Doctor Who: The Wishing Beast and The Vanity Box

Well, it's by Paul Magrs, so you know it's going to be fairly weird. And so it is, with the Doctor and Mel being lured to a remote asteroid where there are strange goings on with a couple of dotty old ladies in a quite impossible landscape.

Strange as this is, it's not quite as bonkers as the short adventure “The Vanity Box” that rounds out the CD. (It's advertised as a separate story, but, honestly, you need to listen to the two together and in sequence). This is set in a terraced street in Salford, and no prizes for guessing which long-running British TV series it's taking the piss out of.

With a sinister alien presence attempting to take over a hairdressers', it's directly played as a slapstick comedy, acting as an effective counterpoint to the somewhat depressing (if well-acted) main feature. Taken together, the two stories are rather better than they might be on their own.