The limits of the Companion part of the Companion Chronicles is stretched a little by this entry in the range. Rather than someone who companioned with the Doctor we get a story told by King Peladon (aka David Troughton, son of Doctor Who) to baby Thalira (played by Ben Briggs, son of amateur Doctor Who Nick Briggs) about the Ice Warriors (played by amateur Doctor Who Nick Briggs, father of Queen Thalira II). I think I wrote in my review of "Bride of Peladon" that Peladon is a world Doctor Who keeps going back to because nostalgic people are under the impression that it is somehow interesting and exciting just because the sets were available for a return visit in the cash-strapped mid-70s. While the Bride of Peladon didn’t do much for me – apart from giving Erimem a really good send off – the Prisoner of Peladon is much more successful.

Peladon has become a window on the Ice Warriors and their unique status as goodies and baddies. Though they still don’t have a proper race name – "Ice Warriors" is sometimes considered offensive but at other times is bandied about quite pleasantly – they have much greater depth than any other monster race in the series and we genuinely don’t know whether they will be the misunderstood good guys or the treacherous bad guys in any given story. Here we have Ice Warrior refugees fleeing civil war on New Mars and seeking asylum on Peladon. But there are Ice Warriors in the court whose loyalty is unclear and whose role in a series of murders is similarly the subject for doubt and speculation.

The Peladon stories have always tried to reflect current issues and this one is no exception. An influx of refugees and the clash between two cultures is something that may not be quite as close to our door steps as a miners’ strike or entry into the Common Market but it is something often in the news. Tension is running high as the hot blooded and not terribly bright Pels are revolting against the help given to displaced Martians and those tensions are being exploited by someone or something determined to kill someone or something for reasons that are not at all clear.

It is more or less a murder mystery, albeit one with both nostalgic and political overtones. Troughton tells the story well with his Pertwee impression capturing the Third Doctor well and his Alpha Centauri being an absolute hoot. Nick Briggs plays the Ice Warriors – as is his way – and to his huge credit there are three Ice Warrior characters and I didn’t realise Briggs played all three. There is a temptation to joke that Briggs plays all these monsters because it’s his microphone and he won’t let anyone else join in but plays like this serve to remind us that he does it because he’s really, really good at it.

Prisoner of Peladon also passes my era test with flying colours. This could quite easily have been a story made in the Pertwee era. It even fits perfectly into the gap in which it is set. The Doctor has just said goodbye to the Princess Jo of Tardis and hasn’t yet met Sarah Jane Smith, girl reporter. This is a slightly melancholic Doctor who, as King Peladon notes during a bitter repost, needs someone like Jo to keep him under control. Listening to it again in the aftermath of "A Good Man Goes to War" it provides a nice bridge between eras. There is nothing new about the idea of the Doctor going too far in the pursuit of what he thinks is right and acting more like a god than a man. It’s more explicit in the Moffat era but it’s been there since day one – literally – and the Pertwee era, with its action man and expanding hair, brought it to the surface at times. Restricting the Doctor to Earth for so long brought on a sort of madness that clouded his judgement just a little when he finally got his freedom back. The fact that the Prisoner of Peladon pre-dates "A Good Man Goes to War" by several years only reinforces the notion that what Moffat is doing isn’t new or radical – it’s a continuation of themes that have always been bubbling under the surface and I like that.