War! The episode opens spectacularly with the Daleks firing some missiles at the TARDIS. With the combined tricks of a force field and a clever materialisation around Rose, one of the best episodes (and I mean ever) of “Doctor Who” begins. This is certainly one classic that will stand the test of time!

Rose, probably much like the audience, simply cannot believe that she has been rescued in “Act I, Scene I” as Jack blows away the Dalek that the TARDIS was also forced to materialise around. The Doctor examines the Dalek mutant curiously as it looks different to the mutant we saw in “Dalek”; it appears more human, even having two eyes. The Doctor explains to Jack about the Time War – Jack had thought it just to be a legend – and about how he “…was there.” They emerge into the Dalek ship (complete with authentic ‘Dalek space ship’ noise; nice touch), protected by their force field, and we are treated to the first of many scenes of beautiful, flowing, dialogue. The Doctor talks at the Daleks who back away from him, afraid. “In the legends of the Dalek homeworld they call me the Oncoming Storm…” Absolutely brilliant. The Doctor then asks the obvious question, “how did you survive the Time War?”

”THEY SURVIVED THROUGH ME.”

Wow. The Doctor and his companions walk towards the booming voice as the lights come up and the Emperor Dalek is revealed in all his sickening glory. It’s a wonderful reveal of an exceptionally brilliant villain. He’s unlike the previous Dalek Emperor we’ve seen in the TV series and audios – I’m assuming it’s not the same one that was killed in “The Evil of the Daleks” – he’s more like Davros in a way, a total megalomaniac. His speeches aren’t what you’d typically except from a Dalek leader, they are full of religious imagery which makes him all the more unnerving. “The Dalek race died in your inferno Doctor, but I survived. Waiting in the dark space, centuries past. I harvested the waste of humanity… they were filleted; pulped…. only one single cell was worthy…” His account of how he created Daleks from human remains (á la Davros on Necros) is horrific. The Doctor immediately sees that the Emperor is quite obviously mad (der?) because of all his years spent in solitude, and he finds the Daleks having a concept of ‘blasphemy’ very strange indeed. The Emperor’s “I AM THE GOD OF ALL THE DALEKS” rant is a powerful image, especially when all his Dalek minions are chanting “worship him!” in their grated mechanical tones. It’s just plain scary! As he orders his Dalek troops to begin their invasion of Earth his eloquent rants, superbly penned by Russell T. Davies, continue as he speaks of “..purifying the Earth will fire…” and “…the planet will become my temple and we will rise. It will become our paradise.” Dalek paradise? Davies’ script was certainly brave, but it pays of spectacularly here. Combining the image of the Dalek Emperor’s crazed rants and the Dalek fleet being launched, topped off with Murray Gold’s epic score… it almost brings a tear to the eye. This is what “Doctor Who” always had the potential to be. It almost brings a tear to the eye.

As the TARDIS lands on the Gamestation, with the Earth defenceless, the Doctor is shocked to find that Lynda has waited for him. After the Doctor’s initial concern he seems very pleased to see her, flirting with her quite ineptly to Rose’s obvious jealousy. At one point it seems that he’s going to hug or even kiss her, but instead he awkwardly shakes her hand, maintaining eye contact until she disappears off behind the TARDIS, off to help Captain Jack rally the humans of floor zero.

Then we have ‘the Big Goodbye.’ I’d tried and tried to stay spoiler-free, but with today’s all intrusive media there was no escape from the ‘Doctor Who gay kiss shocker!’ Gay kiss my arse! Not only was this blown out of all proportion by the press, I thought it was a touching scene which worked well in the context of the episode. Jack obviously cared enormously about the Doctor and Rose. His “…you’re worth fighting for…” line to Rose, followed by planting a smacker on her, was a lovely way to say goodbye, and the way in which he tells the Doctor he wished he’d never met him, and how he…”would have been better off as a coward,” may eventually prove technically true but in the way it was brilliantly written and performed it was clear that Jack was deeply indebted to the Doctor for making him a better person. Jack just sealed it with a kiss; a kiss that was in no way sexual. “See you in hell…!” FANTASTIC!

