the audience applauded

Good movie but grossly overrated

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The 2016 Xmas Special of Doctor Who was disappointing. After waiting a whole year for Doctor Who to return to our screens in 2016. Doctor Who doesn't return with a bang. The Xmas special was not great, it was average. It wasn't as good as the previous Christmas Specials Last Christmas and The Husbands of River Song. It is a bit slow in places. But I found it predictable and it was obvious what was going to happen. It was obvious the boy Grant grows to become The Ghost and that the ruby he swallows gives him his powers. I thought The Ghost was a obvious nod to another comic book strip character The Phantom. In the comic strips, The Phantom is called "The Ghosts Who Walks". It had some goods, but despite the pacing, Peter Capaldi, Matt Lucas and Justin Chatwin's performances which were good, it just wasn't enough. Steven Moffat is a great writer and I don't think The Return of Dr. Mysterio was one of his best work on Doctor Who. Apart from the Xmas special, I shall look forward to Series 10 and I hope it's going to be amazing.

This Christmas special opens in New York City with the Doctor hanging outside the window of young Grant Gordon; once inside he gives Grant a small crystal which he mistakes for medicine and swallows… it is no ordinary crystal; it has the power to make the users dreams come true and this young boy dreams of having similar powers to Superman! Twenty four years later the Doctor is back in New York investigating the sinister Harmony Shoals Corporation; also there is reporter Lucy Fletcher and Nardole, who has become The Doctor's latest companion. The find a room full of brains in jars; brains that want human hosts as part of an alien invasion plot! They are captured but then they are rescued by a flying superhero known as The Ghost. We soon learn that he is Grant Gordon and when he isn't The Ghost he is working as Lucy's nanny. It turns out he has known her since they were children but she has no idea that he has superpowers. Lucy is determined to find out more about The Ghost but he tries to keep his identity secret. While this is going on The Doctor tries to find the details of Harmony Shoals' plans and with the help of The Ghost thwart them.When I saw trailers for this special I wasn't too optimistic; it looked like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of superhero lately and the New York setting made me think the creators were just trying to attract more US viewers. It is possible that this was true but ultimately it didn't matter as the story was rather good. I liked the alien invaders; they were suitably unpleasant and were just about as scary as one could hope for in a show aimed at a family audience; the way their heads opened was delightfully disturbing. The story played with the conventions of the superhero genre in an enjoyable way; never taking itself too seriously but equally not being deliberately silly. The cast did a fine job; Peter Capaldi continues to impress as The Doctor and Matt Lucas made a surprisingly good companion in the role of Nardole… I know there will be a new female companion next year but he showed that a male companion can work. Justin Chatwin did a solid job as Grant/The Ghost and Charity Wakefield was pretty good as his love interest Lucy. Tomiwa Edun and Aleksandar Jovanovic also impress as the story's villains. Overall this was a really solid episode which thankfully didn't overdo the fact that it is a Christmas special.

After such an absence of the show I looked forward to this very much, despite being underwhelmed by the trailers. A show we all love which has a distinctly British feel to it, I did not like the American setting, in my humble opinion it felt like it was trying to be something it's not. That uncomfortable feel was further pushed by the Superhero, something we've not encountered on the show before, it just felt like they were trying to force the show into a direction it's not meant to be in.I can't criticise the acting, I love Capaldi in the role, if the powers that be aren't careful, he will unfortunately be remembered in the same way that Sylvester McCoy was, the actor that saw the cancellation of the show.A very stylish episode with some snazzy special effects, but sadly a woeful script, an uninteresting adversary, it's no surprise to me that audiences are turning off.Mr Moffat you have given us some treats in your time, but please don't utterly destroy the show before you leave. This episode has genuinely left me fearful for the future of Doctor Who. Rubbish. 4/10

I thought the Return of Doctor Mysterio was a nice, well rounded episode. I still like the Husbands of River Song much more, but these two specials are completely different episodes with different objectives. They're both light-hearted for the most part, but Husbands focuses more on the Doctor and River's story while the Return of Doctor Mysterio just wants to be an entertaining hour of television that continues Doctor Who's tradition of having a Christmas special. What I really liked about this episode though was that it wasn't afraid to be fun. Capaldi and Nardole made a great team, and their words to Lucy and Grant at the end of the episode were probably the highlights of the episode. I do think that the best parts of this episode stemmed from the references to the Doctor and River Song's relationship and her death at the Library though. Those small, yet deeper moments really made this episode for me, and it's nice to see Capaldi's Doctor develop a bit more and show that he really is attached to those who travel with him and to see that Nardole has different sides to his character. While I wasn't a huge fan of director Ed Bazalgette's episodes in series 9, I liked how he made this episode feel like a comic book and how there was such a long pre-credits sequence. I think he did a great job directing this episode. The writing seemed a bit weaker in this episode than usual: the Doctor's "Plan B" seemed rushed and was a bit hard to follow in the moment, and there were a few lines here and there that felt unnecessary. Aside from that, Grant and Lucy were good characters and it would be cool for them to come back in the future of the show. The actors who portrayed them were good and the Doctor has obviously impacted their lives in a big way. The villains weren't really threatening though and to be honest I'm not that excited to hear that Osgood might be coming back. I hope that the cliffhanger with the brain aliens is developed a bit more next series though.Overall, I think that the Return of Doctor Mysterio was a nice episode. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was funny, adventurous, well acted and directed, Matt Lucas and Peter Capaldi were great, and it had a pretty nice ending as well.