The main range continues to plough forward with the next Sixth Doctor / Constance / Flip story, and boy it’s a dozy. Scorched Earth takes place in France just after its liberation, in other words Constance’s near future, and so this story really explores the differences between Constance from the 1940s and Flip from the 2010s. Throw in some soldiers on all sides of the war and a fiery alien and you’ve got a hit on your hands! Let’s take a closer look.
Much like with Poison of the Daleks, my immediate thought was “World War II again?” but unlike the Dalek story before this, I quickly thought to myself “That being said, the Third Doctor had very few historical-set stories, and never appeared in WWII, so…It’s actually quite fresh for this incarnation”. So ignoring the setting, is it fresh? or more importantly, is it any good? Let’s find out!
I was of two minds going into Poison of the Daleks. On the one hand I love the Third Doctor Adventures, especially now they have the Brigadier in the stories, but on the other hand, The Daleks, again? The Third Doctor already has the second most TV encounters with them out of the classic Doctors and they already appeared a couple of TDA sets ago. Oh well… Was Poison of the Daleks a treat or a retread? Let’s find out!
Shadow of the Sun is a “Lockdown Special Release”, recorded entirely from the casts’ homes. How does that effect the release? It doesn’t, other than a bonus Fourth Doctor release in May… which sounds good to me! The actual story is two parts bog-standard run-around, one part interesting religious examination. Does that mix work?! Let’s find out!
The Season 14 Blu-Ray set has been released, and that means it’s time to review a story from the set! It was close in terms of which ones I hadn’t watched in the longest time, but I decided to go with Talons because… the other was Masque of Mandragora, and while I’m sure my memories of it being dull might not be true, I fancied a nice long evening with a fun six-parter that I surprisingly haven’t watched in nearly a decade. The Doctor, Leela, Jago, Litefoot, Greel, Mr. Sin… it’s full of characters, quotes and moments engraved in your head, so let’s look just how and why it still stands up, despite… “questionable in today’s world” visual effects.
Here we go then, the titular story and one of those infamous things you hear about as you start to dive deeper into fandom. While I won’t spoil the twist here, I have a spoiler warning in the review part for a reason, you’ve no doubt heard about why this story is so infamous at some point in your Who travels. Still, beyond THAT reason, is the story any good? Does it serve as a good lead in to the fantastic DWM Eighth Doctor comic run? Let’s find out!
We’re nearing the end of our run through the Ground Zero GN, with just this story to go before we reach the final and titular tale. Black Destiny, much like most of the stories in this run, is set during a rarely seen time, in this case it’s The Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry, who are on the way back to Earth after having just dealt a blow to the Cybermen (though let’s face it, had Liz Sladen and Ian Marter still been alive, Big Finish would have mined this period dry!) and deals with zombies and Chernobyl. Now there’s a combo! Let’s have a look…
This is going to be a quicky! Target Practice was a single issue comic story and isn’t even connected to the mini-story arc seen in the previous two comics. Still, is it fun to breeze through?
Continuing on with looking at the comic stories contained within the Ground Zero GN, we now go back down the line of The Doctor to see the original (erm, well…. No, let’s just stick with original…) and his Granddaughter Susan in the still relatively rare pre-Unearthly Child period of their lives. Is this another fun three-issue romp? Let’s find out!
While I’ve finished playing catch up with the Doctor Who Audios, I just need to quickly run down the stories featured in the Graphic Novel “Ground Zero”, but as each story features a different Doctor I can’t group them up, so there may be a bit of a comicathon coming up!
Curse of the Scarab is set during that rare period of Fifth Doctor and Peri, a period that TV-wise was just two stories long, and also features the return of the Orsiran race. These were probably unique things back in the 90s, but Big Finish and Titan Comics of recent years have put an end to that! Let’s take a look anyway…
Hogan Reviews 