We continue our look at the third volume of the Tenth Doctor Adventures with One Mile Down. It’s a middle of the road story, containing both good and bad, and I can’t help but feel the Judoon, seen here front and centre of the cover image, were added for the sake of it, but without further beating around the bush, let’s have a closer look!
Kicking off the third volume of the Tenth Doctor Adventures then is a ghost story that is both a fun story in its own right, and a a great showcase as to why The Doctor and Donna are among the best pairing in the series’ long history. It also features both of Donna’s family members, which is great because it’s always nice to hear Bernard Cribbins! So let’s take a closer look then!
Last month’s Monsters of Gokroth was an average affair, but did at least give us a new combination of Doctor and companion thanks to the reintroduction of Mags… sadly, Moons of Vulpana is, well, not very good. A not very interesting setting full of incredibly dull characters that you don’t even remotely care for, this is not worth going out of your way to track down… Let’s have a closer look anyway!
The Fifth Volume of the Third Doctor Adventures concludes, and now I’m more used to the new Brig I feel I can comment on this story easier, though I am happy to say that Sgt. Benton joins the cast in this story as well, not recast or anything, but it’s a nice addition that makes it feel all the more authentic. The Scream of Ghosts also features the return of something else as well, but that would be for the spoilers section…
The Third Doctor Adventures returns, and has further evolved! Starting off as a mostly narrated affair, we eventually got Tim Trelor’s Third Doctor in a full cast environment, and now we have a perfectly recast Brigadier thanks to Jon Culshaw, and a good version of Liz Shaw from the original actresses own daughter. Adding in Jo Grant, who is thankfully still with us, and we’ve pretty much hit full cast Third Doctor stories! Primord, the first story of two, features both new recasts and is a really fun, if not rather basic, story that is also a direct sequel to TV classic Inferno… Let’s have a deeper look!
It’s time to finish catching up (pretty much) with the Titan Comics releases by covering “Year 3”, starting with… a story that came out at the end of the run, but as it stars the Seventh Doctor I thought I’d read the stories in Doctor order, rather than release order. Operation Volcano shares a lot of similarities to the Third Doctor Titan story I raved about last year, especially with accurate drawings of the lead cast, but does the story hold up on its own? Well…
A few months ago Big Finish had a big sale on and during it I picked up the five Bernice Summerfield boxsets that take place after her 11 series run (that I won’t be picking up without downloads…) but before her New Adventures range (that I brought as they were released a few years ago), so I thought I’d finally get round to listening to them, now we’re currently in between non-currently-released Who marathons. Epoch kicks things off with… a mish-mash of genres and characters that doesn’t fully work, sadly… It’s not all bad though, so let’s press on with the review!
So the Audio / Comic Companion Debut Marathon comes to a close with the Eleventh Doctor’s Titan Comics companion Alice… plus John Jones and ARC, who last far less, but do travel with The Doctor, to be fair to them! Anyway, let’s have a look at “After Life”, which unlike the 10th Doctor stuff, is actually four short stories with connected themes, rather than all being multi-part affairs…
As we near the end of the Audio / Comics Companion Debut Marathon we reach the Titan comics range, a range I started covering on this blog from “Year 2” onwards, so this is slightly awkward as I’ll be going back to the start, before beginning to tackle “Year 3” in a month or so… Oh well! The Tenth Doctor’s new companion for the range, Gabby, is a fun character and their adventures get off to a good, and less complicated, start… so let’s have a look!
This is a rare one, an IDW comic story (well, stories). I wasn’t a big fan of the IDW series, and re-reading these two confirmed that opinion. Wonky artwork (especially Silver Scream!) and endless, relentless call backs right from the off. The stories aren’t bad, but I just don’t like the presentation, not helped by the fact that I only own them digitally thanks to a Humble Bundle a fair few years ago. Either way though, I consider them “canon” to my personal Doctor Who timeline, so Emily and Matthew are indeed comic companions, so here they are in this marathon! Let’s take a look…
Hogan Reviews 