THE DOCTOR AND ROSE TYLER TRAIL A MYSTERIOUS ship to Earth, but it jumps time tracks and arrives there a month before the TARDIS. The travellers find themselves in London during the Blitz of 1941. As bombs rain down on the capital, the Doctor discovers that a group of homeless children are being terrorised by the eerie figure of a small boy in a gas mask looking for his mother. Nancy, the children’s leader, tells the Doctor that the boy is “empty” and that anyone he touches becomes empty too.
Meanwhile, Rose is rescued from the tether of a barrage balloon by Captain Jack Harkness, a fifty-first century con man posing as an RAF officer. In his Chula spacecraft, Jack cures Rose’s burnt hands using nanogenes, subatomic Chula medical robots that scan their patient for physical flaws and repair any damage. Jack mistakes Rose for a Time Agent and attempts to sell her a fully equipped Chula warship that he has “parked” at Limehouse Green Station, but Rose realises that his merchandise is the ship that she and the Doctor are searching for.