Living The Dream(land)...

The third episode of the BBC's daily Doctor Who online story, Dreamland, goes live at 4pm (GMT) today and is available, in the UK at least, on the show's website, via the Red Button service on digital TV or through select mobile devices.

By listing it as "special number eight", the BBC's website suggests that this takes place after The Waters Of Mars, but regardless of when - chronologically - it occurs in the 10th Doctor's timeline it provides a pleasant, light romp in contrast to the dark, horrors of The Waters Of Mars and the looming, apocalyptic End Of Time (at Christmas/New Year).

The Doctor (voiced by David Tennant) arrives in Dry Springs, Nevada, 1958, and immediately bcomes tangled up with an alien artifact, menacing Men In Black, hostile insectoid aliens (the Viperox) and the US Military - headed up by Colonel Stark (Stuart Milligan), commander of Dreamland - the top secret base also known as Area 51, in Roswell, New Mexico!

His arrival comes 11 years after a strange alien spaceship crashed in the desert and was taken off to Dreamland, and the military have been trying to reverse engineer it since - with no success.

The ship looks very much - both inside and out - like the Veil craft from Prisoner Of The Judoon, the first story in this year's Sarah Jane Adventures, and I have my suspicions that the Veil from the crashed ship has taken over the Man In Black... but we will have to wait and see.

A word must be said at this juncture about the shockingly stilted animation. Although it does grow on you as the story progresses (thanks in no small part to Phil Ford's breathless script which doesn't allow you too much time to dwell on the visuals), there is no avoiding the fact that when the characters walk (Thunderbirds-like, but sans obvious strings) in to a room, you catch yourself thinking: "Didn't I explore this area playing Tomb Raider 10 years ago?"

Apparently, this six-part story is the result of a years' worth of animation and a determination to do something different to the 2D animation of The Infinite Quest, the last Doctor Who serial cartoon.

Personally, I would have preferred them to stick to the 2D style of the earlier cartoon, to stop Dreamland looking like a dated video game, but luckily - so far - the story has been a cracking adventure that, after a few moments of acclimatisation, has helped me overcome my dislike and disappointment at the quality of the animation.

Once the six-parts of the story have aired individually, the complete Dreamland will be shown on December 5, on BBC2 at 10am. It's out on DVD (again, in the UK) on February 1, 2010.