for he, Rose and Jack. I loved the moment where the trio could still hear the Child talking but the tape had run out. He was right there in the room with them and the panicked chase out of the hospital ensued. It was very entertaining and action packed! The banter between the Doctor and Jack regarding their sonic instruments was brilliant. Jack had a rather impressive sonic blaster whilst the Doctor had a sonic screwdriver. Jack's reaction to that was magnificent I thought and the Doctor actually seemed ashamed of his little device which was quite sad. I loved how he was trying to resonate concrete when he immediately got himself into trouble with Rose in stating that she assumed he couldn't dance. She trusted Jack, because he reminded her of the Doctor, so she wanted to see what moves her Time Lord friend had. I can't recall the Doctor dancing as we saw here but he seemed to have some moves! The Eleventh Doctor surely is the best dancer though I would say. But Eccleston's Ninth wasn't bad at all! The Doctor executing the switch between the sonic blaster and banana was wonderful and is just a reminder that, even in an episode as dark as this, the Ninth Doctor is nowhere near as dark as his reputation may suggest. I loved the comical reference to Rose and it certainly gave Jack an insight to what life with the Doctor will be like. The revelation surrounding Nancy at the crash site was fantastic and the story then started to make some kind of sense. Nancy wasn't Jamie's sister at all. She was actually his mother as she was older than she looked. She had a teenage pregnancy during the late 1930s and being a single parent during war must have been incredibly difficult. But her son had been affected by the ambulance that Jack used as bait to lure the Doctor and Rose. Jack thought it was empty but the continuation of the nanogenes from healing Rose's hands was superb. They didn't know what humans were and believed they were like the Child so would set out to 'fix' the rest and make them like Jamie. However, when Nancy finally acknowledged that she was his mummy he'd been asking about, the nanogenes recognised the superior DNA and Jamie was fixed. The whole hospital was and for once the Doctor had a great day. He bloody deserves it! Everybody lived just this once. Dancing, he even went and saved Jack from the bomb. Psychology at its finest. Jack was now companion and he was impressed by the TARDIS interior! Overall, a magnificent end to a simply sublime two part story. 

Rating: 10/10