Light Radio

TV I caught an early bird on Doctor Who Adventures this fortnight and spent my torturous trip home listening to the free radio. It's actually of much sturdier quality than you'd expect and like the TARDIS clock last week doesn't disgrace the taxi-cab logo, even if the headphones are a bit tinny and it weirdly picks up stations much more clearly when you click the little light on and off. Next issue they're giving away what looks like a mini-filofax which begs the question of how long this freebie madness will continue. Really how can they afford to be putting out all this for just two English pounds?

Inside the comic/magazine/whatever continues to be a slightly frustrating experience. I know that it's not really directed at us older readers, but I can't see which age group would be reading this. Some of the photography is exciting, but the short sentences in boxes approach feels too simple for anyone over the age of eight. I'm possibly complaining too much but I remember the original Doctor Who weekly being a smidge more sophisticated.

The one area that DWA is excelling at is the comic strip which skews to the complexity of the old TV21 strip, yet still retaining the characterisation of Tenth and Rose. This issue's story is by Alan Barnes, the man behind the seminal Wormwood series of Eighth Doctor strips and former editor of Doctor Who Magazine. An inevitably slight tale about the workforce of a space station going missing, there's still some excellent comedy and a neat ecological message. The canonicity debates will run and run.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Tom Coates believes that the Cybermen are just a load of old hype and should be ignored until the next cycle.