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!
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.)
I had the pleasure of receiving a 4K UHD Blu-Ray of Akira to review for Anime UK News, which you can read HERE. While I do talk about the picture quality more than I normally do for reviews, there is still plenty of talk about the all-time classic there as well. Sadly it soon became known that this release was a bit of a step back compared to other 4K releases, but hey-ho. Thems the breaks!
Behold! Most likely the only Sega Saturn review to go up on this blog! Yes, I own a Saturn, but I brought it at a car boot sale roughly 15 years ago, so a good while after it was still relevant. It was super cheap and had a few games with it, among them were two Saturn exclusives that I always wanted to play: Fighting Vipers and Die Hard Arcade. I remember seeing this game in magazines at the time and being extremely jealous of Saturn owners getting a 3D (!!) beat ‘em up, and with the Die Hard license no less! Was it worth the wait? Erm… sort of? Let’s take a look at the first 3D entry in this marathon!
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!
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!
I hold the Soul Society Arc in very high regard, but even I’ll admit this first quarter is a little on the slow side. Now, it’s the beginning, it’s just setting things in motion, so I can’t be too hard on it, but there are one or two moments when the anime team stretch some things out to breaking point, something they thankfully resist as the arc goes on. So with that all being said, let’s take a closer look at the first chunk of Soul Society episodes!
I was initially hesitant to buy Wicked Sisters, given I haven’t been following the Graceless spin-off series, but after being assured it was pretty stand alone, and given the price, I went with it. Turns out I made the right choice, because whatever happened to Abby and Zara between the Key2Time trilogy and this was nicely explained in a few bits of dialogue, and what was left was a fun story featuring The Fifth Doctor teaming up with Leela to tackle a duo who are pretty much doing what The Doctor does, just with more … dangerous powers…
We reach the end of the “licensed games from Namco and CAPCOM” period of this marathon (ignoring the side-step last week) with one of the best of the lot: Alien vs. Predator from CAPCOM. It’s a game I never knew existed until the days of the ROM in the mid-2000s, and man oh man was I annoyed this never got a home release. Does it still hold up now? Silly question, but let’s have a good look anyway!
Given landing the job as reviewer for Anime UK News is what really gave me the push into reviewing things, it only made sense for Review #1,000 to be an anime review. I didn’t have the time to review a whole series (nor would I want to condense a whole series into a single review) so I decided to review my favourite singular episode, and when I made that decision there was only one thing that leapt to mind… Cowboy Bebop’s fifth episode, “Ballad of Fallen Angels” is not only brilliantly written, acted (in both languages) and scored, but it also stands entirely alone, which is handy for reviewing purposes! So let’s celebrate 1,000 reviews with style!
Hogan Reviews 