‘You can’t have the United Kingdom. There’s already people living there. They’ll think you’re going to pinch their benefits.’ Peter Harness takes the Daily Mail’s nightmare scenario seriously, with a slow invasion of immigrants seeking to maintain their own culture, and then to supplant the indigenous population. The Zygons play into all the stereotypes, with their “community leaders” trying to contain the ‘radicalisation’ of the younger brood but unable to stem the tide, and the gloating Zygonists triumphantly declaring victory in the first battle.

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‘I live in the world you leave behind.’ Catherine Tregenna, writer of some of the most striking episodes of Torchwood, arrives in the parent show with a script that similarly prioritises character relationships over action. The 21^st Century series has often raised the idea of the Doctor’s long life, and how living like a human being, day after day, is ‘the one adventure I can never have.’ This episode engages directly with it, of Ashildr’s life on the slow path, eight centuries of loss and heartbreak waiting for the man who did this to her to pop back in. She is another in a long line of girls (and boys) who waited, but of all of them she’s had to wait the longest and suffer the most.

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‘Oh Clara Oswald, what have I made of you.’ The big selling point of this was Maisie Williams appearance as the titular Ashildr, at the height of enthusiasm for her performance as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. Hence, we get her playing another medieval character who’s impetuously brave, outspoken and cunning, rejecting the traditional female role in her society. It’s like JNT casting Ever Decreasing Circles’ Richard Briers as a rule-obsessed busybody. As stunt casting it makes some sense, as the audience is supposed to instantly like Ashildr as much as Clara and the Doctor do – and the script tries to make it clear from the moment the Doctor has a ‘premonition’ about her that she is something special and important, all in service of that final, uncharacteristic twist.

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‘You can’t just go back and cut off tragedy at the root.’ This takes some leaves from the Moffat approach to two-parters, like a second half that introduces a new setting. But mostly, this is more of the same – running away from ambling monsters. It just so happens this time as well as ghosts there’s a man in a massive monster suit (with Darth Maul’s voice) with the same unfortunate gynaecological resemblance as a Vervoid.

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‘There’s a whole dimension in here, but there’s only room for one me.’ The first two-parter not written by Moffat since 2011’s Flesh episodes. I’d almost forgotten what these felt like. This one particularly feels like a throwback to Series Two, like a sort of amalgamation of The Satan Pit’s haunted Sanctuary Base under siege by something evil with the mystery spaceship and ghosts from Army of Ghosts. It’s pleasingly retro, and even if the episode ends up sedately paced and unlikely to top any season polls, it sets up some good mysteries around the ghosts, what happened to the flooded Scottish village, and how they’re going to get out of that cliffhanger.

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‘Have I not suffered enough?’ On the plus side, this leans more heavily into the idea of the Doctor abandoning Young Davros on the battlefield only to regret the decision and seek to make amends, trying to ease Davros’ passing and show him one last sunrise. On the downside… pretty much the rest of it.

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‘If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you, and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?’ Moffat takes one of the famous morality conundrums from Genesis of the Daleks and turns it into the Genesis of Davros, with the Doctor wrestling with the very real possibility that he can kill the man who created the Daleks and thus make good his failure all those years ago. The challenge being, in so doing he has to walk away from a child asking for help – to walk away from the name of the Doctor.

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‘You’re a dream who’s trying to save us?’ The Doctor and Clara meet their second legendary character this year – in another soft reset for what’s gone before. Last Christmas is the debut of Doctor 12.2, complete with new hoodie and jumper outfit that is going to be the norm from now on. I wish he had been written and performed like this from the outset: grouchy not misanthropic; given the chance, as keen to take the reins of Santa’s sleigh as any of his predecessors; apologising to Clara for his mistakes; being the Doctor. Capaldi’s performance evolves to match this – his spikiness now reflected in his movements, like that distinctive run (as unique as Pertwee’s arms-tightly-in, or Troughton’s bandy-legged scamper).

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‘I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through, helping out, learning.’ The 12^th Doctor finally rediscovers what it is to be the Doctor after Matt Smith memorably ended his time as a blood-drenched tyrant at the head of an army, issuing orders for the extermination of millions to the horror of Clara and his former friends. Except, oh, that never happened barring a possible future which was cancelled when a Clara fragment pushed the Great Intelligence in front of Bessie. Which means this whole series has been based on the Doctor recoiling from something that never was (or at least, was never shown): effect without cause. And if the Doctor really is still running from Trenzalore, maybe someone should have mentioned it to the audience.

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‘Don’t cremate me.’ It’s another one of what a wise man once called Moffat’s three-room stories, as the Doctor and Clara visit the 3W facility searching for the late Danny Pink while the dear departed himself adjusts to life in the Nethersphere. We finally learn the secret of Missy: a regenerated Master harvesting the minds of the dead into a Time Lord Matrix to download them into upgraded Cyberman bodies. And we’re told the dead remain conscious all the way through this, and faced with the horrifying prospect of experiencing their own cremations are offered the choice of deleting their feelings.

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