Letterboxd — Your life in film

In an era of big CGI blockbusters, this felt wonderfully old school. Absolutely thrilling stuff and safely added to the list of greatest ever sequels.

Huge fun, gory and a breezy 90 mins. Nic Cage is having a blast as Count Dracula and Nicholas Hoult is doing the same as 1990’s Hugh Grant.

Probably the best episode of Doctor Who since the brilliant 12th Doctor story Heaven Sent. Without doubt Russel T Davis’ best script since Midnight. Genuinely creepy and gripping throughout it’s runtime, this is the show at it’s very best and Tate and Tennant are absolutely superb.

Great to see Tennant and Tate back together in what was ultimately a fun, but middling first of three specials for the 60th anniversary. Strange narrative choice for the 14th doctor to be so worried about Donna remembering him, then going all out to have her remember him. That new Tardis interior was a thing of total beauty though, the best it’s ever looked.

The music was too intrusive for me, but the colourisation worked and streamlining this sprawling 7-parter down to 75 mins worked brilliantly. I can see this really working for a whole new generation.

Despite it being a bit rubbish, I enjoyed myself so much with this I’m now going to crow-bar Peter Cushing’s Doctor into the canon of the show. His Tardis console room is a fucking travesty though.

This seemed like a perfectly decent adventure but I just couldn’t stop getting distracted. Troughton has always been my least favourite classic Doctor, which I had initially put down to his lack of available episodes. Sitting through these animated versions, he’s still my least favourite classic doctor. I now put it down to him being a whining space hobo.

I hated it first watch as it’s yet another story making the Daleks look stupid and then warmed to it more the second time. Russell T Davis explaining during the making of that we won’t see Davros in his ‘monstrous’ form anymore because it links disability with being evil was utterly ridiculous. I’ve never once linked the two things in my head and nor have I ever seen anyone do that online. Davros just looked fucking cool. I’m not sure what that means for the show going forward.

Another excellent animated reconstruction of a missing serial. It’s a solid Dalek story. I wouldn’t rate it quite as highly as other people seem to do because it could certainly do with being shorter. You could cut two episodes worth of material from this and not miss anything.

The second doctor, Jamie and a perpetually screaming Victoria find themselves up against killer seaweed in this animated reconstruction of the lost 60’s serial. Great stuff, but you have to feel for Victoria, who can’t mentally face another monster of the week, and whose exit from the Tardis crew is rather touching.

One criticism. Everyone has really long arms. Really, really long arms. It’s borderline ‘Mr Tickle’ at times.

The combination of live action and the animation used to finish this infamous Doctor Who  serial makes for odd but enjoyable viewing. The story itself written by the great Douglas Adams is sparkling with his trademark wit and is breezy and well paced, quite the achievement for a Who 6-parter. It also has a beautiful score.

Excellent animation this time and a hugely enjoyable story for the second doctor with the monstrous and genuinely creepy ‘Macra’. What’s that? Oh yes of course, “THE MACRA DO NOT EXIST!” Ahem…