And so on to Series 1's most famous story and the one that introduced Moffat to the revised series. I just hope this goes right.

Disclaimer: I asked if I could have ownership of Doctor Who. The BBC said they had nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Very weird people.

The Empty Child:

Chapter 1 - Bomben Auf England

The floor of the TARDIS shook and shuddered as though in an earthquake. Rose ran into the console room, to find the Doctor hammering at buttons and leavers, while a screen on the wall flashed the word Alert, repeatedly.

"What's the alert?" She shouted.

"It's mauve!" He replied, pointing to the scanner, which showed a strange cylindrical object hurtling through several star clusters, the TARDIS in hot pursuit

"Mauve?"

"Universally recognised code for danger!"

"What happened to red?"

"Red's just humans. To the rest of the universe, red's camp. Oh the misunderstandings, all those red alerts, all that dancing!" He nodded to the object on screen. "It's got a very basic flight pattern so I've hacked it into the TARDIS! Wherever it goes, we go!"

"And that's safe is it?"

"Yeah, completely safe!" He reached over to flick the yellow stabilisers, only for them to choose that moment to burn out and shoot a jet of sparks into his hand. He hurriedly pressed it against one of the cooling valves. "Ok reasonably, I should've said reasonably there!"

On the scanner, the cylinder was abruptly swallowed up by a blue glow. The TARDIS followed seconds later, the two craft went hurtling down that long, translucent-blue tunnel which the Doctor referred to as the time vortex.

"No, no, no! It's jumping time tracks!" The Doctor cried. He watched it getting smaller and smaller on the screen, they were still on its trail but they were losing ground.

"What is this thing?" Shouted Rose.

"I've got no idea!"

"Then why're we chasing it?"

"It's mauve and dangerous... And about 30 seconds from the centre of London."

The craft exited the vortex and screamed towards planet Earth. The TARDIS following behind.

The Doctor stepped out, into a quiet alleyway. The first thing that occurred to him was that this part of London was surprisingly dark, he guessed they must have landed before the invention of streetlights. He looked around, the only other creature he could see was a cat, sat on a wall wondering if the Doctor would feed it.

"Do you know how long we can knock about space and time before we have to return to Earth?" He said to his companion.

"Three days? Assuming we don't run out of milk."

He sighed. "All the species in in the universe and it has to come out of a cow." He walked down the alleyway, looking for signs of life. "We're not far away, maybe a mile. Must've landed a few weeks after it, maybe a month.

"A month? We were just behind it."

"It's jumping time tracks all over the place, we were bound to be a little bit out. Do you want to drive?"

"I could have a go." She grinned. "How much is a little bit?"

"A bit."

"How big a bit?"

"Just a bit."

She sighed. "So what's the plan then? You gonna do a scan for alien tech?"

He raised an eyebrow "Rose, it hit the middle of London with a loud bang. I'm gonna ask." He showed her the psychic paper, reading Doctor John Smith. Ministry of Asteroids.

He found a door, ladled deliveries only and put his ear to it. "Music, door, people. What do you think?"

"I think, would it kill you to do a scan for alien tech? Just give me some Spock!"

He looked up from sonicing the door and pondered for a moment. "Are you sure about that shirt?"

Rose looked down at the shirt she'd found in the TARDIS wardrobe. The one with a Union Flag splashed over the front, and another at the back. "Just taking it out for a spin." She shrugged.

"Mu-mmy." Called a soft voice. "Mu-mmy." It seemed to be coming from above.

The Doctor had got the door open. "Come on in if you're coming. Won't take a minute."

Rose decided against it. She was curiously peering around the tops of walls and the roofs for this strange voice, calling for its mum.

"Mummy." He called again. Now she spotted the owner of the voice, a child in a gas mask stood up on the edge of a flat roof three stories up.

"Doctor, there's a kid up there!" She called, but the Doctor had disappeared inside.

The Doctor was surprised to find that the interior was electrically lit, albeit dimly. He followed the sound of cabaret music down the corridor, out into a small music hall. Judging by the decor, the clothes and the music he judged this period to be early to mid 20th century.

