You know the deal by now, there are spoilers afoot.
24. Time Heist
(Series 8, Episode 5)
This is the episode from the eighth series that I've watched more than any other. That's partly down to how fantastic it is and partly down to the fact that it's been engineered to be watched multiple times. It's got all the best elements of a heist movie; the tension, the excitement, the team dynamic, but it's Doctor Who so best of all, it has time travel! The two Steves (that's writers Moffat and Thompson) constructed a beautifully complex story, in which the mysterious "Architect" leaves clues for the Doctor and his team of bank robbers, because he's seen the heist happen before. Once you get to the end, you find yourself naturally going back to the start just to check if everything stacks up. Spoiler alert, it does. Along with time travel, another of Who's great staples are the monsters, and the Teller is a pretty special one. The prisoner's jumpsuit and manacles hint at the terror that the minotaur-esque creature could unleash and its ability to liquify people's brains is stomach-turning. I love the incredibly dark moment when Clara mistakenly thinks one of the Teller's victims is crying, and the Doctor tells her "Those aren't tears Clara. That's soup". I bet kids all over the country had nightmares after that! The supporting cast in this episode is one of the best, kudos to the two Steve's for creating two characters in the space of 45 mins that I'd like to spend a whole series with in Saibra and Psi. They're exactly the kind of Alien companions I'd love to see The Doctor travel with in the future.
23. Listen
(Series 8, Episode 4)
You could tell from the name, deliberately reminiscent of Blink, that Listen was destined to be a classic. Far from accidentally stumbling into trouble, this time the Doctor goes looking for it, roping Clara in to help him find a creature that is always there, but never detected. She takes full advantage of this interruption, using the TARDIS to go back and fix her terrible date with Danny earlier that evening - probably the closest we'll ever get to a Doctor Who rom-com. As the Doctor and Clara go looking for the creature, they find themselves at the children’s home where a young Danny lived, and we get a glimpse (or do we?) of series 8’s creepiest monster. It’s Ste-Mo doing what he does best, playing on the things that lurk in our imaginations and giving us the heebie-geebies. Turns out that the creature is fear itself, always there, never seen, playing tricks on us. The Doctor’s rousing speech about fear being a survival instinct and ‘scared’ a super-power is one of the standout moments of the series and Clara later repeats his words to a young Doctor on Gallifrey. It's a moment of beautiful symmetry that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The writers on Doctor Who are not just storytellers, they’re poets.
22. The Girl Who Waited
(Series 6, Episode 10)
This one is painfully gorgeous, and for once I’m not just talking about Amy’s hair (as I fellow ginger, I dream of having hair like that). Set inside a gleaming white hospital with its own incredible space age gardens, The Girl Who Waited is about the tragedy of ageing. When Amy gets stuck in a different timestream, Rory and the Doctor set out to rescue her, but they arrive 36 years too late where they find her now in middle age, full of bitterness after half a lifetime of abandonment. Brilliantly, she refuses to let them go back and save her younger self which leaves them with a terrible decision to make. Saving young Amy would put everything right, but it would mean forsaking the older version - should her life matter less? When Rory is tricked by the Doctor into saving young Amy, he is devastated that it means abandoning old Amy again. You’d have to be made of wood like the TARDIS door that separates them not to be moved by their goodbye. If there’s anything better than a love story, it’s a love story across time.
21. Asylum of the Daleks
(Series 7, Part, 1, Episode 1)
What an unexpectedly brilliant series opener this was. The Doctor gets recruited by his arch enemies to fix a security breach on a planet known as 'The Asylum' – a prison for Daleks so deranged, even their own species are afraid of them. The breach was caused by a crashed ship and when the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive, they discover that all of its passengers have been turned into Daleks by the Nanocloud that surrounds the planet. All except one. Step forward Oswin, in Jenna Coleman's first appearance, kept impressively secret by the production team. She guides the TARDIS crew through the Asylum but to rescue her they must safely pass through scores of insane Daleks. In the episode's best scene, a man in a dinner jacket beckons a hallucinating Amy into a room full of people, where a little girl is practicing ballet. Amy, affected by the nanocloud is oblivious to the fact that she is actually surrounded by Daleks and this slow motion sequence is as unsettling as it is beautiful. Of course, it foreshadows an agonising twist at the end, as the Doctor makes his way through intensive care, home to the Daleks that have come up against him and discovers that Oswin has been one of them all along. It's testament to the quality of the writing and to Jenna's performance that the fate of a character that was introduced to us mere minutes earlier, could be so gut-wrenching. Powerful stuff.
