Doctor Who: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

"Are you my mummy?"

Like so many episodes of this first season, this Doctor Who two-parter was a trendsetter and, almost certainly, the most memorable story of Christopher Eccleston's short reign as the Doctor.

This was real, hide-behind-sofa creepiness with the gasmask-faced "empty child" wandering wartorn London asking: "Are you my mummy?" But Stephen Moffat's script had a darker edge as well, with undertones of child abuse, illicit sex and other nastiness that wars make a convenient cover for.

Of course, besides the "empty child", the main thing this story is known for is giving the world Captain Jack Harkness, the suave, polysexual, rogue Time Agent, who swept Rose off her feet (not that that seems to take much!) and even won The Doctor round with his charming ways.

Rose and The Doctor arrive in London during the Blitz, having chased an alien projectile there through time and space. Roaming the streets, looking for the crashed device, they meet up with Captain Jack and cross paths with the highly infectious "empty child".

An incredibly tight script, that manages to swing from light humour and sexual frisson to outright horror at a moment's notice, it's only weak point is its use of the infamous sonic screwdriver to repair cut barbed wire.

A small point, of course, but this marked the beginning of the screwdriver's ability to save the Doctor from any situation, to do almost anything, to be his "ace in the hole" for any emergency. It's a silly thing - but just for that moment the "truth" of the story is stretched a bit too far and you find yourself laughing incredulously at the show, rather than laughing joyously with it.