‘What lies ahead is for me, not for them.’ This is slightly frustrating, because there are moments as brilliant and moving as anything in the series: like the Doctor taking a moment to make sure Adric and Tegan are safe before he heads towards what, presumably, his future self has told him is his doom. Some of the dialogue is wonderful: ‘I’ve just dipped into the future. We must be prepared for the worst’; ‘A change of circumstances that fragments the law that holds the universe together’. And, far from treating this like he’s half bothered and just working out his notice, Baker’s performance is excellent: filled with a sort of distracted melancholy punctuated with flashes of the old smile.

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‘The future lies this way.’ One remembered for its atmosphere and tone rather than some of the shonky details (it seems unlikely the chameleon circuit works by having to land somewhere and measure something in detail before imitating it). There’s a curious resignation to all of this: even before he sees himself, the Doctor seems haunted, disturbed by the possibility that the Master is hunting him, morose about the reception that awaits him on Gallifrey. He misses Romana (who, brilliantly, had a photo of K9 next to her bed), and is unusually chatty about his past (‘there were rather pressing reasons’ for taking the TARDIS from the repair shop on Gallifrey, apparently). With the ululating, eerie Paddy Kingsland score and the TARDIS a dark and sinister space for the first time since Death to the Daleks, it’s very effective.

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‘Of course, the Master.’ It’s not just the Master who’s back: weak endings were a hallmark of the Hinchcliffe years, and make an unwelcome return here. The Doctor’s underwhelmed reaction to coming face to face with his greatest frenemy is par for the course in an episode that fizzles out.

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‘Now this Traken web of harmony is broken, I am free!’ An episode of killing time before all hell breaks loose at the climax: if this really were a Shakespeare play, this is the bit of the text that would be abridged for performance. The best moments are Melkur turning Kassia’s betrayal back on her: her motive was to prevent Tremas from becoming Keeper so she could keep him for herself (a nice secondary meaning to the title there). But, in a cruel twist, Melkur’s plan now relies on her becoming Keeper in her husband’s place. Hoist with her own petard.

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Another strong episode, with come very obvious Biblical overtones as the Melkur lurks in the garden of this paradise tempting Kassia. It’s unusual for a story like this to play out as family drama, with wife turned against husband and daughter, and the resulting mix of science fantasy and domestic drama is compelling and very Star Wars. Sarah Sutton is impressive as an imperious, precocious Nyssa – although there’s no hint that she’s companion material (the Doctor barely acknowledges her existence when they meet). Elsewhere, Neman’s love of money is a curious touch for an idyllic alien planet.

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‘No Keeper lasts forever, and the period of transition is always difficult.’ As the show hurtles towards the departure of its leading man, this could almost be a metaphor for the uncertainty surrounding its future. I’m sure this must have partly inspired some of The Keeper of Traken: lines like the defiant, ‘Trakens have survived times like this in the past. We shall do so now’ put a brave face on what must have been a deeply unsettling time behind the scenes.

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‘You were right, we abused our power. But judge whether we’ve not suffered enough.’ Romana’s dedication to freeing the enslaved Tharils provides the momentum that carries this through to the end – and beyond, as she leaves to become the Daenerys Targaryen of E-Space and free enslaved Tharils across the pocket universe. It’s a departure done without much ceremony or emotion, but works, I think, because Romana leaves with a mission in a way only Steven and Jo have before. You couldn’t really marry her off, and the excuse of not taking her to Gallifrey doesn’t apply so it had to be something like this.

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‘They’re only people.’ The reveal of the Tharils’ true nature – after we’ve already been encouraged to sympathise with their plight through Rorvik’s treatment of Biroc and Lazlo, the imagery of Tharils packed below decks like slaves, and offhand references to ‘Tharil hunts’ – is a brilliant, rug-pulling moment. Biroc sits in his great hall declaring, ‘we are kings’ as the Doctor grimly guesses that they are the enslavers the Gundan Robots were built to defeat. Two time zones – the fall of the Tharil Empire and its ancient ruins – converge, the blade of a Gundan axe slices into the same axe embedded into a cobwebbed table. The show hasn’t bettered the poetry and visual storytelling in this sequence. It’s astonishing.

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‘There are three physical gateways and the three are one.’ After the mystery of the first episode, this is much more down to earth. It provides some answers which, of course, only prompt more questions, but the overall sense is progress in unpicking the plot. The Gundan Robots are revealed to be the creations of a slave rebellion against an empire that once ruled all of known space, whose masters ‘descended out of the air riding the winds and took men as their prize, growing powerful on their stolen labours and their looted skills.’ There’s poetry in the script, which, combined with the fairytale setting of a long-abandoned feast, makes for a striking and compelling episode.

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For the most part, Doctor Who isn’t the kind of cerebral, “grown up” SF that the BBC occasionally dabbled in during the Sixties and Seventies – earlier Out of the Unknown, A for Andromeda, occasional Play for Todays kind of thing. But it can be. Warriors’ Gate is the convergence of Bidmead’s push to get “proper” high concept SF scripts and JNT’s push to bring in new production talent. Apparently it was a nightmare to make, but the result is a long way from the unsatisfactory clash of styles in The Leisure Hive.

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