The Doctor Dances

164b – "The Doctor Dances"
Doctor Who episode
The army of "empty children" marches out of the hospital.
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companions Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) John Barrowman (Jack Harkness)
Others Richard Wilson – Dr Constantine Florence Hoath – Nancy Luke Perry – Timothy Lloyd Albert Valentine – Jamie (The Child) Cheryl Fergison – Mrs Lloyd Damian Samuels – Mr Lloyd Robert Hands – Algy Joseph Tremain – Jim Jordan Murphy – Ernie Martin Hodgson – Jenkins Vilma Hollingbery – Mrs Harcourt Noah Johnson – Voice of the Empty Child Dian Perry – Computer voice
Production
Directed by	James Hawes
Written by	Steven Moffat
Script editor	Elwen Rowlands
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young
Incidental music composer	Murray Gold
Production code	1.10
Series	Series 1
Length	2nd of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast	28 May 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The Empty Child" "Boom Town"
List of Doctor Who serials

"The Doctor Dances" is the tenth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 28 May 2005. It is the second of a two-part story and saw Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, join the Doctor as a companion. The first part, "The Empty Child", was broadcast on 21 May. Together with "The Empty Child", it won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

Continuing from the cliffhanger of "The Empty Child", the Doctor, Rose, and Jack are cornered in the hospital by the "empty children", patients who all have gas masks fused to their faces. The Doctor uses the ruse of an angry parent, loudly telling the patients to go to their rooms. It works, and the patients retreat to their beds. The tactic also works on young Jamie, the index case of the "epidemic", who retreats from his older sister Nancy. The trio go to the hospital room in which Jamie was first taken, where the Doctor realises that the child is still learning what it can do and soon will be too powerful to stop. Suddenly realising that he had just sent the child "to its room" which happens to be the room that they're standing in, the Doctor turns around and finds Jamie standing in the doorway.

Escaping from Jamie and the other patients, the three end up trapped in a room. Jack teleports back to his ship and plays music over the radio to prevent Jamie from using the radio to track the Doctor and Rose. Challenged by Rose to dance while they wait, the Doctor accepts but is interrupted when they are teleported to Jack's Chula ship. The Doctor uses the ship's nanogenes to heal a wound while Jack explains that he went renegade from the Time Agency after they stole two years of his memories. Meanwhile, Nancy returns to the railyard to tell the other children they are not safe while they are with her, because it is her that Jamie is trying to get to. She then tells them she is heading to the bomb site, but before she can reach it she's captured by soldiers. Despite her pleas, she is shackled and left with an infected guard who grows a gas mask on his face.