2.1 Escape from Kaldor by Matt Fitton
Returning to a home world she’d rather forget, Liv reluctantly accompanies Helen to the grand opening of a luxury shopping mall. But when a glitch in the system sends the Robots of Death on a rampage, Liv’s past comes crashing down about her.
2.2 Better Watch Out by John Dorney
The Doctor hopes to take Liv’s mind off recent events by treating his companions to a traditional European Christmas. But not everybody is full of the spirit of Christmas when a wave of misery follows the Krampus as they run through the streets of Salzburg.
2.3 Fairytale of Salzburg by John Dorney
With the Doctor and most of the population condemned to hell, Liv and Helen race against time to discover the source of all this chaos, and to find the one man who can save the people of Salzburg from eternal damnation.
2.4 Seizure by Guy Adams
As if it wasn’t enough to be trapped in the labyrinth of a dying TARDIS and pursued by a ghost, the team find themselves face to face once more with the Eleven. But the Doctor has bigger things to worry about when he discovers they’re being hunted by the only creature to strike fear into the hearts of a Time Lord: The Ravenous.
RAVENOUS: ESCAPE FROM KALDOR
The second Ravenous set is here, but don’t expect much progression in the ongoing story: only the fourth story in the set features any arc elements. The first story, “Escape from Kaldor” by Matt Fitton, is interesting in that it’s largely a character piece but surrounds that material with a predictable, uninspiring plot.
I love what this story does with Liv. She’s one of the best original companions Big Finish has ever created, largely because she’s actually developed as a person over the course of her adventures. Bringing her back home is a great way to underline those changes. Showing her interactions with her sister Tula (Claire Rushbrook) is another great way to underline those changes as well as show where she comes from and flesh out some of the history with her father. There’s even a wonderful scene where Liv and Helen get to sit at a café and talk for a while – it’s so refreshing to have a Big Finish story that’s capable of breathing and letting the characters drive the action.
Unfortunately, this story is set on Kaldor, and that means there are robots everywhere. This, of course, means that at some point they will turn evil and start murdering the population. At this point, all Kaldor-related stories boil down to “who’s making the robots evil this time?” which is boring. The ad copy even calls them “the Robots of Death,” which isn’t actually their name but explains the lack of originality. This time, it’s an accident – a combination of two mistakes leading to a robot rampage. That’s better than another mustache-twirling villain, I suppose, but it doesn’t leave room for any depth or thematic resonance apart from some banal critiques of corporate greed. The central robot conflict should have been directly related to Liv and her relationships, but instead it’s disconnected from the character drama, and that’s unrewarding. I do like the ending, which gives the writers a free year of mysterious character development to play around with – but given that it doesn’t come up in the rest of the set, I’m not holding my breath that it’s going anywhere. Overall, “Escape from Kaldor” is a pleasantly entertaining story with some fine character work but an insufficient plot.
7/10
RAVENOUS: BETTER WATCH OUT & FAIRYTALE OF SALZBURG
I can’t say I was expecting this: a two-part story in the middle of a Ravenous set! A Christmas fairytale! A script that fleshes out one of our main characters! “Better Watch Out” and “Fairytale of Salzburg,” both by John Dorney, are excellent productions, separated almost entirely from the ongoing arc plot and all the better for it.
This is a Christmas story through and through. It starts with the Doctor wanting to “do Christmas” with Liv and Helen, and goes straight to a Krampusnacht celebration in Salzburg. According to legend, the Krampus is a dark reflection of St. Nicholas: while St. Nick rewards the well-behaved children with presents and merriment, the Krampus carries the badly-behaved children off to an eternity of torment in hell. (No, I wouldn’t tell my kids that either, but here we are.) Naturally, since this is a Doctor Who story, the Krampus actually exists, and menaces and destroys a good portion of the city by the time the story ends. But Dorney doesn’t tell this story like a typical Doctor Who story: most of it is told to other characters by the Doctor or a mysterious woman, and even though it’s set in the present day, Dorney uses mannered language structure to communicate a Dickensian feel. As such, we don’t know exactly how much of the story to take seriously: what really happened and what’s just part of the fairytale?
