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In 25 years time, all the nostalgia-obsessed 30-somethings will be discussing TV shows they watched when they were little and recalling that episode of Doctor Who in which there's a spaceship falling into the sun with a crew of strange aliens that need glowing balls to communicate, Martha gets blasted off in an escape pod, the Doctor's eyes glow, he puts on a red space-suit, goes down into a dark pit and meets Satan. And the guys in the gas-masks with hieroglyphics all over their bodies burning people up.

Yes, it's the Satan Pit all over again - if not in story, then certainly in look and feel. It's another patchwork homage to sundry genre movies, mostly too obvious to list here (though most effectively in the beautiful Space Odyssey-esque moment of silence as Martha's pod is ejected towards the raging computery sun-graphics). And like The Lazarus Experiment before it, it's an efficiently-entertaining romp... never dull, but hardly pushing boundaries; disposable amusement that doesn't linger in the imagination much beyond the end credits (unlike, for example, the haunting Girl In The Fireplace).

There are some howlers too, mainly concerning Martha's escape pod. Why put the controls for the pod on the outside of the ship? Why put them just out of reach of the airlock door? Why wasn't the Doctor frazzled?

All in all, I'd say it was a very effective episode 3 and 4: plenty of action, plenty of danger, a nice high body count. Now, if only we could find out what happened to parts 1 and 2, we'd have a perfect Doctor Who story!