Doctor Who Fluxx

I have covered other Fluxx games here before.  A while back I prematurely bought the Doctor Who themed Fluxx pack.  I say prematurely, because at that time, Anne (my #1 gamer) had never seen an episode of Doctor Who.  Over the summer, we watched Guardians of the Galaxy on a friday movie night, and I remember talking about where we all knew "the blue girl" from.  Karen Gillan, you know, Amy Pond from Doctor Who.   Nope.  So we watched all the Matt Smith episodes (except the last two, saving those for later), then started on David Tennant season 2, but after the Face of Boe came up I figure we just need to see them all from the start of the NuWho.  So, we've now watched almost all of season 1-7.  On the side, I watched a season and a half of Peter Capaldi (why is he so grumpy??) and the first season of Jodie Whittaker ... 

Back to the card game.  We just saw the Planet of the Ood episode where the name Doctor Donna came up.  And I remembered we had this card game tucked away, and one of the first goal cards I saw was "Doctor Donna" (10th Doctor plus Donna Noble), so it seemed like we were ready.  And most of the gags made perfect sense now.

As usual with Fluxx, for people who don't like to read a ton of text on cards, it can be draining.  It's simple on the surface, with the rules changing and the goals always swapping out.  The goals which had "the doctor" plus a thing were too easy, since there were 12 doctor cards.  Especially doctor plus dalek, since there were at least 3 dalek cards.  The rule card that said only the highest-numbered doctor could stay in play really helped, but I would almost make that the default rule.

Here is a game where I used my one card (Play One) to steal Donna Noble, then played the My Turn Again surprise card to go again to play the goal card which won the game.

And I wanted to comment on this card:

I can see the way these decks come together, trying to put lots of good things out there for fans to discover, but having Regeneration as a goal with two consecutive doctors is brilliant.

Some other good but subtle gags were: having the Captain Jack card never leave the table once played, because the character in the show could not die; "I'm a Genius" means that if the Doctor is on the table, Creeper cards no longer prevented you from winning (how many times did the Doctor say THAT in the series?); the Doomsday goal card which meant that you could win the game with 3 dalek cards, presumably by bringing on Doomsday. 

These are always fun games, right on the edge of having too many rules hidden on the cards.  As much as they do a good job explaining exactly WHEN each action should be done, it seems there's always some combination where you just have to shrug and say "whatever" and remember to enjoy the crazy stuff.