The Doctor Dances ( TV story ) The Doctor Dances is the tenth episode of the first series of BBC Wales " Doctor Who " . It was the second of a two - part story , which narratively marked the start of Jack Harkness ' travels in the TARDIS . Behind the scenes , " The Doctor Dances " — along with his script for the preceding episode — landed writer ( and future showrunner ) Steven Moffat a Hugo Award . This is also the first time , as noted by the Doctor , where no - one has died during one of his adventures . It also implicitly introduced the concept of what humanity is up to in the 51st century ; according to the Doctor , the human race has a focus on breeding with aliens by then . Synopsis . The Child ' s plague is spreading throughout wartime London , and its zombie army is on the march . The Ninth Doctor and Rose form an alliance with intergalactic con man Captain Jack , but find themselves trapped in the abandoned hospital . They head to the crash site of Jack ' s supposed space junk and discover the ground zero for the mysterious plague . Plot . The gas - masked virus carriers each call out " Mummy ? " while they back the Ninth Doctor , Rose and Jack into a corner ; meanwhile , in a house in another part of London , the child himself is cornering Nancy . At the last moment , the Doctor forcefully steps forward and commands the zombies in a stern , parental voice to go to their room . The zombies pause , uncertain , and simultaneously , so does the child . The Doctor repeats his order , saying that he is very cross with them . Slowly , the zombies turn and return to their beds . At the same time , the child turns away from a confused Nancy , leaving the house and wandering off . As Jack and Rose laugh with relief , the Doctor retorts " Glad that worked . Those would have been terrible last words . " Jack explains how his con was supposed to work : he would find some space junk , throw it through time , and convince a Time Agent that it was worth something . He would then get 50 % of the payment up front before a German bomb ( which Jack would know about in advance ) would land on it and erase all evidence of the swindle before the buyer could claim it . He says the London Blitz is particularly good for this , as bombs fall all the time , and recommends Pompeii as another suitable location that can double as a " vacation " . The Doctor does not approve , and points to the dormant zombies around the room as the consequences of what Jack did . Jack protests that the crashed ship was an empty , burnt - out medical transport and so could not have anything to do with this . As the Doctor heads for the door and upstairs , they hear the all - clear siren sounding . Nancy hears the all - clear as well . Before she can leave the house , she is caught by the family that lives there , who grab and force her back inside until the authorities can deal with her . However , when alone with Mr Lloyd , Nancy adroitly points out that there was much more food on the table than should have been in a time of rationing . She says that half the street believes that Mrs Lloyd is " messing about " with the butcher , but she knows that it is actually Mr Lloyd who is doing so , leaving the implied threat of blackmail hanging . She demands wire cutters , a torch , food , and a trip to the bathroom before she leaves . Back at the hospital , the three time travellers reach Room 802 , where the child , the first victim of the " bomb " , was taken . The Doctor gets Jack to use his sonic blaster , identifying the weapon as coming from the 51st century . The blaster digitizes the lock , leaving a clean square hole where it used to be , and they enter . Smirking , the Doctor tells Jack that he went to the factory where the blasters were made once ; Jack notes that it blew up . The Doctor retorts " Like I said , once . " The room is in disarray , the glass separating the observation booth from the rest of the room smashed . The Doctor prompts Jack , who notes that whatever did this was powerful and angry . On the floor are toys , and on the walls are child ' s drawings in crayon . The Doctor turns on the tape recorder in the booth , and the voice of Dr Constantine issues from the speaker s . Constantine had been questioning the child , but all the child kept asking was if he was his " mummy " . Rose is perplexed by this , as it seems the child doesn ' t even know who his mother is . As the tape continues to play , the Doctor walks around the room , thinking out loud . The homeless children he encountered earlier were living around the bombsite . He supposes one of them wandered near the crashed ship and was somehow altered . The child is incredibly powerful , and he will soon realise that . The tape has stopped playing , but the cries of " mummy " continue to play . Rose is confused by this , but the Doctor suddenly realises his big mistake ; he had sent the child to his room , and " this " is his room . The trio turn around and see the child standing there , asking his eternal question . Jack tries to point his blaster at the child , but finds the Doctor has swapped it with a banana . The Doctor uses Jack ' s blaster to digitise a wall of the room , telling Jack not to drop the banana as it ' s a good source of potassium . They run into the corridor , and Jack reverses