I’m going to be positive about this: my sense of drama and writing was fully formed by the time I was a teenager. Alternatively, my sense of drama and writing hasn’t evolved since.

But I was watching an old Doctor Who story recently and remembering how I felt when it aired, remembering the feeling as vividly as if it were happening right now. Of course, it was happening right now, I was watching this thing and it was dreadful.

Back in the 1970s or 1980s – I’m not trying to hide my age, just trying to obscure which Doctor Who story I could be talking about – I sat in front of this thing thinking no. No. It had impossible moments like a companion happening to speak an Aboriginal dialect from thousands of years ago and I’ve just given you enough to recognise, know, or be able to find out that I’m talking about Four to Domesday.

Peter Davison is the Doctor, Terence Dudley wrote it. Sorry, Terence.

So anyway, it has moments like that about the dialect, and the same character — Tegan, played by Janet Fielding — being able to fly the TARDIS. On one hand, pop me into a sports car and I’d be lost looking for the ignition. And on the other hand, Tegan gets so frustrated trying to take off that actually it is a glorious piece of heartfelt acting.

But still, it had these impossible moments that so jump out of the screen and slap you that you resent the characters. It had a thing where another companion, Adric is asked to explain E=mc2, and if my first reaction is kill me now, my more considered reaction is kill that script then. It was meant to be Big and Clever and show that Adric is amazing. I’ll bet you anything that out of writer Terence Dudley, actor Matthew Waterhouse and me, I am the only one who’s read the General and Special Theories of Relativity.

It’s the presumption that even so, they know more than the viewer, and that the viewer will be wowed by this pathetic bollocks.

Still.

Anyway.

Breathe.

Back when this aired, fine I thought no, this is poor, this is not serving your characters, it is not telling a story. Fan reviews at the time liked the show much more than I did and to this day, every review I can find manages to praise something in it.

Whereas the me of today is left wondering not just whether I should bother coming back for part 2, but even whether I should pack in this thing of watching the original Doctor Who episodes from the start. I’ve been doing that for 10 months I think, and I know I’ve now seen more than 400 episodes, but maybe it’s time, maybe enough is enough.

But.

Rather than make a positive decision to end this watching marathon and find a kettle, I think I really let Four to Domesday’s episodes play on back to back with decreasing attention from me, and increasing pressure from my hands cradling my head.

But I’m glad it did run on because the next story is Kinda by Christopher Bailey.

Doctor Who may never have looked cheaper than it did in Kinda and that is truly, truly saying something. What’s supposed to be a lush jungle is filmed in a garden centre’s display corner. There’s some poor business at the start and end with Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) being incapacitated for no reason other than to cut down the number of characters in the show.

I’m not complaining. There were too many companions at the time and for a brief moment when Nyssa’s collapse was a cliffhanger, there was actually speculation that the character was pregnant. That would’ve been a story. But no, she collapses from early onset technobabble and it takes just under four episodes for her recover and never speak of it again.

So that was risible and if I’ve mentioned the cheapness, I haven’t conveyed it enough to you. No, cheaper than that.

At the very time it was broadcast, Kinda wasn’t exactly dismissed, but other stories easily beat it in popularity polls that year. Then shortly after it aired, Kinda was in fact dismissed, was actually derided, and its most apparently cheap moments were mocked. This period lasted a long time in part because, true, there is a lot to mock.

Except.

I adored it at the time. Yes, if you know the story then you know what I’m alluding to when I say yes, yes, that thing at the end, I know, I know, it is impossible to watch without thinking The Muppet Show had a better budget.

But by the time we reach this thing at the end, we’ve got there with such characters, such ideas and – be still my beating hearts – such dialogue. By that last episode, I am totally in this story and I am enthralled.

And I still am.

Kinda is my favourite of the more than 400 Doctor Who episodes I’ve seen so far.

There is a bit of me that would adore seeing Kinda redone as a modern production, complete with location filming and a better thing-at-the-end. But characters and dialogue beat everything.

They always do.