‘This is where the adventure ends.’ While it still has inadvertently upsetting elements (particularly Sarah Jane’s farewell video), this largely focuses on Ruby executing her plan. Julie Graham is superb, oozing insincerity as she comforts Rani and condemns Clyde to a death in space. It’s the kind of existential crisis that demands the entire team come together – and sure enough, Luke and K9 return to help take down Ruby (Luke now rocking a cool Freshers hairdo and scarf). Even Gita gets a redemptive moment, as she shores up Rani’s belief in Sarah Jane at the crucial moment. If only they’d somehow found a way to crowbar in Kelsey (and I guess Maria), this would be The Sarah Jane Adventures’ own Stolen Earth.

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‘I’m over, my story is finished. But this planet, it needs someone to protect it. Are you that person?’ Through no fault of the writers, this is a very hard watch indeed. Seeing Sarah Jane being told, ‘You are very ill indeed’ and watching her deteriorate, knowing what’s just around the corner, pushes this beyond the unsettling intent, and makes it upsetting. It’s even worse because Sladen performs a fading Sarah, losing her memories (even K9) and her sense of self, predictably well. Real life has made this all too real.

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‘The sands of time have run out, Captain. They have failed in their missions, all is lost.’ The only downside of telling three stories in one is that each is necessarily slight on plot – but not on adventure or character. Rani foils the assassination attempt on Jane. Clyde confounds the Nazis. Sarah Jane and Emily work out a way to rescue the doomed children across the centuries. The last-minute complication of a missing piece of chronosteel is resolved by Emily’s granddaughter, and the Earth is saved.

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‘I need your help to save the world. Time itself is under threat.’ This is different: the team scattered through time on their own mini-Key to Time quest. The Key, in this case, is a magic metal chronosteel but to all other intents and purposes, including being disguised as different objects and its power to re-shape destiny, it might as well be the crystal cube Tom and Mary had to put together in 1979. It even has its own version of the White Guardian, dressed like a genial shopkeeper.

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‘Score one up for the hangers-on.’ A surprisingly straightforward and sweet story from Roberts, a writer I associate more with witty black comedies than fairy tales. This includes some good word play (‘sun and air’), but the real pleasure is seeing Clyde and Rani work it out without the support of Sarah Jane and the computers (although there’s a great moment where Rani wields the sonic lipstick), and where Gavin, a boy convinced of his own ordinariness, becomes the most important person on the planet.

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‘Biggest crisis ever and it’s just us. Not the time traveller, not the boy genius, not the supercomputer or the mega-dog. Us.’ At the opposite extreme to Death of the Doctor’s everything-plus-the-sink approach, this strips it all back to just Clyde and Rani wandering a deserted London, facing a baffling alien intervention. It’s a wonderful idea, executed beautifully – you might think with such a small cast it would be the budget one, but all that location filming can’t have come cheap, and the robots, when they finally show up, are tremendous.

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‘Not as daft as they look, for two batty old pensioners and a bunch of ASBO kids.’ This is the kind of thing 1990s fans, indoctrinated against the twin evils of fanwank and Season 24, can barely believe exists: an episode steeped in continuity with the Doctor battling puppet vultures with past companions – broadcast on BBC One. It’s RTD’s final Doctor Who script for 12 years, and plays like it: a kiss goodbye to the show he resurrected using the characters he loved himself as a kid.

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