The Doctor and Rose Tyler are travelling in the TARDIS, chasing a metal cylinder that is marked as dangerous through the time vortex; the cylinder skips and leaves the vortex, traveling to London some time in the past. The TARDIS materializes at night, within a month of when the cylinder should have arrived. The Doctor investigates a nearby cabaret to try to find word of the cylinder, while Rose spots a young boy, alone, in a gas mask on a nearby roof and climbs up to it to try to help him. Shorly, air-raid sirens begin to go off, and the Doctor realizes they have landed during the London Blitz of World War II, with German planes making a bombing run. The Doctor runs back to the TARDIS but cannot find Rose; however, he is very puzzled when the telephone of his police box starts ringing as it is not a real phone but part of the TARDIS's disguise. He goes to answer when a young woman tells him not to answer it, though he still does, only to hear a young boy asking for his mummy over the phone. The Doctor turns back to the woman to find she has left and gone to raid the house of a family that has left for a bomb shelter for food, and goes to follow her.The Doctor watches the young woman, who has now brought several other homeless children to enjoy the abandoned meal in the home, and decides to introduce himself to them. He learns that the young woman is called Nancy, and that they have been sustaining themselves this way with every bombing run. However, the group is startled to find a young boy in a gas mask knocking on a window; Nancy and the other children bar the house even as the child tries to stick his hand through the mail slot of the front door. Nancy tells the Doctor to not touch the boy, or he will become like the boy, "empty". The boy is able to control the electronic devices in the home, pleading for his mummy through the phone and radio. As Nancy and the other child leave with the ransacked food, the Doctor opens the front door, only to find the boy gone. The Doctor follows Nancy to an abandoned rail yard where she has made her home, and tells her that he's made the connection between the cylinder that fell and the "empty" boy. Realizing the connection, Nancy tells him about a bomb falling near the Limehouse Green station "that was not a bomb". As they investigate the site, protected by a fence and armed troops, Nancy suggests the Doctor talk to Doctor Constantine. The Doctor remarks that Nancy is looking after the children to make up for something, and she admits that it is because her brother Jamie died during an air raid. The Doctor tells Nancy encouragement that everything will be all right before he leaves her for the hospital.
Inside the hospital, the Doctor finds Dr. Constantine who stands watch over several beds filled with corpses, each still but wearing a gas mask. Dr. Constantine points out to the Doctor that the masks are not physical but appear to be part of the body, and they all share the exact same scars and external injuries. Dr. Constantine explains that when the "bomb" fell, it claimed one victim, but those that came into contact with him began to show the same effects, and the symptoms spread from there. Dr. Constantine reveals that the corpses react simultaneously to a large rap of his cane on the floor, and that the first victim was Nancy's brother. Before he can explain more, however, Dr. Constantine is changed in front of the Doctor's eyes into a similar gas mask-wearing zombie, asking for his mummy.
Meanwhile, as Rose attempts to use a rope to climb up to the boy, she discovers the rope is actually a line hanging from a barrage balloon above, and it lifts her up and off the roof. Captain Jack Harkness of the RAF, participating in a function in a nearby building, spots Rose's plight using anachronstic binoculars and excuses himself. Shortly thereafter, Rose can no longer hold her grip on the rope and falls, but is caught in a tractor beam and brought safely aboard a Chula spaceship manned by Jack, whereupon she faints. When she recovers, Jack identifies her as a "Time Agent", and treats her rope-burnt hands using the ship's "nanogenes". Both Jack and Rose appear to find the other attractive, and Jack invites Rose to the top of the ship, tethered to Big Ben. As they continue to flirt, Jack explains to Rose that he used to be a Time Agent and since has gone freelance, and that he has something that the Time Agency wants and that he expects to have to negotiate with Rose for it. Rose bluffs and tells him she would need to consult with her companion first, though she needs to find him first. Jack uses the ship to find the Doctor's location as he explains that the object is a fully equipped Chula warship, and that he knows that in two hours it will be destroyed by another bombing raid.
Finding the Doctor's location, Jack and Rose join up with the Doctor at the hospital shortly after Dr. Constantine's transformation. The Doctor learns of the situation from Rose, but hearing about the Chula warship, demands Jack to tell the truth. Jack admits it was just an "ambulance", trying to bluff its identiy as valuable, but admits that it has nothing to do with the invection. As they argue, the corpses all rise and start to approach the trio; simulatenously, Nancy, who has returned to the house to collect more food, is also trapped and approached by the young boy, who she knows is Jamie, still asking for his "mummy", leading to a cliffhanger ending, continued in The Doctor Dances.
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companions Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
John Barrowman (Jack Harkness)
Writer Steven Moffat
Director James Hawes
Script editor Elwen Rowlands
Producer Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s) Russell T. Davies
Julie Gardner
Mal Young
Production code 1.9
Series Series 1
Length 1 of 2 episodes, 45 mins
Originally broadcast May 21, 2005
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