Review by Guy Clapperton
Stars David Tennant, Georgia Moffett, David Warner | Written by Phil Ford
UK cert PG | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 44 minutes | Directed by Gary Russell
Right, the way to enjoy this DVD is to forget the main feature – it’s a runaround cartoon featuring the ever-spirited voice of Tennant, his inamorata Moffett (if they did get married I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the wedding where Georgia’s dad Peter Davison or Doctor 5 gives the Doctor’s Daughter from Tennant’s third and final full season to the 10th Doctor … but I digress) and a bunch of aliens.
It was planned as 12 minute episodes and it just about holds together. Many people have managed better animation than this and the story’s workmanlike but nothing innovative.
The best bits are the extras. BBC3 viewers might have seen a three-part series about Doctor Who’s best bits since its revival. These were put together in the lead-up to Tennant’s last stories and serve as a reminder of how great the Eccleston and Tennant years were.
And they were. Kind of. There’s another school of thought – mine, mostly – that says that excellent though Tennant was as the Doctor, it all got a bit self-congratulatory in the last few months. Tennant was great but he was on every chat show, there were these unremarkable cartoons and then this clip show reminding us of how much we’d enjoyed it.
Well, yes we had, but we’re bright enough to have realized that in the first place. Sorry guys, but if you slap yourself on the back hard enough too often then it eventually becomes a pain in the arse. If you’re really, really besotted with the series then by all means buy this DVD – but if, like some of us, you think more can be less, I wouldn’t honestly bother.