N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

This won’t be the last time Doctor Who where a crack in a wall is an index of a crack in time!

Even so, The Awakening presented me with another of those memory blindspots. (Perhaps it had fallen through said crack?) I’d probably watched it (and Frontios) the once when the VHS double pack was released back in the 90’s — and that was it. In fact, the only thing I remembered about it was the Malus’s face emerging from the aforementioned wall.

“Something is coming to our village. Something very wonderful and strange.”

Sir George, The Awakening: Part One

Given the flawed carnage that preceded it in Warriors of the Deep (and what was to follow later in the season), The Awakening is perhaps a little unmemorable. No, ahem, Malus intended!

But it has a strong supporting cast — with Polly James, Denis Lill and Glyn Houston amongst the inhabitants of Little Hodcombe and Keith Jayne as time-travelling Will Chandler being particularly good. Barry Newbury’s church interior set is hugely impressive — and the location footage promises to look great when it gets its inevitable HD upgrade.

Added to that, Polly James gets to scream possibly the longest ‘Doctor!’ in the show’s history.

(Having forgotten Polly James was in it, it now makes sense to me why fellow Liver Bird Nerys Hughes read the audiobook of Eric Pringle’s novelisation!)

Ultimately, my lack of familiarity with The Awakening means it’ll probably never rank as one of my favourite Fifth Doctor tales. But as concise tales of aliens invading an English village go, it doesn’t really do much wrong either.