The Empty Calendar

Massive Spoiler Warnings!!

Those who do not want Spoilers...RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!


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It's -

The One Hundred and Seventieth Entry in the Charles Daniels
Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Blitzkrieg


Episode 1.09 - The Empty Calendar - 


 The Doctor informs Rose that a time travelling mauve cylinder is
about to destroy London.

 The Doctor then bursts into freakish amounts of laughter.

 "I mean, how primitive and pathetic can you get?!   OOOOoooooo!
The Mauve Cylinder from Outerspace, come to kill us all."

 "Ummm...we are going to still save everyone, right?"

 The Doctor pauses for a moment, his fingers just above a switch on
the console -

 "Yeah, what the hell.  There's nothing to watch on telly anyway."
 

(Opening credits - the TARDIS whizzes through time and space, stops
for a photo op to be on the cover of the Radio Times, and then
hurtles onward to London in the 20th century)
 
 
 The TARDIS materialises in an alleyway, the Doctor emerges with
a sense of grandeur and out stretches his arm -

"Earth in the 20th century!  An era of progress, prosperity, and
cultural achievement. At this point in your planet's history people
still listen to imprinted vinyl discs and are just DISCOVERING the
joys of electronic gizmos that they'll only ever use once and then
pack away in the stair cupboard.  FANTASTIC!"

"Umm...I remember the 20th century, alright?"

"HMMM??  OH YEAH!  I forgot.  Sorry." 
 
 The Doctor suggests that Rose and he go clubbing.  When Rose asks
him if they wouldn't be better use saving London from destruction,
the Doctor explains -

 "Ah, yeah, well, to be honest, my driving can be a bit shit Rose.
That cylinder got a lead on me. It probably arrived three or four
weeks earlier than us.  London is still HERE.  So it must not have
been destroyed.  WOW!  Aren't I just like Sherlock Holmes?
The powers of deduction!  Elementary my dear Rose!"


 The Doctor and Rose head out searching for the local nightlife.
Hearing music and the sounds of a crowd behind a nearby door, the
Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to break in. Rose rushes into
the club; however immediately afterwards the Doctor hears the sound
of a child calling out for its mummy, and turns to see a young boy in
a gas mask standing on a nearby rooftop. 


 Rose finds herself in a smoky jazz lounge, where a singer is
crooning 'It Had to be You'. Rose decides to ignore the music and
just grab a pint. 

 Unfortunately Rose can't understand what she's been charged and her
offer of a few pound coins leaves everyone around her laughing.

 As Rose tries to understand their reaction, air-raid sirens begin to
wail and the audience promptly evacuates to the shelters.

 Rose finally notices a war poster on the wall, and realises why her
Queen Elizabeth II coins have caused such hilarity -- that bastard
the Doctor had landed them in the middle of the Blitz! 


 Outside, The Doctor climbs a fire escape to the roof, but is unable
to get up to the child until a rope drops down to him. Unsure where
the rope came from, The Doctor nevertheless starts to climb -- and
discovers, too late, that it’s attached to a barrage balloon that has
come free of its moorings. 

 The balloon drifts away from the building, leaving The Doctor
dangling precariously in mid-air, desperately clutching onto the
rope as German planes hurtle through the air around him.

 Suddenly, he realises what a tragic moron he truly is.


 Rose rushes out of the club only to find that The Doctor has
vanished. 

 Rose complains to a nearby cat that she has been left 60 years in
her past by a time travelling alien with no sense of responsibility.
The cat, for its part, looks sceptical.

 Eventually, Rose realises that the cat isn't going to be a lot of
help, and so she follows a strange clattering sound, until she arrives
at a nearby home.

 Here Rose sees a family evacuating to an air-raid shelter in
their garden.  As soon as the family is inside the shelter, a girl
from a nearby alley pops out of hiding and enters their house, where
she begins stealing all the food she can fit into a small sack. 


 Elsewhere, The Doctor’s plight is being observed from a nearby 
officers’ club by Captain Jack Harkness, who is apparently an
American flight officer -- but his iPod Nano sort of gives him away
as being not of the 1940s. 

 Jack sets off to the rescue. The Doctor finally loses his grip on
the rope and falls, screaming -- but one of the searchlights sweeping
across London transforms into a tractor beam and catches him.

 The computer aboard Jack’s ship detects The Doctor’s sonic
screwdriver, which indicates that he is not native to this era. 
Jack makes a note of this on his PDA and then contacts the shaken
Doctor, telling him that he is being rescued by tractor beam
and that he has a nice arse.

 The Doctor is slowly lowered into Jack's life. The descent has made
him giddy, and his close proximity to the attractive Jack doesn’t
help; in any case, he faints. 


 Back at the house, Rose witnesses a teenage girl call in a crowd of
Nazis to take advantage of the windfall. She carves the turkey for
them, presiding over the gathering like a mother and chastising young
Gunther when he comments about the inevitable victory of the German
Master Race, whilst eating a Yorkshire Pudding.

 Rose then arrives and causes a brief panic when she takes a seat
with the Nazis, but the girl calms them down, realising that Rose
isn’t supposed to be here either.