20. Amy's Choice
(Series 5, Episode 7)
I’ll try not to make this too much of a love letter to Toby Jones, but it'll be tough. Amy's Choice was a cool, alternate reality affair in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory had to decide whether they were really in the TARDIS, about to get frozen to death by an ice star, or in Ledworth, facing a squad of killer pensioners. The mastermind behind the confusing set of events was the Dreamlord who gleefully proclaimed that the only way to wake up, was to die in the fake world. But which one was it? The TARDIS dream saw a set of rather fetching ponchos, but the Ledworth dream was filled with Alien’s disguised as old people, which made for that very rare occurrence - acceptable granny-bashing. The emotional heart of the episode and the very neat conclusion came when Rory met his untimely demise and Amy, unable to live without him, killed herself and the Doctor to wake them all up. The Dreamlord had been foiled, and it emerged that he was simply a manifestation of the Doctor’s personality - that’s one sassy subconscious you’ve got there Doc. I can hold it off no longer ... this episode belongs to Toby Jones. If it's not too big of a statement, I think he's one of the best villains Doctor Who's ever had. He's evil for the sake of evil, unimpressed by the Doctor's self importance (partly because he is him) and he delivers put-downs with devilish glee. "If you had any more tawdry quirks, you could open up a tawdry quirk shop. The madcap vehicle, the cockamamie hair, the clothes designed by a first year fashion student. I'm surprised you haven't got a little purple space dog just to ram home what an intergalactic WAG you are." Doctor, you just got burnt ... and not by an ice star.
19. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
(Series 5, Episodes 12 and 13)
This was Steven Moffat's first series finale and it's still one of his best. Like a mad scientist he threw everything into it, Roman soldiers, Stonehenge, River Song, little Amy, not to mention every enemy the Doctor has ever come up against. Part one ended with cliffhanger upon cliffhanger; The Doctor imprisoned in the Pandorica, River trapped inside the exploding TARDIS and Amy dead in Rory's fake plastic arms. Cue the Doctor, now with Fez, hopping about through time and sacrificing himself once again to save the day. Again the build up was slightly better than the solution, but it's more evenly balanced here than say in series 6 with The Impossible Astronaut and it's underwhelming resolution. The start of the series was beautifully mirrored here in its conclusion, with Little Amy helping to save her future self and the finale at her wedding brought everything full circle. The highlight for me though is the story the Doctor tells Amy as she sleeps. Stories have become something of a recurring motif in the Moffat era and if they continue to be as gorgeously executed as this one was, I don't think I'll ever tire of them.
18. The Stolen Earth / Journey's End
(Series 4, Episodes 12 and 13)
I love it when the whole gang gets together. RTD's last real series finale was a fitting farewell (for a bit) to all the characters he'd introduced throughout his run and man did it have SCALE! Not content to destroy the Universe, this time the Dalek's were out to destroy reality itself, overseen by their creator, ugliest man alive, Davros. So worrisome was their plan that it drew Rose out of her parallel Universe and back into the realm of the Doctor. Call me an old romantic but my favourite moment was not the TARDIS flying Earth back into position, nor Rose's brilliant "Do you like my gun?" line, but that moment when the Doctor turned and saw her again and they ran towards each other like something out of Casablanca. Of course, Casablanca didn't have metal aliens with electrocution guns and the Doctor was swiftly tranquilised by a shot from a Dalek. Yes, the fake regeneration thing was a bit of a cheat but RTD tied the whole thing in quite nicely when Donna unwittingly used the extra regeneration energy to manifest the long prophesised Doctor-Donna later in the episode. Donna's demise might be the cruelest of all the companion's exits, robbing her of her memories and forcing her back into her old life, never to know the things she accomplished. Harrowing.
