The long wait is over. At last we can finally rid ourselves of the cheap tacky image of the Daleks, evolved over decades of derision by the same old critics. Now they can climb the stairs. Now they can sucker a man to death. Now all the functions of a Dalek do seem to be practical. But does the excellent realisation of New Dalek merely dilute its traditional message of menace, in the same way that New Labour was seen as a dilution of socialism in the late 90s?

Robert Shearman's answer is an emphatic NO. 'Dalek' sees a fantastic rebirth of a televisual icon in every possible way (I couldn't possibly comment on the rebirth of the Labour Party). In many ways this is the best characterisation of the Daleks since their debut in 1963, certainly since Power of the Daleks. The sheer scale of the species' capability is explored far more than it ever was in the original TV series, making one genuninely awestruck at the potential that just one machine could achieve. Everything is covered. Intelligence in its distress calls and downloading, Cunning in its duping of Rose, Pitiless in its destroying of all the militia in the underground facility, Ruthlessness in its holding the Doctor to ransom in order to escape, Confusion in its coming to terms with Rose's emotions. I could go on, but you get the idea. Where could one get this scope in most of the Daleks' previous stories? And yet that was what made them so appealing in the first place, that there was so much more to the obvious fascistic side they presented. Shearman and RTD deserve immense credit for going back to the roots of the Daleks' attraction.

Special credit is also due to the faithful reproduction of Raymond Cusick's original design. Any production team would have be tempted to start afresh, but thankfully RTD and friends have resisted this, appreciating that the original attraction of the design was the key to the Daleks' appeal. The modifications they have made have all improved the effectiveness of the design, in particular the blue eye, and for me, the speech indicators with the poorer lit scenes being highly effective. The classic old ring modulator is also retained, and Roy Skelton has been well and truly left behind in the voicing stakes by Nicholas Briggs, who produces a fantastically emotional performance, highlighting the Dalek's paranoia superbly.

Of course, all the other elements to Dalek ensure that this is a story of the highest quality. The mood is considerably darker than any of the previous tales and suitably so, since we are now beginning to explore in detail the immediate background to the Doctor's present situation, and the painful effects of the Time War. Gone are the inane grins from Eccleston and cheesy jokes (well most of them), to be replaced by an intense performance of the highest order. This is what many would have imagined Christopher's Doctor to be like from Day One, but the contrast from the first 5 episodes lightheartedness makes this even more effective.

Billie Piper continues to surprise with her acting, and shows she can equal Chris in the intensity stakes. Corey Johnson is superb as Van Statten, smarminess and ruthlessness incarnate, and pleasingly preserved instead of dying the usual villain's death. Only Bruno Langley fails to impress here, performing with too much innocence and naivety for a self-pronounced genius.

The story's location is another excellent feature, the bleak long corridors echoing all the old classic Dalek stories, and providing those much-cherished moments of suspense. Shearman says that the stairs scene was the first thing he wrote, and it's easy to understand why. This scene is directed and acted to perfection, and is the final put-down to the critics.

From a production point of view only Murray Gold's music disappoints, with a lot of over-playing in certain scenes - the Adam/Rose scene a particular weak point. That said, the choral sequences are highly effective in conveying the awesome potential of the Dalek and the rebirth of its power.

After this revelation, I for one hope that we see more of the Daleks in this series, and despite having zero knowledge of the stories to come (spoiler-free is much better you know), something tells me we will. The series will be all the better for it. It's so gratifying to say that the Daleks haven't been brought back just for the sake of it - the possibilities are endless. When one considers that the Daleks' origins go back 42 years this is truly a special alien.

I was unsure of whether I would enjoy Dalek. My earliest memories of the greatest Doctor Who villain are from the Sylvester McCoy outing, Rememberance. Seven years old, quaking in my armchair as the white Dalek climbed the stairs towards the Doctor. Awesome stuff. On a repeat viewing recently, I was slightly underwhelmed by the whole thing. The story didn't make much sense. The Daleks were not as threatening, they wobbled and looked slightly rickety. They were still good, but only just. The downfall of rose tinted spectacles I guess. No pun intended.

So, did Dalek dissapoint? No.

Of all the episodes of the new series so far, this has been the standout, even more so than The Unquiet Dead. Good humour, dramatic to a tee and scary to boot. The moment the Doctor first meets his old nemesis is thrilling and downright spooky, the single blue light of its eyepiece looming out of the darkness. A moment to stick in the minds of many a young child I hope. I know it'll stay in mine.

