I really enjoyed this one. A fun, genuinely creepy Halloween romp. Lisa McMullin doesn't miss.

I really wanted to like this one, because I like haunted houses and I like the Romantics, and it just felt like a letdown. It doesn't help that it revolves around my least favorite Who monsters, but the whole thing just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and feels stapled together. And its appearance isn't nearly as stylish as it should be.

The supposed twist (and consequently, the last third or so of the story) is unutterably clichéd, but this is still a really fun story. It's not as Underground-heavy as, say, The Web of Fear, but it does manage to get in some jibes at Crossrail. I always like DW incorporating mythology and folklore, so I liked the use of elves, and the details like the king feeding birds from his 51st-floor penthouse. Great dialogue too.

I have mixed feelings about the Fugitive Doctor's characterization, but mostly I have to say: Man, it was hypocritical of Thirteen to criticize her for letting Gat use the sabotaged gun when she herself killed the Reconaissance Dalek four episodes ago, after similarly giving it a warning.

A really unsatisfying, muddled plot, but several earnest emotional moments in the last few minutes. I teared up twice!

Alan Cumming: (sees a bit of unchewed scenery) I'll take care of that.

It's a fun, stupid romp, and sometimes that's all you need.

The spiders going after a Trump wannabe played by actual sex pest Chris Noth... the spiders are woke...

I was leery going in to this episode as I'd heard bad things about it, and I've just recently read Rosa Parks' memoir, as well as Our Auntie Rosa, a joint memoir by several of her nieces and nephews. Happily, Chibnall and Blackman did their homework. While some elements of the episode aren't quite accurate (e.g., Mrs. Parks being locked out of the bus in the 40s, rather than choosing to wait for another), they were clearly done to simplify events while remaining basically true to history. And, as in reality, she reacts to the threat of arrest with a calm "You may do that," which literally made me want to stand up and cheer.

The ending tries a bit too hard to wrap things up nicely, and the episode does have a bit of a "gosh golly can't we all get along" attitude, but I can forgive it that.

Hey, at least it's not the Touched by an Angel episode guest-starring the real Mrs. Parks, which does an amazing job of illustrating how racism works with a nuance and level of understanding well ahead of its time, then puts Monica in blackface for ten minutes.

A significant improvement on The Daleks in Colour. The story is mostly intelligible, albeit with the occasional bit left hanging (e.g., how did Lt. Carstairs come into it?). The colourization itself is also much improved; whereas The Daleks had the look of '60s colour TV like Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, with the colours rather pastel, The War Games is still somewhat muted but looks more realistic, similar to the 3rd Doctor era.

On the downside, the continued attempts to modernize the look of the story with CGI inserts and fast edits, particularly cutting away from dialogue to make a voiceover, end up detracting from the experience by making it obvious that it's a re-edit. The flashbacks to The Highlanders and The Wheel in Space are particularly gratuitous. (But at least they didn't do any dizzingly fast, flashy edits like in The Daleks.)

As for the story itself, I enjoyed it and look forward to watching the original.

Nitpick: Using exclusively Nu Doctors as the Doctor's possible regenerations undermined the attempt to connect Classic and Nu. Should have been the War Doctor (too old), Ten (too thin), Five (too young), and Four (won't do at all).

EDIT: I've now watched the original, and the unexplained things I assumed were cut in the colourization... aren't there either. In fact, I preferred the colour version. So I'm bumping my rating up a half-star.

I'm generally only reviewing/rating the original story or the animation, whichever I saw more of, but I have to make an exception here. The story is a 3.5 (apparently I'm in the minority here!), but my god, the animation is demonic. I appreciate that they were trying to do "something different"... but did it have to be this?