17. Dark Water / Death in Heaven
(Series 8, Episodes 12 and 13)
I used to feel like the whole country was watching Doctor Who, that there was a buzz about what had happened in the latest episode and no one could quite believe how good it was. That was certainly true for a while but as with all things, the initial interest has died down and never has that saddened me more than it did as I watched Dark Water/ Death in Heaven. This felt like it was something no one should be missing out on, whether you're a fan or not, this was simply brilliant drama. Certainly, for my money, and this is a big admission, the series 8 finale was the best since Doomsday. The title was apt, it was dark, opening with a very unexpected, very human death and veering between Clara’s visceral grief, Missy’s merciless trail of executions and the one unsettling idea that people could still feel pain after death. Though turning The Master into a woman was a dangerous move, it was one that really paid off - Stephen Moffat giving her the same flirty, maniacal quality he gave Moriarty in Sherlock. The story itself was an emotional rollercoaster, Danny's self-sacrifice got me, as did the Doctor's final salute to the Brigadier even though he was long before my time. The last was Danny giving up his chance to return to the mortal world for the young boy he’d mistakenly killed as a soldier. I hadn’t cried at Doctor Who since Vincent and the Doctor. This got me three times. Throughout it all though, Jenna Coleman shone; believably angry, desperate and quietly devastated. A stunning performance.
16. Midnight
(Series 4, Episode 10)
Effectively a one act play, Midnight was a big departure from run of the mill Who. The Doctor embarks on an excursion across an uninhabited planet, confining himself to a bus with a bunch of tourists. As soon as the driver announces that they'll be taking a new route that's never been tried before, you know it's not going to end well. Inevitably, the bus breaks down and when a sinister knocking starts outside the episode suddenly becomes a masterclass in tension and claustrophobia. RTD plays on the theory that groups make bad decisions as the Doctor struggles to maintain control among the passengers and fear starts to twist their judgment. It's a stroke of brilliance that we never actually see the monster here, just like the passengers, we can no longer trust the evidence of our own eyes. Have a stress ball on hand when you watch this.
15. The Eleventh Hour
(Series 5, Episode 1)
Steven Moffat was under a hell of a lot of pressure here, his first ep as showrunner and it fell to him to introduce Matt Smith, successor to Sir David Tennant. He pretty much nailed it. Matt's first scenes were charming, as he crash landed in young Amelia Pond's back garden and flung himself into action, warning off the alien's that had infiltrated Earth through a crack in her bedroom wall. The storyarc established here, that of Amy Pond, the Girl who waited, is one of my favourites and the pairing of Smith and Gillan (with a hint of Darvill) was inspired. There was a step up in the production values in the Moffat era too - the JJ Abrams lens flare, the choppy POVs - the whole thing looked more expensive and more gorgeous than ever before. The Eleventh Hour set the tone for a brand new age of Doctor Who, and it got it spot on.
14. Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways
(Series 1, Episodes 12 and 13)
The first series finale and the realisation of RTDs masterplan to bring American-style story arcs to British TV. It was the culmination of the Bad Wolf plot thread that had run through every episode and it saw the Doctor and Rose back on Satellite 5, this time, with Captain Jack in tow. It opened with the gang playing their way through a series of classic TV shows, but far from competing for a recording contract or a spot on the royal variety show, winning was the only way to escape a violent death. Rose quizzed her way through the Weakest Link, but after a few too many wrong answers she found herself at the mercy of the Anne-Droid and before long she was zapped to dust. Back in the olden days when we were all a bit more naive, "deaths" like this seemed a lot more final than they do now, so seeing Rose dispatched with such efficiency was shocking. Of course, she didn't stay dead for long, she'd actually been transported to a Dalek ship and in the second half of the episode the Doctor was in full hero mode, deftly snatching her back and threatening to wipe the Daleks out of the sky. But again, for me Russell T Davies really nails it in the more human bits of this episode, with Rose revealing to Jackie that she was the girl who held Pete's hand as he died and stopping at nothing to go back and save the Doctor. I'm going to take off ten cool points for that ridiculously cheesy "come here, I think you need a Doctor" line, and add 50 back on for that magical kiss that's not really a kiss. The ninth Doctor's farewell, beautifully underplayed by Christopher Ecclestone, was reassuring and matter of fact. He left without fanfare, just a quick acknowledgement that he was fantastic. And do you know what Chris, you really were.
