Donna has been kidnapped by a killer robot Santa. Cue the TARDIS, smashing into the freeway and bouncing off it, and chasing a taxi through the freeway, dodging cars, and rescuing Donna. The Doctor is controlling the TARDIS... with a bit of string!
"OI! Santa! If you're going to attack someone with a sonic screwdriver [picks up a microphone] don't let him near the sound system."
A retroactive one can be seen with Donna getting through to the Doctor, who coldly watches the Empress of the Racnoss screaming in anguish over her children, and getting him to leave the tunnel before the Thames floods it.
When introduced to the Doctor, Martha tells him that she's not just going to call him that—he has to earn that title.
The Doctor figuring out how to trick the Plasmavore into outing herself to the Judoon, which involves letting her drink his blood and almost dying. Quite ballsy on his part.
Martha confronts the Doctor about his lying to her earlier and gets him to tell her the truth.
When the Doctor confronts Brannigan about the reality that they may be stuck in their car in this traffic jam forever and then the monitor announces it's time for the daily 'contemplation.' The sound of all the passengers singing together makes it evident why they haven't given into despair yet.
Brannigan: You think you know us so well, Doctor. But we're not abandoned. Not while we have each other.
John Smith instinctively grabbing a cricket ball and bowling it, thus causing a chain reaction which prevents a mother and her child from being killed by a falling piano. Whereas this sort of thing would be easy to the Doctor with his Time Lord senses, keep in mind he's still meant to be biologically human at this point! Whatever the species, the Doctor cannot help being a Big Damn Hero!
When told black women will never be doctors, Martha proceeds to list every bone in the human hand from memory. Also an awesome moment for Freema Agyeman for memorizing all of that.
Son of Mine with his grand Breaking Speech against the headmaster.
Son: What do you know of history, sir? What do you know of next year? 1914, sir! Because the Family has traveled far and wide looking for Mr. Smith and, oh, the things we have seen. War is coming. In foreign fields, war of the whole, wide world, with all your boys falling down in the mud. Do you think they will thank the man who taught them it was glorious?
And the headmaster gets his own in turn, an eloquent rebuttal to the idea that those of the elder generation in WW1 were monsters who sent young men off to die without knowing the cost of war...
Rocastle: Don't you forget, boy, I have been a soldier. I was in South Africa. I used my dead mates for sand bags, I fought with the butt of my rifle when the bullets ran out, and I would go back there tomorrow for King and Country!
Rocastle gets another for realizing that there's someone else inside Baines.
John Smith, the Doctor's alternate personality, is brave enough to sacrifice himself for the greater good of a cause he knows next to nothing about.
The Doctor reveals himself as having changed back into a Time Lord and blows the Family's ship up.
The Doctor: Oh, I think the explanation might be that you've been fooled by a simple olfactory misdirection. It's a little bit like ventriloquism of the nose. It's an elementary trick in certain parts of the galaxy. But it has got to be said. I don't like the look of that hydrokilominator. It seems to be indicating that you're got energy feedback all the way through the retro-stabilisers, feeding back into the primary heat converters. OOH! 'Cos if there's one thing you shouldn't have done. You shouldn't have let me press all those buttons. But, to be fair, I will give you one word of advice. RUN!
The Doctor's punishment of the Family.
Son of Mine:He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing — the fury of the Time Lord — and then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden. He was being kind. He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star. He tricked my mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy to be imprisoned there, forever. He still visits my sister, once a year, every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her, but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you just for a second, that's her. That's always her. As for me, I was suspended in time and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England, as their protector. We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did.
Sally chastises the Doctor and forces him to explain the situation to her. He is visibly taken aback, even though he's in 1969 and reading her side of the conversation from an autocue with no audio.
The Doctor defeats the Weeping Angels by making the TARDIS take off and leave them in a position where they cannot move, without even being anywhere near them.
Jack's reintroduction, holding onto the edge of the TARDIS, through the Time Vortex, while she desperately tries to shake him off, traveling right through to the end of the universe before she's finally forced to land, having ran out of universe to go through before Jack was willing to let go.
The exchange after the Master opened his Chameleon Arch and remembered who he was.
Chantho:Chan,Professor Yana,tho? Professor Yana: THAT IS NOT MY NAME! "The Professor" was an invention. So perfect a disguise that I forgot who I am. Chantho: Chan, Then who are you, tho? Professor Yana:[barely a whisper]I. Am. The MASTER!" [electrocutes Chantho]
The Master's having fun taunting Martha, eavesdropping on her conversations, and being a total Troll. The second he hears the Doctor's voice on the line, however, he straightens up and stops playing. In an instant, the Doctor forces him to get serious, and it becomes a conversation between equals.
One heck of an Offscreen Moment of Awesome for the Daleks: Whatever it was that the Dalek Emperor did when it "took control of the Cruciform," it was enough to make the Master—for whom chaos and destruction are his bread and butter—go Screw This, I'm Outta Here Also a more subtle one for the Doctor at the time, since he implies that he saw it too, but decided to stay.
President Arthur Coleman Winters displayed some jackass, though understandable, behavior towards "Harold Saxon", but he stood up to the Master more than anyone else before his death and refused to tolerate his attitude.
If you think about it, this gives the implication that Winters might have been a member of the tiny percentage of the Earth's population who were immune to the Archangel signal.
The ending is one of the best The Bad Guy Wins scenarios ever to air.
The Master throughout the episode, really. He thwarts the heroes at every turn, and it's not until the end that we even know his endgame. He conquered the entire Earth, completely, in 18 months, using nothing but his brain and some satellites, and he holds it for an entire year. He may have got goofier in his old age, but he's also become competent. Horrifying, yes. Awesome? You bet.
Minor, but he uses “decimate” correctly (killing/removing one tenth of something). Most people just use it as a synonym for destroy.
Jack spends an entire year enduring repeated torture and death by the Master's hand and still doesn't break.
Jack going through the Toclafane to get to the TARDIS. And then destroying the Paradox Machine to free the TARDIS.
Martha's Moment of Awesome has to be when the Master has her imprisoned, kneeling at his feet... and she laughs at him. Then, she reveals that she has just saved the entire world by telling people a story.
Then, of course, the Doctor to the Master, while glowing and floating towards the Master, invincible and unstoppable.
The Doctor: Tell me the human race is degenerate now. When they can do this.
During the Year that Never Was, Martha did such deeds as going to Shipyard #1 in Russia, walking across radiation pits in Europe, being the only person to leave the burning islands of Japan alive, getting her hands on a disk telling exactly how to kill a Toclafane, and finding the parts for a fake gun. Her only defense? A low-level perception filter, that doesn't even really hide her, just make her unnoticeable.
Tom Milligan's attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice with his pistol, even though he knew that both the Toclafane and the Master were invulnerable to bullets, to try and save Martha, a woman that he's known less than a day.
