‘It is time to use the Cabinet of Souls.’ So, imagine The Day of the Doctor except the Doctor uses the Moment to exterminate the Daleks. If Class had continued, I suspect Charlie would have followed the ninth Doctor’s survivor’s guilt trajectory: ‘I should be gone with them.’ As it is, Class ends here, with our hero committing genocide to prevent genocide, Quill still pregnant, April trapped in the body of a Shadow Kin, and The Sarah Jane Adventure’s enigmatic Shopkeeper revealed as an agent of the Weeping Angels.

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‘There will be no going back. You really will either end today dead or with your freedom.’ While the Class-mates were detained, their teacher was going through a very different ordeal. With Ames and an alien prisoner called Ballon, Quill goes on a quest to battle angels and demons with the goal of freeing herself from the mind-controlling bug in her head. By the end, there seems to be a permanent shift in the balance of power between her and Charlie.

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‘How many knobs does he have?’ The cheapie episode sees the Class-mates detained after hours by Quill, only for them to be hit by a meteor shower and the classroom to be ejected into space. Trapped together with no means of escape, uncomfortable truths and darkest fears bubble to the surface.

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‘Do any of you even know your own children?’ The parents are pulled into the latest apocalypse, as the piranha petals munch through humankind, April goes up against the Shadow Kin’s King and Ames comes a step closer to unleashing the power of the Cabinet of Souls.

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‘I don’t suppose we could have a moment of cuddling.’ A return to the multiple plot strands of the first episode, as the Shadow Kin King decides he wants his heart back from April, causing her to begin to share his aggression at precisely the moment her errant father reappears in her life. Meanwhile, Charlie is getting a bit too princely for Matteusz and Tanya’s liking, giving Quill the perfect excuse to throw in her lot with the mysterious School Governors and their representative, the new Head Teacher Ms Ames.

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‘Do you have love where you come from?’ This one reminded me of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Seven episode Conversations with Dead People, in which a malevolent force came to the characters in the night in the guise of their dear departed for its own nefarious purposes. Here, a malevolent force comes to the characters in the night in the guise of their… well, you get the idea.

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‘He’s from Ofsted. Of course he’s evil.’ This is much better than the first episode, while being essentially the sequel to it as the characters (and specifically Ram) deal with the fall-out of events. It helps that the story is much more focused and disciplined, with the main plot exploring the consequences of Ram losing his leg and a lot of his self-confidence, distancing himself from the freaky friendships he started to make at the school disco and falling back on the relationships he has with the authority figures at home and on the sports field.

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‘It’s like the Hellmouth.’ 13 years after Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended, Doctor Who gets round to its own version, even channelling Welcome to the Hellmouth for the opening scenes of the Darla-esque Quill and a male student racing through dark school corridors – and the male student coming to a sticky end. And throughout the episode, writer Patrick Ness puts his cards on the table – within the opening five minutes there have been statements on race, class, gender and sexuality. This is a show that knows both its influences and its target demographic.

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