Watched again for the anniversary.

This one’s incredible and lives up to its reputation for me. Eccleston gives easily his best performance yet. van Staten plays an incredibly hateable Musk like character who gets his commuppence. While I have a couple issues with Rose’s character at the end, Piper brings her A-game too.

The way it reintroduces the Daleks is perfect. Having only Dalek instead of loads for the introduction really establishes them as a threat, which leads to the oh sh*t moment we get in the finale. It also does what I’ve repeatedly said I like most when the Daleks are done well: it makes it a manipulative schemer. It’s not a yelling shouty robot, it’s a living creature trying its best to survive and do its mission. It’s efficient and it knows how to use people like Rose to get what it wants.

The score is one of Gold’s best. It’s purely atmospheric and it hits perfectly.

I love 9’s characterisation here. It’s so much darker, and the first time we truly see him wanting something dead whatever the cost. Which further establishes the threat. And as I already said, Eccleston puts in an all-timer nuanced performance that sells the fear, rage, trauma and guilt perfectly.

Is it Jubilee? No! But I think despite being loosely based on it, and having some of the same core ideas, it’s tackling totally different themes and has the different missions statement of reintroducing Daleks to a new generation. And I think it succeeds on all fronts. It and Jubilee are both great, even if I do prefer the latter for sure.

Unfortunately. Adam exists. He’s annoying, and his actor uh… Doesn’t put in a good performance to put it very gently. And also as some folks alluded to earlier in the thread, Rose doesn’t show any guilt at all about what she caused and almost seems more concerned about the Daleks than she does human lives.

But I love that ending, whatever folks say. The idea of a Dalek scheming to absorb human DNA to recover itself but due to decades of isolation, years of torture, and the existential discovery that it’s the last of its kind when it thought otherwise all that time made it miscalculate and not realise it too would become a little more human. And that isn’t pure. And to not be pure is a fate worse than death for a Dalek.

In the end I have one word to describe this story…

Fantastic!

4.5-4.75 stars