In Review: Doctor Who – The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

Synopsis: Join the Doctor, as he teams up with an investigative journalist, and a superhero to save New York from a deadly alien threat.

Review: This years Christmas episode thankfully makes somewhat of a departure from the whole Christmas thing and gives us a superhero style narrative, which would do the Richard Donner ‘Superman’ movie proud.

The story opens with a really quick origin story in which the Doctor pays an impromptu visit to comics enthusiast Grant. Having gained the boys trust The Doctor entrusts him with an alien gem, which the bout mistakenly swallows and alekazam instant superpowers.

As soon as this is established the story skips forward to the future where the Doctor and Nardole crosses paths with investigative journalist Lucy Fletcher.

From here on in the usual madness follows, but this time we get a really sweet little romance between Lucy and Grant as we learn that he has been watching her from afar pretty much since school. I have to wonder if anyone ever told the kid that this is basically called stalking.

The whole superhero narrative of The Ghost was a lot of fun and would have been much better if the alien threat had been a little bit more of an actual threat. That said one of the aliens does sneak off with the UNIT troops toward the close of the story, which can only mean that they will be recycled at a later date.

Narratively speaking. This was a simple boy meets girl story with the Doctor playing matchmaker. The special effects were pretty cool and the superhero antics were of the same fun level as those seen in pulp movies of past years.

Even the characters name of Grant Gordon aka The Ghost has its roots in comics and the Stan Lee school of giving his heroes matching initials such as Peter Parker and so on.

All in all. It was a bit of fluff, but a much better and more enjoyable bit of fluff than last years yawnfest.