Dreamland

The animation is atrocious, the acting is sub-par, the story is incredibly simple and predictable, and it's not worth the 42 minutes of your life you'll spend watching it.

All that said, though, there are a few good bits. I like the design of the Viperox and the Skorpius flies. There are a handful of references to Doctor Who canon, which are always fun. Tennant's acting is great (as always), and he gives a handful of good speeches.

An animated episode that is generally not that good. The story is forgettable, with long bouts of boredom. The CG is fairly simple that, while they get the look of certain people correct, overall is rather rudimentary. The voice acting is great with a lot of familiar names featuring. While not terrible, this episode is for completists only.

What an interesting curio. The small CBBC budget the team were working with means that this project had a hand tied behind its back before it had even begun. How beautiful would this have been with some Scooby Doo-style 2D animation? That would have been expensive though. Maybe they thought going 3D and building models which could be posed throughout the story would look “modern” within the limited means available to the team. Alas we end up with this awkward, surreal, emotionless animation.

If tying one hand was not enough - this then needed to be a story that could be split in multiple segments. A bad choice on behalf of CBBC in my opinion. A movie length single premier then repeated ad infinitum would have been more satisfying for children than this bitty mess. More premiers, less quality.

Because of these obvious limitations it is perhaps unfair to try and honestly assess the talented Phil Ford’s script. For the most part it’s interesting enough. He summons decent characters and a setting which was ambitious and interesting for 2000s Doctor Who.

I was disappointed with the ending which ran far, far closer to plot points from School Reunion and more recently Sarah Jane Adventures’ The Gift than I would have liked. Aliens who have an Achilles’ Heel like weakness to high pitched sound, so much so that they decide to flee the country with no opposition, after all their scheming and planning… it’s just an annoying resolution. They look like they’ll take over the world and then they put up no fight in the face of minimal opposition.

It’s a frustrating watch because it would be amazing if this and The Infinite Quest were the start of a strand of high quality additional Doctor Who adventures. In the end this is the worst of the two animated adventures, and we haven’t had anything quite like it in the 14 years since.