Doctor Who Review: The Out Of Story Adventures

So after last week's posts, I now give you a review of some episodes that really don't play a part in the main story, but do occur at some stage during each series. This will consist of some animated and short episodes, but I won't be doing all of them as I don't see the point of some of them and I haven't watched all of them and probably never will:

Attack of the Graske

Serving as a interactive adventure that takes place sometime during the 2nd series  The Doctor recruits a new companion (the viewer) to help him save Christmas from a troublesome creature known as a Graske. The idea of this adventure, is that the viewer has their own Sonic Screwdriver (or remote in this case) and you have to use it to solve a few puzzles (the majority of which are easy with a few hard ones as well) and the adventure ends with either a good or bad ending, depending on which option you took on the final puzzle, followed by The Doctor evaluating your score. Overall, the idea of having a more interactive experience is great, but it could be better with I don't know, more puzzles to crack or other things. Either way, its a good adventure which you can try out online. The the greatest by any means, but OK nevertheless. 7/10

The Infinte Quest

Taking place sometime during the events of the 3rd series (hence there being Martha Jones and the 10th Doctor here), The Doctor and Martha travel into the depths of space to find datachips to unlock a ship called The Infinite, a powerful and huge spaceship that can grant people their heart's desire. However a space pirate by the name Baltazar is also looking for the ship, but unlike Martha and The Doctor, he wants to sue it for his evil work. Its a very simple story to follow and while I do find the animation to be very unmoving and at times, odd, the story is great and the voice acting is great too. Only criticism that I have, is that the animation needs working on, especially if it wants to compete with more recent animated shows. Otherwise, it's a good adventure. 8/10

Time Crash

Serving as the bridge between "Last of the Time Lords" and "Voyage of the Damned" (or rather series 3 and series 4), The Doctor says farewell to Martha and after attempting to take off in the Tardis, the Tardis begins to sound an alarm and spins wildly and as he checks the systems, he bumps into his 5th incarnation (played by Peter Davison) who is doing the exact same thing and for the rest of the mini episode, they just banter about things with a few funny moments throughout. Overall, it's great to see 2 of the best incarnations of the Doctor together and I found this to be a very funny and enjoyable story which can be the biggest highlight of Children in Need 2007. And with a 50th anniversary special coming up, we can expect more of these great encounters that only happen once in a lifetime. 9/10

Dreamland

Taking place during the specials that occurred after series 4, The Doctor arrives in Nevada and after investigating an alien artefact in a diner, he encounters some robotic Men in Black and is taken to Area 51 (aka Dreamland) and is locked inside a military base with the waitress and native American he encountered at the diner. Escaping from their prison, the trio escape the area and basically for the rest of the episode, they try and stop the military from taking orders from an alien, while also exploring Area 51 in the process. Overall, while I do find that the animation is an improvement over The Infinite Quest, it's still not that great and feels very stiff at times. However, the story on the other hand is great and pays tribute to the area of America that seems to always get some sort of extra terrestrial discovery (according to the films on them any way). So its a great story, but suffers with the stiff animation which is a downside. 8/10

Space/Time

Now this one I find to be surprisingly good and a bit odd. Taking place at some stage in the 6th series The Tardis lands in what's known as an emergency materialisation, which normally would have the Tardis land on the safest place in the known universe, however in this instance, it instead, ends up inside itself, meaning that no one can leave ever again. But a few tweaking might be able to fix that. This is an episode that while very short, is surprisingly very good in that it pays tribute to nearly every in joke that a Whovain would make and its one that I think none of us saw coming. 9/10

Now I normally would put a overall score here, but as these take place at different points during the show, I'm not going to bother. What I will say is that, not only should you tune in to the main series, but also tune in to these specials because even though they are not part of the main story, they bring a lot of humour, imagination and fun to the world of Doctor Who, which as a fan myself, I love a lot.

Oh and for anyone wondering, I will touch on the remainder of the spin off shows that I still need to do series  reviews of sometime in April and as for the classic series, I will not do series reviews of as there are a lot of them, so instead, I will watch a few episodes of the classic series and will do a review of the doctors as a whole and I will do the remainder of the Adventure Games as well, hopefully they will be done in April so don't worry, they are coming.