An episode I’m sure anyone familiar with the Third Doctor would predict being among his best works. Season 7 of Classic Who is personally my pick for the best year in all Doctor Who, both Classic and Modern. Despite only four stories, what it lacks in quantity it sure makes up for in quality. You had the opening Spearhead from Space which I previously talked about, Doctor Who and the Silurians which was an excellent story, The Ambassadors of Death is the weak link, maybe a bit too long but don’t let anyone tell you it’s not a solid story in its own right. This season was just unlike anything Doctor Who had done before or since, coming off of the Second Doctor era, they decided to completely reinvent the look and tone of the show and take a more serious and mature approach with their stories. The Hinchcliffe years also went heavy on the darker and violent stories, but Season 7 just had this intensity to it, and it did so without being excessive. Pertwee peaked literally from the beginning as it was basically a downward slope from there. Not a bad downward slope so to speak but it did revert to a more traditional form.

So that brings us to the finale Inferno which was an epic way to close out the season! You have the Doctor ending up in a parallel universe where it’s the usual premise where all his friends in UNIT are now fascist a-holes. But this world is doomed as a drilling experiment unleashes the horrors beneath the Earth’s crust and the Doctor must convince these evil doppelgangers to help him escape back to his world to save it from the same fate.

Next to actually destroying the Earth (permanently I mean), this is the gutsiest scenario you could ever do in Doctor Who, having the Doctor completely powerless and watch as the world is slowly consumed by a sea of lava and explosions, knowing full well he cannot save anyone and that his only hope is to convince them the help him escape to save a bunch of people they don’t even care about. An event so traumatising it comes back to haunt him the following season in The Mind of Evil where he’s forced to relive that experience. Just the concept alone makes this an incredible viewing experience, but thankfully it’s also held up with some excellent writing for our side characters and their evil counterparts in a bleak yet all too familiar world.

If you can get past the terrible makeup on the monsters you will find some of the strongest and most mature Doctor Who material ever put onscreen.