Christopher Eccleston's performance was bang on the nail throughout. He displayed none of the gurning weaknesses that let down Aliens of London and WW3. His trademark "fantastic" was less annoying and more a wonderfully unhinged show of relief. He excels with drama and flounders with the humour at times, so it's nice to see this episode played entirely straight. His fear of the chained Dalek, his hatred of it, chilling. I would have objected to the Doctor rifling through guns with the intent on destroying his foe, but the payoff of this was also part of the episodes finest moment. More on that in a while.

Billie Piper was, as always, good. Not much more I can say. It was great to see her feeling sorry for the chained and tortured Dalek. I'll even admit to feeling sorry for the thing as the scientist was going at it with the drill. The shrieks were another thing that left a lasting impression on me.

I shall be interested to see how Bruno Langley fares. For the first time since the Peter Davison era, the Doctor is now travelling with more than one companion, so it will be nice to see how this dynamic works and if it lasts. Adam has not really had enough time to settle in this episode, so we shall see.

Henry Van Statton was superbly slimy. Perhaps the character was a little cliche, but nicely played.

But of course, what of the Dalek itself? After all these years, is it scary? Yes, and then some. I got cold shivers as it broke free whilst screaming "that" catchphrase. You know the one. Begins and ends with an E. The resulting chaos and slaughter was both shocking and exciting.

More than the action, the emotional content was a sharp slap in the face... In a good way. To see a Dalek in such turmoil is strange. And the high point of the story, the climax, that finest moment I mentioned... Breathtaking. I nearly cried for the Dalek, with its pitiful fading voice and single tired eye. As the Doctor runs in, intent on gunning the poor creature down, and Rose defends it. The roles are suddenly reversed. It is the Doctor who is intolerant and hateful, quite ready to murder as the Dalek is finding itself unable to do the same, vulnerable, alone and confused. A great twist and a great bit of writing. Gravitas, y'know?

This week the tone was just perfect. After the farting, camp and rather pathetic Slitheen, this is truly welcome. This is what Doctor Who should be. A perfect balance of humour, action, suspense and drama. Murray Gold even outdid himself in places. For all the excitement this episode had built up, I did not find my expectations so cruelly shattered.

I would put this right up there with the best of any other Dalek episode, Genesis included. There can be no higher praise surely?

Oh yeah, hooray for the Cyberman head.

The last Dalek television story was ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ in 1988; a story which, like many earlier stories featuring the famous monsters, ended with the total annihilation of the Dalek species. Unsurprisingly, this is overlooked in ‘Dalek’ and yet the story begins with Skaro’s inhabitants having already suffered a calamity which has left only one surviving example of its malevolent species. This individual soldier is being held captive at an exhibit in a privately owned museum in a Utah of the near future. Initially, the creature is in an sorry state of extreme decrepitude, unable even to exterminate the Doctor when the chance presents itself. However, thanks to the clumsy intervention of Rose the Dalek is able to regenerate itself, recover the power to activate its’ laser and go on the rampage. What then follows are some of the best sequences of the new series so far, with the Dalek doing what is does best and single headedly wiping out several groups of heavily armed soldiers.

There are one or two differences between this Dalek and the more familiar predecessors, but they are mainly in the form of new tricks which it is capable of performing rather than radical re-imaginings of the creature’s character. We all know that the Daleks could fly in the old series, as they did so clearly in ‘Remembrance’ and it was inferred that they did so in ’Revelation of the Daleks’ also (how else did that Dalek fire from such an elevated position in episode two?). The Dalek in this story also flies, doing so at several points in the story. It is also capable of rotating not only the dome on top of its shell, but the central area at which the arm and gun are mounted. The suction cup on the end of the arm is now capable of moulding itself into different shapes—firstly to crush the skull of a scientist and then to hack an electronic keypad. The laser blasts look less like the thunderbolt-look from ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ and ‘The Five Doctors’ special edition and more like the tradition blue beam of energy from the earlier stories. When the targets die though we are now treated to a stunning x-ray death akin to those seen in the Doctor Who comic strips. Towards the end of the story the bonded polycarbide armour of the Dalek opens up to reveal the mutant inside, probably the longest and most generous footage ever allowed of the actual mutant but very much in keeping with earlier appearances. Finally the Dalek commits suicide using the half-spheres around its base. How exactly these worked is never explained, but they seemed to create some kind of destructive field around the Dalek which completely wiped it out. Other tricks the Dalek displayed in the episode include drawing energy from a television monitor whilst simultaneously downloading every piece of information available on the internet, using it’s casing to set fire to or extrapolate DNA from whomever touches it, and generating a defensive shield around itself which caused all bullets to disappear before making contact.

