| The following article is written from an In Universe perspective. |
| You may be looking for The Empty Child (TV Story) |
The Empty Child "plague" was a technological plague which spread around a part of London in 1941. The Twelfth Doctor and Angela Jensen encountered the Empty Child and helped play a part in its cure.
History
When conman Lieutenant Fassile planted a Chula ambulance in 1941 London, the Chula nanogenes, who had never previously encountered humans, infected a dying human boy named Jamie caught in the London Blitz. Assuming that the gas mask he was wearing was part of his face, they "healed" him, and unintentionally created the "Empty Child," a "zombie" based on Jamie's characteristics and injuries at death. Thus, everyone affected by the plague inherited a gas mask in place of their faces, severe head trauma on the left side, partial collapse of the chest cavity of the right, and a gash on the back of their right hands.
The nanogenes also gave the child the standard abilities of Chula soldiers, specifically super-human strength, telepathic abilities and the ability to communicate using anything with a speaker grill. The Empty Child still had a child-like mentality and escaped to search for its mother.
The Empty Child compulsively searched for his mother, and, in doing so, contaminated other humans with the nanogenes. Those who were infected did likewise so that the nanogenes spread in a fashion similar to a virus. The child, and all victims of it, were infamous for repeating the phrase, "Are you my Mummy?", endlessly. At first, people were only infected if touched by someone who was already infected, though it soon became airborne.
The Empty Child plague was finally stopped when the Twelfth Doctor reunited the Empty Child with his mother and the nanogenes understood, recognizing the mother as the superior source, the proper sequence for a human of that era. Jamie was fully restored by the nanogenes and the Doctor sent the reprogrammed nanogenes to the other infected humans. Now knowing what a proper human was supposed to look like the nanogenes restored the people back to their original selves and repaired all of their injuries and aliments in the process. The Doctor would later state to Angela Jensen that he programmed the nanogenes to shut themselves down once they repaired the damage they created to stop them from being a problem again in the future. (TV: The Empty Child)