Did the story live up to the hype?

Gallifrey IV and Zagreus. Overhyped so much that they were never going to live up to the expectation. Fortunately I didn't wait a year (?) for Gallifrey IV to come out so wasn't affected by the hype - same with Zagreus actually. Because I came to that party late, I missed the fan fallout and could just enjoy the stories. For me, I still think Zagreus is an excellent story, whereas I don't get The Holy Terror at all *ducks rotten fruit*.

Cheers

Tony

Let's see. There's Master, which I found to be three episodes of brilliance followed by one episode, which my reaction to can be summed up as "What the dickens?"
Mind, I wish there were more failures like that.

There's also the the Rocket Men, which I went into with no knowledge of its reputation, and found to be an emotionally manipulative, predictable melodrama with a jumping chronology that seemed gratuitous and annoying; the Prisoner of Peladon, which almost everyone seems to like, but which made me rather annoyed with King Peladon and had a rather amusing attempt at a Third Doctor-version of the New Series' "the Doctor needs his companions"-shtick, which amounted to "He can be a bit rude, can't he?"; Dark Shadows' The Blind Painter, which others seems to like, but I thought was a melodrama which contrived, through gratuitously stupid character-actions and arbitrary rules of magic, to be tragic; The Oseidon Adventure, which seemed like glorified fan-fiction. There's also the Elite, which isn't at all bad, but I thought devolved into sound and fury once , and possibly the Empathy Games, whose general reputation I am not completely aware of, but which seems to be well-regarded.

On a much more positive note, speaking of a release that others here were disappointed by (I adored it,) I love how each episode of the Holy Terror emulates a different genre. The first behaves like an Aztec-style historical, the second like a straight-up farce (though of course, there's plenty of comedy throughout,) the third like a regular Doctor Who adventure, all before turning into a high-concept horror story in the fourth episode.


EDIT: Oh, yeah, I wasn't very enamored of the first part of I, Davros. I thought it was trying too hard to be grim and macho, and came out rather stilted and two-dimensional as a result. Not to mention that the actors were rather variable. The lady playing Calcula was quite hammy and the chap playing young Davros didn't give the most convincing performance.

Actually I did think of a story that didn't live up to the hype for me...Love & War. I just didn't care for it at all. Probably why I haven't looked into other releases with Bernie even though she wasn't why I disliked the release.

I've learned to be wary with stories marketed as the return of [insert character, monster, setting here] or sequel to a classic series story. It kind of takes away from enjoying said stories on their own merits rather than the expectations of quality based on the original story or returning element. Had Return to Telos kept the Tomb and Jamie bits a reveal for the story itself, it would have been a nice surprise, an unexpected cameo. Instead that was what it was marketed on, so I spent most of the story wondering where those elements would come in and how they would be incorporated into the story. It's like with movie trailers, you know a character will survive because there's a scene in the trailer with them that hasn't come up yet in the movie.