ABSTRACT
The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, the episode to be written by Steven Moffat, are set in the London Blitz in 1941, and powerfully evoke the particular and recalled atmosphere. There is an implicit reference to the situation of innumerable women following the slaughter of millions of young men in the impending First World War. In the World War II episodes, a central focus is on the relationship between mother and child as a primordial emotional and social bond threatened by war, and needing to be repaired if recovery is to take place. The Doctor meanwhile has encountered a young woman—who seems to be little older than a teenage girl—whom he observes to be caring for a group of children living rough in the London Blitz. The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances present an imaginative view of the war as a situation of damage and suffering, in which heroism is shown to take an unusually reparative form.
