We come to the Ninth Doctor’s swansong as Eccleston leaves the show with a bang in the epic two-part finale to Series 1.

Like most people, I found that The Parting of the Ways is really what puts this up among his best, while Bad Wolf is good in its own right, it really is more of a setup and not nearly as strong as what follows. Especially as most things we see in Bad Wolf are pretty much discarded in part two in favour of the grand battle between the Doctor and the Daleks. But there are some great moments such as the Ninth Doctor realising to his horror the world he created in the fallout from a prior episode and the negative consequences of his actions. It’s something that doesn’t come up a lot in Doctor Who where they reveal that while the Doctor in the moment may have saved the day, in the long term he actually made things worse because he was too busy flying off to his next destination instead of cleaning up the mess.

As far as The Parting of the Ways goes, it is arguably Modern Who’s best series finale if not near the very top. The main threat being set up perfectly earlier in the series with Dalek showing just how unstoppable a single, damaged Dalek can be, now we have the Doctor in a base under siege against an entire fleet of Daleks with the Dalek Emperor himself at the heart of the it. Whether you like Russell or not, there’s no denying he knew how to use the Daleks better than Moffat or Chibnall, the Daleks have never felt more threatening or powerful than they were under Russell. Series 1 in particular is the Daleks at their peak, and sadly it’s been a long and miserable downhill slope for them ever since. Just look at the Daleks in Series 1 and then look at them in their most recent appearance and say “Really, how the hell did we get here!?!?!?”

Eccleston wastes no opportunity with his final hour as he goes all out with his performance in this, there’s so many great standout moments from him; from his broken reaction to thinking Rose has been killed, his defiance at the Daleks, vowing to wipe them all out, his awesome confrontation with the Emperor, his final message to Rose knowing that he’s almost certainly going to die, his contemplation at once again wiping out a race close to his hearts in order to defeat his greatest enemies, and his final scene where he comforts Rose before his death. He may not be everyone’s favourite Doctor but there’s no denying he was, quite aptly, fantastic in his final story. It is sad we never got more from him onscreen, I dunno what it is but I just can’t envision him beyond Series 1, it just seemed like the perfect way to go out. Not to mention culminating his character arc where, faced with one final battle against the Daleks after failing to get the job done in the Time War, he’s forced to make a decision that could wipe out humanity the same way he destroyed his own people, but instead of repeating his actions he chooses not to. It’s a great ending to his character arc of recovering from the Time War and being faced with repeating the actions that went against everything he stood for. I don’t think you could’ve done anything further with his character. There’s certainly a lot I think they can do with his character prior to this which I’ve constantly argued for in Big Finish, but this ending just seemed like the perfect time for him to regenerate.

Another highlight is Billie Piper, putting in my personal favourite performance as Rose. I won’t lie, I’m no fan of Rose Tyler, her dynamic with David Tennant is really annoying, especially the soppy romance, and she does and says a lot of horrible things to those close to her like her mother and Mickey that the episode expects us to cheer her for. She left her boyfriend literally in the gutter after a near death experience and didn’t bother to come see him after spending over a year away, and then months later gets possessive and jealous when he reveals he's seeing someone else. Then in Series 2 she willingly leaves her mother in a parallel universe the Doctor’s about to seal off knowing full well she’d never see her again and without even saying goodbye! But I will say that compared to the bland and lifeless characters we got from Moffat and especially Chibnall, Rose is at least a well-developed character! Not a character I like, but she is still a character, and this is honestly Billie Piper’s best work as knowing what the universe has to offer, she can’t accept going back to a humdrum life, especially if it means leaving the Doctor to die.

As a regeneration story, this is by far the best in Modern Who, I went on quite the tirade back in The Caves of Androzani about how Modern Who keeps missing the point of a regeneration story, but this manages to get it right. The regeneration is not overshadowing the story, it’s not something that’s constantly teased throughout, it’s not even teased in the episodes leading up to it, it’s just dumb luck as a result of the Doctor trying his luck too many times and this time it didn’t work out for him, and he doesn’t fuss over it, he doesn’t cry, he doesn’t go on some big nostalgia trip. He just accepts it, smiles, comforts his companion, says looking back he was quite fantastic and then that’s it!

It's not all perfect, the Bad Wolf stuff still to this day feels underwhelming and it boggles my mind why it’s become something fans go apesh*t for whenever it gets mentioned. All these random references throughout Series 1 and the reason behind them all was…..Rose just had them left throughout time because they were already there………I think. Like seriously, can someone tell me how the Bad Wolf words contribute to the story and why they were so important. The Bad Wolf words have absolutely nothing to do with the events that result in the finale and even Rose absorbing the heart of the TARDIS! It’s a pre-destination story arc where one of the elements has nothing to do with the other!!! It’s also contributes to one of my issues with Russell and how he views the Doctor Who universe, in Russell’s mind the universe in Doctor Who is just this mystical entity with a mind of its own that does whatever the hell it wants and has random people leave random messages all over the place for no reason other than magic or destiny or some stupidity. The only time these sorts of ideas work in Doctor Who is when someone with god-like powers is making those events happen, like the White and Black Guardians from the Key to Time saga, Fenric from the Seventh Doctor era or even the Time Lords themselves! Russell could easily have fixed the Bad Wolf arc and the other random coincidences in his era (such as the Doctor constantly bumping into Donna and her family) by revealing they were all a product of the Time Lords, slowly manipulating events and people in the Ninth and Tenth Doctor’s lives to ultimately bring about their return to the universe, but he couldn’t even do that!!!!

But with all that aside, this is an excellent swansong for the Ninth Doctor and in terms of being a Dalek story and a regeneration story, Modern Who really should take a page out of this every so often!