Hogan Reviews

This is a strange boxset. It sees the Seventh Doctor come across Harry Sullivan and a female UNIT member called Naomi Cross in the near-present day because the Fourth Doctor dropped them off in the wrong time. What makes this weird is that story hasn’t been released yet due to the nature of how far in advance Tom Baker’s stories are so this is picking up from a cliffhanger we’ve yet to hear! Thankfully a conversation between the two catch us up pretty quick anyway. As for the story itself? A bit too fantasy for my liking, something that’s becoming something of a theme for Big Finish Who releases recently… Let’s take a look!

Flatpack is a weird story because it has the Ninth Doctor encounter some old companions but in this case its Liv and Tania from the Eighth Doctor audio range, a situation where we know Liv left The Doctor to live with Tania but also had adventures before then that are still being released. That makes this feel less like The Doctor meeting old companions and more like some sort of crossover. Still though, key question: is it good? The answer is yes! While I had some problems with it the two returning companions worked really well with Christopher Eccleston, so let’s take a look.

So after heading to Earth and then Outer Space, what could The Doctor possibly do next in this third box in the Ninth Doctor’s second “season”? Well… a mix of both, in other words like all Doctor Who seasons. Anyway, enough of making fun of the boxset naming this was a fun double bill but neither story particularly stood out as memorable, which is a shame because its always nice to “see” the Sea Devils pop up… Let’s take a look!

The most interesting thing about “The Dalby Spook” is finding out that it’s based on an actual thing! Apparently on the Isle of Man in the 30s there was a hot rumour of a talking mongoose called Gef that attracted paranormal specialists and skeptics like Harry Price to debunk it. How bizarre! What’s that? The story? … It’s alright. After “Paradox of the Daleks” it was certainly more straight forward and low key, that’s for sure! Let’s take a look…