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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 27 September 2026 |
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| Rating: |   6 |
Ravenous 2 continues the Big Finish attempt to emulate New Who. It supposedly fits in the grand story arc of the Ravenous "season," but only the 4th episode actually does this. The rest of the set bears no apparent relationship to the Ravenous arc. Perhaps it will become apparent after the next 2 sets. As it is, this set demonstrates the limits of using the same writers over and over. It feels like it is becoming a factory production, just reusing the same designs with a slightly different paint job. The set's structure is a one-part story, a two-part story, and then a one-part story. So, for the "theme" of the first two parts, the Doctor has decided that his companions need a holiday (where did that idea come from?) and so each should visit home. "Escape from Kaldor" by Matt Fitton takes Liv back to Kaldor City, where she definitely does not want to be. We learn that Liv has a sister, and that the two of them have issues. Meanwhile, the story gives Fitton a chance to return to previous Big Finish Kaldor stories, to have people chased by killer androids again, and Liv and sis to carry on their personal feud in the midst of being hunted by killer androids. The story also creates the pretext for the Liv-only Kaldor series without her actually leaving the TARDIS crew. That this story is the best in the set is depressing.
The next story is the 2-parter: "Better Watch Out" and "Fairytale of Salzburg," both by John Dorney. It's an unholy mess. The Doctor's plan to get time off with companions takes Helen back to Earth, this time Salzburg shortly before Christmas. Dorney wants the story to be a Christmas Doctor Who, so has shoved in all sorts of Christmas elements - a bit of A Christmas Carol, a bit of The Sound of Music, a bit of the historical St. Nicholas, a bit of It's a Wonderful Life, and a bunch of the local Salzburg Christmas legend, the Krampus. Dorney just cannot make all the parts fit. For instance, the story seems to be set in the early 21st century, yet a main component is an evil landlord conniving to kick out tenants, all of which is very 19th century (it's our A Christmas Carol element), not at all the way rents operate in 21st-century European cities. Apart from some automobiles, the story does not at all feel like 21st-century. Then, what precipitates the disaster of the Krampus coming to life is a mysterious, unexplained figure who grants wishes and then vanishes. No explanation. He's just there to get the job done for the writer (perhaps a stand-in for the writer?). The dialogue is atrocious, full of boring, out of context speeches. Plus, in the middle of a big city getting destroyed by magical, malicious imps and a giant demonic Krampus, characters seem to be able to find each other without any trouble at all. When the plot needs them to meet, they meet, no matter how far away from each other they were or how little each knew where the other was. For a story that is meant to make the listener appreciate the magnificence of storytelling, it is not told very well.
The third story is "Seizure." This is the only one that connects with the Ravenous story arc, mainly by introducing said horrifying monster, which had only been mentioned in Ravenous 1. The Doctor responds to a call for help from The Eleven, despite Liv and Helen saying they want nothing to do with it. He lands the TARDIS inside a dying TARDIS, where The Eleven is trying to escape from "The Ravenous," some sort of horror from the old days of the universe that loves to eat Time Lords. The story is pretty by-the-numbers for what Big Finish has been doing with the Doctor 8 box sets. There are no original ideas, just the same old ones redressed. It appears that in the 2010s, the only new monsters that Big Finish can come up with are motivated by just one thing - hunger. They eat. That is all. It's a boring motivation. One would think that some race from the deep past gifted with language abilities enough to wax poetic (in very long monologues) about how hungry they are might just have something more to them. Do they have a culture (implied as necessary, since they have language)? Do they have individuality? Do they have higher ambitions? No. So, for the 20th or 30th time (I lost count), The Doctor and crew get menaced by something that wants to eat them. We've already done that story. Can we please do another? The Eleven in this one is totally wasted as a character. All he does is whine "Let's go," and then just steals The Doctor's TARDIS, and not in any clever way, just by picking his pocket of his TARDIS key. Really? That is all you could come up with, Guy Adams?
The takeaway here is that Doctor 8 really, really needs a new set of writers.
