“Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!”

Has Doctor Who ever had a more triumphant climax to one of it's stories? Honestly, yeah it probably has (there's been an awful lot of Doctor Who stories) but whilst watching this episode it's hard to think of anything more triumphant than Christopher Eccleston, with his big, wide-eyed grin, ecstatically declaring that "Everybody lives!". The Doctor has certainly had bigger triumphs overcoming greater threats, but I'm hard pressed to think of many stories where he manages to save literally everyone. For this Doctor especially, a Doctor so heavily defined by his guilt over the Time War, the people he lost and the lives he took. This triumphant climax not only feels deserved, but genuinely cathartic and maybe even redemptive.

If the rest of this story wasn't up to scratch, that ending alone would likely still make this a beloved episode. But fortunately, the rest of the episode is also great. Which makes this story an undeniable all-time classic.

What's interesting on this rewatch is that as both the first series of the Revival, and the last (only) series for Eccleston, the show had to spend a lot of it's first half establishing the show, and a lot of the second half giving the 9th Doctor a satisfying conclusion to his character arc, as well as giving the series a satisfying narrative conclusion. As such there's not a lot of episodes that are just the Doctor having a fun adventure, without the show also having to establish the larger rules/lore/themes/narrative or character threads etc... Not to say there wasn't fun to be had in the other stories. It's just that the fun adventure stuff, usually had to establish a larger point for the series and it's characters as well.

This story might be the only story in Series 1 that is just a fun adventure, and what a fun adventure it is. Despite the stakes at play and the scary 'monster', the opening set piece in the hospital is often thrilling, and the banter between our 3 main heroes is a constant delight. It's easy to see how Captain Jack so quickly became a fan favourite. John Barrowman is such a charasmatic presence. His toothy charm and playful energy works so well set against Eccleston's grumpy, northern disposition. Their attempts to one up each other to impress Rose is a lot of fun, and you can see them impressing each other to some extent as well. Even though the Doctor is angry with Jack for the chaos he's accidentally unleashed, you have no issue believing that the Doctor would want to save Jack by the end, and allow him to travel in the TARDIS.

It seems weird to talk about how fun this episode is, when it's usually considered first and foremost to be a scary Who episode. But just because the script and the characters are fun, it doesn't mean the stakes feel lessened or that this episode can't have some good scares. I mentioned in my previous review how good I think the design of Jamie is. It's so simple yet effective, and the "Are you mommy?" phrase is so utterly creepy. The scene in Jamie's room with the tape player, is so well constructed that I expect some kids may have been sent cowering behind the couch because it's a genuinely tense in how it plays and scary in it's reveal.

As mysteries go this one is also great. I love that the first episode basically gives you all the pieces to solve the mystery. I mean it's unlikely that you were going to, because the mystery requires in universe knowledge and some sci-fi logic to solve. But everything that's needed to make the reveal make sense has been well established already. I love that there isn't a villain per se in this episode. Just Nanogenes, little computers that heal people, but don't understand what a human is and the first one they encounter is basically a scared, dying little boy who wants his mum. So proceeds to remakes all people in this image because it assumed that's what human beings are. I think both the reveal and the solution are incredibly satisfying.

The solution of course brings us onto Nancy. I love that Nancy isn't trying to be some hero. She wants to know what happened to Jamie, but mostly she's just trying to survive another day (along with her gang of orphans). That's the reality for her living rough during the Blitz. It's just how to make it to tomorrow. She's pretty much expecting to die soon, because how could anything survive this war. She has no problem believing Rose is from the future, but struggles to believe that Rose is from a future London and isn't German. The world looks to be ending  when she sees the war happening around her. Her world feels like it's ended since she lost Jamie, but at the end she can see a future again.

Nancy is secretly Jamie's mother (not sister) and when she embraces Jamie at the end, it makes not only for a lovely climax for her personal story, but makes sense as a solution. The nanogenes analyse both of them together and can see that their genes are similar enough to figure out that she's his mother, and that her DNA is how humans should correctly be remade. Simple, elegant and a wonderful end to the characters arc, which sets up the most triumphant of endings to the narrative. Still one of my absolute favourite stories in all of Doctor Who.