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Doctor Who Offers Look at How Series 2 Brought the Show to New Heights

Blimey, has it really been 14 years since Series 2 of the new Doctor Who? 2006 was the year where everything changed. It was David Tennant's first season as The Doctor and Billie Piper's second and last. It was the season that caught fire in the US and turned the show from a decades-long cult to a massive global pop culture phenomenon. Teenage and 20something women discovered the show and fell in love with Tennant as their geek boyfriend. Girls everywhere identified with the "everygirl" qualities that Piper brought to Rose Tyler. Showrunner Russell T. Davies also became more confident and started to throw in genuinely crazycakes ideas in the show. He also began to knit the show's past continuity into its present to establish it's a continuation of the show and not a reboot after all. It was the beginning of the peak of the show's popularity.

Of course the BBC would put together a compilation of the best moments from that season in a 45-minute video on the official Doctor Who YouTube Channel.

"New Earth": Funny that the video starts the Doctor vaccinating a bunch of plague-ridden patients and causing herd immunity. That's unexpectedly timely, especially considering this was back in 2006 – 14 years ago!

"Tooth and Claw" was fun. The Doctor meets Queen Victoria and werewolves in Scotland! That moment where the Doctor looks at his first lycanthrope not in fear but in awe and reverence. "That's beautiful!" Then he has to kill it.

"School Reunion": The reunion with Sarah Jane Smith (Liz Sladen) and the establishment of past companions' love for the Doctor. The first real tie-in to past continuity on the show with more to come.

"The Girl in the Fireplace" makes the first overtly romantic story in the series that points out that the Doctor can and does fall in love. This only worked because of the genuine chemistry between Tennant and Sophia Myles. The two dated in real briefly after shooting that episode.

The reintroduction of the Cybermen to the 21^st Century audience and composer Murray Gold's entire new orchestral suite for them.

I'd forgotten about "The Idiot's Lantern" and "Fear Her" because they were probably the weakest, most forgettable stories in the Russell T. Davies era.

"The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", a 2-parter which is really a remake of cult Science Fiction horror movie Event Horizon. The Doctor faces Satan in space over a black hole. High concepts galore!  This story also introduces the Ood. Of course the Doctor was going to face off against Hell at some point. It's a fun conflation of Hammer Horror and Science Fiction that only the show can pull off.

"Love and Monsters", the annual Doctor-lite episode that's considered one of the worst stories of the modern series, which featured one of the worst monsters in the show's history and ended on a really awful and creepy sex joke. And a criminal waste of the wonderful Shirley Henderson.

"Fear Her", which just had to have the Doctor light the torch at the London Olympics in one of the most shamelessly cheesy moments of the show. And the foreshadowing of the loss of Rose Tyler.

"Army of Ghosts" and "The introduction of Torchwood before it turns into a spinoff starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness. The Daleks vs. Cybermen clash old school fans always wanted to see. And of course, the loss of Rose through the dimensional rift and their goodbye. The completion of Rose's arc as she goes from shop girl to defender of the Earth in another universe. And the image of a Time Lord weeping for his lost love.

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