Author: David Hogan

Star Wars: Visions – Season 3 Review

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The third season of “Visions” is an odd one. The first season had the whole fresh ideas and “weird, Star Wars made by anime studios!” thing going for it, and Season 2 had fresh ideas from animations studios around the world. This season is more shorts by anime studios, some of which are sequels to ones from the first season, so it all feels less special this time round. Some are good, some are middling, some are bad, as per usual with any collection of short stories, but overall I felt this was the weakest Season of the three. Let’s take a look, anyway (and with no Spoiler Section because that would just take too long to recap the ends of all nine shorts…)

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Doctor Who: Causeway – The Time You Never Had Review

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Finishing off the Causeway boxset is “The Time You Never Had”, which ramps up the Causeway story arc / buzzword that I’ll be honest didn’t know was a thing until it was brought up. Still, this is once again a good story but also once again has its faults and has an ending that felt a little bit like having your cake and eating it too. Still, I think more good than bad at least! Let’s take a look…

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Doctor Who: Causeway – Lost Among The Stars Review

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The first of two Eighth Doctor boxsets within a month of each other, “Causeway” features the new Charley and Audacity combo of companions and certainly puts the latter through the wringer across both stories! “Lost Among The Stars” is a really fun story, full of a creepy soundscape, interesting world building and a good “how will they get out of this one?” twist, but sadly the end and predictability makes it fall short of something truly great. Let’s take a look!

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Sonic X Shadow Generations (PS5) Review

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When I posted my review of the third Sonic live action film I mentioned that halfway through Sonic Heroes was when I gave up on Sonic games (apart from Mania) and that got a few people mortified that I hadn’t played Sonic Generations, so when the recent re-release came up on sale I thought “why not?” and brought it. After playing through both campaigns I can say that while I had fun at various points nothing about the experience made me think I’ve “missed out” if this game is heralded as the best of the latter 3D era. The experience was still more good than bad though, so let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: Lionesses in Winter Review

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“The Thirteenth Doctor finally gets a Christmas Special!” was the cry as this story was announced, but honestly this doesn’t have a lot of Christmas in it, and instead is a weird mix of light-hearted banter and a look at grief and having to try and get over that major loss, two story beats at the literal opposite ends of each other. Does this blend work? Well…

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One Piece – Egghead Arc (Episodes 1123 – 1155) Review

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Time to look at the second half of the Egghead arc, which has a hell of a flashback story mixed in with plenty of over-the-top action and some leaps forward in terms of the overarching plot that has been teased for the last few DECADES. Very pretty to look at too, though there were plenty of recap episodes and breaks to allow this, something that will hopefully vanish now One Piece is switching to a seasonal model at long last. Anyway, let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: Merlin’s Trap Review

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“Merlin’s Trap” was the big draw for this Halloween set as it’s the debut of Jon Culshaw’s Twelfth Doctor impersonation, and thankfully while not as perfect as his Brig it’s miles better than Jacob Dudman’s attempt, so I’ll happily take it given the Twelfth Doctor era is a personal favourite of mine. Ignoring that aspect though, is the story any good? It’s… fine, doesn’t break any new ground etc but I will say at least they got the horror aspect a bit more involved here. Let’s take a look!

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Star Wars: The High Republic – Finale Review

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Okay, after a couple of final things in the High Republic line we now arrive at the actual true finale, and given it’s just a single comic issue this is going to be a rather short review… Still, it wraps up a few things and gives us a nice warm send off to something that I’ve absolutely loved the past few years and am genuinely sad to see it go (but also happy it got all the way to its planned ending, and a good one too!) So let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: The Bramble King Review

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The next story in the Halloween boxset (skipping over Doctor-less spin-offs for my wallet’s sake) is an Eighth Doctor / Audacity story that focuses on the classic “children’s folklore comes to life” idea but with the folklore of an alien tree-like species instead. It’s a perfectly good one-hour story but once again it feels more sci-fi than horror, which given the whole idea of this Halloween boxset was “spooky stories for Halloween” is a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, lets take a closer look…

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Doctor Who: Sea Smoke Review

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Kicking off a Halloween-themed boxset of stories (in January, if you needed a tip off as to how behind on Big Finish audio reviews I am…) is “Sea Smoke”, my first full experience of the recast First Doctor / Dodo combination, and I have to say… it didn’t do much to convince me to jump in. I mean, at the best of times I’m not all that interested in Hartnell era audios as I’m not all that interested in a fair few of the Hartnell era TV stories, but having some of the poorer recasts at the centre doesn’t help much. Anyway, let’s take a look at “Sea Smoke” on its own merits…

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