So here’s an exercise which often has interesting results, or perhaps no result at all. For any particular Doctor, what is your second favorite story. Favorites are often easy to identify as part of a engraved experience forged long, long, ago. Runners-up on the other hand, if there is a definite opinion to be had, are often more nebulous. For the Tour and the Davison era specifically, there is an answer.
It is Enlightenment.
The Tour had quite recently finished, after delays for the holidays and other life events (including sloth) HD-Classicating Season 20, with new caps for Enlightenment as the final piece of that tapestry. Then came to news that Barbara Clegg, the author of Enlightenment, in her only Doctor Who outing, had passed at the age of 98. Almost an eternal unto herself in a way.
If any single image capsulizes Enlightenment it is that of ‘tall’ sailing ships in space. But Clegg made much more of that than could be reasonably assumed in the form of the Eternals, who longed to feel something, anythings, to prick their boring ‘eternal’ existence. For the imagination and execution alone, Enlightenment was not only the jewel of the ‘Black Guardian’ trilogy within Season 20, but was almost the best Davison story period.
There’s something of the eternal there too.