Indeed it is… 
6 Likes
Watching Mind Snap and god, I forgot that the original(/proper/good) design was in it for like a minute
11 Likes
The only things I’ve rated 1/10 have been things I’ve either found actively offensive culturally or to the memory of actors (The Didus Expidition, Legend), insulting to the viewer (Probe Case Files Volume 2 Trailer (£12???)) extremely incompetently made to the point of them being painful to watch (The First Adventure, Out of the Shadows, Web of Lies), or all of the above (When to Die) (See how many of these are BBV)
I can’t give Mind Snap a 1, but I sure as hell can’t give it better than a 2
Mind Snap - 2/10
This is a clip show, and it’s not even a good one.
There’s a narrative reason given for the clip show, something’s happened to K9 and they’re trying to get his memory back, but wow does this suck.
Half the time the clips just come from Starkey or Gryphen just saying something random and then it cutting to a clip that’s maybe tangentially related if you squint.
And then the vast majority of the clips also include events that K9 wasn’t present for (out of order, defragging, not in the dream realm), so the framing device doesn’t make sense.
Also as a final note, I can’t believe they remind us that the original design was in there for like a minute, and say that he ‘really looked like a dog’ back then. How can they say the original is more like a dog when the redesign was so clearly done to make him more dog-like.
11 Likes
I wonder if Mind Snap still has the lowest rating on the site.
8 Likes
Hmmm, if only there was a way to check this…
8 Likes
I did take a look. Out of the stuff that has ratings two were sorted lower. Both have a higher rating but are sorted lower by @shauny rating algorithm
Third lowest
second lowest
And the lowest rating on the site:
How bad is that audio with Baker? I want to listen to it now 
11 Likes
If I understand it right, it’s not just that it’s a bad story, it’s that it was marketed as something it’s not and isn’t worth the price. It’s supposed to an early Nation-penned draft of Genesis. However, only the first episode is full cast and the rest are just single-narrator summaries. The second disc is just a Philip Hinchcliffe interview. So I think the poor rating is as much for the “what was the point of this” and content-to-price ratio as much for the content itself.
11 Likes
I’ve heard it’s pretty bad, they took an early script for Genesis and just made that, and you can tell it’s an early draft
11 Likes
Oh wow, I didn’t know that, yeah that makes it worse
10 Likes
This is just what I’ve heard. I haven’t purchased it myself.
8 Likes
There’s definitely things that deserve to be lower than Mind Snap that people just haven’t watched (I’m looking at you When To Die)
8 Likes
It was about 100 pages of search results with no rating before I came to these.
I have been trying to watch the second PROBE episode for 3 months but I get bored after 5-10 minutes each time.
6 Likes
Makes sense, why would people watch the worst stuff (if there’s no badge in it)
?! The second PROBE was probably the best!
6 Likes
But it is boring and long. Do they get even worse?!?!
7 Likes
It’s shorter than 90% of classic who, and less boring than those!
As for if they get worse, eh, I don’t like them as much, Unnatural Selection does a great job with practical effects though that bring you in pretty well, and Ghosts of Winterbourne is revisiting the cast of The Devil of Winterbourne so you’ve got that hook in there.
I think Devil of Winderbourne is probably the slowest, but personally I think that’s points in it’s favour with how they make use of the time, slowly building.
And then there’s When to Die which like, I was laughing at every few minutes, though note laughing at, not laughing with
5 Likes
I liked your mind snap review. Here’s mine. It might just be the most mind boggling slice of the Whoniverse.
7 Likes
The Angel of The North - 5/10
After seeing them do nothing with the London setting, I’d been looking forward to this all season, I don’t think Doctor Who has done anything with The Angel of the North, and seeing the K9 team in Northern England could be fun, if only for the horrific attempts at northern accents.
Sadly, my hope was misplaced.
The titular angel isn’t the English statue, but a fallen spaceship that the STM comes from where something weird is happening. First of all, I also think the release order of these stories is strange, in Mind Snap they reference K9 having some link to the STM, but that link is only discovered in this episode.
But enough about the strange, lets talk about the bad. The accents in this episode seem to be dropping, they’re not great at the best of times, but a few times through this episode I noticed people slipping into different ones for a couple of words before reverting. The white greenscreen with some snow effects isn’t exactly the most convincing canadian snowscape, and the characters seem perfectly dry after coming back out of it both times. The Korven are again said to be this major threat for the whole of not only earth, but all of spacetime… and the first time we see one in this episode it’s dispatched of in seconds with a single shot from K9. It seems they’re building to a finale with them as the main threat and yeah, no, it’s just not working for me.
There’s definitely some good to be had in this episode though, Thorne is, as always, suitably cunning, and we get an implication that he may be in league with the Korven, or at least wants the STM fully working for his own ends. The opening scene does a great big of horror with the classic cut to a hallway for a scream. The initial shots of Gryphen trying to leave the house do a great job showing his fear of the outdoors, dutch angles used really well to make the audience feel off balance. And lastly, it’s a small thing, but I’ve mentioned before my love of CCPCs, just the right amount of goofy and imposing, and I love the slight tweak to the ‘paintjob’ they get here, with the ones coming with Thorne having red shirts under the body suit instead of the black, it seems to imply some level of rank of specialty, which is a neat tiny bit of worldbuilding.
Overall, fairly middling.
4 Likes
Also, unrelated
A tie-in called The K-9 Storybook was going to be released in 2011 containing behind-the-scenes extras, short stories, comic strips and other material from the live-action series, Instead the The Essential Book of K9 was introduced.
We Were Robbed!!!
The Essential Book of K9 has shorts and comics about K9 Mark 2, but they’re not tie ins with the show!!
11 Likes
We had the exact same thought about the Angel of the North 
unfortunately the Whoniverse is by and large totally allergic to the North East 
Geordie companion when…
6 Likes
The Last Precinct - 3/10
K9 says ACAB… until it goes Idiots Lantern on us at the end.
This is a really fun premise for an episode, the Police have been replaced with the CCPCs, so what does that mean for the people that were on the force? Where are they now? Well, as this episode tells us, they lost their jobs and some became terrorists fighting against The Department.
I appreciate how unsympathetic The Last Precinct are made to be, sure Starkey was also doing anti-Department terrorism back at the start of the show (and has still done a bit throughout), but unlike these guys he wasn’t kidnapping kids or threatening harm to civilians. There’s good ways to fight the good fight, and there’s bad ways to do it too.
I like the idea of alien tech being used in CCPCs, sort of building on what was done in Mutant Copper (and giving me ideas for what I’d love from a continued version of this world), and I like more hints that Thorne has some plans going on behind the scenes, likely to be revealed next episode (wow, it’s only 2 episodes left, what I assume is a 2 part finale from the names).
Interesting interactions between Darius and his dad here, we learn that he upped and left him and his mum (sidenote, he has a mum we never see??? I just assumed she was dead like Jorjie’s dad probably is) a couple of years ago to join(/found?) The Last Precinct.
The ending though, it leaves a lot to be desired. Darius’ dad doesn’t really do anything to redeem himself at the end, he releases Gryffen sure, but that’s because his plan had already failed. Darius then figures a way to use K9 to help ensure he gets a proper trial and fair sentence, which like, is a good thing to do, but it’s framed as a moment of forgiveness, especially with the shoulder grab afterwards. It’s not as bad as The Idiot’s Lantern, but it’s definitely up there and while I wanted to give this story a higher rating with that at the end I can’t.
7 Likes