The final story of season 24 marks by far the best of the season and the 7th Doctor’s run so far. We get a fantastic and relatable companion introduction that leaves you wanting to know much more about 26 year old newbie Ace who is going to be a wonderful lead opposite McCoy’s Doctor.

This is the best of the Sabalom Glitz trilogy too, with him caught up in debts on this colony spaceship at the beginning of the tale and forming a uneasy but ultimately good natured alliance with The Doctor. You can see that Glitz is a bastard who can’t be trusted, but he has such charisma that you want to route for him anyway. Great character.

Mel looks a little out of place in all this, we never got to understand her character or what really makes her tick. It makes sense then that apropos of nothing she decides she wants to shoot off with Glitz - they make a very odd team.

I didn’t mind though - because the spark between Ace and The Doctor is palpable and delivers a hit the show has been severely lacking since The 5th Doctor said goodbye to Peri - a perfect Doctor/ companion pairing allowing for inspiring, fizzing dialogue.

Other than the oddly set up, literal cliffhanger I enjoyed all of this story. I wasn’t quite sure why The Doctor had put himself in that situation on the cliff until the next episode when Mel and Ace went to traverse the same journey. You can tell RTD took queues from both the light shield and robotic spaceship tannoy voice when putting together The End of the World. The concept of cryogenically freezing anyone who cannot pay off their debts also gets revisited by Moffat in A Christmas Carol. So all in all it’s an influential story which seems to me to mark the start of a classic new era.