Continuing to look at the third “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” set titled “The Stuff of Nightmares” with the first of two stories that feature the “Dream Crabs” that feed off human brains while stimulating dreams for them as they do so. It was a fun (and obviously horrifying) concept for the Twelfth Doctor Christmas story they came from, but do the creatures work a second time round in the excellently titled “Together in Eclectic Dreams”? Let’s see…
You tend to get two kinds of sequels in Doctor Who, and most media in general to be fair, one that just repeats the old plot of the first with minor differences and one that actually does something new with the original concept and sadly “Together in Eclectic Dreams” falls in the former category, giving us a story that hits pretty much all the beats of the Christmas special they came from, sans Christmas. That’s not saying it wasn’t entertaining to listen to or anything, just that was my first thought when the credits rolled…
Anyway so alarm bells begin to ring as soon as the story starts as the Doctor (Colin Baker) is accompanied by a companion he’s never had before in Mari Yoshida (Susan Hingley), a woman who is suffering from bad dreams so The Doctor takes her to a monastery on a place called “High Dream” which is famous for its ability to soothe dreamers, but that monastery soon turns into a special sleep clinic/sleep museum instead and a friendly monk turns into Professor Klovis (Raj Ghatak), head of the facility. They meet museum worker Tara (Rebecca Front) and “Sleep assistant” Sam Duffy (Sam Stafford) but things get more complicated when Mari and later Sam fall asleep and meet the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) who is confused to find his past self with a companion he doesn’t recognise, which helps both Doctors figure out that their surroundings aren’t real and a bit later they encounter the Kantrofarri (or Dream Crabs as that’s easier to remember how to spell…) putting the final pieces together.
The future Doctor gets kicked back to presumably the next story in the boxset and the rest plays out how you’d expect given I’ve already talked about the similarities to “Last Christmas”, but I’ll still leave that to the Spoiler Section. It’s a fun story, though I’m a little fed up of the Sixth Doctor with new companions, let alone the Sixth Doctor with a new companion who turns out to leave him at the end of their debut story, something that’s oddly happened to him once or twice already recently…
The Continuity:
The Sixth Doctor front and centre and the Eighth next to him… it almost makes sense as a cover by itself! *GASP!*
As mentioned the “Dream Crabs” only other appearances are the Twelfth Doctor Christmas Special “Last Christmas” and the next story in this boxset: “If I Should Die Before I Wake”, which features the Eighth Doctor.
Other than that I’ll mention the Sixth Doctor audios “Blood on Santa’s Claw and Other Stories” and “The Lure of the Nomad”, as they both feature the Sixth Doctor with proto-new companions who turn out to have other reasons for travelling with him and are gone by the end of their stories…
Overall Thoughts:
“Together in Eclectic Dreams” is a good near-retelling of one of the better Doctor Who Christmas Specials and although they’re less creepy on audio for obviously reasons the Kantrofarri still make good monsters to fight. Still hard to shake the feeling of “seen or heard it all before” though, especially pairing the Sixth Doctor with another new one-off companion!
As mentioned this plays out much like Last Christmas so when The Doctor and co. believe they’ve pulled themselves out of the dream they turn out to be in a dream within a dream before actually waking themselves up; The Doctor waking in his TARDIS, regretting taking a flask from High Dream (I guess that’s where the crab in his ship came from) and thinking he must have been on his own for too long and Mari and Sam wake up in the same university dorm and decide to go off together while the radio mentions Tara’s new song coming out soon. So yeah, similar ideas of people from all over time and space being Dream Crabbed at the same time sharing a dream and waking up from it only to go about their normal lives, just less Santa Claus.
Hogan Reviews 