At some point during the writing and planning process of this series, Russell T Davies dreamed up the character Captain Jack Harkness. Jack is what can only be described as a multisexual human from the 51st century; who’s ideas toward sex and sexuality were incredibly fluid in comparison to the generations who lived before him. It was quite clear what Davies was striving to achieve with this character. He wanted an open and sexually liberated individual to play a part in this show as a means of bringing Doctor Who firmly into the 21st century. Alternative sexual and gender identities are still suppressed and ridiculed in many corners of modern society, however they are beginning to gradually break free from the shackles of previously conceived prejudice outlooks. Davies wants Doctor Who to be a show which celebrates such forward movements of liberation within contemporary society and Jack Harkness was designed in order to be one of the faces of such an idea.
Davies is pretty much spot on when it
comes to writing homosexual characters, however it would seem that even the sexually diverse
character of Jack Harkness proved to be of some difficulty for him to
bring to the small screen. Rumor has it that he wasn’t too sure on
how to introduce such a sexually fluent character into the series
and instead wanted a writer with more experience in that area to come
forth and do the job for him. It was during these moments of
searching that Davies came across a 2000 television series called
Coupling.
Coupling was a UK sitcom written by English-teacher-turned-screenwriter Steven Moffat. The
show explored themes revolving around the troubles and
misunderstandings of sexual relationships and was based loosely on Moffat’s
own relationship with his wife Sue Vertue. One of the most notable
aspects to Coupling was the staggering intelligence which the show possessed. Non-linear story lines and cleverly structured set
pieces revolving around language barriers and misunderstandings
made the show stand out from many other sitcoms of the same nature. The
show appeared to be able to take a clichéd format of people
struggling whilst in love and turned it into something intelligent, entertaining and highly engaging. It was a sex-based
sitcom which also had a reasonably high IQ. The show also made several
references to classic Doctor Who serials; establishing Moffat as a long time fan
of the program. It was likely that around this point, Davies began to realize
that Moffat was not only a lover of the show he was planning on
reviving, but was also a man who seemed to be able to write about sex
and sexuality in a highly intelligent a tasteful manner.
This is where things get a little
surprising, because when we look back at The Empty Child, we
remember the episode for its scares and creepy monster, not necessarily
because of its introduction to Jack Harkness. Jack is indeed a
memorable character from the post-2005 Who universe, but this is
mainly because of his presence in the show’s spinoff Torchwood, more so than his debut outing. Moffat is mostly credited for being
the man who can scare the socks of his viewers whilst also plotting
out stories that are non linear and complex in their structures. Yet
he was not hired for being the man who could provide sofa cowering thrills, but was brought on because he was supposedly bloody good at writing sexually charged characters.
Moffat was merely there to write a Jack Harkness romp of an episode which would help
to introduce the lovable-yet-horny time agent into the mix, but instead gave us more than we bargained for.
The Empty Child is one of the
most complex and interesting stories from the 2005 series. It is a
two part story which revolves around the Doctor and Rose chasing a
time cylinder through the vortex and into the year 1941 during the height of the World War Two blitz. Whilst searching for the capsule, the Doctor encounters a
young girl called Nancy; Rose is rescued by the handsome Mr
Harkness; and the streets are troubled by a little boy who appears to have a gas mask welded to his face. Yet this is no ordinary little boy, as
if you are to touch his flesh, you too would be doomed to become like him; an empty monster with a gas mask for a face.
As the Doctor follows the trail of Nancy,
he soon discovers that she's helping a group of orphaned children
who've escaped back to London after finding life away from home too
difficult to bare. Nancy and her friends are constantly harassed by
the gas mask child who endlessly utters the question “are you my
mummy?” The Doctor, intrigued and perplexed by this enigmatic
creature, becomes adamant to find out who and what it might be. This
finally leads him to Albion Hospital where he meets Doctor
Constantine; a man who spends the war tending to wards full of gas masked patients that have fallen victim to the little boy's nightmarish abilities.
Whilst the Doctor gets himself stuck
into the mystery of the empty child, Rose finds herself hopelessly
charmed by the dashingly flirtatious Captain Jack. Soon
after Jack’s first on screen appearance, we quickly learn two
things about this man. Firstly, he’s not from this time period, and
secondly, he’s a fan of numerous genders. This taste for multiple
genders is pretty much established in several seconds, where Jack
both compliments Rose's backside and slaps the bum of a male co-soldier moments later; informing him that his bottom his great too. After this moment of sexually charged exposition, Jack proceeds to save Rose from a barrage balloon by
catching her in a beam of light which stems from his spaceship. So
yeah, he’s pretty much established as a bisexual fella from the future right from the get
go.
