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Reviews for The Magic Mousetrap

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Something Missing

By:writingbluebear, Jersey
Date:Saturday 9 May 2009
Rating:   6

The Magic Mousetrap has a great plot, setting, cast, excellents twists and role changes, but falls badly after part one. The pace remains steady, dialog is good and well acted but without a raise in temo or real urgency, fear etc it just falls down. Could have been better with the toymaker up and running, taking everyone on. Whilst there was an excellent sense of the unknown it never went anywhere, but should have been great.



Odd and Clever

By:Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA
Date:Saturday 3 October 2009
Rating:   7

Spoilers Ahead

The Magic Mousetrap is a real oddball of a story that feels like one of those strange PC adventure games that take place in some quiet, dreary mansion, in which the player goes through rooms one by one, that are filled with strange, sometimes nightmarish objects, exploring and looking for clues as to what's going on and what the objective is. Until the end of episode two, it's pretty tough to get any sense of what these people are doing in the odd setting of this sanatorium in 1926 Switzerland. The situation is doubly clouded by the fact that the Doctor has amnesia (again!), and by the fact that Ace and Hex are putting on fake voices for some reason and have taken on new identities. (Sophie Aldred is so good at this that at first, I had no idea that this was Ace and Hex!) Then, when the Doctor comes upon a ventriloquist's dummy in a cupboard, he suddenly realizes that what he's looking at is The Celestial Toymaker. And the dummy starts to speak...

That is quite a spoiler, but if you are a Toymaker fan, I highly recommend this one, and there's nothing else in the packaging or description that gives any indication of his presence here. It's very easy to pass this one by without that bit of info...

As a bonus, we get Polly's Story, which is apparently in an ongoing series of "The Three Companions." Read by Anneke Wills with John Pickard and Nicholas Courtney as a (very) retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the story features the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie paying a visit to an industrial planet scheduled for demolition, but stuck just before the point of destruction. The characterizations are great, but the flashback story Polly is telling the Brig about is more like one of Virgin's Missing Adventures than something from 1966's season four, though I suppose it actually isn't too far off there either.



Yes, once again...

By:Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom
Date:Sunday 24 October 2010
Rating:   10

A stagey one! A stage play thats as gripping as An Inspector Calls or any such memorable stage plays over the years.

I love theatrical stories. One can easily imagine this story being put on the stage anywhere in the country. And it should be a sellout if they ever do.

The return of the Toymaker to the main range of audio adventures is handled very well indeed. After his brilliant Year of the Pig, Matt Sweet is back with yet another character piece. The games scenarios are all rather creepy and imaginative. This could have easily been too similar to The Celestial Toymaker, but it isnt and its an excellent sequel (as IS The Nightmare Fair) to that brilliant original outting.

Sylvester McCoy's Doc may once again have amnesia, but here its more believable because the story is told at pace and is menacing and effective. That the Toymaker here is little more than a creepy talking doll is a great piece of stuff.

And Sophie is better at voice hiding than Phil, the poor bloke. He is good, but not a patch on that stalwart brilliant companion Ace. I love Sophie, her character ooes brilliance. She was and still is one of the classiest companions ever. She beats Billie and Karen into a copped hat at any rate.

I wish that these guys at big finish though would stop doing these trilogies though. Having connecting themes for so long is beginning to get a little stupid and strenuous now. Get back to the Doc just flying anywhere. Give it its due though, this trilogy of stories is far more loose than all the others, which is a very good thing. One wants just a story to go into another. One wants a different Doctor story every month. One wants a little more of the feel of the classic series again.

But dont get me wrong, The Magic Mousetrap is imaginative and never less than highly entertaining.



Strange

By:David Layton, Los Angeles, United States
Date:Tuesday 20 November 2018
Rating:   7

Every once in a while, Doctor Who goes slightly surreal. This one has a reason for this, which appears in part three. In the meantime, we get an amnesiac Doctor 7 visiting the sanitarium from Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" where resides a collection early 20th-century showbusiness stereotypes and a peculiar physician who treats them to electric shocks to prevent them from remembering something. The Doctor scrambles around trying to figure things out while the other characters all desperately tell him that something terrible will happen if he does figure it all out. It's a clever story, though not emotionally engaging.



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