Only a handful of Doctor Who episodes have reached #1 in the television charts for the week they were first transmitted, and all of them have been this century. As the future of our show seemingly hangs in abeyance for the first time in that century (and once again through no fault of its own) it’s worth remembering that, as well as the heights of popularity it’s reached at in the last twenty years, heights inarguably higher than those scaled by twentieth century Who by almost any measure.

The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End is one of those peaks. A friend texted me immediately after transmission of The Stolen Earth demanding I join him in a pub to talk about it, as he wouldn’t be able to think of anything else while conscious and thus his wife didn’t want him in the house. That’s fan reaction, of course. But #1 for the week and an AI of 91 speaks to huge public engagement with the show and this appropriately matches the story, in which the Daleks have a plan of unprecedented scale.

Davros has devised a way to use twenty-seven stolen planets as both “an engine” and “a transmitter”. They’re set up in a specific configuration around the Daleks’ new ship the Crucible, and inside an area of space known as the Medusa Cascade. This is a “second out of sync with the rest of universe”. Using them, the Crucible will expel Z-neutrino energy across all existing realities. As Davros explains, and it’s worth quoting nearly in full because it’s so thrillingly bonkers, although here it lacks Julian Bleach’s extraordinary delivery.