A Christmas Carol is certainly the most Christmassy Christmas story so far in the marathon, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the title. Christmas-ness aside the story is a fun one, with some good use of time travel (though one that sort of breaks all the rules that The Doctor has been following his whole life…), a good sense of humour throughout and a pleasant, soppy ending. So a pretty good Christmas story then! Let’s take a closer look…
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Well, it was a good thing I listened to this before doing the Christmas stories list, because this sort of counts! At least in the same way “Flip-Flop” counts, as it’s set at Christmas with a few mentions of the holiday, but it’s otherwise a standalone story that isn’t itself “festive”. It also features Jon Culshaw’s always crazily accurate Brigadier, though the character’s involvement does raise a few confusing questions…
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On first glance you may see the title, find out that this story contains someone pretending to be The Doctor and think it’s a rip-off of another story that appeared in the this marathon, but actually that’s the only thing the two have in common, and “The Next Doctor” is a great story in its own right. So let’s take a look at the last Tenth Doctor Christmas Special in this countdown (having already covered his actual last special some time ago…)
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Uryu gets the spotlight for the first half of this chunk of episodes, before we dive head-first into the fight-fest that is the Soul Society Arc finale. Does the pace slow a bit too much in between? Are there too many flashbacks? Did they really put another Karakura Superheroes filler episode in?! Let’s take a look!
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Good old disaster movies, they’re… not my thing at all, but they do often get shown around Christmas, so the next Christmas Special being very much a Doctor Who version of that makes sense. It also has Kylie Minogue as a sort-of companion, which is pretty much all the advertising was leading into it, but hey-ho. It was a big deal! So let’s have a look at “Voyage of the Damned” and see if it holds up past the big guest!
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It’s time for another Time Lord Victorious tie-in, but one with the Fourth Doctor, weirdly enough! This was announced late in the game (so much that it wasn’t included in the TLV subscription bundle…) and was made to act as a tie-in to an Escape Room activity that thanks to COVID barely got going. STILL! Funnily enough this story was actually good by itself, so let’s take a look!
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Having already reviewed the first Tenth Doctor Christmas story a few years ago, we jump straight to the second. The Runaway Bride features the debut of future companion Donna Noble, and even dabbles in the Dark Times (which is relevant to the current Time Lord Victorious storyline being released…) Overall though it is what it was always meant to be: a fun Christmas story, with a bit of Doctor rehabilitation after losing Rose in the previous story. Let’s take a look then!
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ECW games are like buses, you wait forever for one then two comes along at once! … then the company goes bankrupt. Oh well! Anarchy Rulz sees us wave goodbye to the “War Zone Engine”, and not a moment too soon as it started to get old during Attitude, and Hardcore Revolution didn’t do it any favours. Still, this game features a match where people explode into flames when they get tossed over the top onto lava-like “hot coals”, so… hooray?
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You know I’d completely forgotten this story was set at Christmas until last year, when I was preparing this marathon (that ended up getting delayed until now) and saw it pop up in a search I did to “make sure I hadn’t forgotten one”. It’s nice because reviewing a Ninth Doctor TV story is always going to be a rare thing, and Christmas Specials are sort of a classic thing post 2005, so it’s nice he got one. Anyway, ghosts and Charles Dickens? Sounds good to me! Let’s take a look…
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So… this somehow became a thing! Daleks! (yes the exclamation mark is part of the title…) is a series of five 15-ish minute episodes focused on the unique Dalek group we’ve heard/read about recently in the Time Lord Victorious stories. Sadly, even for an entirely free YouTube series, the production values are extremely low, so much so it’s distracting a lot of the time. Add in the fact that there are no human or even visibly alien characters, only robots and aliens inside robot shells, it comes off as if it had to be made in five seconds. Want to know more? Well, I don’t see why you do, but okay…
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Hogan Reviews 