Author: David Hogan

Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead Review

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Doctor Who Season 20 was released on Blu-ray a short while ago so it’s time to look at the story I haven’t seen in the longest time off the set, in this case I couldn’t remember which out of this and the following story, Terminus, I hadn’t seen so I went with the earliest of the two *shrugs* I mean, I’ll review them all eventually… Mawdryn is an odd one, mainly because the role of returning character changed from Ian Chesterton to the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart but the role in the story of “older teacher” wasn’t changed, making for an odd out-of-character rewrite for the Brig that infamously cemented the “UNIT Dating controversy”. It’s also the story that debuts companion Turlough and boy, he is not very likeable to start with… Let’s take a look!

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Fantastic Four – Origin (Fantastic Four Issues 1-10) Review

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Our next look at big Marvel comic releases in rough order is the chunk of comics that most point to as the start of the Marvel comic universe as we know it, with “Marvel’s first family” the Fantastic Four due to it coming out first (not including the 40s Captain America stuff I looked at last time, which wasn’t released by Marvel just absorbed by them later) What are they like? Well, they’re full of 60s comic cheese and lots of inner-monologuing, as you tend to get with, well, 60s comics. Is it still fun to read though, or is it just worth it for the historical significance?

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One Piece – Live Action Season 1 Review

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After failing with Death Note and creating the utter disaster that was the Cowboy Bebop live action series when I heard that Netflix was tackling One Piece I laughed at the idea given the One Piece world is weirder and wilder than either projects they previously got so wrong. So imagine my surprise when I started hearing that it was actually good, so positive was the reception that against all my instincts I gave it a go, and you know what? It is good! Not amazing, it has flaws not just related to having to condense so much story into so few episodes, but the fact I enjoyed a live action version of One Piece at all is some sort of minor miracle. So let’s take a deeper look at the show, a good few weeks after its relevant because I’m me and I do that sort of thing…

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Doctor Who: Once and Future – The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50 Review

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This month’s Once and Future is the first to feature a future incarnation of The Doctor from what I still believe is the Eighth Doctor’s perspective as David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor makes an appearance (or is it the Fourteenth?! … Right, Big Finish don’t have the license…) While you can tell how this was written after the Once and Future strand had already been planned out, as admitted by the writing team themselves, it ends up being one of the better stories, once again having a very self-contained plot full of randomly thrown in characters but at least this time the story was good fun! So let’s take a look…

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Star Wars: The High Republic – Balance of the Force / Battle for the Force Review

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It’s time to finally put a cap on Phase II of the High Republic by looking at the comic run that unlike Phase I didn’t really have a clear breaking point (even though the trade paperback people tried, as you can see by the title!) Over 10 issues we see a mostly new group of Jedi on the planet Jedha, dealing with several issues to do with the many different Force-based groups before seeing the Battle of Jedha through their eyes. It’s a very fun story actually, not that I should really be surprised at this point… Let’s take a look!

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Dragon Ball – 23rd Tenkaichi Tournament Arc (Episodes 140 – 148) Review

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It’s time to wrap up the final story arc of the original Dragon Ball series… well, it would be if this was the manga (though that was technically just called “Dragon Ball” the whole way through) but ignoring the post story filler arc, this is the big finale as Goku and Piccolo do battle in one final epic Dragon Ball battle before the beam-fests and teleporty fights that follow in Z. How does it hold up? Why, let’s take a look, shall we?

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Doctor Who: In the Night – Resistor Review

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If I were to give a one sentence review for “Resistor” it would be that it’s a simple two-part story that’s just… fine. The main issue is coming right after “Pursuit of the Nightjar” which is an extremely tough job for any story, let alone one with such a comparatively short run time. Still, putting that aside and looking at it by itself, what’s it like? Let’s take a deeper look…

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Jujutsu Kaisen – Hidden Inventory / Premature Death Arc (Episodes 25 – 29) Review

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It’s time to squeeze in a quick modern anime review as the new season of Jujutsu Kaisen is nicely split into two arcs and as this one is only five episodes it’s already ended (in fact it ended a couple of weeks ago, actually…) then it made sense to do it now rather than wait for the official end of the season. That being said it’s despite its short length it’s certainly no less important for it, so let’s take a look!

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