the settings and reintegrates the wall , sealing the child in . However , their respite is short - lived as the child begins to batter his way through the wall and the zombies start approaching them from both sides . The child is not just controlling them — he is every living thing it has infected . Surrounded , Jack explains the functions of his weapon . He asks if the Doctor has anything . The Doctor is about to say what he has , but stops short ; he explains that it ' s sonic . Jack demands to know what , to which the Doctor says " screwdriver ! " Rose pulls Jack ' s blaster down to disintegrate the floor just as the zombies close in and they fall down to the ward below . The zombies in that ward wake up as well , and the trio run for a door , sealing it shut behind them with the Doctor ' s sonic screwdriver . However , it is a storeroom , and a dead end . As the Doctor looks for a way out , Jack vanishes . Nancy reaches her makeshift living space at the abandoned rail yard , and finds the other children there . She chides them , saying that they should have looked for somewhere else to stay , but they say they are safe with her . Nancy disclaims this , saying that it is not that the child keeps coming after them ; the child keeps coming after " her " . As if to prove her point , a typewriter in the hovel starts typing on its own , tapping out the child ' s question repeatedly . Nancy leaves , heading for the bombsite . In the storeroom , Jack ' s voice comes over a disconnected radio . He had used his ship ' s emergency teleport er , but could not take the others along because it was keyed to his molecular structure . He is trying to override the navigational computer ' s security , but it will take some time . Jack is able to communicate over the disconnected radio because of his ship ' s Om - Com technology — an ability the child also has . The child ' s voice comes over the radio , tauntingly saying that he is going to find them , and Jack jams the signal by playing Glenn Miller ' s " Moonlight Serenade " , the same music he and Rose danced to on top of his spaceship . As the Doctor works on breaking through the concrete by setting up a resonance pattern with the sonic screwdriver , he asks Rose why she seems to trust Jack . Rose says Jack reminds her of the Doctor , except with " dating and dancing . " The Doctor is mildly offended that Rose assumes he cannot dance , and Rose , amused , asks him to prove it . As they start to dance , however , they are teleported up to Jack ' s ship . There , the nanogene s heal the Doctor ' s hand that he had burnt on the TARDIS console when it sparked during the pursuit of the cylinder . The Doctor identifies Jack ' s " borrowed " ship as being of Chula design like the crashed ship . Jack works on getting the nav - com back online , and in answer to Rose ' s questions , he explains that his confidence trickster activities are not wholly mercenary . He left the Time Agents when he discovered that they had stolen two years of his memory . Jack observes that the Doctor does not trust him , and he may be right not to . Meanwhile , Nancy has reached the crash site , and uses the wire cutters to get past the barbed wire . However , as she reaches the tarpaulin - covered ship , she is discovered by the soldiers guarding the site and placed under arrest . She is brought to a hut where Jenkins , a sick soldier bearing the lightning scar mark of the child ' s plague , is resting . Despite her pleading with the commanding officer Algy not to leave her there , he handcuffs her to the table . Once left alone , Nancy can do nothing but watch helplessly as Jenkins painfully transforms into another zombie in a gas mask . The Doctor , Jack and Rose reach the crash site as well . Rose offers to distract the guards ' commander , but Jack points out that he knows Algy - and Rose is not his type . Jack goes ahead instead , leaving Rose slightly shocked . The Doctor points out that in the 51st century , people are a lot more flexible in who they " dance " with — " so many species , so little time " . However , when Jack tries to talk to Algy , the British officer asks if Jack is his mummy before transforming into a zombie and collapsing . The Doctor hears singing from a nearby hut and finds Nancy , who is keeping the zombie Jenkins asleep with a lullaby . The Doctor frees her from her bonds and they all head to the Chula transport . As Jack tries to open the coded lock on the transport , he sets off an alarm which awakens the zombies in Albion Hospital , who then start to move toward the site . The Doctor orders Jack to secure the gates and tells Rose and Nancy to reconnect the barbed wire with the sonic screwdriver . Nancy asks Rose who they are , and Rose tells her that they are from the future . When Nancy is sceptical that there will even " be " a future , given all the carnage of war around them , Rose tells her that she is from London in the future . Nancy is a little hesitant to believe that since Rose isn ' t German . Rose confidentially tells her that the British will win the war . Jack manages to open the transport , revealing that it is empty . However , the Doctor asks Rose what they should expect in a Chula medical transport , and Rose hits on the right answer : nanogenes . The ship was full of them , and when it crashed , billions and billions of nanogenes escaped , programmed to heal everything they came across . However , the first thing the nanogenes found was a dead child wearing a gas mask ; never having seen a " normal " living human before , they used that as their only pattern . They then started to transform everything they encountered to fit that baseline . The nanogenes have given unimaginable power to a little boy searching for his mother . He tells them there isn ' t a child alive that wouldn ' t tear the world apart to find their mother and this is one who is both willing and able to do it . Cries of " mummy " fill the air as the zombie army , led by the child , approach the site . When Jack triggered the alarm , the ship thought it was under attack and so summoned the zombies as troops to protect it . The transport was a battlefield medical unit , built to heal Chula warriors and send them back to the front lines ; that was why the child was so strong and could transmit his voice using the same technology as Jack ' s ship . Nancy begins to cry , saying that it is all her fault . The Doctor starts to comfort her , but then realises that the child — Jamie — is not her brother , but her son , whose maternity she kept a secret from everybody , even Jamie himself . Jack notes the bomb is seconds away from dropping , but the nav - com is back on - line and the teleporter is only working for him again . The Doctor tells him to do what he has to , and Jack teleports away , making Rose think he has abandoned them . The Doctor asks Nancy to tell Jamie the answer to the question he has been asking all along . Jamie steps up to Nancy , asking once again whether she is his mummy . Nancy answers yes , she is , and she will always be . They embrace , and the nanogenes swell up around them in a cloud of glowing particles . To the Doctor ' s delight , the nanogenes scan Nancy and Jamie , matching their DNA . Because she is Jamie ' s mother , Nancy ' s genetic code provides them the information they lacked with Jamie . The nanogenes recognise Nancy ' s living form as the correct pattern and , using this as their new baseline , restore Jamie back to full health . With a laugh of joy , the Doctor unmasks the restored Jamie and lifts him in his arms . Rose suddenly remembers the bomb , but the Doctor says it has been taken care of . As it streaks down towards them , so does Jack ' s ship , capturing the bomb in its tractor beam . The Doctor has judged Jack ' s psychology rightly , and the former Time Agent has returned for the rescue . Jack is riding the bomb itself in the beam , and tells the Doctor that the bomb has commenced detonation . Jack is keeping it in stasis , but it will not last . The Doctor asks him to get rid of it as safely as he can . Jack bids Rose good - bye , and teleports with the bomb back to his ship , which flies away . The Doctor waves his fingers , summoning the nanogenes around them and applying a patch to their programming . He hurls the nanogenes towards the zombies , crying out triumphantly , " Everybody lives , Rose ! Just this once — everybody lives ! " The former zombies rise , all of them restored to their normal selves and with their ailments cured by the nanogenes , even to the extent of Mrs Harcourt regrowing her missing leg . The Doctor leaves Dr Constantine to tend to his patients and take credit for all the cures , bidding them farewell with an exhortation to beat the Germans , save the world , and not forget the Welfare State . He sets the Chula transport to self - destruct once they leave , to fulfil history ' s requirement of an explosion . As Rose and the Doctor enter the TARDIS , the Doctor is pleased with himself — the reprogrammed nanogenes will fix all the earlier damage they did before they deactivate and Nancy and Jamie will get the help they need from Dr Constantine . Rose then asks about Jack and the unexploded bomb , and his smile fades . In space , Jack discovers that there is no way to eject the bomb or even himself , and his situation seems hopeless . With an air of resignation , he orders " emergency protocol 417 " , a large martini ( with too much vermouth ) and begins to drink as the strains of Glenn Miller start to play . . . from the open doors of the TARDIS appearing at the back of his ship . He enters the console room and the Doctor , pointing out that " your ship ' s about to explode , there ' s going to be a draft " , tells him to shut the doors , welcoming him to his ship . Rose is trying to teach the Time Lord how to dance , but he ' s having trouble remembering how . " Much bigger on the inside , " Jack exclaims in amazement , to which the Doctor tells him , " You ' d better be , " as he sets the TARDIS off on its next course . Rose then interprets what the Doctor is saying to Jack as , " You may cut in . " The Doctor then tells Rose he " remembers " . Rose wonders what he has remembered as the Doctor changes the music to " In the Mood " , saying , " I can dance " . Rose points out that Jack may want this dance . The Doctor agrees , but mischievously asks , " But who with ? " As Jack watches , smiling , the Doctor and Rose dance around the console . At the end of the music , the Doctor dips Rose , much to her excitement . Story notes . Ratings . 7 . 9 Million viewers