The band were just finishing their song as the timelord walked in. He clapped along with the others then stepped up onto the stage himself.

"Excuse me!" He said into the mike. "Could I have everyone's attention, just for a mo', I'll be quick. Hello! Might seem like a stupid question, but has anything fallen from the sky recently?"

The audience were silent for a moment, then burst out laughing. The Doctor frowned. That wasn't the response he'd been expecting.

Rose ran up a fire escape and across a flat rooftop, to where the child was standing on a raised platform. "Are you alright up there?" She shouted.

"Mummy?" Said the child.

"Hold on, don't move!" She looked at the wall, but it was completely flat, no way of scaling it that she could see. That is until a rope swung her way, out of nowhere. She tugged on it, it seemed sturdy enough so she started to climb.

"Sorry have I said something funny?" The Doctor asked the manic crowds. "It's just that there's this thing I need to find, would have landed not long ago..." An air raid siren rang through the room. "Not far from here..." Guests were hurriedly finishing their drinks and stepping up to leave, as someone guided them down to the shelter. "...With a very loud bang." On the wall, he spotted several posters reading things like Hitler Will Send no Warning, always carry your gas mask and Britain Shall Not Burn, Britain's fireguard is Britain's defence. He'd landed in the middle of the Blitz. That simply wasn't fair!

Rose hauled herself up, she hadn't climbed a rope since her gymnast days and her muscles were protesting, but she was getting there, kicking off against the wall for help. Before long, she was halfway there.

"Mummy." Said the child. "A balloon." He pointed to the barrage balloon overhead, trailing the cable that Rose was hanging from. Rose didn't have time to register before she kicked out form the wall, but just failed to swing back. She clung on for dear life as the rope tossed her around like a leaf in the wind. By the time she got her bearings, the balloon had drifted away from the rooftop and got caught in an updraft, carrying the helpless girl up into the night sky.

Rose looked out at the blacked-out skyline of London below. The main light came from the searchlights, which occasionally hit other barrage balloons similar to the one she was hanging from.

The sound of air raid sirens rang around her, followed by the roar of propeller-driven aircraft and the blasts of anti-aircraft guns. A squadron of German bombers came swarming up the Thames, straight towards her. Great, she was in the middle of a German air raid, with the union flag splashed across her chest.

"Rose!" Shouted the Doctor, unaware of her plight, but aware that she was gone from the alleyway. As he looked around, he noticed the same cat from before, voicing its annoyance that the girl had gone off without bringing it any food.

"You know." He said to the cat. "One of these days, I'm gonna meet someone who gets the whole "Don't wander off" thing. 900 years of phone box travel and it's the one thing that would surprise me.

A phone rang nearby. Looking around, he realised the ringing was coming from the phone on the front of the TARDIS. Now that was odd. He pulled the panel open. The phone continued to ring. How could it be ringing? What was he supposed to do with a ringing phone?

"Don't answer it." Said a woman's voice. "It's not for you."

The doctor turned to face a dark haired girl, who looked to be in her late teens. "How do you know that?"

"I just know. And I'm telling ya. Don't answer it."

"Well, since you know so much, tell me this: How could it be ringing?" He pointed back at the box. "It's not even a real phone. It's not connected to..." He turned back to face the girl, but found her gone. He looked back at the phone. He pulled out his sonic, but couldn't think of what exactly to do with it. At a loss for ideas, he simply picked up the phone and held it to his ear.

"Hello. This is the Doctor speaking. How may I help you?"

"Mummy?" Said a soft voice. "Mummy?"

"Who is this?"

"Mummy."

"Who's speaking?"

"Are you my mummy?"

"How did you ring here? It's not a real phone, it's not wired up to anything."

"Mummy!"

An engaged tone sounded from the phone. The Doctor knocked a couple of times on the door. "Rose, are you in there? But no response came.

A crash sounded form down the alleyway. The Doctor ran towards it and round the corner, to see a dustbin rolling across the cobbles. Over a wall, he heard voices shouting.

