Ravenous 2

In a parallel universe, where Doctor Who was not reborn in 2005, Paul McGann is the current leading man. When Storm Warning arrived in January 2001, for many fans, myself included, it was as if the series had well and truly returned, the adventures continuing in audio form, brand new, unbound by continuity and with the ability once again to go anywhere and be anything. What’s more, they were some of the best adventures there had ever been, The Chimes of Midnight still regarded rightly as a zenith in Doctor Who storytelling. The Charlotte Pollard storyline was the audio equivalent of the Rose Tyler arc and this new Doctor was as sexy, appealing, different and modern as Christopher Eccleston would prove to be four years later. Nowadays, we know exactly how the Eighth Doctor meets his demise, thanks to Steven Moffat’s The Night of the Doctor, but I still think of the Paul McGann adventures as the ongoing series, running in parallel with the TV programme. Whenever an Eighth Doctor boxset falls through the letterbox, guiltily they feel just that little bit more exciting than any of the other incarnations’ releases. The story goes on…

Currently, we’re partway through Ravenous, a series of 16 CDs across 4 boxsets. The first set didn’t quite feel as grand and operatic as Dark Eyes or Doom Coalition but was a welcome return to the more freewheeling days of those early Charley adventures, unconnected and richly different stories. The Eighth Doctor, Liv and Helen make for a fine TARDIS contingent: fun, intelligent, vibrant and dynamic. 

Much has been made of Helen’s family background since she arrived aboard the time machine and so opener, Escape from Kaldor, instead mines Liv Chenka’s lineage for dramatic impact. We leave the story excitingly unsure of what Liv has been up to in her private time but on the whole, this is a pretty standard run-around. There are a few moments of exciting jeopardy, but no real new ground is covered. For a story seeking to warm our nostalgic cockles with Voc Robots, it’s almost criminal that they are all voiced by female actors, meaning they sound nothing like the Vocs of old. This is a world away from The Sons of Kaldor and its almost excessive respect for the soundscapes of the Hinchcliffe masterpiece and makes the robots’ re-appearance from an auditory perspective pretty superfluous.

Speaking of masterpieces, Ravenous 2 is worth buying if only for John Dorney’s utterly fabulous, terrifically clever and defiantly Christmassy Special, two-parter: Better Watch Out and Fairytale of Salzburg. If there were ever a story to rival the aforementioned Chimes of Midnight in the classic Big Finish Christmas adventure stakes, it’s this. The first part has a uniquely European Seasonal atmosphere, a first for Doctor Who and the happy team of the Doctor, Liv and Helen fit snugly into this warm world of bratwurst sausages, roast chestnuts and eggnog.

John Dorney has fun with narrators across the two episodes, the Doctor opening the story with a dark tale of yuletide horror, the Krampus arriving in a little girl’s living room one night to eat her father. Later, playful imps begin to spirit away “naughty” revellers in the streets of Salzburg before the legendary beast itself rears its head from beneath the nearby hills. This is not just Doctor Who riffing on folklore, this is Doctor Who creating a story of its own mythic proportions. The second narrator is seemingly divorced from the main narrative, but the Pilgrim is played by Siân Phillips which instantly grants her legendary status before she utters a word. The true identity of the Pilgrim is withheld until the very moment Dorney needs to show his cards and the revelation is truly shocking. It also allows for the only occasion when “wishes really do come true” to be played without feeling trite or schmaltzy. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that his two-parter really is an “instant classic” to use a Steven Moffat expression. Part Sound of Music, part Christmas Carol, part Hammer Horror, totally Doctor Who, this really is as good as it gets.

Following such magnificence, closer Seizure was always going to have difficulty making an impact but running at only 48 minutes and parading itself as a dark, horror story after such a fundamentally brilliant dark, horror story with Bonus Christmas, it has its work cut out. Seizure is such a slight tale that in contrast to Fairytale of Salzburg it feels even smaller and its villains, the eponymous Ravenous, make for second-rate baddies after the devil that was the Krampus. Seizure’s major problem seems to be that it wants to be a tight little atmospheric tale of terror, but it is resolutely not scary and hasn’t got any shape. The ending is signposted throughout in such large capital letters meaning that it feels patronising where Salzburg felt like an intricate jigsaw the reader had to piece together right up until its final scene. After such hard-hitting, ambitious story-telling, Guy Adams’s Seizure can only end up feeling like the damp squib after the bonfire. It’s still nice though to have a cliff-hanger ending to tide us over before Ravenous 3 with Only Charley Bloody Pollard making her return!

Overall, this set is all about that monolith at its centre. There’s a place for simpler, trad stories like Escape from Kaldor and it’s certainly strong meat and potatoes Doctor Who from Matt Fitton. Better Watch Out and Fairytale of Salzburg, on the other hand, push the boundaries of what Doctor Who can be and through their ambition point the way forward. This is vivid, bold story-telling and, just as those early tales of Charley and her Eighth Doctor felt modern and immediate, this too feels like the Doctor Who of tomorrow. Were the Christmas Special to have been released on its own, I’d shamelessly grant it a 10/10 review. With two lightweights either side of it, however, I’m going to have to regretfully lose a few points. I’d urge anyone who hasn’t tried an Eighth Doctor release though to give Ravenous 2 a shot though. If rumours are to be believed, Doctor Who may be without a Christmas Special this year; Big Finish have already come to the rescue. Try a day out in Salzburg with Paul McGann instead. I promise it’ll be rip-roaring.

8/10

JH