Jack goes to rally the troops leaving the Doctor and Rose and alone. Rose asks a very good legitimate question: they have a time machine, so why not simply go back a week and warn Earth? The Doctor explains that if he crosses his own timeline, he would simply become part of events, and then he asks her an even more obvious question: why don’t they just leave? Why don’t they go to Marbella in 1989? Rose never would have thought of that. Of course, neither of them would ever do that. There is a wonderful moment where the Doctor, obviously thinking over his own words, has an epiphany. He goes very quiet for a moment, then jumps up full of energy, spouting some fabrication about crossing his own timeline to save the day. Leaving Rose in the TARDIS, he sends it back to Earth, to Rose’s own time. On board, the Doctor’s hologram appears and it’s such a sad moment. Knowing that a part of the Doctor is going to die is sad enough in itself, but in the way his holo-recording faces death so bravely and matter-of-factly makes it all the more moving. “…that’s okay, I hope it’s a good death. The TARDIS can never return for me. Let the TARDIS die…. If you want to remember me, then have a good life. Have a fantastic life!” It’s a proper single manly-tear trickling down the face moment.

The sci-fi in the show has been ripped to shreds by it’s detractors, and most of the time they have a point, but who really cares? The show’s never really been about hardcore science fiction, it’s more fantasy… more fantastic! The ‘Delta Wave’ which the Doctor proposes to use to destroy the Daleks is one such example that I’m sure will be mocked. Throughout the series, the sci-fi elements have been nothing more than a springboard for some brilliant character-based drama. Rose sums up it brilliantly herself as she sits in some café back home with her Mother and Mickey. She says the aliens and spaceships really don’t matter… the Doctor showed her a better way of living. He taught her not to give up, to stand up and say no, to have the guts to make a stand. That’s what it’s all about. That what Russell T. Davies knew when he sat down in Cardiff to write “Rose,” and that’s what he knew when he sat down to tie up his ingeniously crafted season with “The Parting of the Ways.” That’s why this show is a positive triumph.

Look at the scene between the Dalek Emperor (on the view screen) and the Doctor. The Emperor tells the Doctor to tell Jack the truth; the truth that the Delta Wave is nearly ready but it won’t discriminate between Humans and Daleks. “ALL THINGS WILL DIE BY YOUR HAND. If I am God, then what does that make you, Doctor?” The dialogue is absolutely superb, and Jack’s reply is ace – “…never doubted him, never will.”

We then see legions of Daleks just flying through space. It is literally the stuff of nightmares. As the Daleks invade the Gamestation, the Doctor asks the Emperor Dalek about ‘Bad Wolf’ and how he spread the words across time and space but “…the truth of god…” is that he knew nothing of it. The volunteers are slowly killed one by one, and barring the unexpected assistance of the Annedroid on floor 495 the Daleks are every bit as unstoppable as the lone one we saw in “Dalek” – only now there are half a million of them!!! Roderick, the winning contestant on the ‘Weakest Link’ and the rest of the humans who refused to fight are exterminated as the Daleks purify floor zero – just for the hell of it.

Back on Earth, Rose is desperate to get back to the future and there is a lovely scene where Jackie talks about how she hated the Doctor, but now “…she loves him…” because he sent Rose home. Here Davies explores for the first time in the series history what it is like for a companion who has done all these wondrous things to come home and be forced to lead a normal life. Rose can’t do it. Through her tears she cries “What do I do every day?” I love how she also confesses to her Mother that she was the girl who sat beside her Dad as he died. It’s all very emotional, as if every episode in the season has been carefully and painstakingly structured to bring us to this fantastic finale – and it certainly has. It’s fantastic stuff, and Billie Piper puts in her best performance yet. She is every bit Eccleston’s equal in this episode, and that is saying a lot. Sat in some old playground with Mickey, Rose sees the huge spray-painted words ‘Bad Wolf’ on the ground. She looks behind her, and they’re graffiti on the wall. They are everywhere she goes – not following the Doctor, following her. Finally she realises that it’s not an ominous warning… it’s a message. A link between her and the Doctor. As I suspected, the ‘heart of the TARDIS’ we saw in “Boom Town” plays a crucial part in the season finale. Rose reasons if she can rip it open she can ‘talk’ to the TARDIS and make it take her back to the year 200,100. Mickey tries to persuade her to stay and she flatly tells him “…there is nothing for me here,” but Mickey still helps her despite her inconsiderate behaviour towards him (or her Mother for that matter.) Ironically, it is those two people who help her save the day as Jackie gets a tow truck to rip open the TARDIS console. It’s slightly disappointing that the TARDIS console can be ripped open by brute force, but hey, you can’

Daleks.

Thousands of ‘em.

Don’t shoot ‘til you see the whites of their eyes, lads!

Charlie Catchpole, TV reviewer for the Daily Express, claimed to have been reminded of the film Zulu when watching the stand-off against the invading pepperpots in this episode, and you can see his point. I’ve always been a sucker for any kind of fiction involving brave, desperate stands of the few against the many, and The Parting of the Ways is a wonderful example of such against-the-odds, backs-to-the-wall heroics. It was the story the character of Captain Jack Harkness was pretty much invented for, and he’s again wonderfully played by John Barrowman here. Poor old Jack certainly gets put through the mill – exterminated, resurrected and then left behind, it’s nonetheless comforting to know that the charismatic Captain will be back sometime in the next series.