"Hurry up, into the shelter!" A woman's voice shouted. The Doctor stood on one of the upright dustbins. A middle aged woman, who was surprisingly large for someone who'd been on rationing for several months, was shovelling her kids towards an Anderson shelter at the end of the garden. "Hurry up! No messing. Arthur! Arthur, will you hurry up! Didn't you hear the siren?"

A similarly large man followed her out. "Middle of the bleedin' night. Every night. Don't they eat." He shouted up at the bombers. "Don't you eat!"

"Shut up!" Shouted his wife. "It's an air raid!" She shoved him into the shelter and slammed the door behind them.

As the couple continued to argue, the girl the Doctor had met a minute before emerged from her hiding place in the bushes. She silently made her way up the garden path and through the back door, which the family had left unlocked in their haste.

Another Heinkel bomber passed under Rose's feet, its slipstream wafting her upwards and forcing her to slide a few feet more down the cable. She could only grip so hard with this numbness spreading up her arms. She'd tried to loop the rope around a limb, but she needed both hands to keep grip, and couldn't make any practical loop without letting go.

Ahead of her, she saw s trigger-happy German gunner shooting tracer fire into another barrage balloon nearby, lighting it up like the Hindenburg. Behind her, a Hurricane swooped over to engage the bomber head on, spraying it with machine gun fire. Narrowly missing the girl as it did so.

In a mess hall, not far away an army Sergeant called Algy was finishing off his drink, as the others cleared out. All except the American air force captain. One of 12 American pilots who'd come over to fight, something he admired them for. With the rest of the country being frustratingly neutral, these people risked losing their citizenship if their government ever found out what they were doing.

The American, Captain Jack Harkness was his name. was stood on the balcony, peering up at the night sky through a pair of binoculars.

"Jack, are you coming down to the shelter?" Algy asked him. "I'm probably not 'cos I've got this blasted guard duty to do." He followed the Captain's eye line skyward. In particular, he was following a stray barrage balloon. "Barrage balloon. Don't you RAF boys use them for target practice?"

Jack wasn't listening, he was zooming in on the girl hanging from the balloon. "Nice bottom." He commented.

Algy, who'd turned to go thinking Jack wouldn't say anything, blinked in surprise. "Jack, time and a place." He said quietly. "Anyway, don't you think we should be going?"

Jack finally stepped away from the balcony. "Sorry old man, got to meet a girl. But you've got an excellent bottom too." He gave it a pat as he walked by. Algy supposed he couldn't get too annoyed at the man's behaviour, given circumstances.

The young woman looked around the kitchen. She looked for tinned food first, since it needed to sit at the bottom of the bag. Looking in a cupboard, she found several tins of baked beans, some spam and some corned beef. She looked in the bread bin and found half a loaf, along with a third of a fruitcake, wrapped in tin foil. There was still some space in the bag so she grabbed a can of syrup she'd spotted in the cupboard. She wouldn't need it, but it would make a nice treat. Plus she could tell from how well stocked the kitchen was that this family weren't exactly digging for victory anyway. They could easily replace everything.

Making her way to the front door, she just happened to glance into the dining room and smiled. She propped the front door open with her bag and went out into the street. Once there she whistled twice in each direction, before going back inside, picking up the carving knife from the table and slicing into the large pork roast on the table.

Two boys she recognised as Jim and Ernie followed her in.

"There many kids out there?" She said.

"Yes miss." Said Jim, as the two of them grabbed at the full table of food.

"Oy! Still carving." She said. "Sit and wait."

Jim and Ernie meekly obeyed. "Look at all this." Said Ernie." Bet it's off the black market."

"That's enough!"

Rose was nearly at the end of the rope. The biting cold meant that the feeling had gone from her hands ages ago. Only massive concentration had allowed her to keep gripping, seeing some blood decorating the lengths she had already slid down, she realised that it was going to really hurt when she got the feeling back. If she got the feeling back.

As another bomber passed by her, an anti aircraft battery blasted at it. The flak shell exploded close enough to catch Rose on the edge of its shockwave, which threw her sideways. The last few inches of rope slid from her grip, sending her plummeting towards the ground, a quarter of a mile below.

Author's Notes: Wikipedia gives the number of American Pilots in the Battle of Britain as 11. Jack being a fictional character, I've listed it as 12.