When I knew we were going back to the beginning of "nuWho" to review the episodes, this episode was one of the ones I was really looking forward to seeing again, as I remembered it fondly. It wasn't quite as good as the regard my memory had for it, but it's still probably the best episode of the run so far.
Tracking a distress signal to an underground bunker in the far future of 2012 (!) The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) discover a personal collection of alien artefacts belonging to American Billionaire Henry Van Statten (Corey Johnson). Most is junk but to the Doctors horror the distress signal is coming from a damaged, but alive, Dalek that he has chained up. The Doctor is torn between his desire to end his greatest foes forever, Rose's naïve assistance and Van Statten's desire to own a unique object.
So the issue here is one of expectation vs Reality, in my mind, Eccleston berates the Dalek for its own existence and it's a classic lengthy monologue. In reality, it's a nice bit of business, but nothing like as Iconic. "You would make a good Dalek" is a nice comeback though and it does oddly tie into the idea that the war doctor is the one before this one and he's still dealing with some of that trauma.
Overall the show is good though. It's a first look at the iconic villain and the episode circumvents those old jokes immediately about getting away from Dalek's by heading up some stairs by introducing the flying mechanic. I love the skeleton effect on the deaths via the laser gun and the specific sound effect for it too. Awesome stuff. Bruno Langley makes his debut as Adam. I remember that he has a little run with team tardis - but at the moment I can't remember if he comes to a sticky end or not. I guess I'll wait and see. He isn't that strong a character here, so I can't imagine we spend that long with him.
It's still the strongest episode so far, just not quite the masterpiece I remembered.