What we do know is that this is a wonderful character piece for Helen Sinclair. She’s the most proactive of the main characters and she’s the one who ultimately saves the day. Dorney takes what we’ve learned about her – she’s extensively studied ancient languages, she’s incredibly intelligent, she’s brave and determined, she’s not above sacrificing herself – and mixes it all together into an excellent script that drives her character forward. Finally, we see the extent of her affection for the Doctor and Liv and how far she’s willing to go to save the day. Much as the previous story gave us a refreshingly long look at Liv, this story does the same for Helen, cementing this as one of the strongest TARDIS crews Paul McGann has ever had.
So much of this story is about unfulfilled wishes, and how the past cannot be changed. A seemingly minor story about a cruel landlord casting tenants out into the cold becomes, with a wish, the catalyst for the entire story. The Doctor tells the story to someone who wants to change the past but cannot, using it to inspire that person to resist his fate. And when things seem to be at their worst, Liv uses a wish to save a friend, reciprocating a sacrifice she barely understands.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the resolution is both predictable and uninspiring. It’s not hard to figure out who the “bishop” is at the start of the second episode, and his eventual confrontation with the Krampus is a bit performative and surprisingly lacking in drama. I also think the fairytale esthetic jars a bit with the modern setting, though Dorney keeps the points of conflict to a minimum. Overall, though, this is an excellent two-part story. The production is first-rate, from Ken Bentley’s direction to Benji Clifford’s sound design and Jamie Anderson’s score. The characters are well-served. The atmosphere is pure Christmas. The story is rewarding. Put all that together and we’ve got one of the best McGann stories in quite some time.
Highly recommended.
9/10
RAVENOUS: SEIZURE
The Doctor and his companions answer a distress call and land on an abandoned, dying TARDIS to rescue the Eleven from a monster. Once there, they run away from the monster for a while and eventually escape, but there’s a twist at the end! There, now you don’t have to listen to “Seizure” by Guy Adams, the final story in this Ravenous set and the worst of the set by a long way.
This story is obviously meant to be terrifying. A dying TARDIS that has lost its pilot, slowly breaking down from within, losing control of its internal geometry, and generally feeling like a haunted house. A shadowy, hungry presence stalking the halls, striking fear in the very hearts of Time Lords. This sounds like it could be good, but Adams does nothing with the material, such that it comes across as little more than a pointless runaround. It’s a mediocre haunted house story that takes the path of least resistance – okay, so the dying TARDIS struggles to maintain its internal geometry. That’s it? Anyway, we finally come face to face with the Ravenous, and what are they? Monsters that stalk you through dark hallways and threaten to eat you. Be still my beating heart. There’s some discussion that these are ancient Time Lord nemeses, and that they only eat Time Lords because other meals aren’t sufficiently nourishing – but then the Ravenous says that it’ll eat Liv anyway so that all goes by the wayside. Naturally, the Ravenous also enjoy playing with their food, which sort of explains why it follows Liv around taunting her but doesn’t actually bother to eat her. This isn’t scary and it isn’t interesting.
The Eleven is back, and yet again it’s just Mark Bonnar doing a bunch of voices seemingly at random and then yelling “SILENCE, ALL OF YOU!” Bonnar is way over the top, because communicating “panic” in characters that are already on the border of sanity involves screaming even more than usual. The Doctor is terrified by the situation. Do you know how I know that? Because the script has him tell us that he’s scared, over and over and over again. At no point does McGann actually get to communicate this through his performance without simultaneously hammering the point home with obvious dialogue. Which is a shame, because he’s a talented performer who doesn’t need to do that. Also, remember how Helen traveled with the Eleven? I’m not sure Adams does, because they spend a good chunk of the story together and it’s barely mentioned.
Fundamentally, the problem with “Seizure” is that it wants to be a haunted house and monster story but completely fails to capture the appropriate tone for either of those categories. It’s not scary. It’s barely suspenseful. The characters don’t sound frightened. The monster is ill-defined and boring. The “dying TARDIS” material is unimaginative. At this point I’d suggest just abandoning these epic stories entirely – the number of successful attempts can still be counted on one hand and we’re 20 years in.
Boring.
3/10
Actually that wasn't as bad as I feared. I thought you'd give it a 1 🙂