Imagine, if you will, a 10 year old girl, watching the revival from the start for the very first time, rewatching episodes she was too young to remember watching the first time. As that little girl, thoroughly obsessed with Doctor Who, I fell in love with Love and Monsters, and it quickly became my favourite episode. I don’t remember being 10 well enough to tell you why, but I’m glad I remember my taste in episodes when I was small, and that I can now recognise that it was good, unlike when I was a teenager and suddenly too cool for it.

So, why was I right to love this episode at 10? Before the reveal of the Absorbaloff, this is a truly great story, all the members of LINDA are likeable and watching them become friends is just fun. And then there’s the stuff with Jackie which is utterly heartbreaking. Seeing how lonely Jackie is without Rose, and how much it hurts her that this new connection she made was using her, not even to get to Rose, but to get to the Doctor makes for genuinely great television. Not only that but the added layer as he realises what he’s doing is wrong, he suddenly sees what LINDA has become under Victor Kenedy, and that he is going to have to give up that part of his life, at the same time that he realises he has this genuine connection with Jackie, that he likes her and wants to be friends with her, only for that new friendship to be ripped away because he realised it too late.

Despite how good the first two acts are, it's the final act after the reveal of the Absorbaloff that the story really falls apart. I understand that it was designed as part of a Blue Peter competition, but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t very good. (There is one good bit when we learn he comes from Clom, twin planet of Raxicoricofallapatorius). It's weirdly not that intimidating for how awful the absorption aspect is, and then its final defeat just does not stack up to the rest of the episode.

And then of course there is the final joke, all I have to say on that is: why?

Overall a good story let down by its ending and the need for a monster, perhaps the quintessential example of this for me.