Doctor Who: Every Penultimate Cliffhanger Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

Following the wonderfully intense finale of Doctor Who's first season, series two was the difficult second album. But it turned out to be superior in every sense. It's multi-dimensional-spanning finale is still one of the greatest to date. And the penultimate cliffhanger episode nailed it to a fault.

Whilst audiences were certain Cybermen were set to appear in the finale, nobody expected them to be achieving a full-scale conquest of earth. The reveal that the enigmatic ghosts appearing across the planet were actually Cybermen breaking through from a parallel universe was a stunning twist.

But Russel T Davies wasn't done upping-the-anti. Within the same final five minutes, and closing off the episode in jaw dropping fashion, came the completely unexpected return of those pesky Daleks, who hadn't even been seen for that entire season.

It was a smart double-hit which could only have worked once, so Russel T Davies was clever in pulling it out the bag so early on in the show's life. There have been numerous Earth-invasion arcs from both Cybermen and Daleks since. But none of them have had the same clever simplicity and excitement established in Army of Ghosts.