Deeptime Frontier written by Matt Fitton and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it about: Stranded on a desolate world by a dead TARDIS, the Doctor and his friends are trapped, surrounded by creatures from Time Lord nightmares – the Ravenous… Elsewhere, on the edge of the vortex, a Gallifreyan research station takes on board an extremely dangerous artefact. Are the Time Lords sowing the seeds of their own destruction? And if one Ravenous creature rattles the Doctor’s nerves, what will happen when the whole clan is hunting him?

Physician, Heal Thyself: The Doctor’s own experiences of the circus haven’t reassured him that the Ravenous are safe because they look like sinister clowns, something that is supposed to be amusing. ‘I’d settle for any degree of kill’ says the Doctor, choosing an extreme method of dispatching the Ravenous here. I’m guessing that Time Lord race memory of these creatures is buried really deep and terrifies. He’s frightened, in a constant state of fight or flight. He disapproves of how the Time Lords used to strut around the cosmos like Gods. He can’t make mistakes like the ones on the Time Skiff when his friends’ lives are in danger. Even the good Time lords are burdened with that Time Lord arrogance.

Liv Chenka: Hooray for Liv who is now asking Time Lords upfront if they are evil to save the hassle of acting surprised later. She’s been at this Time travel lark long enough now to ahead of the game. She’s looking for escape routes as soon as the going gets tough. Man, she’s good, this one. Liv makes the (very accurate) observation that the Time lords don’t play at all well with others.

Helen Sinclair: Helen decides to stay with Liv when the Doctor heads off to draw the Ravenous off their scent. Am I reading too much into how much these two always want to stick together?

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Time Lords always manage to give the most terrifying things such pretty names.’
‘If you’re not absolutely certain you’re top of the food chain you have to watch your back.’
‘This universe will be our hunting ground again!’

Great Ideas: Deeptime Frontier begins with a sequence that is far more gripping than the entirety Seizure on the previous set, which a good sign. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing particularly novel going on here, Gallifreyan scientists on the edge of the vortex involved with dangerous artefacts have bitten off far more than they can chew. But it is presented in an excited, dynamic fashion all the same. There is a lovely cheat at the beginning where you think the Doctor and co are entering the story (even the music is in on this) and it turns out to be some Gallfreyan high official materialising on the research station. The station has been built next to a vortex fissure so they can mine dark chronons. There are an infinite mass of dark chronons in the vortex, an unlimited supply of raw TARDIS fuel. Essentially Gallifrey could overhaul its entire power system, but the old fossils in the High Council are resistant to change. The Matrix is always predicting doom and gloom and if anything were to happen to the Eye of Harmony, this would be a back up power source for the entire planet. Sounds great in theory. The Ravenous look uncannily like a circus clowns, the tradition evolved to look like them to try and neuter the fear and sublimate the deep race memory of the Ravenous. The Ravenous are a family, or rather and extended family that call themselves a clan. As usual with these epic length adventures they originate in the misty dawn of history, the Old Times of Gallifrey. The carried out monstrous attacks on the earliest Gallifrey pioneers and according to the Matrix they were trapped in a bubble dimension and lost in the vortex. Pact mentality was their strength: one is a threat, but more than one and they are truly terrifying. The Doctor casually mentions that old TARDIS are sent to a furnace that takes them apart atom by atom. Given that our TARDIS has always felt like a sentient piece of hardware that is something that makes me quite sad. Imagine a graveyard of dying TARDISes waiting to be put to death in the flames, one molecule at a time. The Ravenous have the ability to appear and disappear at will. There were atrocities on both sides of the Ravenous/Time Lord conflict. They weren’t just one family to begin with, the Timer Lords attempted to wipe them out but allowed one clan to survive, imprisoned to salve their collective consciousness. They have a bad habit of doing that sort of thing. Have you noticed? Time Skiff Alpha Nine was on Yalta Prime, an early colony that Gallifrey deigned to help. Rasillon planned to arrive in style and bring a new dawn of enlightenment to a primitive world. He ordered a Time Skiff to appear in the atmosphere, which was supposed to be an awe-inspiring display. The ship never arrived, only one week later, destroyed. The Ravenous never attacked they merely showed themselves to the Time Lords and this caused them to react in apoplectic fear, made mistakes, killed themselves. They are Ravenous but they can delay gratification if the banquet is worth waiting for. The mining project weakened the Ravenous prison enough for one to break free. It reached out doing what any starving wounded predator would do – it found easy prey.

Isn’t it Odd: Like Dark Eyes, like Doom Coalition, Ravenous is stretching back into Time Lord mythology to earn its stripes and make it seem as huge as possible. Haven’t we had enough of this sort of thing by now? What with the Time War spreading through Big Finish like a plague, so much of what they release that is Doctor Who related is tied up with the Time Lords and their multiverse spanning history. And it always seems that the eighth Doctor is tangled up in it.

Standout Scene: ‘What if they’re hiding in the very thing that you’re mining…?’ And with one line the Ravenous become a genuinely ominous, terrifying force. Once you learn that the Ravenous look like freaky clowns, it makes the taunting and the laughter much more menacing.

Result: ‘The Ravenous play with their food…’ Deeptime Frontier makes Seizure feel even less relevant because it is practically the same story being told but in a far more engaging manner. I really enjoyed the opening 15 minutes with the Doctor, Liv and Helen turning up unexpectedly in a typical Doctor Who setting (a research station in the vortex). Because of the nature of these 16-part epics, we don’t always get a sense of individual adventures and whilst I have some questions about just how loosely this arc is being told, it has been nice to enjoy some good old fashioned ‘episode one’ arrivals in the Ravenous series. I’ve been asking for information about the Ravenous for over eight hours of listening so it’s great that we’re finally given their backstory and a picture of their ugly mugs on the cover. To be honest we’re handed so much information here that you could practically begin your Ravenous experience here (although you would be denying yourself the gorgeous Christmas two parter from the previous set, a Big Finish highlight in recent years). Paul McGann throws himself into the role of a frightened Doctor with real panache, he’s not an actor who is afraid to take risks and he’s still backed up by one of the strongest set of Big Finish companions. I enjoyed how much of this was conveyed through the concepts and the performances at first, rather than assaulting us with a barrage of sound effects. There was an element of disquiet about the story that very few Doctor Who audios achieve. What we have here is another race with terrifying abilities that the Time Lords have pissed off by trying to shove them out of existence and now they’re out for revenge. Oh wizard. The Time Lords really are turning out to be the biggest villains in Doctor Who, aren’t they? Suddenly this themed series has achieved crystal clarity, which was something it desperately needed. It makes me very positive for the rest of the set. My favourite Matt Fitton script for some time: 8/10