Multi-Doctor Marathon

Ranking the Doctor Who Multi-Doctor Stories

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After a lengthy “catch up marathon” it’s time for the main event, on today the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who’s first episode going live, I’m going to rank all 43 multi-Doctor stories I could find (not including short stories, as there was a surprising amount of them and so few are actually easy to find, and not including stories where two version of the SAME Doctor feature, as that’s still technically multiple Doctors but not in the way I mean…) Now the key thing here is I’m not ranking them on anything other than being a good multi-Doctor story, and by that I mean having fun multi-Doctor interactions and more often than not, some good anniversary stuff as well. So while some stories lower down on the list are clearly better than some higher that most likely means that the multi-Doctor aspect was only a small part of it. Make sense? Good. Let’s rank ‘em!

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Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Review

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It’s time to end the Multi-Doctor Catch Up Marathon with the very first multi-Doctor story! The Three Doctors aired to kick off Season 10 (and so fans have taken to call it the 10th Anniversary story, though technically that’s not true…) and saw the return of Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor to assist his successor. Sadly William Hartnell was too ill to actually participate on set so he advises from a “Time Eddy”, or a small plastic triangle in someone’s shed, but hey-ho. At least had an excuse, unlike Tom Baker in the Five Doctors! Add in some early fun Time Lord lore and a cheesy villain it’s a good time in front of the telly. Let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: The Five Doctors Review

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The Five Doctors has to be one of my favourite “comfort food” things to put on, if I’m not really sure what to watch or for whatever reason feeling unhappy it’s something that will cheer me up for 90 minutes or so. That being said this is a review and to be completely fair to it the story really isn’t up to much, it’s a big anniversary special with loads of companions and, well, four Doctors to be more accurate, plus a few old villains and the like so it doesn’t really have time to be anything with more substance. Am I just making excuses? Well, let’s take a closer look…

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Doctor Who: The Two Doctors Review

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As we near the end of our Multi-Doctor catch-up marathon we’re left with the original three TV serials, with “The Two Doctors” being a bit of the odd one out as it wasn’t to celebrate any kind of anniversary but instead the producers at the time saw how successful “The Five Doctors” had been and decided to do it again! So we have the Second Doctor and Jamie join the Sixth Doctor and Peri in the middle of Season 22 for no real reason, in a story partially filmed on location in Spain, also for no real reason! Plus it’s a three-parter but at a time when each episode was the length of two regular episodes, making this effectively a six-part story which in the 80s was practically unheard of. In other words “The Two Doctors” is a very odd story, but is it a fun story to watch?

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Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Now, “Dimensions in Time” is a tricky one because technically it doesn’t feature two Doctors interacting but given it has multiple Doctors and companions and its an anniversary story I felt I couldn’t skip over it… plus if I don’t do it now I never will! So for those not aware “Dimensions in Time” was a 1993 Children in Need 3-D charity sketch (spread over two nights) to celebrate the series 30th anniversary, but due to it being off the air for three years all we got was this, which given it also crosses over with forever-popular soap Eastenders and had a phone-in vote to decide what some of the soap’s cast did shows how the show was viewed by the BBC at the time… Let’s take a look anyway, and not worry about if its canon or not!

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Doctor Who: Timewyrm – Revelation Review

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It’s time to dip into the Virgin New Adventures proper, though much like Zagreus I was hoping my planned dipping into older stories thing would’ve meant I’d at least covered the other three Timewyrm stories but alas, no. I have read and reviewed the other three but I didn’t find the space to randomly put them up as I had so many other new releases to catch up on. Anyway, the main point is unlike Zagreus there isn’t actually much continuity baggage beyond “the Timewyrm is a powerful mental parasite that the Doctor and Ace have encountered across several time periods”, just with a returning character or two thrown in. Revelation is a fun story, full of really weird and whacky imagery and scenarios that brings the arc to a good close. Let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: Cold Fusion Review

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“Cold Fusion” was originally a novel for the “Virgin Missing Adventures” line, pitched as a Fifth Doctor story that happened to feature the Seventh Doctor and his then-current companions from the main “New Adventures” line, but like some of the other novels (though not nearly as many as I’d like) it was turned into a full cast Audio Drama, and boy it’s a really fun one too. At six parts it moves around at a quick pace and gives lots to do for pretty much everyone while keeping a light-hearted but occasionally serious tone. Let’s take a look at what is the last audio in this marathon (as I’m going by release order of the original book, otherwise it would’ve been closer to the start!)

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Doctor Who: The Sirens of Time Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Where to start with “The Sirens of Time”? It was the first full cast Doctor Who audio Big Finish produced (not including the Bernice Summerfield spin-offs anyway) and as such the audio quality, script and small-part actors are all of lower quality that what you got even one year later honestly, it didn’t take long for them to get a better handle of things but this first release is rough. That being said the set up isn’t bad, in fact its one we’ve seen many times in this multi-Doctor marathon in that the first three parts are for one Doctor each then they all come together for the fourth, though there is a weird anti-Fifth Doctor thread across the story… Anyway, let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: Project: Lazarus (II) Review

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This is an awkward release to cover as “Project: Lazarus” was released as a single story made of two halves but the issue I always ran into was that the first half, which is a self-contained Sixth Doctor story, has a major companion departure (pretty much anyway) whereas this second half, a self-contained Seventh Doctor story (featuring the Sixth Doctor, sort-of) isn’t really that important. So to give the Sixth Doctor story its rightful spotlight I’ve broke it up into two reviews, with the first half appearing next year (hopefully!) when I cover all the Evelyn Smythe stories here and there. So let’s take a look at the second story in Project: Lazarus, itself a sort of second story in a loose trilogy…

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Doctor Who: Zagreus Review

David HoganLeave a comment

This is a review I was hoping I would’ve got to in my sadly-put-on-hold “filling in the gaps” covering of older Who stories I had to stop a year or so ago as instead of a big anniversary story with multiple Doctors meeting its instead a near four hour story wrapping up a bunch of the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard storylines and setting up the next era of the audio-exclusive series (the show’s TV revival had yet to come about at this point so these audios with Paul McGann were very much the continuation of the show) so while I’m happy to talk about this now it does feel like reviewing a season finale without having reviewed any other part of the season. There is a brief scene with four Doctors talking, in case you’re wondering why it’s part of this marathon, plus each of Doctors 5-7 and a bunch of their companions play other roles in the story as well. Confused? I bet. Strap in, it’s a long story…

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