CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK!

'Doctor Who' is back on Earth!

Fifteen years after the last regular episode, six years after the one TV movie for the Eighth Doctor, we've had a full series of thirteen episodes featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Incarnation.

The final episode for this year has aired, signaling the end of Eccleston's tenure and marking the debut of David Tennant in the role.

And so to celebrate, most of my essays and all of the Crossovers will be dedicated to the Doctor for the rest of the summer.

Be forewarned: In my essays during this summer salute to 'Doctor Who', there will be spoilers for each of the episodes, especially in regard to summaries.....

Location: London, England
Date: 1941
Enemy: The Empty Child

After chasing a mysterious capsule through time, the TARDIS lands in London during an air raid, where Rose is swept off her feet, and lands in the arms of a time traveller called Captain Jack.

The Doctor, on the other hand, follows a girl to a meeting of the homeless children of the Blitz. Here a child in a gas mask is terrorizing them by tapping into phones and making all sorts of things happen, all the while crying out for his mummy.
[Thanks to TV.com]

London, 1941, at the height of the Blitz. A mysterious cylinder is being guarded by the army, while homeless children, living on the bombsites, are being terrorised by an unearthly child.

A mauve cylinder hurtles through space and Time with the TARDIS in hot pursuit (literally -- the Doctor burns his hand on the overheating console). According to the Doctor, mauve is the universally recognized code for danger; humans use red, but the rest of the Universe thinks that’s camp.

The Doctor has hacked into the cylinder’s flight computer and is following it, but the cylinder is jumping time tracks, making it difficult to lock onto. Whatever it is, it’s dangerous and it’s 30 seconds away from crashing down in the centre of London...
[Thanks to The Doctor Who Reference Guide]

CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK
'DOCTOR WHO' - "THE EMPTY CHILD"
&
'GOODNIGHT, SWEETHEART'

In chasing down the Tula warship that Captain Jack Harkness deposited in London, it's never stated exactly where the TARDIS lands. Nor is the nightclub in which the Doctor seeks information... information... information... identified. And both those facts (or lack thereof) help my argument for this crossover.

Rose may eventually end up in Jack's Tula time-vessel and hovering outside of Big Ben, but she had been sailing over London at the end of a barrage balloon tether. Who knows where she originally started her journey?

It's going to be my contention that they began this adventure in the East End of London.

When the TARDIS crossed paths with Jack's ship, I think it created a confluence of time-stream energies churned up by the conflicting nature of the technology from both vessels. The Doctor was using Gallifreyan equipment, while Jack depended on Tula tech. Although the basic energy from the time-space continuum was the same, it was altered by each of these time-ships and then created something new - a permanent vortex near to the site where the TARDIS landed.

For most of the two-part episode (concluding the following week in "The Doctor Dances"), the TARDIS remains in a back alleyway. This is where the temporal wormhole establishes itself. And I believe this alleyway is none other than Duckett's Passage, through which Gary Sparrow was able to travel back in Time from the 1990s to the London of 1941 in 'Goodbye, Sweetheart'.

Since it was pretty well established in this series of 'Doctor Who' that the Time Lord never hung around long enough to see his meddling all the way through to its conclusions, it's not surprising that he never noticed that he had left behind a Time Vortex in Duckett's Passage. And obviously Jack wasn't going to look into it, nor would he have cared, really.

And so Gary Sparrow - TV repairman in the 90s, singer of Beatles tunes in the 40s - was able to take advantage of the rift in Time to easily jump into bed with his wartime mistress Phoebe before going back home to his shrew of a wife Yvonne.

A place often frequented by Gary and Phoebe during the Blitz was the Royal Oak, and it's also my contention that this was the same nightclub in which the Doctor hoped to find out where the Tula warship had crashed.

(As a further crossover, I think this is the same nightclub visited by Sgt. Hanley - he had yet to receive his commission to Lieutenant - on "A Day In June" three years later in the pilot episode of 'Combat'.)

"I think perhaps your logic is wearing a little thin."
The 2nd Doctor
'Doctor Who' - "Tomb Of The Cybermen"

After the problems I've had in trying to make the argument for my crossovers with "Rose" and "Aliens In London"/"World War Three" and see them basically go up in smoke, it's nice to think that this one should be pretty safe.

Even better, there's this plot description for one of the very last episodes in the series:

'Goodnight, Sweetheart' - "Just in Time"
When a workman arrives from the far future to mend a hole in the space-time corridor, Gary must decide where his future lies.
[Thanks to epguides.com]

It's my belief that this workman was one of the Time Agents with whom Captain Jack was formally associated. And that will lead to the next perfect crossover for next week's episode of "The Doctor Dances".

BCnU!
Tele-Toby