British research scientists are disappearing, and an intrepid young journalist sets off to investigate... My favourite companion had left the show: how would Sarah Jane Smith shape up? Very well, as it happens, although the magic of the relationship between Pertwee and Manning was lost, and it wouldn't be until next season that the strongest of all Doctor-companion relationship would be established. We get to meet the Sontaran Linx, a design aesthetic so memorable that it was stolen by Star Trek: Voyager 20 years later. We also learn the name of the Doctor's home planet, Gallifrey, for the first time.

One of my all time favourite episodes at the time, this story still looms large in my memory. The big spiders! The chanting ("oom, haddy haddy um!")! The end of the world (again). It was good to have a resolution to the Mike Yates sub-plot, tragic to witness the death of the Doctor (I had watched since Troughton, but this was my first regeneration scene). Life, or at least Saturday tea time, would never be the same again. According to one of the novels, an irradiated Doctor took hundreds of years dying in his Tardis before returning to Earth, which is really too horrid to contemplate!

This was a truly memorable story, with some superb interplay between the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, a different kind of villain, and that heartbreaking ending. Sladen gets a much better leaving story than she had on arrival, a fitting tribute after her stint as the Doctor's longest serving companion. Who knew that it would be another 30 years before the Doctor and Sarah crossed paths again? That's 50 words... why do I need to write 100 these days? It's an injustice, I tell you! Oh well, needs must, and the Devil makes work for idle hands, I suppose.

This new season promises to be better yet. RTD has said they are as nervous about introducing a new Doctor as they awere a year before, but really, the lessons have been learnd, there is a hugely talented group of writers, technicians and actors, and a year ago they were taking a risk - what if te public wasn't ready for a Doctor Who revival, what if they hated the reboot? They got it sooo right last time, and this season we have the cybermen and the return of old companions. Tennant looks the part, this is going to be great.

Well, this is the moment I have been waiting for since the news of Eccleston's departure leaked out... It was worth every minute. From the tantalising trailers, through the Tardis crash landing, the Doctor's disorientation, his new harder edge and the final exchange with the P.M., this was Doctor Who as it was always meant to be. Tennant is the most convincing Doctor since McCoy (another Scot!) and by the end of the next episode we will all have forgotten the jug-eared incarnation. An almost flawless episode... I would have had the Doctor out of action for a smaller chunk of the 55 minutes.