This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Dragonfire

Yes. This story really is that good. It absolutely lives up to the hype and after watching it it's now firmly in my top episodes of Classic alongside City of Death and The Caves of Androzani.

For a start, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred have exceptional chemistry. I'm not sure there's been a pairing this strong since 2/Jamie. The pacing is incredible, not a single moment drags and feels boring- the story's constantly moving. This works exceptionally as a 25th anniversary story with the whole revisiting 1963 thing and the tongue-in-cheek easter egg of the show itself.

The proto-UNIT team were really good. I can see why they got themselves a spin off. Group Captain Gilmore in particular worked really well in place of the Brigadier here. There's some genuinely fantastic visuals in this story, the transmat, the Dalek shuttle, even the casket (as silly as it looked) was something you wouldn't have imagined just a few years before.

There's some great commentary about fascism and racism that I think is done in quite clever ways. Having Ace dumb down the Dalek civil war (which has a lot of paralells to certain events in history) as a bunch of blobs that aren't really any different battling it out. But not just that, the "no coloured's" scene and the bartender scene were also really great.

We're finally seeing that darker side to 7 that I've been told so much about and it's brilliant. McCoy is just perfect for the role here. Looking at him you'd think he was one of the most lighthearted incarnations of the character and that's what makes his darker moments really good. Although the Daleks will obviously be back, the destruction of Skaro here really felt like a "final end" much like Evil of the Daleks.

Genuinely a brilliant story, not much more to say than that.

Next Story: The Happiness Patrol