 Rose learns that these Nazis are fairly eccentric. They choose to
parachute down during the air raids to eat up all the English food
they possibly can - because they secretly love it.

 "OH YES!  The English sausage is uberkunst.  It mocks my aryan
soul with its Lincolnshire purity!"

 The teenage girl, Nancy, has been keeping an eye out for them.
It’s dangerous to be wandering around central London with
a group of clearly uniformed Nazis, but Rose is impressed with the
audacity. 

 Rose conversationally asks the girl if anything unusual has happened
in London in the last month or so.

 The teen girl twirls her hair and says -

 "Not really, no.
  Well....there is that creepy undead child who transforms all he
touches into mindless zombies who cry out for their mothers.
But, I've got my hands full with these SS Officers as it is.
So I try not to think about it."

 Rose drops her fork in shock.


 The Doctor awakens aboard Jack’s ship, and the dashing young man
hands him a paper saying that it identifies him as an American
volunteer in the Royal Air Force’s 133 Squadron. 

 The Doctor stares at it and huffs dismissively.

 "You got this as a free toy in a 50th Century Box of Wheetabix."

 "My god!  That's right!  How did you know?"

 "I've used this thing a million times, trying to impress dates."

 When the Doctor returns the psychic paper to Jack, he finds out that
the Doctor considers himself available even though he’s got a 
sort-of girlfriend; an archnemesis he has conflicting feelings about;
and a companion that he never truly got over.

 "Robot dog huh?  OUCH!" Comments Jack.


 Seeing that the Doctor is injured, Jack heals his various rope burns
with a cloud of nanogenes.

 He then lowers a ramp and invites him up onto the “balcony” to
discuss business over champagne. 

 The Doctor follows him out onto the hull of his ship to discover
that it’s invisible -- and is tethered to Big Ben. 

 "I've been all through the universe of time and space, but this
is one chic set-up Jack."

 Jack flirts confidently with The Doctor as they drink champagne,
and though he points out that he's a 900 year old bachelor who's
never found a steady relationship and sure isn't looking for further
love crap in his life right now, the Doctor is outstandingly
disappointed when Jack stops. 

 The Doctor then hints that if Jack could put on Glenn Miller’s
Moonlight Serenade he would become a total slut.

 Suddenly, Glenn Miller is filling the air, and they begin to dance.

 Jack explains that a fully armed Chalupa warship, the last of its
kind, has crashed somewhere in London. He knows where it is, and is
willing to give that information away if the Doctor can beat him at
Scrabble. However, there’s a deadline, because the ship will be
destroyed by a German bomb within two hours.


 Rose wants to know where this child became all zombified. To her
surprise the teen girl, Nancy, tells her that if she wants to find
out what’s going on, she’ll have to speak to “the doctor.” 

 Rose follows Nancy to a nearby hospital. 

 As Rose explores the hospital, she finds each ward full of lifeless
bodies, one to a bed, all wearing gas masks. 

 She then meets the one living inhabitant of the hospital, the
elderly Dr Charles Xavier.

 Xavier claims that the hospital is full of mutants.  Xavier also
tells her that the patients aren’t really wearing gas masks.

 "Ummm...OOOOO K.  Well, it sure the hell looks like it."

 Xavier invites Rose to examine the bodies, but warns her not to
touch the patients’ flesh.

 "Because if I do, I'll get infected?"

 "Not necessarily.  But it's just damned creepy is all.  I didn't
invite you in here to see you touch up some breathing corpses!"

 Rose looks at the bodies and sees that each one has identical
injuries: head trauma, partial collapse of the chest cavity,
and a very nasty paper cut on the right index finger.

 Also, the gas masks appear to be fused to the flesh, in some ghastly
and unnatural way - "Wood glue maybe?"


 Xavier -- who also has a damned ugly papercut  -- reveals that the
bomb only took one life, but it was the life of a very intensely
sexual blonde nurse from Cardiff; Every doctor, nurse, patient,
and construction worker who touched the nurse acquired the same
injuries. 

 "Some sort of zombie STD, it seems."

 Rose notices the paper cut on Xavier's hand and winces.

 Before Rose can collect herself to ask anymore questions, Xavier
begins to choke, and calls out for his mummy. As Rose watches,
appalled, a gas mask seems to grow right out of Xavier's face. 

 As Xavier slumps lifeless in his chair, Rose hears Jack and
The Doctor calling out to her. 

 The Doctor introduces Jack to Rose, and also explains that Jack
wants them to play a winner-takes-all game of Scrabble.

 If they win, they get an ultra rare Chalupa warship, and if not,
they have to hand over the TARDIS and live out the rest of their
short lives in World War 2 Britain - they've got less than two
hours before a German bomb destroys this entire area.

 "Isn't that just fantastic!?"

 The Doctor frantically begins to mix up the Scrabble bag, but
unfortunately pulls out a "Y". Jack pulls out an "L" and then
stops dead.

 Jack's just noticed the bizarre undead bodies in the ward. 

 Jack insists that he has nothing to do with this. He left his
novelty Genetic Engineering Home Zombie Kit at home.

