The Empty Child

[sawyl]

Yet another deeply cool episode of Dr Who and, to me, the scariest of the lot so far with the whole zombies with gas masks thing. Given the fuss over the dalek torturing ep and the DVD being released with a 12 certificate, I'm impressed that the BBC managed to show it at 6:30 although I guess they probably didn't have much choice - if they'd canceled or postponed it to make way for Eurovision, they'd probably have faced a barrage of complaints from the nations geeks.

Anyway, enough of scheduling - I get enough of that at work - it's the ep that really matters. Question is, did it remind anyone else of the Authority story Shiftships? Maybe it's just me and my tendency to filter all my cultural references through comics, but the combination of a space ship with retro interiors parked over London, the gloomy night time skyscapes and Rose's union jack top - very Jenny Sparks - all made me totally think of Sliding Albion. The fact that all the victims were being kept at Albion Hospital (and being looked after by a Dr Constantine) didn't hurt either. The gas masks also reminded me of the Cyphermen - the Outer Church's very own time travellers - currently working through astral projection from a top secret military base somewhere in the UK.

I guess there were also echos of Quatermass 2, where the aliens set up a big funky fresh factory somewhere and gradually infect the local residents with "overshots", really some sort of weird gas alien thing that freakily possesses them. I'm not sure the detail was in the original radio and TV versions, but I'm pretty sure that when the people got possessed in the film version they developed a nasty looking cut from the alien possession. Luckily, thanks to Professor Q and Welsh super mathematician Leo Pugh, the world was saved when the British Rocket Group's latest and greatest was deliberately crashed into the factory by the recently infected Valleys numbers head.