The writing for this episode was unlike anything yet seen in this series so far. It avoided the irritatingly facetious levity of Russell T Davies’ episodes and allowed for the most dramatic exchanges of dialogue we’ve yet had from the 9th Doctor. The scenes in which he verbally spars with the Dalek are mesmerising and powerful, and even the Dalek’s perspective is given an convincing angle. There are also several surprises thrown in, including the Cyberman head on display in the museum, the reference to Davros and the acquisition of a new assistant in Adam, something I really wasn’t expecting.

One aspect of the story which narrowly avoided being disappointing was the emotional baggage that seems to be passed from one episode of this new series to the next. Like earlier stories, there were gratuitously soppy scenes of Rose and the Doctor facing death and once again telling one another how they’re glad they met each other. I’m getting a little tired of these scenes and am hoping they wont carry on into the 10th Doctor’s era, but clearly the production team think they are necessary. One genuinely moving aspect of the story was the Dalek itself. True, it kills lots of people and shouts exterminate in the voice we all love, but it also demands the sympathies of the viewer. The suicide of the Dalek at the end of the episode could so easily have been derived from the same sentimental trash as that seen in ‘The End of the World’, and indeed I can imagine a Russell T Davies version of this story ending with the Dalek killing itself because it was lonely (as in ‘Remembrance of the Daleks). Thankfully though, writer Robert Shearman comes up with a much better justification of the self destruction: because of Rose’s DNA the Dalek is mutating into something other than a Dalek, therefore it considers itself to be impure and can’t face a none-Dalek future. In short, it is killed by it’s own xenophobia. This theme of ethnic cleansing it one that lingers at the heart of the Dalek legend, featuring prominently in stories like ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and ‘Evil of the Daleks’ as well as many others. In fact, ‘Dalek’ draws many comparisons to ‘Evil of the Daleks’ in its treatment of the idea of Dalek nature contaminated by humanity. Being about twenty years too young to have seen ‘Evil of the Daleks’ and having only experienced it through the soundtrack and single remaining episode, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to see this adventure—a story which promises great potential for future episodes. Lets hope the next story is just as dramatic.

I think this episode is without doubt the episode everyone has been waiting for since the series started, even before. It doesn't matter whether your a fan of the show or not, watched the original or not, because there's not many who haven't heard about the daleks. Even those who are too young to remember the original series have heard about the Daleks, so expectations for this episode were high.

The episode opened with a cameo from another of the Doctor's biggest and famous of enemies-the Cybermen. Luckily enough for the casual viewer the quick climpse wasn't laboured and full with remarks to previous encounters between TimeLord and Machine. Had this been the case many would have soon turned off put off by the constant remarks to events they know nothing off. Luckily the sequence was quickly over and the Doctor was arrested.

He was quickly introduced to the second villian of the piece, an american billioniare who collects alien artifacts. He wasn't the best of characters to be honest. Whether that was due to poor scripting or acting its difficult to tell but he didn't shine out, he just felt like a plot device to introduce the audience and the Doctor the main enemy of the episode-The Dalek. The Doctor stroded agrogantly into the cage expecting he could help the alien and expecting the alien to be greatful of his help. The last thing he expected to see was his arch rival hidden in the dark and the horror on the Doctor's face was plain to see.

The episode quickly picked up some much needed pace so it could be all over and done with in 45 minutes because of the restrictive new format. This episode could have done with being a two-partner to allow events to be spread out instead of feeling rushed. The deaths could have had more of am impact if the Dalek chasing through the corridors was expanded. It slowly hunting down and killing its captors. We could have seen the fear, horror and tension from the other characters as they fought for their lives and the realisation that there's a better killing machine other than mankind. All these themes and others could have been explored more deeply but let it not be said that this was an excellent episode.

