Trapped on a dying world, The Doctor and Charley come face-to-face with those responsible for the war to end all wars, while C'rizz tries to understand what has happened and learns the terrible truth.

 Powerful forces are at work on Bortresoye that not even a nuclear holocaust can tame; natural forces that have excited the interest of Excelsior, the self-proclaimed saviour of her people.

 With Charley immobilised and C'rizz left to battle against the elements with some of the victims of war, one final, desperate hope of escape presents itself to the travellers.

 But who will be the last to leave the planet? Who will have to stay behind? And will The Doctor, Charley and C'rizz live long enough to find out?

 CALL IT MEGALOMANIA, BUT there’s something quite satisfying about creating a whole world and then casually destroying it. Although I hasten to add that the prospect of wielding such god-like power wasn’t the main reason for writing this story.

 Having seen him face death on so many occasions, almost to the point where his mortality was in doubt, I thought it would be interesting to put The Doctor (not to mention Charley and C’rizz) into a desperate situation from which there could be little or no hope of escape. It struck me that The Doctor has always been able to deal with tragedy or disaster, and to move on from the experience, without any apparent psychological scars. He has never really had to accept that the end, even of his own life, is inevitable. I decided to put that to the test.

 A lot of the script was written late at night and into the early hours of the morning: a part of the day which felt detached from reality and, certainly for me, heightened the sense of bleakness and isolation I was keen to capture in The Last.

 I hope a little of that sense communicates itself.

 It was Gary Hopkins who suggested the casting for The Last in the shape of Carolyn Jones, whom director Gary Russell recalled enjoying enormously as Sharon Metcalfe in the original 1970s run of Crossroads. Tom Eastwood was a friend of Caroline Morris, who plays Erimem in our Fifth Doctor adventures. Tom is best known to schoolchildren as the voice of Clifford, the Big Red Dog. Ian Brooker, Jane Hills, John Dorney and Richard Derrington had all worked with us before whereas Robert Hines was new to us all, but Gary Russell had seen him in an episode of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot and remembered him from that.