‘Ah, an existentialist.’ It’s fun in a different way from the rest of Season 24, furry dice in the Nosferatu cockpit excepted. The erudite guard who spouts lit crit like a PhD student is a neat subversion of the usual grunts, a joke that works on the superficial level of confounding audience expectations, and then on a fannish level for anyone who got The Unfolding Text reference (I only know because I’ve been told). I’ve half-jokingly compared Season 24 to Season 17 before, and while I wouldn’t die on that hill, I do think there’s a playful, witty strand in this that’s not a thousand miles from what Williams and Adams were up to.

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‘This is the real McCoy, this is.’ The idea of an evil supermarket manager plotting the conquest of the 12 galaxies from his freezer department in between arranging for the sliding doors to be fixed is exactly the kind of premise that would have been at home in a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. That sensibility inhabits the story, which is full of ideas that could have come straight from the strip: the mark of Kane, the singing crystals, the space cantina, even the planet Svartos itself. Kane is a comic strip villain, imagined as Ice Dracula (he sleeps in a coffin, has a widow’s peak and captures a spaceship called Nosferatu). This shouldn’t be a surprise given Cartmel’s interest in 1980s comics, but this, even more than Paradise Towers, nails the style.

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‘It’s a superfood created by the bees themselves. It has the ability to change an ordinary worker bee larvae into a queen.’ I enjoy the way the plot is explained not through the usual rushed exposition or “I’ll explain later” but by an elderly Welsh man whose enthusiasm for bees figuratively explains the entire life cycle of the Chimeron. Or perhaps he’s actually as manipulative as the Doctor, with a few well-chosen words prompting Billy to transition to ensure the survival of the Chimeron species. I’m left with the sneaking suspicion that in the end Billy’s future might not be quite as he expected: he’s not going to be Delta’s sweetheart but the young princess’ stud – that’s definitely the implication of Gornowy’s parting shot: ‘The new young queen comes along and the whole colony swarms all around her, and off they go to find a new hive. A new hive and a new life.’ I can believe Delta’s in on this too: look at the little smile she gives when she kills a Bannerman at Goronwy’s farm. She’s cold as ice. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be a tyrant queen that Gavrok was rebelling against.

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‘Who will stop me? You, with your puny flag and your appeals to fair play and justice, huh?’ Again, there’s a surprisingly brutal streak underneath the whimsy, with Murray and his Nostalgia Tours passengers exploded by Gavrok and the Bannermen in a shockingly Sawardian massacre. Don Henderson makes a much more credible baddie than Richard Briers did, disgustingly feasting on raw meat as he studies everyone intently like a predator contemplating prey. I like the little touches of make-up on the Bannermen – red-rimmed eyes, scarlet tongues, piggy hooves – even if they largely remind me of the Robomen from the Dalek Invasion of Earth movie.

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‘I don’t just kill for money. It’s also something I enjoy.’ This is different: a historical set within living memory, practically within the show’s own lifespan. And not for the last time in the McCoy years. Again, this all unfolds with a pleasing sense of fun even when some of the subject matter is grim (the corpse strewn battlefield at the start includes a grisly moment when one of the bodies is blown up). The holiday camp setting isn’t unique (The Macra Terror and The Leisure Hive), but it’s a sensible choice – a microcosm of 1950s Britain. Alien tourists visiting Earth’s history for larks is such an obvious idea you wonder why Graham Williams didn’t get there first.

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‘Bring them all out, all the nasty human beings. The Caretakers, the Residents, the Kangs, all of them.’ I think it’s mostly Briers as Kroagnon that really irks fans. The Chief Caretaker was a heightened version of his Ever Decreasing Circles character, in keeping with the other inhabitants of the Towers. But Kroagnon is just a joke performance that’s only occasionally funny (the look he gives Pex when they’re hurrying through the corridors). A more interesting choice might have been to tone it right down, so that Kroagnon and the Doctor suddenly become the only characters in this world with any gravitas, worthy opponents. Instead, it equals Graham Crowden’s death scene in The Horns of Nimon without the excuse that Briers didn’t know it was a take rather than a run-through. Fittingly, for such a rubbish villain, he gets a rubbish death scene – pushed through a door and exploding, rather than anything more creative.

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‘This is no time for games. The future of Paradise Towers is at stake. We must all work together.’ Some of the themes of the McCoy years emerge as the Blue and Red Kangs have to overcome their enmity, pawns joining forces to combat a once-repressed but now resurgent evil. The beast in the cellar is Kroagnon – the Great Architect imprisoned, like Freddy Krueger, by the Kangs’ parents and now getting his revenge on the children. This reveal gives Paradise Towers a haunted house vibe as it begins turning on its unwelcome inhabitants.

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‘That delicious little Mel…’ I can see why fans in 1987 didn’t like this: after all the backstage drama of the last few years, a black comedy about Richard Briers feeding people to a beast in the cellar while middle aged lady cannibals catch Bonnie Langford in a crocheted shawl probably made their hair stand on end. Even though it’s the best story since, this isn’t gritty and tough like The Caves of Androzani (AKA the one the show spent too long trying to replicate). It’s more like something that previously only Graham Williams might have countenanced. Divorced from its context, it’s obvious that this has more in common with RTD’s revival than it does with Androzani. It has a sense of fun, a disregard for sci-fi cliches, and a delight in the outré possibilities of Doctor Who. It’s like a Pete Walker horror film, and I adore it.

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‘It’s seen better days, that’s what’s happened.’ This is as big a change as The Leisure Hive, less for the visuals, which superficially echo Varos, but in the quality of the script. Suddenly, for all their odd slang sayings, these people speak like human beings. Mel might be on the menu for two cannibals from a dystopian future, but it sounds just like they’re having a cosy chat. The Doctor gossips away to the Deputy Chief Caretaker about the difficulty of doing a good job. Mel comes across as a middle class square, happier with the Rezzies than the Kangs, but even this humanises her in a way that the “computer genius with a memory like an elephant” brief never did. For several years we’ve had American teenagers that speak like characters from Victorian melodrama and space gangsters declaiming at each other in Bad Sci-Fi-ese. This is such a relief.

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‘I have the loyhargil, nothing can stop me now!’ Imagine this as Colin Baker’s last episode. Suddenly, the nature of the Rani’s plan is revealed – to transform Lakertya into a time manipulator allowing her to ‘change the order of creation’. A little local difficulty has become a danger to the whole universe. Appalled, the Doctor wires the time brain to explode, while Beyus and Mel evacuate the captive geniuses. As Mel guides them to the TARDIS she looks back at the Rani’s base – no sign of the Doctor, and then a huge explosion. He must have been convinced that it was the only way to be certain of saving everything. Mel is inconsolable, rushing back to the ruins to find the Doctor terribly injured, but ready with a final bon mot before the miracle of the Time Lords works its magic for a seventh time…

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