Dalek

Wow. Gosh. Fabaroonie.

It's seven o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm seven years old again. Even though we'd seen a lot of it before, the first sight of the dalek raised the hairs on the back of my neck. It was a fantastic bit of scripting too - the parallels drawn between the Doctor's ruthlessness and the dalek's single minded urge to exterminate, and the idea of them both being the sole survivors of their species was a neat touch.

Christopher Eccleston was in top form, going from fear and panic, to furious rage and back again. Billie Piper's Rose was even better - she actually managed to make me feel sorry for the poor ickle dalek being chained up and tortured for fifty years, and the final scene where it got to see the sunlight before self destructing was almost a tear jerker.

Lots of iconic moments to remember - the dalek breaking free of it's chains, and it's implacable progress through the base killing everything in it's path. The alien museum with the cyberman head in a glass case. The Doctor scrabbling at the door of the cell trying to escape, before realising that his mortal enemy was impotent and helpless.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff, and notably dark and scary for a Saturday teatime. Torture, death, mayhem and destruction and a suicidal dalek - you've got to love it.