For over a decade, the whole family could gather around the TV on Christmas Day and watch a new Doctor Who Christmas special. These episodes were rarely as all-around well-executed as the series’ best episodes, but they were always packed with holiday spirit and undeniably fun to watch. No Christmas special exhibited these qualities more than the 2010 special, A Christmas Carol. Being both Steven Moffat and Matt Smith’s first Doctor Who Christmas special, it had quite a lot to live up to—and boy did it. I’d argue that A Christmas Carol is not only a great Doctor Who Christmas special but also a great episode of Doctor Who in general. Loosely adapting Charles Dickens’ classic book, A Christmas Carol, the special is jam-packed with Christmas spirit, spectacular performances, and a suitably timey-wimey plotline perfect for the 11th Doctor. It is easily my favorite Doctor Who Christmas special. (5 out of 5 wands.)
Continue readingDoctor Who: A Christmas Carol (written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes)
Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) are trapped on a crashing space liner, and the only way the Doctor (Matt Smith) can rescue them is to save the soul of a lonely old miser, Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon, Laurence Belcher, Danny Horn). But is Sardick, the richest man in Sardicktown, beyond redemption? And what is lurking in the fogs of Christmas Eve?
When it was announced that Big Finish Productions had been given the license to create new audio dramas featuring characters from the revived series of Doctor Who (in addition to the classic series license they already had), we all knew it was only a matter of time before they started doing new adventures with some of the Doctors from the new series. Unfortunately, with the exception of David Tennant (as the 10th Doctor), Big Finish has been unable to lure any of the new Doctors to do audio dramas yet. In their absence, Big Finish has still created new stories featuring those Doctors in the form of audiobook/audio drama hybrids, where an actor who can impersonate that Doctor performs the narration, the voice of the Doctor, and the voices of some other characters while a guest actor or two from the TV series comes in to provide their own voice. They did this first with the Nicholas Briggs led Ninth Doctor Chronicles, then a second time with the Jacob Dudman-led Tenth Doctor Chronicles, and most recently with another set led by Jacob Dudman, this time featuring the Eleventh Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles features four stand-alone stories from parts of the Eleventh Doctor’s era. 
What to say about The Lost Dimension: Alpha? I definitely wish the issue was longer. That sounds like a complaint, but really, it’s more of a compliment because it really is just that good of an issue. In Titan Comics’ latest Doctor Who crossover, The Lost Dimension, multiple incarnations of the Doctor come together in order to save the universe from a mysterious entity known only as The Void. The Void has always existed: “No place. The silent realm. The Lost Dimension.” But the void is no longer empty. The void is hungry. It’s devouring our universe – through time and space! Now, every Doctor must play his part to save… EVERYTHING! Written by George Mann and Cavan Scott and illustrated by Rachel Stott, Cris Bolson, Pasquale Qualano, Elton Thomasi, Klebs Jr., and JB Bastos, The Lost Dimension: Alpha is the first of eight issues in The Lost Dimension crossover event. (As always, spoilers follow) 
Thoroughly Modern Reviewer 