‘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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‘A hologram! As insubstantial as the Rani’s scruples!’ It’s incredibly linear and straightforward. It’s also colourful and engaging. Whether it belonged on BBC1 in prime time on a Monday evening is debateable – Uncle Jack, which starred Fenella Fielding as the very Rani-like Vixen, was a fixture of children’s TV in the early 1990s, and this might have fit quite nicely in a similar slot. Compared to, say, Earthshock, this all looks very insubstantial.

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‘Quite adept at manoeuvring, aren’t you, Doctor?’ McCoy is largely confined to one room for this episode as various characters come to him. There’s a risk that this could have sidelined him from the action, but I think the script manages to make it seem like events are revolving round him – the Rani is fetching and carrying for him, Mel is desperate to find him, while he pootles round investigating the laboratory, trying to piece together what’s really going on.

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‘I’m a bit worried about the temporal flicker in Sector 13. There’s a bicentennial refit of the Tardis to book in. I must just pop over to Centauri 7, and then perhaps a quick holiday. Right, that all seems quite clear. Just three small points. Where am I? Who am I? And who are you?’ The new Doctor wakes up full of plans. He’s diverted, for a while, by the Rani’s manipulations, but from the off this is an incarnation who intends to get things done. Most Doctors are a contrast to their predecessors, but the seventh especially so. While ‘Sixie’ was bombastic, erudite and confident the seventh Doctor is an underdog, dismissed as a ‘cretin’ by the Rani, jumbling his aphorisms, pratfalling and prone to melancholy: the Buster Keaton of Time Lords.

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‘The performance was too grotesque to be real.’ Given the circumstances around it (the original Saward script being withdrawn and the Bakers not allowed to know its contents), this could have been much more disappointing. It’s by no means a great ending (and the final joke of the Valeyard’s survival inadvertently throws into doubt whether this is all still a Matrix illusion), but it generally works.

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‘Most of what you saw was true.’ Except all the really dramatic bits, like Peri dying. Those were all made up. I think it’s a stroke of genius to bring back the Master as the Doctor’s key witness for the defence, and Ainley doesn’t disappoint as he leers over the court room, gently flirting with the Inquisitor, mocking the Time Lords’ love of propriety, and dramatically blowing open the conspiracy to conceal the theft of Matrix secrets by devastating the Earth. This might have been enough anyway: ‘causing ripples that’ll rock the High Council to its foundations’ and ensuring no-one else has the pleasure of revenge on the Doctor is perfectly Master-ish.

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