2005-10
N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Do the Viperox ‘decimate every world they encounter’ or do ‘they kill everything’? Which is it? Cuz there is a difference! 90% in fact.
“Ah, the smell of fast food on the desert air: the perfume of America.”
The Doctor, Dreamland
In fairness, ‘decimate’ is one of those words that gets misused all the time, like ‘literally’, or ‘leapfrog’ by those football journalists who’ve clearly never played it (leapfrog, not football) before, so I shouldn’t be too harsh, especially when the biggest problem with Dreamland is its occasionally ropey animation. (My daughter was not impressed either!)
I’m probably biased, because I liked the animation style used on Scream of the Shalka, the reconstructed first and fourth episodes of The Invasion and The Infinite Quest.
For me, Cosgrove Hall (and spiritual successor Firestep)’s style suited Doctor Who best of all those we’ve seen to date. I appreciate that cost may well have been a factor in moving away from their method of animation, but it’s a shame, because in comparison to those stories, at times, Dreamland bears the rough-edged animation of an early 3D video game.
Thankfully, the voice acting is of a much higher standard and it’s especially nice to hear Lisa Bowermen’s voice on a televised Doctor Who story. If only they’d let her play Bernice Summerfield on the TV show.
While Dreamland may be the weaker of the two Tenth Doctor animated tales, it does offer a bit of breather between the bleakness of what happened on Mars and the end of time yet to come.