David Tennant’s 15 best Doctor Who moments

There are a lot of fun moments in this underrated episode from early in Tennant’s run, and the opening scene really sets the tone. Thinking that he and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) have landed in 1979, the Doctor rambles on about his love for The Muppet Movie and his distaste for Margaret Thatcher before stepping out of the TARDIS into what turns out to be 1879. Whoops. As soon as the Doctor realizes they’re in Scotland, Tennant slips into a slight exaggeration of his own natural Scottish accent. “Ah, I’m dazed and confused,” he tells the royal guard aiming a pistol at them. “I’ve been chasin’ this wee naked child over hill and over dale. Innit that right ya timorous beastie?” His disapproving reaction to Rose’s ghastly attempt at an accent works on more than one level and makes it even better.

By this point, Tennant had been playing the Doctor for two seasons plus two Christmas specials, so his commanding delivery of the Time Lord’s credentials had already been perfected. Even if he can’t get his numbering system quite right, it’s not hard to see why the terrified passengers of the doomed starship Titanic, including a waitress played by Kylie Minogue, would follow him anywhere. This installment currently holds the ratings record in the U.K. for the most viewers of a single episode in the modern era of Doctor Who, with an estimated 13.3 million viewers tuning in to see Tennant give this memorable speech.

After making her first appearance in the 2006 Christmas special “The Runaway Bride,” Catherine Tate joined the Tenth Doctor as his full-time companion in the season-four premiere. They run into each other again while independently investigating a mysterious company called Adipose Industries that has created a miracle weight-loss pill and is secretly breeding weirdly cute little animated balls of fat. (Only in Doctor Who could those words make sense.) Tate does most of the work in this cleverly conceived, wordless reunion scene, but the Doctor’s befuddlement at seeing her again is what really sells the comedy. The way Tennant meets her energy right from the jump is our first indication of how well they’ll work together from here on out.

The Doctor has seen so much death and blames himself for a lot of it, so when he gets the rare opportunity to save everyone, it fills him with joy and spurs him to action. In the second half of this two-parter (following “The Silence In The Library”), he’s about to give up after an entire team of researchers has been killed fighting the Vashta Nerada, microscopic, flesh-eating creatures that hide in shadows. One of the members of that team is River Song (Alex Kingston), who would become very important to the Doctor later on. At this point, though, all he knows is that she seems to know everything about him and has a sonic screwdriver she got from his future self. That turns out to be the key to saving not just her but everyone—in a manner of speaking.

The thing about being a human traveling with the Doctor is that at some point the adventure has to end. He just goes on living forever, cycling through companions as the years go by, changing his face, but remaining the same person at his core. That’s also true for Doctor Who as a TV series, in a way. Actors come and go, and their lives are never the same once they leave the TARDIS. Sometimes they get to come back, though, as Elisabeth Sladen in this episode. Returning to the role of fan-favorite companion Sarah Jane Smith, she reflects on life after the Doctor in a way that feels very meta. Tennant almost seems like a fanboy himself the way he lights up the first time he sees her, at a school where they’re both investigating a sudden and unexplained uptick in student scores. It leads to this thrilling moment of recognition, when Sarah Jane realizes who he really is. It’s enough to make you choke up, the way he puts everything he’s feeling into three little words: “Hello, Sarah Jane.”

For most of the revival series, the Doctor believed himself to be the only Time Lord left in the universe. Not so, it turns out. Unfortunately, the other surviving Time Lord happens to be the Doctor’s nemesis, the Master (John Simm). With the help of Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), the Doctor foils the Master’s plan to wage war on Earth, but before he can take him into custody on the TARDIS, the Master is fatally shot. The anguish Tennant conjures in this scene is heartbreaking as he holds his old friend in his arms, demanding that he regenerate to no avail. It becomes more subdued, but still visible by the light of a torch as he sets the Master’s funeral pyre ablaze, all alone in the universe once again.

To escape from a family of aliens, known simply as the Family, the Doctor traps his Time Lord essence in a pocket watch and becomes a human with no memory of his other existence. Along with Martha, he settles into a simple life at an English boys school in 1913. By the time the Family finds him he’s already built a life as his human alter ego, John Smith, and begun courting the school’s widowed nurse, Joan Redfern (Jessica Hynes). Their only hope is to bring back the Doctor by opening the watch, but the more John learns about him, the less he wants to sacrifice himself for this mythical man who didn’t even consider the prospect of falling in love as a potential complication. Tennant puts so much emotional heft into John Smith that even though you want to see the Doctor back to his old self, you can’t help mourn the loss of this alternate personality, who we’ve technically only known for one episode.

Finishing up the story that began in “Human Nature,” “The Family Of Blood” gives Tennant a chance to play two very different sides of the Doctor. And you can tell immediately which one he’s playing at any given moment—unless he doesn’t want you to. In the climax of this two-parter, he puts on a show for the Family, begging for his life and clumsily tripping into a panel full of buttons. That should have tipped them off right there, because pressing buttons is one of the Tenth Doctor’s favorite things to do. The transition from that bit of comedy to the chilling way the Doctor condemns each of the family to their own individual eternal torture is masterfully done.