The influence of the new Battlestar Galactica could be felt here. The enemies in that series were once chrome robots who hunted down mankind because they had no other purpose. But the new Cylons are humanoid and have emotions, they have evolved and because of it you feel for them. Their are times when you are on their side or at least you understand their motives. This episode had examples of that. The Dalek, by using Rose's DNA to regenerate, developed emotions as a side effect and by doing so the audience began to feel for it. You sympathised with it, more so than with the Doctor. The Dalek was the last survivor of its race and all it could do was follow long programmed orders to kill but desperately wanted new ones. Meanwhile the Doctor almost became the villian of the piece through his determination to kill without listening to reason or letting emotion come in the way. Even the Dalek pointing out the Doctor was acting more like his species than Timelords didn't really stop the Doctor. It took Rose and the mutating Dalek begging to be killed for the Doctor to realise what he had become.

The episode also confirmed my suspsion that the Daleks were invovled with the great timewar and also hinted that if a Dalek survived other Timelords may survive as well.

Once again Billie Piper stole the show with brilliant acting and the supporting cast were better than some so far although perhaps not as brilliant as one was hoping. Christopher Eccelston improved on previous performaces as the Doctor but he still doesn't quiet feel like the Timelord I have come to know and love thanks to UkGold repeats, VHS and DVD releases due to being too young to remember the original series. This episode gives me hope for future episodes after previous ones failed to engaged or to impress me, bar Wolrd War Three that is.

Once again, the work of a different writer marks a much welcome change of tone and pace for the show.

There were huge expectations for 'Dalek' - the return of the most celebrated of the Doctor's enemies, the middle-season event episode, the promise of a darker, more complex tale.

Incredibly, it delivered.

After the slightly goofy shakiness of 'Aliens of London' and 'World War Three', we were thrown straight into a tighter, more claustrophobic setting in the form of Henry Van Statten's UFO museum, deep in a bunker in Utah. The Doctor and Rose are catapulted into the tale within the first five minutes (after a rather wonderful fan-pleasing moment featuring a Slitheen arm and - brilliantly - the helmet from a classic series Cyberman), giving us over to the episode's real star - the Dalek itself.

There has been huge build-up to this moment - the Doctor's vague references to the Time War which wiped out the Time Lords and was responsible for countless further damage to the Nestenes and Gelth, amongst countless others, have clearly been related to the Daleks.

And the creature's unveling, followed by the Doctor's gobsmacked reaction, which soon turns to venomous hatred, was outstanding. This was not a dumb, clumsy pepperpot which could only yell 'Exterminate', this was a soldier, intelligent, manipulative and incapable of understanding that there was nothing left for it to fight for.

Until, that is, it uses some of Rose's DNA to repower itself (a contrivance which seems sketchy but is entirely forgiveable given the places it takes the story) and sets about wiping out the inhabitants of the bunker.

There were so many superb moments here, not just Doctor Who moments but moments of real, heartfelt drama. Chris Ecclestone, after looking a little unsettled in the previous tale, dives into the script with a vigour and commitment which is entrancing to watch. Here is a Doctor who is not only eccentric and mercurial, he is damaged. He still hurts and hates for what happened to his people. Ecclestone's movement from fear to hatred to anguish to desperation to sympathy is an absolute joy.

Yet, almost unbelievably, it is once again Billie Piper who runs away with much of the episode. She has none of the Doctor's (or, indeed, many of the audience's) history with the Daleks, allowing her to see the wretchedness of its existence and to show it a second's kindness which ultimately saves all their lives and takes the viewer into the real tragedy behind the two races of aliens whose face-off she gets caught in.

Special mention should also go to Nicholas Briggs, who gives the Dalek more depth than any seen before.

It's hard to see how the series could get any better than this. Rob Shearman should certainly be given more episodes to write next season and I can only imagine what such a radical rethinking could do to, say, the Cybermen or The Master.

All this, and a new companion to boot. The Doctor has been back for a few weeks but now, finally, he's even better than before.

And just what is this recurring Bad Wolf reference leading to?

The Graham Williams universe seems to consist of planets that resemble the home counties populated by peoples who adhere to Terran middle-class etiquette. This is endearing and reassuring in one sense, perfectly fitting for the then tea time slot of the programme, and contrasts fantastically with disbelief-suspended extraterrestrial settings. It can stretch one’s sense of belief to the extremes however – think of Drax and his cockney lingo picked up from his days of dodgy dealing in London’s East End and his true identity as a Timelord trapped on another planet in The Armageddon Factor. No less incongruously, The Ribos Operation pits the Doctor against the cajoling machinations of Garron, an interplanetary con-merchant who explains in one scene how he had almost succeeded in selling the Sydney Opera House to an alien speculator. Garron, evidently incredulous to the Doctor’s well-travelled presence, particularly regarding Earth, impersonates a town crier at the beginning of this story which the itinerant Gallifreyan immediately recognises as “a Somerset accent”. Here then, at the very beginning of a story and of a season, the uncompromisingly parochial Williams micro-cosmos asserts itself substantially for the first time. One might even say it does so earlier in the opening scene when the Doctor irritably confronts the White Guardian who is dressed in colonial attire, replete with sun-hat, and seated in a cane chair in dire need of a veranda.

