While UNIT race to stop the Master from launching the stolen Thunderbolt missile, the Doctor has his own challenge: to bring a temporary halt to the alien mind parasite’s increasingly greedy attempts to feed on the evil in Stangmoor Prison. Meanwhile, Mike Yates is strapped to a chair at the launch site, and Jo’s locked in a cell surrounded by sex-starved male prisoners: in context, Mailer’s little air kiss to her is one of the scariest things in the entire series.

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The Doctor’s flashback to monsters of yesteryear, and an increasing willingness to draw on the show’s backstory, recalls the second Doctor’s defence at his trial, and points the way to more clips to come – in Day of the Daleks and The Three Doctors, and then as an annual event during the JNT years. It opens the episode on a high point – the Doctor’s hearts nearly give out under the mental pressure of the Keller Machine and the Master rushes in to save him.

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The prison riot sub-plot is really very weird. Mailer and his goons take over the prison and hold Jo hostage, but she manages to grab Mailer’s gun and help the warders take back control for all of about five minutes (her finest moment so far). Then, the Master, in the guise of Emil Keller, turns up and re-arms Mailer, organising a second prison takeover. So what was the point of the first one? I suspect it’s our old friend “padding”. There’s a lot of good stuff in the episode, and the plot just about hangs together, but it does lack the momentum of Inferno, an altogether more ramshackle piece of work. 

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On top of the killer rehabilitation machine, the World Peace Conference, the missile transport we now have a prison break and the Master thrown into the mix on the basis that something has to stick. The risk is that there are a lot of stories rather than one good one, but Houghton has more or less proved he can keep the plates spinning, and at least this is giving the sense that everything – somehow – is connected, rather than being introduced, Terry Nation style, to extend the script for another week.

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This is almost as scattergun as Terror of the Autons: we’re presented with UNIT observing a revolutionary new method of rehabilitating criminals; investigating a World Peace Conference threatened by allegations of international espionage, and transporting a missile. Last time Don Houghton wasn’t sure if his story could stretch to seven episodes he chucked in a parallel universe plot which added an extra element of tension to Inferno. This time, it just feels like a string of unfortunate coincidences.

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In context, this continues to be one of the biggest pivots in tone and style in the show’s history. The opening action sequence (introduced with an iconic ‘Hai!’) features two police officers revealed to be murderous drones (Barry Letts got into trouble for that), one of which is driven off a cliff by Captain Yates in a speeding Morris Marina (why UNIT are driving round in a crap car is anyone’s guess – they’re all in uniform so can’t be undercover). After an impressive fall, the Auton then just gets straight back up and comes after them again. It’s relentless and quite scary.

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Again, the episode plays a neat game of pitting the Doctor and the Master against one another without ever having them cross paths. At first this takes the form of the Doctor battling for the mind of his companion, de-hypnotising her, and freeing her from the Master’s control. Later, the same thing happens to the kidnapped scientist Philips, with a less happy outcome. Still, you’re left with a sense of the Master playing games with the Doctor (he describes the bomb he sent Jo to deliver as a ‘gallantry on the even of battle’), while the Doctor’s just trying to avoid a massacre.

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It begins with an explosion of colour at the circus, a far cry from the muted beige shades and scientific environments of Season Seven, and what follows is like eating a whole bag of Skittles in one go. It’s a rush of images, a plot that progresses in great leaps rather than with the methodical and steady pace of last year. Almost before you can take in one thing, the next arrives. It introduces three new regulars, writes one out offscreen, and essentially crams in the story of pretty much the first three episodes of Spearhead from Space. This feels more different from Inferno than Spearhead from Space felt from Season Six.

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