1.13 - The Parting of the Ways

The first finale of the revival is a great one. The Daleks are at their best when they are shown to be the ruthless, killing machine that they are; and they are shown as that here. Eccleston is terrific and it's a shame he that he wasn't around longer. You can see his pain as he closes the Tardis door and Daleks are screaming exterminate! You can see the emotion as he picks coward over killer. It's great stuff. Rose is very good too, as I like here refusing to just accept to go back to Earth, and here speech to Mickey and her mom that she's learned from The Doctor that you can't just sit around, do nothing and give up like everyone else in the world. It shows how she's grown. If I had one negative, it would be the kiss...

This is the second part of the two part season finale. This part is really excellent in almost every way. The only real downside to this episode is the unlikely plot element when it is revealed the Daleks have been controlling human society via Satellite 5 for many generations to supposedly set up an attack on Earth is an extremely convoluted and pretty unconvincing plot when a simple attack could have been simply carried out by a Dalek fleet without all of that effort beforehand.

The Doctor, Rose and Jack are on Satellite 5 as the Daleks attack and they all do their part to try to heroically stop the Dalek Emperor and his fleet. The episode has great drama, great action, great effects, great emotion and great script. The acting of the 3 heroes is great with John Barrowman, Billie Piper and Chris Eccleston all at their best. The Daleks are properly formidable and impressive with great voice performance by Nicholas Briggs.

In addition to the great adventure we also get a regeneration! Eccleston is replaced by David Tennant as The Doctor regenerates at the end of the episode. I was very worried but it turned out Tennant was going to be my second favourite Doctor behind only the legendary Tom Baker. Obviously the excitement of a regeneration adds to the qualities of the episode.

All of that outweighs the unconvincing part of the central plot which would normally drop my rating a couple of points. I feel I still have to take half a point off for this seemingly illogical planning by the Daleks so I rate this 9.5/10 which happily I still round up to ten for this site anyway haha. For the two parter my score is 17/10 therefore 8.5/10.

Russell T. Davies did a great job bringing Doctor Who back to our screens so successfully and this first series of the returned show was of good quality with some superb stories. A few less impressive episodes mean this series was not amongst the best in the show's history but it is a strong medium level season of Doctor Who. Christopher Eccleston was a great actor to bring the series back and portrayed the strength and the edgier, more thoughtful parts of the role really well. He struggled a little with the lighter more comedic aspects which he more recently admits were behind his discomfort that lead to him leaving. He looks slightly uncomfortable when acting more humorous scenes.

Series 1 Average Rating (therefore also all Christopher Eccleston episodes average): 8.38/10

Amazing acting by Eccleston throughout, he really shines here. His best performance on the show for sure.

The Daleks are incredibly threatening here (for the last time in NuWho really) and the futility of their fight back is very emotive and well done. The regeneration scene is great too.

Fantastic finale and a relatively satisfying conclusion to the 'bad wolf' arc.

My favourite finale of the Davies era. I feel the daleks threat level diminished a little after this. Always love them but this first season of new who made them powerful and intimidating and then somewhat fiddled to much with that later on. Eccleston is on peak form in his last story. Still hope one day some bugger convinces him to do audios or a multi doctor story appearance.

10/10 epic