The Sun Makers is the Southampton Football Club of Classic Doctor Who.

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When competing in the Championship, against Fifth and Sixth Doctor stories, the Saints are up near the top of the league, fighting for promotion alongside Caves or Varos.

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But in the Premier League, which is dominated by the might of the Tom Baker era, they find themselves out of their depth, languishing in the relegation zone.

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We’re probably being unnecessarily generous to Peter and Colin, whose workmanlike eras would be slogging it out in League 1 or 2, but the point illustrates how ridiculously awesome the rest of Tom’s output is. When compared with the great man’s cream of the crop, The Sun Makers is mere filler, a forgotten track that you enjoy listening to when it’s on - but one you wouldn’t specifically ask Alexa to play.

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Speaking of which, we laugh out loud at the early scenes when both Leela and the Doctor bark (sorry…) at K9 to shut up, like today’s impatient teens when their smart speakers don’t instantly obey their mumbled instructions. The foresight of Doctor Who, eh? We’ll call this Prescient Point #1.

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In fact, laughter is a surprisingly frequent occurrence during this story, which should be an oddity given it sets out to be a delightful serving of bleak dystopia – only it’s the late 70s, so the collision of styles should shock no-one.

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The scene where Doc Four accidentally hypnotises Leela is hilarity of thigh-slapping proportions, matched only by K9’s joy at the prospect of a biscuit.

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The Sun Makers balances the levity with the darker tone pretty well. It would sit nicely alongside The Happiness Patrol in a decade’s time and the two stories share a decent premise of the corrupting power of, err, power. Here, a faceless corporation is taxing the enslaved population to death (or as the toady – sorry, Sea Kelp – baddie states in a cod-Trump way, “We have tried war but the use of economic power is far more effective”).

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The fact that this is pre-Thatcher is surprising – and clocks up Prescient Point #2.

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Oddly for a villain with mega eyebrows, a speech pattern we love trying out in meetings and a toilet-based demise, Mr Toad is not the most memorable villain in this story.

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His Number 2 (geddit?) is easily the most punchable wrong’un in Classic Who. Yes, even Ainley at his worst can’t match Hade the Collector for sheer smarminess. That said, he does bestow upon us a brilliant workplace-based game we can all enjoy. Refer to your boss this week as “your corpulence” or “your omniprescence” and let us know how that pans out.

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In the meantime, fans of corridors are spoilt rotten here. There are no fewer than 174 scenes set in corridors during The Sun Makers. Some corridors have doors in them. Some have windows. Others are plain. There really is something for everyone. We’re so lucky.

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Those with a penchant for blocky production design are also well served and will take great delight in the Tonka Toy guns used throughout, while pre-schoolers will find the ludicrous score happy-making.

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Obviously, Tom Baker is immense. “I always whisper when I’m opening safes,” is the kind of needless side-crack he delivers with such beautiful nonchalance and which he totally owns, while his composure when in danger is always wonderful. He’s being threatened with a red-hot poker and is being jovial to the last.

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This is also Leela’s strongest showing in her mercifully brief stint on the show. Her Unrelenting Courage act is pretty awesome here and at one stage she takes on a gang of crims single-handedly. We can’t imagine any other Classic Who female companion doing that. She’s also in genuine peril at a couple of points – being trussed up and hoisted against the wall looks more uncomfortable than when she’s actually shot.

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And then she’s locked in a steamer.

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This is no cartoon violence: when this show goes dark it really goes for it. It opens with an attempted suicide and closes with a cold-blooded murder of Hade, which we’re not convinced is entirely softened by the delight of the whooping and cheering mob. Still, he was a bell-end so let’s gloss over it.

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Which all leaves us nothing left to do except to award Prescient Point #3. This final honour goes to Mr Toad (a Joe Pasquale / Dr Evil love child) for his obsession with metrics being so relevant to today’s age in which we only care about outcomes that can be measured by likes on an Insta post (ooh, now who’s getting political?).

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And if this were the metric by which we judged the Classic series, we’re sure The Sun Makers would earn a few hearts. Only from Who loyalists, mind: after all, and with apologies to Saints fans, Southampton rarely trouble the top echelons enough for most people to have strong feelings about them either way.

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