Arriving in time for the show’s 50th anniversary in 2013, the Doctor Who DVD Board Game is one of countless, video-based quiz games that used to be regularly released to capitalise on the popularity of a film, TV show or franchise in general.

Though it’s nicely packaged, has cute little TARDIS pieces for each player/team and even adjustable levels of difficulty per question when it comes to the video clips on its DVD, the game can’t help but feel lazily designed when it comes to the actual game part of the experience.

Players roll a standard six sided die and one with special symbols; they move their TARDIS the number of spaces shown on the normal die, then obey the symbol rolled on the special one.

This could lead them to answer a question on a card or a video clip, or choose one of those options. It can also direct you to draw a TARDIS card, the outcomes of which seem excessively random, sometimes overpowered and frequently unfair!

The questions on the cards are chosen by another roll of the standard die; given that there are six questions per card, that’s pretty obvious.

Questions cover the entirety of the Doctor’s history up to 2013, so it’s pretty comprehensive; impressively so, in fact.

They do seem to be weighted more to questions on modern (ie post-2005) Doctor Who, however.

The DVD element is pretty fun and does, unlike the question cards, allow a bit of leeway for non-Whovians to have a chance; before you see a clip, which are randomly picked by the disc, you can choose whether you want the question to be Observational, Casual or Expert.

Me being the insufferable smarty pants that I am, I always opted for Expert, which would often end in failure when a clip from an era I was less familiar with came up (say, the First or Second Doctors); just like the question cards, the DVD clips cover all of the Doctor’s history up to 2013 and again, it’s really impressive to see just how far back into Doctor Who history this goes.

It’s fine and works best with players who have a decent amount of familiarity with Doctor Who, but it doesn’t have a great deal of longevity; its accessibility for less obsessive Whovians is limited too.

Also, the actual roll-and-move gameplay always feels completely random and devoid of any strategy, because, well, it is.

The fun comes from being able to show off your knowledge of Who, so this really is just a rainy day activity for fans alone, but even then, they’re probably better off with one of the Doctor’s more recent tabletop releases, such as Don’t Blink, Nemesis or Time of the Daleks.

Or there’s always the Magic: The Gathering Doctor Who set, if they’re into that sort of thing (spoilers, sweetie: that’s totally my thing).