Seizure written by Guy Adams and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it about: 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.

Physician, Heal Thyself: The Doctor isn’t a complete bastard and if the Eleven is sending out a distress signal then it is probably for a good reason…or a trap. Either way it is worth checking out, despite the complete disinterest of his companions. He practically emotionally blackmails his companions into heling out their old foe, asking if they would genuinely leave someone to die. TARDISes and Time Lords are telepathically linked and if this had been the Doctor’s TARDIS in this much pain it probably would have broken him. He leads a bruise worthy life. I’ve heard Paul McGann play angry and weary and jolly lately, but it’s been a while since I have heard him this perturbed. He makes the atmosphere in the broken-down TARDIS work because of his nervous and distracted reaction to it. He really is worth his weight in gold, this actor.

The Eleven: Oh groan, I thought we had tied this character up and assigned him to the rubbish bin? I thought we had moved onto the much more desirable prospect of the Twelve? No, he’s back and it’s not about time and he’s still banging on at the voices in his head. Insane and capable of great violence, apparently. Why then is he presented in such a comic book way? He murdered the previous inhabitants of this TARDIS and stole the ship.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘TARDISes do love a corridor. It gives them something to do whilst they are coming up with more rooms.’

Great Ideas: The Doctor is very empathic and a dying TARDIS has a certain anxiousness in the air. As a TARDIS dies it should continue to constrict; dimensions folding in on one another, rooms shrinking, corridors shortening. Areas that they are in could simply cease to exist because when a TARDIS is in distress it tends to forget certain parts of its geography.

Isn’t it Odd: Ravenous is proving to be a very odd set of adventures indeed. As a series of standalone adventures it has delivered pretty well with six of the stories scoring above average in my book and providing everything from a reasonably diverting time to a near-perfect adventure. However, as a linked series of adventures with a running arc it is least satisfying that Big Finish has ever produced with little or nothing to join these stories together, no sign of a continuing storyline and only now, eight hours into the narrative are elements emerging that make any sense of the umbrella title of the sets. It’s certainly not the first time Big Finish has promised one thing and delivered another (Zagreus promised to a multi Doctor story, the Divergent arc promised to be good) but I could imagine if arcs were your thing that you might be bitterly disappointed by this point. The one saving grace is that the remaining stories on this box set have been extremely good in their own right, but that doesn’t quite make sense of their utter disconnect from the central storyline, which is conspicuous by its absence. I made similar complaints about Doom Coalition and it would appear that they have learnt nothing from that exercise. DC could have been condensed down into two box sets of four episodes but I’m willing to bet at this rate Ravenous (the core material of the arc) could be squeezed down into a third of it’s sixteen-hour length. The Ravenous almost couldn’t live up to expectations because we have waited so long for them to make an appearance. It’s not the culmination of a great narrative resulting in their appearance, it’s more the sigh-worthy appearance of an (underwhelming) creature that I had forgotten was relevant. It has lines like ‘my mouth is actually watering…’ and ‘I’m so hungry!’ It’s no scarier than Kroagnon or the Wire. The synopsis states that the Ravenous are the only creatures to strike fear into the hearts of a Time Lord but let’s be honest with Big Finish stretching the mythology of the Time Lords to bursting point that is quite an overstatement. There seems to be a threat that they are terrified of coming out every other month these days. And why are the Time Lords the benchmark for everything these days? The most terrifying Time Lord weapon! A foe even the Time Lords never managed to defeat! It must be so tedious having to live up to that kind of reputation. The climax just sort of…happened. The Doctor and his friends just leave. The end. Well, if only it was that easy every week. The Ravenous is defeated by the TARDIS just going.

Result: It sounds like a wonderful idea for a Doctor Who story, doesn’t it? A Decaying TARDIS, a monster stalking the Doctor and his companions around the corridors and an old enemy to fight. I can see why the producer jumped at the chance to tell this story, it seems rife for scares, drama and atmosphere. It doesn’t quite turn out that way despite the efforts of the director to make this as much of an assault of weirdness as possible. Much like the Time War material that Big Finish has put out there is a general lack of imagination when it comes to Time lord technology and how it manifests itself when it is malfunctioning. I think this could have been a really trippy, terrifying, surreal experience. I can imagine a writer like Lawrence Miles or Rob Shearman taking this concept and running with it, turning the experience into a nightmare you can barely comprehend and putting the regulars in an impossibly frightening spin of madness. Guy Adams goes for a much more straightforward, linear approach; with a ghost floating down the corridors going ‘woooooo’ (not quite but it isn’t far off) and the great titular Ravenous monster of the providing to be little more than a screeching Doctor Who monster. At this point in the set (halfway through) it is astonishing that this is the point where the arc has reared its head and that practically everything before it has been standalone. The Ravenous ultimately turn out to be a bit toothless, all talk and no balls. If you want to make a supposedly terrifying new foe make an impact then let it do something shocking. This might have been a good moment to lose either Liv or Helen, have them cut down in action just as their relationship with the Doctor and each other has reached its height. It would have made the creature far more exciting than a cheap Wire knockoff (‘Hungrrrrryyyyyy!’). I had switched off by the end, there was nothing risky happening, nothing surprising. It’s the definition of a Doctor Who run around (because that is all anybody really does) sowing seeds for future stories and the climax is so forgettable the Doctor and his friends just sort of leave. I hope the Ravenous turn out to be bit more exciting than is promised here: 4/10