The Thirteenth Doctor returned to our screens over Easter, but don’t get your hopes up for a special episode as it felt very much like a regular “filler episode” at just the regular runtime of 45 minutes and having little to no impact on the story. Still, the Sea Devils returned! Always nice to see a returning monster… Most of the time. Let’s take a look!
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The Invasion is not only a rare eight-part story, not only features the debut of UNIT but it’s also the first story to ever receive animated missing episodes. On top of all that it has Cybermen in it, which admittedly isn’t very rare for the Second Doctor story, but there you go. That being said they only appear in half of it anyway as it does take a good while for the invading to actually happen… thankfully the human villain in the story is very entertaining! Want to know more? Read on!
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*Gasp!* A Patrick Troughton story that’s entirely live action?! I forgot such a thing exists… The Mind Robber is an odd story, to put it mildly: fictional characters brought to life, funky 50s robots, Zoe doing some sort of karate, a superhero called “The Karkus”, someone else playing Jamie for two episodes, and more! Does it hold together? Is the odd episode count of five parts a good or bad thing? Let’s find out!
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It’s always interesting to look back at the debut story of an iconic enemy, seeing which parts of their character / their race lasted and what was added as they went along. In the case of the Ice Warriors their debut story is actually a very basic Second Doctor “base under siege” story with about the only impressive thing about them being their costume design. Still, they proved popular enough to bring back later several times (including two Third Doctor TV stories coming to this blog in a month or two!) so let’s take a look at the one that started it all!
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As quickly as they began we end our travels with Oliver Harper. He joined with a big secret, we found out that secret in his second story, and now we see (or hear) how his travels end. Is the ending a worthy one? Well, let’s find out!
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For this run of stories I was going to take a look at the Sarah Kingdom trilogy (also by Simon Guerrier) but then I remembered I’d started the Oliver Harper trilogy in the Audio/Comic debut marathon, so it made sense to finish that off instead… so here we are! The Cold Equations is the middle of the three stories (obviously) and focuses on more on character development for both Steven and Oliver, with the latter’s “big secret” being revealed…
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The War Machines is a lot of things, it’s the last entirely complete Hartnell story in the archive, it’s Dodo’s last story, it’s Ben and Polly’s first story and their only story that’s not either missing entirely or filled in with animation and it’s an extremely rare contemporary First Doctor story. Is it also a good story though? That’s the main question, so let’s find out!
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This two part story manages to tick several boxes here, not just being a really good two-parter for the Ninth Doctor, not just a story where the Ninth Doctor meets the Brigadier, but also a more traditional Cyberman story for Mr. Eccleston after the admittedly great but very unusual one we got in the last set. While it’s not perfect, for example I have no interest in the Sam Bishop character that’s presented here like it’s a long awaited bit of backstory, but overall it’s a really enjoyable two hours. Let’s take a closer look!
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The last of the… current series? Sort of? … Erm, of the Ninth Doctor audio dramas has arrived and it’s neatly split into a single episode and a two-part finale, though I will say that the finale will have a lot to live up to as this story, “Fond Farewell”, was great. Well written, acted and felt extremely of-era, there’s a lot to like, so let’s take a look!
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So, along with the Twin Dilemma (already reviewed) and Paradise Towers, The Web Planet was one of the stories I was least looking forward to re-watching one day for this blog. I convinced myself that my dislike for it probably came from the mistake of watching all six parts in a row back when the DVD came out, so I watched it in three lots of two episodes this time and… nope, still extremely boring and super cringey in places. I do admire how far they went with how little money they had, it’s an impressive story for a 60s British TV serial (well, apart from the Zarbi…) but still doesn’t make it very fun to watch… So, let’s get it out the way then, shall we?
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Hogan Reviews 