Yet things are not as simple as that in
The Empty Child, because Jack is not in 1941 just the ogle at and slap
the bottoms of its residents. After lifting Rose off her feet (and
treating her to a dance outside the clock face of Big Ben), he begins to question her
about her role as a time traveler. The plot is flipped on his head.
Jack knows more about Rose than anyone in this story should and
more importantly, it would appear that he rescued her for a very specific and selfish
reason. When Jack finds out about the Doctor being the leader of
their little time traveling duo, Harkness is adamant to
meet him.
This is where The Empty Child branches away from the episodes which came before it, because its structure is
so far different from the standard A to B layout of episodes one through
eight. Yet the difference in structure is not so much because of the mystery element surrounding the entire episode. Viewers are left in the dark for
a majority of this plot, but then this was also the case in Aliens
of London/World War Three. What separates this story from the
rest is the number of questions and mysteries which play out before
our eyes. Aliens of London/World War Three had one question and a
straight forward answer. We had an alien ship crash into the River
Thames and group of disguised aliens pretending to be members of
authority. As soon as we were informed that the crash was a hoax in
order to try and drive humanity into a state of paranoid fear, we as viewers
pretty much nodded in acceptance and went along with what the plot had to offer. But
here, there are all kinds of questions that keep the audience
constantly guessing. Who’s Jack? What does he want with another time traveler? What is the gas mask child? Why is the gas
mask child the way it is? Why does it transform others when it
touches them? What is its relation to Nancy? Why does it keep asking
for its mummy? What was the mysterious pod that the Doctor and Rose
were chasing through time at the start? And how on earth do all of
these questions interlink with one another?
Whereas the previous two part story was
a singular question and answer game, The Empty Child is the first part of a labyrinthine
puzzle narrative. Because that is exactly what this episode is.
Viewers are given all sorts of information without the plot explaining how it
all fits together. A series of set pieces, events and characters help
to tell a story without giving away any solid conclusions. The audience
struggle to piece everything together, yet such pieces just do not
seem to want to fit. This is not an A to B story, but an A through Z one
which slowly throws random letters at you in what would appear to be an
incoherent manner.
This is not a critique on The Empty
Child in any way shape or form. In fact, it is quite the opposite of a criticism,
because I’m of the opinion that this is the finest story of the
first series. Steven Moffat has built a perfect jigsaw of a story which
not only helps to keep one's backside firmly in its seat, but also manages to
tinker and toy around with all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas.
This is not your usual monster-of-the-week story, but is instead the Jonathan
Creek of Doctor Who. It is full of mystery, intelligence and
complexity. We don’t know where it is going or what all of it means,
but we are more than eager to discover the answers which await us in the story's conclusion.
The jigsaw puzzle narrative will become
a recurring trademark of Moffat’s in the following years. With every series, his ability to write enigmatic labyrinth
stories will grow in their complexity. In series two he will be
responsible for penning a love story set in a nonlinear labyrinth of
time; in series three he shall create a tale containing quantum
beasts and characters interacting with one another via differing historical
periods; in series four he will tell a story about a woman from the
Doctor’s future which simultaneously jumps between two sets of
reality; and in Series five onward he will fashion a vastly complex
strand of uniquely designed story arcs which will span over several
series. This is what Moffat just so happens to be good at doing, yet
it all seems to have started here for him (well, he did write a novel
for Doctor Who back in the 1990s, which did contain such structures,
but I will come on to that at a later date).
Watching The Empty Child today is
quite an interesting experience, because we really can see Moffat
planting the very early foundations of what will later be known as
his trademark styles. The timey wimey plots might not have been put
into place yet, however the complexity of his story plotting most are
certainly in play. Here we have three separate time periods
clashing with one another. First there is the story of the Doctor
and Rose who are hunting for a mysterious time traveling pod, the second is the
story of Nancy and the Orphans and the third is the presence of a
flirtatious time agent who’s overly keen on communicating with a
fellow time traveler.
The puzzle which is The Empty Child
may have given us a number of the pieces to this jigsaw, but we are
going to have to wait until the following episode before finally receiving the answer to how all of this fits together.
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