13. The God Complex
(Series 6, Episode 11)
You might be surprised that I would rank this one so highly, but bear with me. There’s something undeniably creepy about tacky hotels. From the lounge music in the lifts, to the soiled carpets, they’re the perfect setting for a horrible death or two. This particular hotel was something of a torture chamber, exposing the people trapped inside to their worst fears, then preying on their faith to lure them to their deaths at the hands of an (oddly beautiful) Minotaur. The ending was especially dark as The Doctor had to destroy Amy's faith in him in order to save her. It was a strong story and it required a strong supporting cast to carry it, leading the pack was Amara Karan as Rita. I'd like to take this opportunity to implore the writers to bring Rita back. She was brave, funny, clever, everything a good companion should be ... hint hint.
12. Turn Left
(Series 4, Episode 11)
Possibly the bravest of all the Doctor Who eps, this episode would have made absolutely no sense to a casual viewer. It was a twisted look into a world without the Doctor, who it emerged, would've died under the Thames barrier had Donna not pulled him out in The Runaway Bride. The Starship Titanic subsequently crashed, destroying London, the Adipose killed half the population of America and several of the Doctor's allies fell taking up his fights. Immigrants being packed off to concentration camps and southerners becoming refugees were just some of the hard-hitting repercussions of his death. With the fate of the Universe now resting on her, Donna made the ultimate sacrifice, in a mature and slightly shocking ending, that perfectly rounded off the story. Huge props to Catherine Tate in this episode, who takes the often lairy Donna and drains all the life out of her as she's forced to flee her home. Chilling.
11. The End of Time Parts 1 and 2
Two things: First, putting this notably dark episode of a beloved family drama on just before the inevitable hour of cheer we like to call the EastEnder's Christmas special was a ballsy move from the BBC. What a jolly time we must all have been having Christmas day 2009. Second, to bring back not just the Timelords but the whole of Gallifrey, then to make both of those things pale into insignificance beneath the weight of your own magnificent finale is something only RTD could achieve.
I felt the loss of the tenth Doctor keenly, watching the second of these two episodes through a cascade of ugly tears. After all the fanfare, the smashing of windows and the crashing of spaceships, it was lovely old Wilf who caused the biggest ruckus. The long drawn out prophecy, he will knock four times, in the end so simply un-riddled, in a moment of pure, cruel genius. I'm obsessed by the way that scene can manipulate emotions: First you think The Doctor's survived, then you hear the knocking and your heart sinks. Then you wrestle with your conscience, who do I want to survive more, him or Wilf? Then the Doctor gets in the radiation chamber and you think it's all over, but it's not, he walks out as alive as ever ... but not for long. Through that whole sequence, David Tennant's performance is mesmerising; relieved, angry, then resigned - it hits you wave after wave. If you managed to get through all that without shedding a tear (Seriously? You didn't cry at "Wilfred, it's my honour"??) it was impossible to hold it together as the Doctor said his final farewells - revisiting his friends for one last time in his current form. The killer goodbye was Rose's (as it should be) whose confinement in a parallel universe meant that the doctor was forced to go and see her at a time before she knew him, making for a beautifully bittersweet parting. Then came the final line; Christopher Ecclestone revelled in his own fantasticity, Matt Smith made a note to remember himself, David Tennant's era ended with the truthful and now iconic "I don't want to go". Yes it's self indulgent and potentially out of character but as a farewell to an actor we were all pained to be parted from, it couldn't have been more fitting. Excuse me, I need to go and do a few tears.
10. Army of Ghosts / Doomsday
(Series 2, Episodes 12 and 13)
I recently went to an Orchestral Doctor Who concert and when a clip of this episode came up on the big screen everyone around me made the same choked sobbing noise. Apparently time doesn't heal a broken heart ...