Then there is the setting of the planet Ribos: an extrapolation of 19th century Tsarist Russia complete with crown jewels, snow flurries and ushankas. The incoming companion Romana too has a faintly Russian-sounding name in full (sorry, can’t remember the spelling) and is wearing a Zhivago-esque white fur-collared outfit missing its own ushanka. The Russo-evocative setting is amplified too by suitably sombre organ music emphasising the gloomy wintriness of a planet steeped in backward tradition – so much so that its inhabitants are completely ignorant of life on other planets and that aliens are mingling casually among them. This planetary obliviousness is exploited to the full by Garron and his indeterminately aged, monkey-faced sidekick Unstoffe: together they attempt to manipulate the battle-weary Graff Vynda-K into buying Ribos from them for his new base where he might regroup his forces for a last stand against those who have usurped his Levithian crown. Garron and Unstoffe plant a lump of the adamantine Jethrik on Ribos in order to deceive the Graff into thinking the planet is rich in this, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy. Garron also claims the Ribans (note here how Holmes expertly avoids the semantic ease of calling the inhabitants Ribosians or even Ribons, instead opting for the slightly lateral variation of Ribans) are ignorant of Jethrik’s properties, not to mention reputation, and through a laboured elaboration improvised by a disguised Unstoffe, further lead the Graff to believe that the Ribans refer to the mineral as Scringestone, possession of which ensures “you’ll never get the scringes again” (Unstoffe). Though it is true the Ribans are unaware of the mineral’s true value.

But the honest-faced Unstoffe is later morally redeemed when his conscience is awoken to the ironic plight of the vagrant known as Binro the Heretic: his gift to this misunderstood genius who was persecuted for his theory of life on other planets is to tell him that he himself is from one of those distant stars – a truly moving scene. Equally emotive and harrowing is the Graff’s ultimate lapse into delusional paranoia on realising he has yet again been strategically out-manoeuvred by a typical Holmesian capitalist (also see the Collector in The Sunmakers, Rohm Dutt in The Power of Kroll and so on).

Otherwise The Ribos Operation is a fairly comical tale and one of the most uniquely static stories in the show’s cannon: there is virtually no action throughout the story and its impetus is almost entirely in the exceptionally colourful, detailed and lively dialogue between the writer’s proverbially caricature-style protagonists.

Detail is the word which springs to mind in summing up the strengths of The Ribos Operation – strengths which far outweigh its situational inertia and suspension of disbelief. Typical of Holmes’s imaginative genius, he teases us with hints of a planet with a rich history and geographical variation; more specifically in this case, he has the characters making geographically specific comments like “Are you from the North?” (to the Doctor); this is also to my mind the second and last time since The Keys of Marinus that a script has detailed an alien planet to such an extent that the concept of countries has surfaced: the events of this story are in the often-mentioned country of Shir (not sure about the spelling). Not since The Talons of Weng-Chiang with its allusions to an Icelandic Alliance, the Phillipeno Army’s final advance against Rejyavik, and the Peking Homunculus, has Holmes so vividly evoked a fictitious backdrop to his stories.

The Ribos Operation is not a classic Doctor Who story in the traditionally recognised sense – it lacks sufficient drama for a start. But it is a classic of its kind, that kind being of the dialogue-driven, stage-play style Doctor Who, an infectious medium in which the mind is gradually immersed in a trance of perfect escapism: a fictional scenario which feeds the intellect and puts all mundane preoccupations to sleep for a deeply rejuvenative period. And most of all, as previously mentioned, this story typifies Holmes’s gift at tantalising the imagination with half-sketched details never fully substantiated, which echoes of Hemingway’s theory of ‘omission’: that which is unstated strengthens the story and makes people feel something more than they have understood. This stimulating of the imagination was one of the vital functions series such as Doctor Who exemplified.