It was quite fun to see Hartnell in shirt sleeves for the last episode – but he’s found another coat for this one, just in time for a journey into the realms of Universal’s Old Dark House horror. Right from the off, the haunted house isn’t exactly pitched as the most terrifying environment – Ian quips about the Daleks not liking stairs, and despite the swooping bats, floating ghost and dancing skeleton, it’s all written more like Abbott and Costello Meet… than a real horror story.

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The episode opens with a rather unique quasi-pre-credits sequence of the regulars celebrating their victory over the Daleks on Aridius – before the Doctor notices that the Time Path Detector is alerting them to the fact that there is a time machine on their tail. Cue a strange starfield through which flies the TARDIS and the Dalek timeship.

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As the ominous (and brilliant) title suggests, this is a much more serious proposition than last week’s episode as things take a decidedly grim turn for the TARDIS crew. Between murderous Daleks, ravenous Mire Beasts and Quisling Aridians, this has a greater sense of urgency and danger than anything since the last Dalek story.

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This episode has one of the most charming openings ever: a bored Vicki wandering round the TARDIS as the Doctor tinkers with his Time TV, Ian reads a ‘far-fetched’ storybook about alien monsters, and Barbara, practical as ever, does some dressmaking. This is all lead up to the big reveal of the Space-Time Visualiser, which can show any event from history, including Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, and the Beatles.

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This is a really good episode for all the regulars. William Russell is finally getting hero moments again – rescuing the Doctor from becoming an exhibit, and forcing Lobos to reverse the freezing process. Having incited armed revolution, Vicki heads back into the Space Museum to search for her friends. And Barbara is the one to drag Dako to safety from the Morok gas attack, before she gets to reflect on their existential dilemma, and finally cleverly defuses a brewing temper tantrum by the Doctor. As this is practically the final time we’re going to see the whole team together, it’s a lovely last hurrah.

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Another week, another week of the regulars standing about wondering if they can change the future – and again, Barbara sounds like the voice of the audience: ‘All we do is stand around saying this whole thing is a nightmare. Why don’t we do something?’

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After last week’s focus on the regulars, the story begins to open up to explain more about the situation they find themselves in. Lobos is the governor of Xeros, ‘a planet in the Morok empire’. The Moroks were apparently once a great spacefaring people, now declining into indolence and decadence. What’s amusing about them is that while the show has attempted to make previous aliens, such as the Sensorites or the Menoptra, ‘otherworldly’, the Moroks are basically bureaucrats with silly hair. They’re the kind of aliens Robert Homes creates. Had Holmes written them they would have been funnier, but probably not by that much. If there’s an issue at all, it’s the performance of Richard Shaw that struggles to land the joke.

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Most of the opening episodes of the sci-fi adventures are relatively eerie – from the exploration of the Dead Planet Skaro and the horrors of Marinus, to the spaceship tomb of The Sensorites and the weird surface of Vortis. This one’s pretty great though. The TARDIS has landed in amongst a whole load of rocket ships in a space museum. But straight away there’s something not right – the regulars aren’t wearing the same clothes as last week, and then a dropped glass reassembles itself in Vicki’s hand.

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Barbara runs away from El Akir, making him even crosser and causing him to hiss even more menacingly. But for another week in a row, she’s assisted by friendly locals who hate him for his cruelty. Ian encounters a less friendly local who plans to feed him to the ants, and Leicester quizzes Vicki, much to the Doctor’s annoyance.

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It all goes Julian and Sandy as the Doctor and Vicki spend the third week in a row mucking about with the punningly-named Ben Daheer. ‘Who’s your friend?’ Vicki sniggers as the merchant gives a fey wave. ‘A girl dressed as a boy,’ sighs the Chamberlain. ‘Is nothing understandable these days?’ However, things take a more serious turn when Princess Joanna approaches the Doctor, whom she senses she can trust, to discover King Richard’s plans for her future. The Doctor and Vicki continue to be a winning combination – Vicki’s now so settled in the TARDIS that she sees it as the only home she’s got, and although their plot in The Crusade hardly sets the pulse racing (despite the Doctor’s vague promise that court intrigues could be ‘very, very dangerous’), they’re much more fun to watch than the Doctor and Susan ever were.

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