“I’ve got the real Limehouse Blues… Rings on your fingers and tears for your crown. This is a story of the old Chinatown.”

In early 1989, in a post twenty-fifth anniversary poll of the whole of Doctor Who, The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) was voted the single best Doctor Who story by the readers of Doctor Who Magazine. Always highly rated by fandom, it benefited from being exactly the right age for the late teenagers and young adults of Doctor Who to be nostalgic for it.

It had also recently garnered its largest UK audience since original transmission through being released on VHS. That Talons VHS came out the same day as Terror of the Zygons (1975). Both had originally been scheduled for early 1986 and had been taken off the schedule thanks to being rated PG by the BBFC, and BBC Video’s then policy that all Doctor Who releases should be rated U. The policy was eventually overturned and the two tapes were eventually released in the UK in November 1988, just in time for Doctor Who’s silver anniversary. To many fans, both stories felt like birthday presents.