“Back from the edge. Back from the dead. Back before demons took control of my head.”

The third Doctor Who serial has a writing and production history almost as contested as its title.¹ Which is, in some ways, remarkable. After all, it’s a two part story, one which only features the series’ regular cast and which was, for forty one years, the only television Doctor Who to take place entirely inside the TARDIS. On the face of it, you might think there simply isn’t enough going on in such a production for complications to arise. You’d be wrong.

Fortunately, they’ve been untangled brilliantly in Simon Guerrier’s Black Archive on the serial, which I recommend heartily and which can be bought here. I won’t tread on his toes, but to get into what I want to say about the serial it’s worth noting that while the story was both written quickly and initially commissioned as a kind of stopgap while Doctor Who’s future was uncertain, neither of those things are true in the way that decades of fan writing have assumed. Like I said, read the book.