During a visit to a local diner, the Tenth Doctor stumbles upon a mysterious alien artefact that leads him on a mission to rescue Rivesh Mantilax from the threat of the Viperox and the clutches of the American military.
Rate and review below:
I barely remember this one, but I do remember it being tough to get through. The acting was great, but the animation was fairly poor.
2.5/5
5.0 Perfect/Fav
4.5 Excellent/Fav
4.0 Very Good
3.5 Good
3.0 Enjoyable
2.5 Meh
2.0 Bad
1.0 Very Bad
The episodic format definitely shows in the pacing, especially if you’re watching it as a complete feature.
David Warner for the villain isn’t the worst get, and Lisa Bowerman is in the cast too. The nod to all the pieces of media that use the ventilation shaft as a means of traversal is worth a smile.
Horrendous. Like cut scenes from an old playstation game.
I think that the quality of the animation is so bad that the story does not matter it is just too bad
Really bad animation and the music really shows as just cut clips from Murray Gold’s work which has been carelessly put it. The story isn’t great either but the actors are certainly putting their best effort in. I just don’t think that anyone has ever really been able to work Doctor Who successfully into animation.
Yeah, unfortunately it gets in the way of the story.
Yeah this really doesn’t work for me. I’m just going to lift the final paragraph from my review and post it here.
“I appreciate that they were trying something different with both this and ‘Infinite Quest’. An animated series directed at kids sounds like a great idea for Doctor Who. But, whereas ‘Infinite Quest’ felt like an interesting failure, this just feels like a failure.”
As someone who wasn’t a big fan of Infinite Quest, after watching this I gained a newfound respect for that story.
You’ve got some brilliant actors here, but the animation is so, so ugly that it distracts you from actually enjoying the story.
I swear that the Lion King remake had more facial expressions than this. Which is quite a shame, as it really gets in the way of the first DW encounter that, quite frankly, should’ve happened much earlier: The Doctor goes to Area 51. Thank the Menti Celesti that Day Of The Moon would do much better with it later.
Also, I know that ‘canon’ isn’t a fixed idea with this show, but given there’s a Dreamland reference in SJA, it’s weird thinking of this as ‘canon’.
The sequel episode is good but this is a bit of a letdown. The Americans haven’t come back. I do like this more than the rest of you. Have Dreamland on DVD.
Well, I’m going into this one having ‘watched’ it twice before but totally lost interest after a couple of minutes and paid very little attention. Third time’s a charm…
Verdict - It is essentially as poor as I remember it, as most other people say. There are some not-awful lines, but that’s really about it in terms of positives. Even Tennant, who normally goes some way to redeem even the tripiest tripe he’s in, is nothing special here. It feels slap-dash and incoherent (even when you are paying attention) and the whole thing really just screams why do I exist?!
I haven’t revisited this since I was a kid, but when I had it on DvD back then, it was so niche but I loved it. My parents got me it one Christmas, and I was like oh my God, more Doctor Who (thought I had seen everything up to that point). Rating it a 10/10 for how often I re-watched it.
That’s why it’s beautiful. Art, truly. My beloved telltale style animation.
I actually did love the Cold War themes, and with how isolated the desert felt as well (especially with such liminal graphics).
I loved the aliens and I love the Mr. Dread guys too, always wanted to see them again beyond SJA. But they were so fitting for this historical era.
Probably also lead into my love for Fallout and Nevada generally later in life. The fact it takes place in the 1950s, the costume designs of the characters, I love them a lot, they’re pretty cute. The Russian focus is just fitting considering it is an Area 51 story when Krushchev was in power. Beginning of the space race too.
I’m genuinely glad it’s found some love!
Like @teslapunk3327 there were a few elements to this I did like. However between the animation, the accents, and the pacing I didn’t really enjoy it.
Also since it is Doctor Who, I figured Area 51 would show up sooner or later
Because of the low rating, I had put off watching this, but I didn’t find it all that bad, rating it a 3/5. I guess I was more willing to give the production a bit of grace for the low budget animation, and I got used to it. I thought the setting was interesting, and I enjoyed the alien design. However, I did think the amount of running through corridors was a bit excessive for 45 minutes, and some of the one off characters could have been written better.