Dalek

I bet some of the dedicated fan base are spitting feathers tonight. "Dalek" was all about icons - the show itself, the characters themselves, the enemy itself - enough icons in one show to keep media students happy for months. But rather than keep each element in thier own place, this series continues to chop up convention and slap heritage in the face with a kipper; the Doctor turns evil, the Dalek turns soft, and the companion gets herself into trouble an... Oh, okay, not [i] all [/i] the conventions are altered...

"Dalek" will certainly divide opinion. Maybe some fans are beyond convincing now - for some, this series is beyond a joke and as far as they are concerned, Doctor Who finished with Sylvester McCoy and has never, ever returned. This episode pushed the show further away from the assumed conventions of Doctor Who, and maintains the very high standard of the series so far. Make no mistake - this is classy, classic television, with the confidence of the show oozing from the screen. By making the Doctor far more complex, twisted even, the new series opens up the usual character traits and stuffs them full of new, unexpected details. Viewers are being asked to feel sorry for a Dalek, and for a moment actually does. The viewer - this one, at any rate - must have held their breath when they realised what was implied by the line "You'd make a good Dalek..."

For this episode to work, Christopher Eccleston would need all his ability turned all the way up. He did and gave one of the best performances of any of his predecessors. The shock seeing the trapped shirtless Doctor, urging his captor to listen to reason, was made all the more real by the constant sense of fear running through the entire episode. In 45 minutes, real terror existed in an episode destined to be remembered as a modern classic. Genuine concern at the safety of Rose, genuine shock at the electrocution of the guards, and as for the Dalek's levitation...

By making the Dalek and Doctor so closely tied, the danger always existed that the episode would be too sentimental, perhaps too domestic to use a common phrase round these parts. But how clever, how perfectly written, was the twist which saw the last surviving Time Lord turn into a gun-toting mad-man, and consequently the Dalek into the moral voice of reason. How brilliant to see the depth of intellegence which allowed humour to appear like raindrops on a windshield, giving the Doctor a real gritty drama to act through but with a background of light relief perfectly realised. Christopher Eccleston will surely be ranked fairly high on the list of 'best' or 'most convincing' Doctors. Not because he's the most recent or the better looking, but because this Time Lord has layers so thick one series wouldn't be enough to scratch the surface, and that is the kind of character the series has always needed. Of course, one series is all we have, all we get given after all these years. "Dalek" was a very different, very modern Doctor Who, played by one of the best Doctors, with one of the best narratives. Onwards, ever, ever onwards.