It’s a really creepy episode. Like, really creepy. Writer Steven Moffat comes up with a fantastic “villain,” this little kid in a gas mask who calls out, “Mummy,” over and over again. And then when he touches you, you get infected with something and eventually turn into a gas mask covered person.
Now, the gas mask is part of the new creatures’ structure. It’s creepy.
The setting is WWII London. The Blitz, which takes Christopher Eccleston longer to figure out than it took me to figure out. How did he not… grok it? Especially since the TARDIS can tell its location in space and time… can’t it? It’s like the show is anti-continuity.
Eccleston and Billie Piper are in town trying to help a crashed rocket in distress or something. While Eccleston is trying to find the rocket, Piper runs off after the creepy little gas mask kid and finds herself on a balloon in the middle of a Luftwaffe raid.
The CGI raid is… not amazing.
Luckily, time traveling scoundrel and dreamboat John Barrowman saves Piper and the two start doing some kind of pre-canoodling while Eccleston is hanging out with teen Florence Hoath. She’s carrying for all the homeless kids during the Blitz, sneaking into houses and getting them food and so on. She’s also got the answers about where the rocket landed.
But then so does Barrowman—he’s going to sell its location to Eccleston and Piper because he thinks they’re “Time Agents” and have money.
Lots of terrifying kids in danger sequences—both in danger in the Blitz (Eccleston remembers real quick because he’s surprised they haven’t been rescued or something) and then in danger from the little monster gas mask kid. Hoath’a really good.
The ending is really good. It’s a really good episode.
There’s a whole bunch of self-anglophila in the episode, an almost overbearing amount, and then some forced “Star Trek” references but they’re little bumps. Barrowman and Piper are great together, Eccleston’s excellent with Hoath and that subplot.
Even if there’s no consistency with the tech.
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