Exactly thirteen years ago today, on Saturday March 26th of 2005, Doctor Who returned to the BBC after a sixteen year absence. Happy birthday, NuWho! 

As for today's viewing, on a surface level it plows the same fields as the Sixth Doctor story Vengeance on Varos but updated for twenty-first century television. So let's talk about that.

Bad Wolf

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The setup of this story has the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack all waking up inside futuristic versions of popular 2005-era British game shows. The Doctor finds himself as a housemate in Big Brother, Rose is a contestant on The Weakest Link, while Jack gets a makeover in What Not to Wear (hint: at a more than one point he proudly wears nothing). In this version, the human hosts are replaced by robots - all of them actually voiced by their real-world counterparts, which was a nice touch. Also, the losers of the games are completely vaporized, so it's win-or-die.

Fun fact: this scene originally included a shot from behind including John Barrowman's bare buttocks, but the BBC made them cut it.

It's a lot of fun, especially John Barrowman amping up his charisma to epic levels as Jack, and by itself it could have been enough to carry the story. The real excellence, though, comes from two big reveals.

First: this story is set on the same broadcast satellite that was the focus of The Long Game earlier this season and is set one hundred years later. In that time, instead of mankind accelerating back to normal and turning into the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire it turns out humanity has gotten even worse and collapsed into a race of hypnotized couch potatoes watching perpetual game shows. The Doctor is forced to confront the fact that it was his actions that caused this, with humanity turning in upon itself once all news broadcasts ceased.

Second: the real force behind all of this tampering with human history is actually the Daleks. Somehow two hundred Dalek saucers survived the Great Time War, a half million Daleks cloaked out in space ready to unleash Armageddon. It's a massive reveal that was tragically spoiled by the teaser at the end of the previous week's episode. By the end of this episode the Daleks have Rose, and threaten to exterminate her unless the Doctor stands down. This leads to the second best Ninth Doctor monologue:

DOCTOR: No! Because this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to rescue her. I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet and then I'm going to save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!
DALEK: But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan.
DOCTOR: Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death. Rose? I'm coming to get you.

What started out as fairly light satire ends up with Christopher Eccleston giving one of the best performances of the series. As befits a season finale, this moment is the culmination of everything that has led here. It is moments like this, and like the ending to The Doctor Dances, that really makes me sad he didn't stay on longer. I completely understand why Eccleston chose to leave. I have a world of respect for how professional he was about his departure (even when his previous employers were grossly unkind and unfair to him). But wow, I am not ready to see him go.

And yet, tomorrow I will. And then, after not even two weeks with the Ninth Doctor, I get a full month and a half with the Tenth.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Ninth
Companion(s): Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness
Episode(s): Bad Wolf
Steps Walked: 7,341 today, 2,625,577 total
Distance Walked: 3.85 miles today, 1,364.92 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 52 today, 483 total
Weight: 251.73 lbs (five day moving average), net change -55.57 lbs