I remember being bowled over by the first half of this two parter. The way it ended, with the ghosts of the title revealing themselves to be Cybermen and with Daleks protruding from the mystery sphere in Canary Wharf. The meeting of two foes, at that time, was momentous enough to make you feel like the world was ending. It kept punching in the second half too. The Cybermen successfully invaded Earth and the Daleks freed millions of others from a prison ship. On a quieter level, head of Torchwood Yvonne fought against her Cyber conversion to "do her duty" and Jackie was reunited with Pete in a scene that makes me WEEP! But let's face it, none of that is what got this two-parter to number 10 on this list. It's Rose's goodbye episode and, like Dalek before it, it was another defining moment in Doctor Who history. I think I'm going to stick my neck out and call the farewell scene at Bad Wolf Bay my favourite moment of TV ever. Months after they were cruelly torn apart and with travel between parallel universes now impossible, the Doctor sends a projection of himself to Rose so that they can say goodbye. As if it weren't painful enough, there can be no goodbye kiss as the Doctor is just an image. The only thing that can truly end this partnership is a declaration of love, one that Billie Piper delivers so perfectly it hurts. But alas, the walls of the universe close and the Doctor never gets chance to reply. It's been almost ten years but the pain's still raw. Iconic.
09. The Doctor's Wife
(Series 6, Episode 4)
I can't believe it took them seven years to do a story about the Doctor and the TARDIS but MAN was it worth the wait. Let's not over complicate this - it's a love story. The TARDIS matrix is transferred into the body of a woman called Idris and the Doctor is able to have a conversation with the love of his life for the first time. It was the kind of easy back and forth you'd get between an old married couple - had anyone else noticed that he always pushes the TARDIS doors open even though the instruction to pull is clearly written on the outside? Gorgeous! There was a second story unfolding inside the TARDIS too as a sentient asteroid, voiced by Michael Sheen, messed with a stricken Rory and Amy, separating them and manipulating their timelines as they tried to reach the control room. And what a control room it was! I got a sudden whoosh of happiness when I saw the new gang inside the original TARDIS from 2005, but it was soon replaced by sadness as the Doctor had to put the TARDIS matrix back where she belonged and say goodbye to Idris. After years of new companions marvelling at the internal dimensions of the TARDIS, could this episode have ended any more perfectly than with Idris asking "are all people like this?" "So much bigger on the inside?" Absolutely beautiful.
08. Dalek
(Series 1, Episode 6)
It only took them 5 episodes to resurrect the Daleks, and they had a hell of a legacy to live up to. Boy did they deliver. The lone Dalek they brought back was faster, cleverer and more deadly than its predecessors. That embarrassing design flaw that meant they could be stopped in their tracks by a flight of stairs was deftly dealt with in a historic scene where the Dalek demonstrated its ability to ‘elevate’ for the first time. For fans of the old series now watching again with their kids – that scene must’ve been the stuff of nightmares. It gives me chills even now. But this Dalek was more than just a cold, hard, killing machine, this one had a back story – one inexorably entwined with the Doctor’s. It caused him to act in a way we hadn’t seen before, he was angry, merciless, gleeful that the imprisoned Dalek was being tortured. He screamed at it “why don’t you just die?!” It's a defining moment of the Ecclestone era, that went on to define the whole of the modern series. Unlike before, the Doctor was a war veteran – guilt stricken and lonely, he had more secrets and more cause to be reckless than he’d ever had. Ultimately, this characterisation gave the show its focus - The Doctor's new purpose was to right the wrong he felt he’d made in the Time War. He chose to be a hero. I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say he’s one of the greatest TV characters ever conceived.
07. Vincent and the Doctor
(Series 5, Episode 10)
One of the things I’ve realised as I’ve been writing this list is that Doctor Who is not about monsters. Yes they’re an integral part of the show but the best episodes are the ones where the monsters are in the mind or in the dark or in the corner of your eye. If those episodes are actually about fear, this one is about sadness and hope. The Doctor and Amy visit Vincent Van Gogh to rid him of a monster, only to find that the thing that really plagues him is depression. After taking down the invisible creature that's been killing off the townsfolk, The Doctor takes Van Gogh to the Musee D'Orsay in the present day, to show him how well loved his paintings will become. As soon as I saw Richard Curtis's name in the titles I knew this episode was bound to be a bit of a weepy, but it's easy to make someone cry if you write about something sad, what's far more difficult is making them cry with happiness, and he managed it effortlessly. The museum curator's speech about how Vincent used his pain to portray the ecstasy of the world is stunning. Also stunning is the production design. The team perfectly recreated the locations from Van Gogh's paintings, from the cafe with the orange light, to his bedroom complete with wicker chair. His house, festooned with paintings, some of which are still drying is another lovely touch. The ending is tough as Amy realises that despite all they did, Vincent still killed himself. Monsters are real, but they don’t come from space, or from the future, or from hell. They’re already inside us. Even inside the greatest men. Staying true to Van Gogh's story means that this episode never trivialises depression, it's honest and sensitive and that heartbreaking ending is summed up in a wonderfully bittersweet line from the Doctor: "The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always make up for the bad things but vice versa the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things." Yet more poetry.
