What can I say? This is a truly great opener to the 2005 revival, and when I was a child it got me hooked in minutes. Rose will always hold a special place for me- it was my first ever episode, and a wonderful introduction to the world of Doctor Who, which is exactly what it was supposed to be.

Setting up the episode through Rose’s eyes to allow a slower build up to an alien threat worked brilliantly, letting the show feel updated and as though it had a place in (what was then) the present. Those new to Who went on that first journey with her, got to know the Doctor as she did, and as such the exposition present isn’t too much. Watching it now, explaining the TARDIS, (what she is, what TARDIS stands for) all feels a little long winded- purely because I already know all that from the past almost-20-years of watching. As a child, the threat felt very real, and- call me silly- but I still eye shop window dummies suspiciously on occasion, just in case.

In terms of character, Rose does a great job too. You meet Rose, of course, and she feels like an everyday person- she’s real and normal and this is all happening to her completely by chance, but she rolls with all the strangeness with a level of composure I could only dream of. The Doctor, too, within seconds of meeting, grabs her by the hand and pulls her out of danger, and the conversation in the lift is a perfectly condensed look at their whole dynamic. ‘What makes you say that?’ ‘It’s gotta be students’ ‘good thinking.’ He knows from that moment that she’s not just a stupid ape but someone worth having around, and despite walking away after blowing up her job, it’s clear that he’ll want her to come with him, and that she’ll want to go.

• I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go.

Who are you, Doctor? This brilliant alien who says things like this, blows stuff up, and… laughs about death and the invasion of Earth? He’s camp, he’s butch, he’s got PTSD and a chip on his shoulder the size of the London Eye, and, speaking of that ‘giant round thing slap bang in the centre of London’, he’s so wonderfully dense sometimes too. Who wouldn’t want to get in a box and fly off with him?

Jackie and Mickey, too, feel just as real as our main pair (plastic doppelganger aside), and it’s something I love about RTD’s era(s)- the companion always has a clear tie to Earth, they always have some solidified reason to come back home despite running off for an adventure. Even Clive has a life and a place in the world despite his limited screen time (RIP, you would’ve gotten on so well with LINDA).

Rewatching recently, I was struck by the 88 seconds long shot of the Doctor and Rose talking - it’s not a tense moment, it’s just a conversation, but it’s a wonderful way to bring the audience along. It’s not quick, few-second cuts between them. It lets the eye look at them both, between them both, see them within their environment and really get a feel for Rose’s World in the background. It’s just two people walking along and it looks like an everyday conversation, except… it’s most definitely not. He came along and turned it all on its head.

There are, of course, some imperfections with the episode. The CGI now is naturally dated, but that can’t really be helped, and that photoshop of Nine at JFK’s assassination always gives me the giggles. Also I simply refused to believe that Rose didn’t notice something was wrong with ‘Mickey’ after he was eaten by the bin. It’s so unnatural and unsettling and she didn’t even blink… Though perhaps that says more about her character than anything else, so focused on the Doctor that everything else is blurring into the background already?