Chris Boucher acknowledged his sources by littering the script with namechecks to well-known science-fiction authors: Uvanov was a corruption of "Asimov", Poul was a reference to Poul Anderson, and Taren Capel was an homage to Karel Capek (who first coined the term "robot" in his play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921).
Voted by fans as the sixth greatest Doctor Who (1963) serial in Outpost Gallifrey's poll in 2003 to celebrate 40 years of the series.
Although this serial has gone on to become one of the most popular Doctor Who (1963) serials ever made, director Michael E. Briant revealed on the Special Edition DVD commentary that neither he nor star Tom Baker liked the script by Chris Boucher very much. Briant claimed he believed it owed too much to Agatha Christie and was fairly average. Briant added that he thought the story's greatest attribute was its design work.
This is one of the few stories which explains, in relative simplicity, using a demonstration with two boxes, how the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental.
In 2000, this became the first Doctor Who (1963) serial from the Tom Baker era to be released by the BBC on DVD.