06. Human Nature / Family of Blood
(Series 3, Episodes 8 and 9)
As far as endings go, this has to be the best doesn't it? First there's John Smith's agonising decision to sacrifice himself to bring back the Doctor - the fleeting flashforward through the life he could have lived if he stayed with Joan is gut punch number one. Gut punch number two is Joan's refusal to travel with the Doctor with the words "he was braver than you in the end". Then there are the imaginative punishments the Doctor dishes out to the Family of Blood: He wraps the father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star, trips the mother into the event horizon of collapsing galaxy, traps the daughter in a mirror and suspends the son in time, in a thrilling sequence that ends with the haunting line "we wanted to live forever, so the doctor made sure that we did" - which warrants air punch number one, in celebration of Paul Cornell's sensational writing. Then it's back to the gut punches. Number three comes with the Doctor giving young Tim the (seemingly empty) fob watch which will save his life in the fields of France a year later. And the fourth comes at the end when old Tim weeps for his fallen comrades at a memorial service only to see the Doctor and Martha looking on as the Vicar reads "they shall not grow old as those of us who are left grow old". I'm getting goosebumps just writing about it!
By setting this story one year before the outbreak of the First World War, Cornell used the schoolboys' battle against the attacking scarecrows (notably addressed as soldiers) as a harrowing glimpse into the future, to a real war that would tragically take many of their lives just 12 months later. It's hard to watch as the boys, cheeks damp with tears, reluctantly open fire on their unknown enemy - a poignant metaphor for the futility and inhumanity of battle.
These were the episodes in which Martha reached peak companion, fending for herself while The Doctor believed he was human, rescuing him and never giving up, even when he subconsciously abandoned her.
05. The Girl in the Fireplace
(Series 2, Episode 4)
And so, the Moff-fest commences. This is a beautifully neat episode that I can't help thinking would make for a fantastic film - a time traveller hopping in and out of someone's life at different points to save them from a monster who is stalking them - that's one hell of an epic romance. The stalkee in question is Madame de Pompadour who forms a lifelong attachment to the Doctor after he saves her from a clockwork Alien as a little girl. Sophia Myles gives a beautiful performance here as the accomplished and headstrong Reinette, who refuses to give in to the monsters and makes a conquest of the King of France and the Lord of Time. Unfazed by the prospect of a world beyond her imagining, Reinette makes some pretty poetic observations such as "The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other." No wonder he likes her so much.
There's lots of great comedy in this episode, with a seemingly intoxicated Doctor unwittingly befriending a horse and uttering lines like "always take a banana to a party Rose", but it's equally steeped in creepiness - the monsters under the bed, the human body parts wired into machinery and of course, the wonderfully sinister clockwork repair droids. Bravo to the "Alien" department (is that what they call themselves? If not, they should) the french regency outer shell of the droids is beautiful enough already, but the clockwork mechanism inside is just gorgeous! I'd like to display one of the heads in my living room as some sort of post-modernist sculpture.
For purists who believed that love stories have no place in Doctor Who, I hope this episode convinced them otherwise. The threats are more potent when there's love involved, the stakes so much higher. And, when it all goes base over apex, as it inevitably will when the Doctor sets his hearts on someone, the pain is all too real. When he returns after defeating the Aliens to collect Reinette and take her to the stars, he is confronted once again with the inevitability of human life and left with a broken heart. It's bittersweet and it's wonderful.