As for the Daleks themselves… Oh yes! Would you guess there were only three of them? I certainly couldn’t see the joins, and we’ve definitely come a long way from the days of blown-up cardboard cut-outs standing in for invading Dalek armies. When I wrote a review of Dalek for this website, I commented on how I preferred to see the metal meanies as the hard-arsed bastards of the universe exterminating everything in sight, and as if realising that we’d want a bit of that after the emotions of the earlier one-Dalek episode, Davies delivers here in spades. Thousands of ships, hundreds of invading Daleks, a massacre of innocent humans, and the killing-off of supporting characters who, although it was always fairly obvious they were going to end up as Dalek-fodder, we were cleverly made to care about anyway. I felt particularly sorry for poor old Lynda ‘with a y’ – as soon as the Doctor promised her last week that he’d get her out of there alive, you knew she was destined for extermination. And what an extermination – surely one of the best-executed (excuse the pun) death scenes in the entire series, as the Daleks float menacingly up outside window in the silence of space, the lights flashing out ‘Exterminate!’ as they blast the glass and send poor, sweet little Lynda out into the airless vacuum of space. (Explosive decompression not shown, probably just as well…)

Being churlish, you can point out that TARDIS-powered Bad Wolf Rose was being a bit of a bitch not to resurrect Lynda – and indeed, everybody else – at the same time as bringing Jack back from the dead, although Rose’s jealous glances in Lynda’s direction made it quite clear what she thought about the other woman’s attitude towards the Doctor. Meow!

That whole resolution to the Bad Wolf mystery managed to be pulled off without leaving a sense of anti-climax or underwhelming, which was a big relief, although it was a little confusing in places – was the Bad Wolf Rose, or the TARDIS speaking through Rose? Or was it supposed to be deliberately ambiguous? Probably the latter. Whichever it was, Piper played the possessed Rose wonderfully, the extra elocution added to her speech for this scene marking her out as different just as much as the fancy CGI around her did!

It was the neat trick of the Doctor’s to have sent Rose back home, out of the way of the massacre – you really got a sense of Rose’s raw anguish and frustration at being sent back by her friend, and her grief at not being able to help him. Mickey and Jackie ought to have seemed shoe-horned into the episode, given that their scenes were such a contrast to everything else going on, but they actually worked rather well, and it was nice to get a sense of conclusion to their relationships to the Doctor and Rose, for this season at least.

Joe Ahearne continues the high standard of direction he’s set out in the rest of his episodes, ably supported as ever by the wonderful design and production departments of BBC Wales and everyone else working on the series. The only visual element I felt slightly disappointed in was the Dalek Emperor – the design just didn’t seem particularly distinct or iconic to me, although the close-ups of the actual mutant Dalek creature inside itself when it was speaking were effective. The concept of the Dalek God and the other Daleks getting some kind of religion was interesting, although perhaps it was an element too much for Davies’s script to fully support as there wasn’t much time to explore it, and it might have been better left as the focus of an episode all to itself. Perhaps in the future – after all, although they won’t be in the second season (probably – I hope not anyway, best leave them for a bit so their appearances always remain special), it’s impossible to believe we won’t be seeing them return every two or three years for as long as the new series continues to be a success.

Now, the kiss. Or to be more accurate, the kisses – for the Doctor gets friendly with both of his companions in this episode, something which has proven to be red rags to bulls with Doctor Who fandom in the past. I had no problems whatsoever with the Jack kiss – it was a funny, almost touching little moment as the Captain said goodbye to his friends, and it was amusing to see the Doctor taken rather by surprise. The Rose kiss I was much less keen on – I thought it was overly sentimental and mawkish and the episode could have done without it, but when most of the rest of the episode is so good it can just about be forgiven. In any case, it’s not the sort of detail I’m going to be losing any sleep over.

It can be taken, I suppose, as a kiss goodbye, as of course one of the main features of the episode is that it brings the curtain down on the all-too-brief era of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. This is a great shame – even if it was planned this way from the outset, as Davies and Gardner have claimed, it’s still a pity because Eccleston really is wonderful in the part, both in this episode in particular and throughout the rest of the season. He’ll be remembered fondly by both fans and the general audience alike, although his one season stint means it is sadly unlikely that he’ll become as deeply buried in the popular consciousness as some of his predecessors.