Some of the memorable moments from Tennant’s run have gone viral, so even if you haven’t seen any of Doctor Who, you may recognize them. This is the episode that features the sad-Doctor-in-the-rain meme, and it happens when he has to say goodbye to Donna Noble. After she helps save the universe by becoming part Time Lord, the strain of it on her human body nearly kills her. The only way to save her is to wipe her memory and make her forget everything about her time with the Doctor and return to her life as it was before, never knowing her true potential or the millions of people she saved. It’s one of the saddest endings for a companion in the modern era, and it absolutely wrecks him to have to take that away from her. Incidentally, a popular fan theory about her return and the Fourteenth Doctor taking the form of the Tenth again has to do with his guilt over abandoning her here.

“The Girl In The Fireplace” is unquestionably one of the best standalone episodes in Tennant’s run, and there are so many wonderful scenes we could have chosen from it. This one gets the nod because it never fails to elicit a grin. He swans in right on cue, just as Rose is warning the clockwork monsters who’ve captured her not to piss off the man the Daleks call “the Oncoming Storm.” Returning in an inebriated state from what must have been a very lively party, he doesn’t seem like much of a threat. He swoons about with a drink in his hand, wearing sunglasses and his tie tied around his head, singing a number from My Fair Lady. “Among other things,” he tells Rose, who demands an explanation of where he’s been, “I think I just invented the banana daiquiri a couple of centuries early.” It’s all a ruse, of course. He’s just playing with the monsters like a cat plays with its food, disabling them with ease and hurling insults like “you’re Mister Thick Thick Thickety Thickface from Thicktown Thickania” as he does it.

In this companion-lite bottle episode, the Doctor takes a sightseeing shuttle on the resort planet Midnight, but there’s no such thing as rest and relaxation when you’re a Time Lord. The shuttle is invaded by a mysterious entity that seems to be possessing the passengers. Paranoia runs high as they all start to suspect each other, but before the Doctor can sort it out he gets overtaken himself. The creep factor in this episode is off the charts, reaching its apex when the Doctor starts repeating the words of another passenger. The strength of his will as he fights this violation of his mind is another great example of how much Tennant can convey with his face and physicality. You can practically see the battle going on behind his eyes, and it’s terrifying.

One of the most famous phrases ever to come out of Doctor Who originated in this episode, and the Doctor himself is barely in it. His primary function is explaining to the episode’s main character, Sally Sparrow (played by Carey Mulligan), how the monsters known as the Weeping Angels function. “People assume that time is a straight progression of cause to effect,” he tells her. “But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” The term has become shorthand for those times when you don’t have a good explanation for some sci-fi element that’s overly complicated. As such, it’s been applied to so many things beyond this show.

If we weren’t limiting ourselves to one pick per episode, we’d include the scene in which Rose gets trapped in a parallel universe and the Doctor loses her forever—or so he thinks. Despite Tennant’s incredible performance in that harrowing moment, it’s not the scene we’ve replayed the most from this episode. We keep coming back to Ten’s last few moments with Rose, using the power of the TARDIS, and consuming the energy of an entire sun, to say goodbye. Burdened by all the things he wants to say but can’t bring himself to, he urges her to live the day-to-day life he wishes he could have (with her, though that remains unsaid). He gets to hear that she loves him, but doesn’t have a chance to reply before the connection is broken. We know what he was going to say, though. And so does Rose.

Doctor Who eased viewers into the first big casting transition of the new era by keeping the new Doctor on the sidelines for much of his debut outing, “The Christmas Invasion.” Still recovering from the heroic act that caused his regeneration in the first place, he spends most of it unconscious in bed in borrowed pajamas. It gave the fans a chance to mourn the Ninth Doctor while building suspense for the Tenth to make his big entrance. And wow, what an entrance it was. All it takes is a nice cup of tea to awaken him from his slumber (a very British touch), and he’s off to the races. From the moment he bursts through the TARDIS doors to the way he takes down the prime minister with just a few whispered words, Tennant acts like he’s got something to prove, and makes you forget that anyone else ever played the Doctor.

Just as Ten was forewarned that his “song” would be coming to an end, we were prepared for Tennant to leave the show long before his departure. We had a good two years to process it, actually, with three standalone specials and an epic, two-part finale. The farewell tour ended with “The End Of Time—Part 2" and the Tenth Doctor revisiting his old companions, even going back in time to visit Rose just before she met Nine and set off on the adventure that would change her life. When his voice cracks on the words “I don’t want to go,” it’s as if Tennant is also talking to the audience, reassuring us that he’s loath to leave behind this role that he so obviously loved playing for five years. “This song is ending,” an alien Ood reminds him and us. “But the story never ends.”