Doctor Who: The Best Episodes From Each Modern Series

14. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Series 1)

It was a close run thing with the other par excellence episodes of Robert Shearman's Dalek and Paul Cornell's Father's Day. But Steven Moffat's very first (proper), award-winning Doctor Who story has everything, and is memorable for many wonderful reasons.

Things quickly escalate, literally, when Rose takes her new Union Jack T-shirt for a spin around London via... barrage balloon during a Blitz bombing raid. Fortunately, a rather dandy and dashing 51st century Time Agent, whose invisible spaceship is casually (and awesomely) tethered to Big Ben, rescues her in suitably spectacular fashion. Hello our favourite cheesy beefcake!

We have a sweetly-sounding child in a gas mask looking for his mummy, innocently going about Wartime London transmitting cries of "mummy" via the TARDIS telephone, a radio, in sync with a cymbal-banging toy monkey, and a typewriter - which was added later on because the episode was originally too short.

It has one of the best cliffhangers, which followed that viscerally vivid scene straight out of a Lovecraftian horror where Doctor Constantine's face agonisingly and terrifyingly transforms into a gas mask. But best of all, following the traumatic events of the Time War, it continues the Doctor's personal healing process in the most uplifting and joyous way: just this once, everybody lives!

It showcases some of the very best in British acting talent with Richard Wilson's resolute Doctor Constantine, Florence Hoath's brilliantly nuanced portrayal of the canny and caring Nancy, and the best NuWho Doctor-companion dynamic - alongside Ten and Donna - in Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.