Nonetheless, that’s the situation, and it was always going to be intriguing to see how the death of the Ninth Doctor would be dealt with. Unlike Logopolis or The Caves of Androzani, The Parting of the Ways – in spite of its title – never really feels like a doom-laden story where everything is building up to the regeneration at the end. Yes, there’s a great deal of death and destruction as well as of course the impending threat of Dalek invasion, but it never surrounds the Doctor as much as it seems to do in those other stories.

That said, however, the regeneration doesn’t feel at all tacked-on or periphery – it may not have been the focus of the entire episode, but when it comes to it the sequence really packs a punch. Perhaps because of the special bond that’s developed between the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler, there really is an atmosphere of tragedy to this change – which seems more like a death than perhaps any other regeneration since the first. The Doctor’s sad reflection that he in his ninth form will never see Rose again really brings home the idea that even though each Doctor has the same memories and the same basic ethos driving him, he’s never quite the same person as he was before. How Rose – and indeed the production team behind the scenes – deals with this change and its impact on both the audience and the dynamic of the Doctor-companion relationship will be fascinating factors to follow over the next year or so.

In the few seconds we get of him at the end of the episode it is of course impossible and unfair to make any judgements at all about David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. The one factor which perhaps can be commented on in passing is the perhaps surprising choice of accent – the same English pronunciation Tennant employed for his starring role as the eponymous hero of Russell T Davies’ Casanova, rather than his own native Scottish tones as many – including this reviewer – had expected. The reasons for this will become clear with time, and however he speaks one thing is clear – Tennant is a fine actor, and I very much look forward to seeing what he does in the role he has perhaps been destined for for some time.

Roll on The Christmas Invasion, and the continuation of the fine new era of Doctor Who that the past thirteen weeks have introduced us to.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod! My inner eight-year-old is so very happy...

The final episode of this series was SO good that the Doctor kissed his companion AND I DIDN'T CARE!! Normally I would be up in arms at such un-doctorish behaviour but the episode was SO exciting and SO moving that it almost seemed OK. (Jack kissing the Doctor isn't a problem as that's the companion kissing the Doctor, not the other way round...)

Regarding the big mystery that was finally answered- I bet we all thought a one or several points, 'Ooh, I wonder if Rose could be the bad wolf...' and then thought, 'neah.' Thank you RTD for one of the most brillliant apotheistic twists we could have hope for. Don't quite see how the Daleks were able to survive the time war 'through' the emperor dalek but again - strangely - that doesn't really bother me.

There were alot of wonderful & iconic moments in this episode - almost as though RTD was ticking them off one by one. Dalkes breaking through a door with a cutting torch AND a regeneration in the same episode is quite literally fan heaven.

There were wonderful quirky, inventive moments such as the companion, boy friend and mother conspiring to break into a piece of Gallifreyan technology using a chain and a truck. It's so wonderfully bizarre. Again brilliant use was made of the stark contrast of colours and mood between Rose's council estate and a space station in the distant future where humanity is about to meet its end. There was powerful archetypal imagery with Rose attaining ultimate power (and becoming something a bit dangerous in th process - total power corrupting totally and all that). The Emperor Dalek attaining a god-complex, a re-visiting of the Doctor's hesitance to kill from Genesis of the Daleks, and the Doctor sacrificing himself for his companion.

And the Doctor regenerated standing up ...blimey- I'd never have thought of that. And it seemed to suit Ecclestone's dynamic and swaggering portrayal to a T. It was a much more empowering way to regenerate, when contrasted with the ususal vulnerabiltity and disorientation that surrounds most regenerations. It wasn't at all what I'd expected in terms of ceremony and solemnity - but instead it was fantasticly optimistic and almost like a redeeming process after the trauma of the Time War.

Christopher Ecclestone has left us - and what a nice goodbye speech we got. He really has put an enormouse amount of effort into this series and by the final episode, I think I'd forgiven all of the telling people to shut-up and gurning. He's done the show a huge service.

But now we've got to start dreaming about Christmas- David Tennant. Teeth. Barcelona. Fantastic.

With interesting concepts and a few odd twists, Parting of the Ways was a rollercoaster- and had it's fair share of ups and downs. With a warming display on the part of Mickey and a rare glimpse of Jackie Tyler's compassionate nature, complete with Captain Jack at his most 'heroic' (for want of a better word), it succesfully tied up the odd loose end.

No doubt a few watchers were punching the air in triumph when Rose revealed herself as the now infamous Bad Wolf- but for me, the ending was a kind of anti-climax. Having the Doctor able to explain his regeneration (as far as time would allow him) was a nice little addition that I think is helpful to the newer fans of Doctor Who. Ecclestone's performance in that scene reflected the disjointedness that regeneration brings brilliantly.