04. The Waters of Mars
I'm taking a break from the Moff-Fest and awarding 4th place to Phil Ford and my hero, Russell T Davies, writers of one of the cleverest and most self-knowing episodes ever. In 2052, the tenth Doc stumbles across the first human colonists on Mars, the crew of Bowie Base One and it quickly becomes apparent that he knows something is about to go dreadfully wrong for Captain Adelaide Brooke and her team. Though neutralising impending disaster is normally the Doctor's m.o, this time, in a massive break from the norm, he abandons them to their fate, explaining that what's about to happen is a fixed event in time, something even a Time Lord shouldn't interfere with. In a very sophisticated sequence, the Doctor heads back to the TARDIS with his comms still on so he can hear the horror unfolding inside the base. The crew are being decimated by an ancient Martian race who manifest themselves through water which it turns out, is as deadly as any weapon. The simple idea that it only takes one drop for your life as you know it to come to an end is what makes this episode so tense, and it plays out perfectly in the worst "death" of them all, as a single droplet of water drips down Technician Roman's cheek like a tear and it's game over for him.
While it's heartbreaking to see the Doctor leaving good people to die, it's somehow worse when he goes back to save them. Frustrated at his lack of control, he decided to exert his power over the laws of time, risking the future of the human race in the process. He's callous and borderline deranged as he declares himself the winner of the time war and, as he revels in the deaths of the people he killed, it's clear that the Doctor is just as capable of evil as he is heroism.
The explanation about fixed and flux points in time is one of the things that this episode is most remembered for. It effectively corrects any plot holes that have gone before, such as the Doctor saving Caecilius' family from Pompeii. With this new explanation, you could argue that although the eruption of Vesuvius was a fixed point, the deaths of that particular family were in flux. It's a bit of very clever writing which leaves room for all manner of moral dilemmas in the Doctor's future.
03. The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances
(Series 1, Episodes 9 and 10)
And we're back to Moffat again, his very first episodes in fact. I think this two-parter was a pivotal moment in the show's history. Up until this point we'd had some cracking episodes; living plastic, ghosts, sentient pieces of skin, but the scares were mainly reserved for the younger viewers. That changed with The Empty Child. It was the first of Moffat's 'monster that isn't really a monster' monsters; a little boy, killed by a bomb who was somehow still roaming the eerily quiet streets of London at the height of the blitz, gas mask fused to his face, repeatedly asking people if they were his mummy. The way that his condition could be passed on through touch, made every foot step and every reached out hand terrifying -these episodes are a masterclass in how to scare the beejesus out your audience. At one point, the Doctor, Jack and Rose are listening to a recording of the little boy when, after a few seconds they realise the tape has stopped and he is actually in the room with them. Then there's the comatose patients in the hospital all sitting up at once, and of course, Doctor Constantine transforming into one of the gas mask zombies himself. It still shocks me just how vivid that scene is. It's terrifying! But of course, this episode has more than just the fear factor. The story itself is near perfect; the mystery of who the little boy really is, the introduction to Captain Jack, the smooth talking conman who's likeable enough to convincingly become a demi-companion in just two episodes. And then there's that ending - nothing over clever, just an emotionally motivated ending that works. You can marvel at Christopher Ecclestone's beautifully judged performance - the war veteran finally getting to revel in the fact that he's saved the day without losing anyone along the way. Just beautiful.
02. Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead
(Series 4, Episodes 8 and 9)
In second place, it's the Moff ... again.
I watched this one very recently and it's still an absolute banger! It's kind of an early prototype for some of Moffat's more convoluted series storyarcs, with three plotlines happening simultaneously - What's going on in the library, how is the little girl involved and who is River Song? It's a lot to condense into one episode, but standards were high here and it really worked well. The Doctor is summoned to the biggest library in the Universe, only to find that it's been silent for 100 years after mysteriously sealing itself and sending out an ominous message "4022 saved. No survivors". As the lights go out it becomes apparent that the Doctor and Donna are not alone and there is something sinister lurking in the shadows. The Vashta Nerada are another of Stephen Moffat's BRILLIANT monsters - "pirhanas of the air" they hide in plain sight ready to rip their victims apart. Like the 'just one drop' tagline in the Waters of Mars, the Vashta Nerada can also be summed up in one sentence; 'not every shadow, but any shadow' and with no way of knowing which patch of darkness might be infested, we're on alert all the time. Call me a physcopath but I do love a story where the cast get picked off one by one, it adds a massive sense of unease to proceedings.
