You know what I always disliked? Soaps. You know what I really disliked about soaps? The Christmas episode that was almost guaranteed to be depressing as hell. Well, welcome to the Doctor Who equivalent of that! Death in Blackpool is Lucie Miller’s leaving story (though far from her last story) and it’s not exactly full of Christmas cheer, to put it bluntly… Let’s have a look then…
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The Chimes of Midnight is one of those “holier-than-thou” Big Finish releases along with Spare Parts, and it was also among the first I listened to. While some stories my opinions differ from the majority, as all people find with things like this, but in terms of “The Chimes of Midnight”? No, it’s firmly one of my favourite Doctor Who stories period and I need no excuse to listen to it (though its Christmas setting does lend to a December re-listen…) So let’s finally get a review of The Chimes of Midnight up, shall we?
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I’ll be honest with you, this time last week Flip-Flop wasn’t part of this marathon. It’d been well over a decade since I listened to it last and the fact it takes place on Christmas Eve/Day had completely slipped my mind. Still, a random look at a forum thread on “Doctor Who stories set at Christmas” and here we are! Flip-Flop isn’t actually very Chirstmassy, beyond a few mentions here and there, but it is very cleverly written! So let’s take a look…
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Time Lord Victorious continues this month, in several different formats, but starts with this one-hour audiobook. Now while I prefer full cast audio drama, I have no issue with a good audiobook, and thankfully Jacob Dudman does a good Tenth Doctor and has a good enough range for the rest of the characters, plus reading the prose. All that being said, is it actually any good? Let’s find out!
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The One Doctor is a bit of an odd-ball in this Christmas specials look, as it technically doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. It was released in December 2001, but that’s about it… except it’s clearly a light-hearted comedy affair set up to be Big Finish’s “Christmas Panto”. For that reason I feel it deserves to be here on this list, unlike the next year’s release “Bang Bang-a-Boom”, which while more light-hearted felt more like a Star Trek parody than anything Pantomime-y. ANYWAY, so let’s have a look at the first of five audio Christmas offerings in a row!
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Kicking off this rundown of Christmas stories I haven’t reviewed already is the very first one (which makes sense as I’ll be putting the reviews up in Doctor order…), though it’s oddly a single episode in the middle of a larger serial. Thankfully it’s also completely standalone, the six episodes before it and the five that air after it make up the real meat of “Daleks’ Master Plan”, this is merely a comedic interlude because the episode happened to end up airing on Christmas Day. Is it still funny, even though it now only exists as a soundtrack and some still photos? Let’s find out!
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Ghosts sees The Doctor and River Song arrive on a planet of ghosts, unsurprisingly. Thankfully unlike the bland title it’s a clever story, more so than most, so now more than ever pay attention to the spoiler warning! Don’t want spoilers? Then just skip to the score to see if it’s worth your time (there are no spoilers in the Overall Thoughts, I should make that more obvious really…) After a great and a good story, does the “Doctor and River Song” set end on an equal high, or a disappointing low? Let’s find out!
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Hi all!
Alongside my regular, roughly 9.10am posts on most weekdays (plus Scrolling Sundays of course!) I’ll be putting up an extra Doctor Who review at 2:30pm between tomorrow and December 23rd. Each story is a Christmas themed story (that I haven’t already reviewed) that will culminate with a “Ranking all the Doctor Who Christmas Stories” list on Christmas Eve (which WILL include the ones I’ve already reviewed, obviously!) In order to not give the game away the reviews will be uploaded in Doctor order, rather than any order of preference! (Also it won’t feature “Spare Parts”, because although there are references to the Mondas version of Christmas, it just… doesn’t fit in my mind as a “Christmas Story”. Also I’m sure there are one-off comics set at Christmas by Titan and IDW, but they don’t end up in the collected GNs I have, so I can’t comment on them!)
For the sake of not over-Who-ing this blog I have put the DWM Eighth Doctor comics/Lost Stories rundown on hold until January, though given the amount of Big Finish releases and Time Lord Victorious stories there are this month a few days with two Doctor Who reviews going up is unavoidable, so sorry if that part of the blog doesn’t appeal!
After all, given how 2020 has gone, who doesn’t want some extra Christmas things? (though being honest I started this last year then ran out of time, so… yeah. Some of these reviews are a year or more old! … of things much older, so makes no difference to anyone but me, but there you go… man this is a rambling bracketed comment… I’ll stop now.)
The Doctor and River trio continues as we get our first “traditional” story with the characters, though admittedly one that takes them across different time periods rather than a single adventure in one place. Does a more familiar, almost Doctor-Companion set up work with River Song and the Tenth Doctor? Let’s find out!
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We kick off a trio of Tenth Doctor and River Song stories with Expiry Dating, what would be, from The Doctor’s perspective, their second encounter, just after Donna had left. It’s nearly entirely told via messages to each other, from one end of time and the universe to another, and includes several legitimately funny cameos and scenes. How does it rate over all? Let’s find out!
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Hogan Reviews 