A little bit late with this review, but still (just) before the next-to-air episode, it’s time to put down in words my thoughts on Orphan 55. I’ll be honest, I was really enjoying it for most of its runtime, it was a good base under siege story with some properly creepy monsters, sadly there was a twist that not only didn’t really work in Who’s history, but didn’t work at all due to its lack of subtly. Want to know what I’m going on about? Read on!
The new series of Doctor Who has (finally) started with a two-parter named “Spyfall”, which is at east an actual pun on “Skyfall”, unlike a certain episode last season that set me off… ANYWAY, Spyfall is Chris Chibnall’s best effort so far, which comes as a big relief after his rather poor track history in the last series. Throw in an unexpected twist and it’s a good near-two hours. Let’s take a closer look!
My idea of reviewing a story from every season as its released on Blu-ray immediately ran into a problem thanks to the release of Season 23, a season that’s actually one long story, albeit a story that is clearly segmented into four parts. Rather than review the whole Trial of a Time Lord (which I didn’t have time to do due to a certain six film, six game marathon) I was going to just review one part, but that didn’t seem right either. Thankfully, on the Blu-ray, is a special “Standalone Edition” of one of the stories, with all the Trial stuff cut out, so I’ve decided to review that, and then later do an additional paragraph or two when I reach this story during a review of Trial proper. With all that said, how is Terror of the Vervoids when all the Trial stuff is removed? Let’s find out!
The Season 10 Blu-Ray… came out a couple of months ago, but now after several changes in my life, from job upgrades to moving, I’m back and settled, so I finally stuck on the restored version of a story from arguably my favourite Doctor Who period. Hooray! Planet of the Daleks, unlike the other ones I’ve reviewed, is actually the “centrepiece” of this set, and while I didn’t bother with the updated effects, I did enjoy the re-colourised Episode 3 and the general clean up. So let’s look at the story that inspired quite a few direct sequels, though none on TV, funnily enough!
A week after the Season 18 Blu-ray release and we get an even more anticipated HD release for Doctor Who: another fully animated missing story, in this case The Macra Terror! Yes, I never thought I’d see the day… would be an understatement, even after the release of Power. So how does the animated version stack up, and how is the story overall? Well…
Season 18 made its way to blu-ray this week, so as per usual I thought I’d review a story from the season to “celebrate”, so to speak. The big draw of the set is the new Special Edition of Logopolis, but given I’ve reviewed that already, I decided to go with the story I haven’t seen in the longest, which in this case was Meglos. Nearly 10 years since I last watched it and mentally wrote it off as “boring”, I actually enjoyed it more than that memory would‘ve had me believe. By how much? Well, let’s find out!
2019’s first, and only, televised Doctor Who story was at the very least a good one. Despite being the weakest of the writers in his own show-ran season, Chris Chibnall managed to tell a good story and put a unique spin on a Dalek tale, something very hard to do after 50+ years of the evil pepper pots. So let’s take a deeper look at Resolution, and then I’ll update the Thirteenth Doctor page for the last time this year… already. (not bitter or anything…)
So I thought with the blu-ray season sets being released now I’d watch and review at least one story from each season as they come out, rather than do the whole season in one go and ruin potential marathons for down the line. For Season 19 I chose Four to Doomsday, as I had already covered Castrovalva for the “Debut Story Marathon”, and it was the one I hadn’t seen in the longest… that wasn’t called Time-Flight… Let’s take a look then, at the story that is actually Davison’s debut in the role, recording-wise.
Series 11 / Season 37 comes to an end with the unnecessarily annoying to say “Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”. Sadly, once again, the limits of Chris Chibnall’s script writing rears its ugly head, as while the story wasn’t bad by any means, it was once again lacking in tension or interesting new characters. So, let’s take a look then, as the Thirteenth Doctor’s final outing until New Year’s… in a couple of weeks?!
It Takes You Away is right up there with the best this series. It was cleverly written, used the companions well and had a really interesting, unique sci-fi plot at its centre. It’s getting rather worrying that the only stories I’m particularly thrilled with come from writers who aren’t showrunner Chris Chibnall, but hey-ho! Let’s take a look at “It Takes You Away”.
Hogan Reviews 