Of course, this was the episode that introduced us to the enigmatic River Song, one of the defining figures of the Moffat era. I think it's the nature of fans to feel quite protective of The Doctor, so River's instant familiarity with him made her quite a divisive figure. What better way to introduce a new character into a show about time travel though, than in the wrong order? Although we couldn't quite put our finger on River's relationship with the Doctor, we still felt her death keenly at the end of this two-parter. That was mainly down to David Tennant's performance, again wounded, unable to save someone else he loves, even if he hasn't quite worked out why yet.
This ending is second only to that multi-layered one in Human Nature/Family of Blood - River dies but the Doctor refuses to let it happen, so he "saves" her ... to a hard drive with a couple of kids to look after and the souls of all her friends to keep her company. She reads her children a story about a hero who refuses to give in "Everybody knows that everybody dies ... but not every day. Now and then ... every day in a million days when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives." It beautifully echoes Moffat's "everybody lives" ending from The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, one of those spine-tingling rewards you get when you watch a show like this for a long time. Then, at the end, as prophesised by River, the Doctor swaggers back to the TARDIS and opens the doors with a snap of his fingers. Goosebump inducing.
01. Blink
(Series 3, Episode 10)
Quite simply, a masterpiece. One of the best and most iconic episodes of TV ever.
Never underestimate the power of a good story. Blink is a perfect story, which makes it all the more powerful. Steven Moffat once again draws on our fear of the familiar to create an astonishingly creepy villain. I think we take it for granted now just how ingenious the weeping angels are. Let’s refresh - they evolved a perfect defense mechanism; as soon as they are observed by any other living thing, they freeze into stone which makes them impossible to kill. The crux is of course that they're unbelievably fast so you're only safe for as long as you can keep your eyes on them, blink and you're dead. Death at the hands of a weeping angel is not as final as it sounds (in this episode anyway), they consume the potential energy of the days you might have had by trapping you in the past. Not only is that a terrifying prospect, it's also a vital twist in the story as it allows victims of the Angels (such as the Doctor and Martha) to leave clues, helping Sally Sparrow to escape their clutches in the present day. This back and forth between the past and the present makes for all sorts of wonderfully Doctor Who moments such as The Doctor reading aloud from a transcript of a conversation he’s still having. In order to write a successful sci-fi story, you have to stick to the rules. They’re normally well established, you know the kind of thing, if you go back in time and change something, you alter the course of future events. Rules like these are embedded in us, they don’t seem too convenient or too far fetched. To establish a new rule normally takes time and repetition, but in Blink, Stephen Moffat managed to feed us a whole set of new rules so eloquently that we could accept them as fact in a single episode. What's more impressive is that he broke established time travel rules to give us that unbelievably satisfying ending where Sally Sparrow met the Doctor and gave him all the information he would one day need to save her. See what I mean about it being a perfect story?
Let's just go back to the angels for a moment though, there's a vital thing I forgot to mention earlier. They don’t cover their eyes because they’re crying, they cover them because they can’t risk looking at each other. Not only are they the deadliest creatures in the universe, they’re also the loneliest. As we know from numerous Doctor Who stories, including that of the central character, loneliness makes you desperate and desperation makes you dangerous, it's this vaguest hint of a backstory and glimpse into their motivation that cements the weeping angels as the most feared and beloved Aliens since the Daleks.
The spectrum of possibility in sci-fi affords it moments of poignancy that wouldn't be possible in other forms of drama. Throughout this list, there seems to have been one recurring word ... poetry. So let's end on that shall we? After being transported back to 1969 at the touch of an angel, DI Billy Shipton spends the rest of his life waiting to deliver a message to Sally Sparrow. Just minutes after she first met him as a young man, Sally finds a much older Billy dying in a hospital bed. "It was raining when we met" he tells her. She simply replies "it's the same rain". Beautiful.
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