With the arrival of David Tennant as Doctor Number Ten, and a brief but unique introduction, on the whole the episode lived up to the credentials of a finale. However, the idea of the Doctor taking the Daleks' word of 'coward' unto himself seemed a little final, as if he expected to lose without a battle.

Rose bringing Jack back to life with her temporary 'demi-god' powers courtesy of the TARDIS....a good show of her feelings for him and the extent of her 'power', but a little off-key. And the dramatic rise in the series' death toll (once again) brought back the slightly darker and more sinister shadow behind the new and re-vamped Doctor Who.

Overall verdict? Great- but I have yet to decide if the new Doctor will fill his predecessor's shoes successfully...

I have really mixed feelings about this episode. The first 10 minutes where really clever and just fantastic! Most of the rest of the episode was great, but then the ending ruined it all.

Here we go again with the magic wand cure all solutions. This is a problem that the newer Star Trek series suffered from as well. No one ever fights it out any more. The writer paints himself into a corner and comes up with a magical way over the top cure all that ruins everything.

The writers need to keep things credible. Please listen to your viewers!

Others mentioned that it's unrealistic for taste in television or for similar shows to exist thousands of years later. I disagree because I think it's possible for television to revisist stuff from way back. We do that now all the time in fact. Television could have gone through many stages prior to the Daleks intervention. I think the whole reality tv concept was under explored. I would have made it a seperate story.

Effects! Ahh. I know about effects. I'm a professional 3D animator myself. The effects looked great, top notch, but the animation was choppy in some shots. I've seen this before on the show. There's no budgetary reasons to have this. A good animator would be able to make these shots smooth as silk regardless of budget. There's a way to smooth between keyframes with an ease in and ease out selection.

Captain Jack...

I really like this character. I'm hoping they don't get out of line with the gay stuff though. That aspect I don't like to see in Doctor Who, but otherwise great character and he behaves how I would behave in that environment. A much more entertaining Han Solo. Spin off show anyone?

Chris E....

The best by far in my opinion. I will miss him as the Doctor. I can't imagine anyone else in the role now. He put Tom Baker into 2nd place.

Rose.. Great as usual. Superb acting.

I haven't seen any other reviews but I think most would agree the ending was too over the top. The Dalek Emperor looked great. Would like to have seem move around though and personally I would rather have seen a Dalek invasion on Earth in the streets rather than in space. But that's just me.

What happened to the Jelly Babies by the way?

Oh my god....That was possibly the best episode of Doctor Who ever. Any Russel T Davies doubters shurely must be at ease now. This was mind blowing stuff.

First off Christopher Eccleston will be sorely missed. This was a huge send off for him and he deserved it. I often wondered why they never used the Daleks before for a Doctors finale. It was suitably big to use them for his final story.

The chemistry between the Doctor and Rose have been second to none. Billy Piper and Christopher worked so well together that i can just live in hope that David Tennant will have the same chemistry with the walking perfection that is Billie.

I loved how the Bad Wolf stuff came together, and the fact Rose turned out to be Bad Wolf instead of the Daleks was the iceing on the cake. It was much more satisfactory being her than the daleks as a whole. I loved how it turned out she had sent herself the messages.

The whole story was about death. The death of Jack, the death of the human race and of course the Doctor. Thank heavens Rose turned up and resurrected the brilliant Captain jack. I loved his kiss scene with the Doctor and Rose. Especially the kiss with the doctor. How times have changed for the better. here is hoping we see some boyfriends for Jack in series 2. If he is in it of course.

But the Daleks and especially emperor Dalek was brilliantly menacing and evil. I loved the battle of wills between the doctor and emperor.

I particularly liked the scenes where the Doctor tricked Rose into the Tardis and sent her back. I cried during the holographic message and loved Rose's scenes with her mum Jackie and ex boyfriend Mickey. My only complaint was that they didn't go into the Tardis with her to see the regeneration.

I laughed out loud when Jackie turned up with the big truck. loved that scene, so nice.

Rose as the Bad Wolf was great. She kicked ass as a higher being. Loved her destroying the Daleks like she had with the Autons in her first episode.

And yes, I am so glad they kissed. So good and heartwarming to see he regenerated and forfeited his life to save that of his true love Rose.

The regeneration scene was up there with Peter Davison’s. Now I have two favourite regenerations. I loved there parting words and Christopher and Billie pulled in award winning performances.

BAFTAs should rain down on this show.