‘If escape were that easy Adric we could all be free of this nasty world.’ While previous regenerations have picked up from the end of the previous story, this is a straight continuation of Logopolis 4, with the amazing vanishing security guards reappearing to menace the new Doctor and friends, the Master having come up with yet another plan on the fly, and references to block transfer and the Logopolitans. This makes sense as a follow up to The Five Faces of Doctor Who, which concluded with Logopolis in December 1981. The plus is that it provides immediate jeopardy directly connected to the Doctor’s regeneration.

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‘How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?’ It’s hard to appreciate the Peter Davison years without understanding the sudden accessibility of past Doctors. This BBC2 repeat season, organised by JNT, preceded the release of any Doctor Who videos, and was the first time many fans had been able to see Hartnell, Troughton and even Pertwee in action (previous BBC repeats had religiously stuck to featuring only the current Doctor). Viewing figures were good – averaging five million (Pertwee was most popular).

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‘Oh, Doctor, you didn’t forget.’ Filling the gap between Seasons 18 and 19, this curio broadcast over the 1981 festive season is easy to mock, with its hilariously bad title sequence and theme music, a performance of incredible camp from Linda Polan, and the notion of a series of adventures for Sarah and K9 investigating the covens of England. There are, it’s true, numerous laughable elements, but the biggest surprise is that this works.

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‘While there’s life…’ I find it impossible to watch this dispassionately: there’s so much sadness wrapped around Tom’s departure – much more than in Pertwee’s, which felt more like the celebration of an era than a funeral – that the context of this episode overshadows the content.

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‘I am prepared for the worst.’ From Logopolis ‘the unravelling will spread out until the whole universe is reduced to nothing’. It’s a grand idea, and Bidmead makes it accessible by showing the localised effects – the great city falling silent, its people turned to dust and its streets collapsing on themselves. The eerie silence and accelerating decay contain hints of the Daleks’ time destructor on Kembel. The scale of the fourth Doctor’s last hurrah is epic.

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‘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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