Eccleston, Shepherd, Teixeira and Torrens are all excellent in this tightly crafted one-off. Won't spoil the villain, but he's wonderful and the icy sound design that follows him is chilling. There's a good running gag that involves Eccleston flirting with a highly personalized AI and when his running joke to Teixeira's character doesn't land, it takes us from fun romp to serious adventure with stakes. Again, won't spoil it, but I also appreciate the way anxiety was handled in this story.

great villain, very creepy and well done. the ending scene AGH I LOVE NINE SO MUCH!!!! this was a great base under siege story.

It took me a long time to get through this one which almost certainly impacted my enjoyment. There was some solid characters though I wasn’t convinced on Jack Frost as a menace. Eccleston was on form as ever. Good mini-exploration of anxiety in one of the side characters, which felt very “Doctor Who”.

I’m now very behind on these sets - stories like Salvation Nine make me want to bound into the next one, but ones like these slow me down!

The third episode in the Into the Stars set.

I did try this earlier in the year, but didn’t take much in. The notes I made at the time simply said ‘doesn’t standout much’ so I’m giving it a second go.

There is a hint of Christmas in this, references to paper crowns, presents, rehydrated turkey, and the foe in this being known on Earth as Jack Frost.

The Doctor arrives on a space station around Venus - a science station. An experiment to take temperatures down to absolute zero, allows a winter god - Jack Frost to enter our dimension.

I’ve always found the ninth Doctor adventures to have a different energy about them, its the speed, I think its Christopher Eccleston’s delivery, it has an urgency about it - just an observation.

This starts with Dr. Lenni Fisk in conversation with her wife on Earth and missing their son. Its a bit of a trope, I remember a mini series called ‘The Deep’ and in Doctor Who, the Rebel Flesh/ the Almost People both had similar setups.

Dr Lenni Fisk suffers with anxiety, her son has an illness, which is why she’s so far from home engaged in research. There’s Jack Frost - the last of the winter gods and its Christmas. But the story doesn’t do enough with any of these elements to make it a great audio.

There is a difference between Christmas story and a story thats set at Christmas (the old Is Die Hard a Christmas film? debate). This is much the latter. The winter god isn’t particularly amazing, just bland. And there are parts that do feel rehashing of other, better, stories.

Doesn’t standout much is what I said at the beginning and thats still the case, its nice enough, average. But I do feel that there was a much better story to be told.