Auld Lang Syne, the third and final episode of the Ninth Doctor's "Back to Earth" boxset, dug into an element of time that Doctor Who, despite being all about time, hardly ever explores. Specifically: the way families build meaning across time with traditions kept.

Leah Brotherhead's Mandy Litherland meets up with the Doctor once a year for, IIRC, basically four years running, which seems like a short time to get to know someone and a short time to form such a friendly bond. But as her sister points out toward the end of the episode, that can be enough when the people are right. It strikes me that this is also how well a lot of us know our families, especially extended family. We meet up for the holidays, having grown or suffered an entire year in the interim. It creates a rift to be sure. Your family doesn't know you the way your day-to-day friends and acquaintances might. But there's also something deeper about seeing someone once a year through a large chunk (or all) of their life. So structuring a story around these time windows that have the Doctor popping into our hero's life year after year is a neat way to explore that.

Mandy is a great one-off companion, too. Interested (maybe in love) without being starstruck. Really enjoyed the way Brotherhead played off of Eccleston. And her reason for not traveling with the Doctor at the end of the episode makes sense: it would preclude her from visiting this family we have seen she loves. Sometimes, companion exits feel cheap (Really? You're not going to travel in SPACE and TIME so that you can go do [insert mundane thing you could also do in 10,000 BCE or on Mars just as easily]. Looking at you Dan.) so it was nice that her exit didn't.

Enjoyed this. Would recommend. Going to keep listening to the Ninth Doctor audios.

This final story of the box set means the 9DAs continue the trend of having one “fantastic” story per set. Not the ratio I like, but it was a relief to be swept away with Tim Foley’s beautiful story.

Plot wise it has touches of The Girl in the Fireplace (doors into different times within a house) and A Christmas Carol (The Doctor revisiting the same person at New Year’s Eve each year) but these elements work to good effect.

Daring to give Eccleston a love interest was a strong move and completely era appropriate - a good way of differentiating this Doctor from the classic cohort. It’s a crying shame though that she doesn’t jump in the TARDIS with him at the end of the story - it just seems like a wasted opportunity for him to not share his adventures with someone else.