It’s been a while since we’ve had a baddie go certifiably nuts, so it’s quite fun when Paul Whitsun-Jones really goes for it with the Marshal’s flip into fruit loops madness, staring wide-eyed at his model of Solos as he plots his new empire. He’s got competition though from possibly the gayest moment in the series to date as Ky transforms into a sparkling rainbow fairy and floats about beatifically. In between these two transcendent performances we get a courtroom scene (always a good move) complete with surprise witnesses and some rhubarbing administrators from Earth.

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With everything beginning to converge back on Skybase, this episode is largely about spinning plates for a week. Not a huge amount of new information is disclosed, not a great deal happens, it’s another fifth episode that feels like it’s marking time.

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Up to now some of Baker and Martin’s more off-the-wall ideas have been reined in presumably by Terrance Dicks and Christopher Barry, meaning that The Mutants hasn’t been quite as disconcertingly weird as The Claws of Axos. That changes in this episode, which sees the Doctor plunging into a radioactive crystal cave to satisfy his thirst for knowledge (he should be careful about that) in a sequence that goes on forever and throws every video effect available in 1972 at the screen including slow-motion, electronic lightning and strange blobs, and sparkly haloes around everything. It’s as trippy as the inside of Axos, and the weirdest thing we’ve seen so far in a season that’s largely toned down some of the tartrazine excesses of Season Eight.

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For various reasons, location filming in 20th Century Doctor Who almost inevitably looks more impressive than studio VT, so it’s a no-brainer to point out that when an episode benefits from more than the usual proportion of film. Still, it is worth pointing out that Christopher Barry, who oversaw the extensive filming for The Dæmons, makes this look equally impressive. Chislehurst Caves, illuminated by various coloured lights, are a lot creepier and cavernous than the studio caves in Doctor Who and the Silurians, and the chase of Varan across the steaming Solonian landscape, as he finally emerges into the light of a hill overlooking his village has an almost Season Seven sense of scale.

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Having adjusted my expectations downwards after Episode One, I enjoyed this with far fewer reservations. Partly this is because the film sequences are up to director Christopher Barry’s normal high standards: the handheld shots look great, and the masked guards looming out of the fog make this look like an early episode of Blake’s 7. But it also helps that the Skybase sequences are lit more atmospherically (the Herbarium, where Meatloaf-wannabe Varan hides out is all red and green low lighting, and the power failure the Doctor engineers plunges the space station corridors into moody darkness).

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Without beating about the bush: this serial doesn’t have a very good reputation, described variously as ‘tedious’ and ‘leaden and unengaging’. In context, it’s neither of these things: it’s the first time Jo has gone into space (she gets a lovely moment of wonder as she gazes out of the porthole of the Skybase), and the first time the show treats the breaking of the Earth exile format as routine (there’s none of the lengthy set-up of Colony in Space, the Doctor accepts he can travel in the TARDIS so long as it’s as an agent of the Time Lords, and Jo has no qualms about going with him).

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It’s all go in this final episode, which is a vast improvement over last week’s misfire. Predictably, the Sea Devils prove as untrustworthy associates to the Master as the Nestenes, the Mind Parasite and the Axons, and he ends up locked in a cell with the Doctor who, fortunately, has reversed the polarity of the neutron flow (yay!) to destroy the Sea Devils and their base before they can take over the world.

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This is a let down after a lead up of four really entertaining, funny episodes. While Malcolm Hulke has never tried to hide this is a companion piece to Doctor Who and the Silurians, I think here the comparison works very much not in The Sea Devils‘ favour. Partly this is because the dilemma is so unchanged from the earlier story. But largely it’s because the Sea Devils themselves aren’t given the space to become an equal and opposite culture to humankind, as the Silurians were. Instead, the Master takes the place of the arrogant “Young Silurian” in arguing against the elder Sea Devil’s willingness to negotiate, and so the Sea Devils themselves are reduced to props in the ongoing enmity between the two Time Lords. They look quite good, and their whispery, rattling voices are better than the Silurians’ warbling, but the Sea Devils just aren’t as interesting.

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Two of the classic clip-compilation moments happen early in this episode. First, the Doctor hurls himself on barbed wire, and uses the sonic screwdriver to detonate a minefield to scare off a pursuing Sea Devil (probably best not to ask why he didn’t just blow up all the mines straight away rather than than creeping slowly through them). Later, in a bigger and better repeat of the previous cliffhanger, a host of Sea Devils rise from the sea, at dusk, to attack the castle.

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The long recap of the fight sequence from the end of Episode Two indicates that this is going to be a bit thin, and the script is mostly just vamping, spending loads of time getting the Doctor out of handcuffs; Trenchard delaying Captain Hart’s investigations, and a submarine in danger from the monsters we already know are behind the missing boats. In theory, this is infamous middle-episode padding.

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