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For years I had remembered a Doctor Who story set on a ship which also contained a scene with the Doctor stumbling out of what I perceived to be a giant paint tin (possibly this was due to an advertising campaign by one British paint company which featured a cylindrical house that was a giant tin of their paint). When I read the novelisation of Carnival of Monsters it seemed to fit, but it wasn't until the repeat screening in 1981 that I confirmed that I had seen this story on original broadcast. I didn't have a VCR at the time of that repeat screening so I had to make do with that old mainstay of keeping a story for repeat enjoyment - the audio tape. If there is one thing that definitely stuck in my memory after that it was the cry of the Drashigs. In a lot of his stories, Robert Holmes features some vicious carnivore. Unlike those other stories, the Drashigs are a memorable foe for the Doctor and play an important part in the story.

There are a lot of memorable elements to this story, perhaps its down to this particular adventure, but I have always had a fondness for stories where nothing is as it seems and for stories which feature characters caught up in a loop, repeating one series of events. This latter plot element can easily go wrong, but Holmes pulls it off successfully and it is easy to share Jo's sympathy for poor old Major Daly and the crew of the SS Berniece, seemingly forever doomed to live the same moments over and over again.

Robert Holmes was generally acknowledged as one of the series' finest authors and his finest moments tended to be the byplay between two characters. This story benefits from some excellent dialogue and three sets of double-acts - the Doctor and Jo, Kalik and Orum, and Vorg and Shirna. This is an excellent story with excellent dialogue - one of my favourites from the Jon Pertwee era.