 But when Rose reveals that this all started around the crash site
and demands to know about the warship, Jack caves in and admits that
it’s just the empty shell of a fast food delivery vehicle.

  When Jack spotted the TARDIS, he assumed that its occupants were
Time Agents. He threw a space delivery van in front of their
flight path, intending to trick them into thinking it was dangerous;
Hoping that they'd investigate, then meet up with him, then he'd
con them into an intense game of Scrabble, and he'd finally have
a nice evening out as they all eventually forgot about why they
stopped by in the first place.


 "What can I say?  My social life has been hell recently.  I was
getting desperate!"


 But if the fast food space cruiser really was empty, then what’s
with all the rewriting of the DNA of the gas-masked patients? 

 All at once, the patients sit bolt upright and get out of bed,
calling for mummy. 

 Rose warns the Doctor and Jack not to touch the patients, it's just
creepy and wrong.

 But the zombies surround them, backing them up against a wall... 


Book(s)/Other Related - 

Journeys In Time And Disgrace - Why The Doctor Who Production Team
                                Can NEVER Return to Amsterdam


Any First Person Shooter with Nazis and Zombies...umm...so that's
about all of them.


Links and References - 
The Doctor mentions that if they have the time, he'd like track down
and kill Mickey's grandparents (a neat idea he picked up from a 20th
century sci-fi/action film) 


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor mentions that he hasn't been so expertly wined and dined
in the 1940s since Hitler took him out for a romantic evening on 
HIS invisible space ship. 


Groovy DVD Extras -
Three esteemed World War II historians shout out an abusive
commentary track.


Dialogue Disasters -

-----

 CHILD: Are you my mummy?

DOCTOR: God I hope not!

-----



Dialogue Triumphs -

-----

  Rose: I think you should do a scan for alien tech.
        Gimme some Spock!

Doctor: Rose, I told you before.  I only agreed to wear those
        stupid ears ONCE.  
        
-----

Doctor: You know, one day, just one day maybe, I'm gonna meet
        somebody doesn't blink at an age gap of 900 years.

        Maybe I should have gone on that second date with
        Cthulhu.  I mean, what's 9 centuries to him?

-----

Doctor: I want to find a blonde in a union jack. 
        Any one will do. I just woke up this morning with a craving.

------------------------------------------------------------


Viewer Quotes -

"DAMN!  This was creepy!"
         - Valiant Thor (2005)


"Jack brings out a side in The Doctor that we have never seen before,
that giggling schoolboy we always try to suppress but unleash when
somebody charismatic and charming starts chasing you. 

 And while I can see why the producers would want to make The Doctor
a strong, tortured anti-hero with a dark past (I mean, why not, it
worked for Angel) the series has certainly spent enough time dealing
with the complexities of being the last of an all powerful alien
race with the ability to control destiny - so now it is time to
let the Doctor have some fun."
                               - Sci-Fi Reviewer Daily, (2005)


"This is so scary - people shouldn't eat cheese before watching it."
          - Adam, 12 years old (2005)



Russell T Davies Speaks!

'I was really worried about gearing a programme toward a family 
audience.  Maybe it didn't actually EXIST anymore.

 Then I sat with a group of 15 people watching Finding Nemo on a
Sunday morning and I thought to myself "If people will watch this
crap, they'll watch ANYTHING!"
 
 So I felt a lot better about the whole project.'



Christopher Eccleston speaks!

'The Doctor is a great individual - He doesn't like to think about
the South.  He's got no time for paninis and red wine.

 Just give 'em a cheese toastie and a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale,
and he'll be happy. 

 He's the kind of guy who just lives for the moment, content to
wander around the streets of Hull blind drunk and then wake up
with a hang over on a P&O Ferry bound for Amsterdam.

 He's not on a mission, he hasn't got an agenda, he's just there,
like a drunken lump.

 Things just happen, he responds to them and does what he thinks is
fun.'


 
Billie Piper speaks!

'The relationship between the Doctor and Rose is really interesting.
I think they're on a par with one another.  Which is pretty sad,
as I think Rose gets dragged down a lot having to deal with things
at the Doctor's level!'

 
John Barrowman speaks!
'Science fiction and pornography have a lot in common.
They are both just heightened reality.' 

 
Rumours & Facts -

 The only writer besides executive producer Russell T Davies who was
ever gushingly praised with religious awe by Christopher Eccleston,
was Steven Moffat. 

 Moffat was largely known for comedy, writing such diverse series as
Coupling (which was a shitty rip off of Friends) and Joking Apart 
(which was a shitty rip off of Seinfeld).

 The most important aspect of this story is its introduction of
“Captain” Jack. 

 In the earliest versions of the story, the Doctor was seduced by
Father Jack, from Father Ted fame.

 However, after shooting the romantic scene on top of the invisible
spaceship for the Doctor and Father Jack -- everyone universally
agreed that the story was just too damned disturbing to carry on
in its current form.

 In a hasty re-write Father Jack became "Captain" Jack and Frank 
Kelly was replaced by John Barrowman.

 Thank god.