An Autist Reviews: Companion Piece (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Ravenous 3.2)

*All Reviews Are Spoiler-Free Aside From Any Spoiler Sections*

After just barely escaping the Crucible Of Souls with his life, the deranged Time Lord known only as the Nine happens upon River Song, stranded in the time vortex. With one companion of the Doctor in his possession, the Nine’s kleptomaniacal nature pushed him to complete the set. After using River’s knowledge of the Doctor to collect a plethora of his companions, the Nine finally heads after the first two people he met (and used) after regenerating: Liv and Helen, and just in the nick of time too! Tossing them in with Charlie Pollard and later tossing a strange woman named Bliss into the mix as well, the Nine unwittingly puts together a team with the perfect set of skills to break out of his supposedly perfect prison. But will they be able to? Or will this finally be the end of their journeys with the Doctor, continuity be damned?

“I’ve got a friend of the Doctor’s! Well, I can’t just stop at one.”

Okay, let’s get one thing clear: The first third of this story suffers from poor writing and a decent helping of poor acting and a few poor effects as well, but the rest of the story is top-tier stuff. But within the first 25 minutes of this story, Liv and Helen have no knowledge of where the Doctor’s TARDIS will be, despite Rasmus telling them in the last story, River gets stuff explained to her by the Nine that should have been explained way before this story takes place, River is implied to not be a proper part of the Nine’s collection (something that is later directly contradicted), and River suddenly goes along with the Nine’s plans, something that the Nine doesn’t question at all, not even his other selves question it. All of that is in the first 25 minutes. Of a 57 minute story. It’s almost half of the story that suffers from this. Now don’t get me wrong, the dialogue is generally fantastic, with there only being some issues with the Nine’s other personalities not being all that easy to distinguish, but that doesn’t keep the plot holes and horrible exposition from dragging this rating down. Frankly, I’m being really kind with this review, and it’s because everything after the setup for this story is fantastic, like, it’s top-tier John Dorney writing! So let’s talk about that top-tier John Dorney writing! The use of each of the five main characters is stunning, with so much thought put into how they fit into the escape plan! Charlie’s role is especially well done! And all the little details and cameos are written fantastically, with there being some utterly incredible hints towards certain pseudo-twists as the story goes on. Really, if you can make it through the first half, you will have a great time with the second half! It’s a Doctor Who companion prison break for crying out loud! And the story even tiptoes around making the ending a copout by clearly showing how River is setting it up beforehand! I love the second half of this story so much, man!

Okay, moving past the frankly weirdly half and half writing, let’s talk about the acting. Like everything else, the acting is worse for wear in the first half, with the Nine’s past selves all sounding samey for the first, like, 5-10 minutes, and with the companion cameos alternating between really great acting and pretty stunted sounding acting, which kind of sucks, since those are the only Side Characters in the entire thing, and they drag down the acting rating a LOT. The main characters suffer some too at the beginning, but mostly they’re fantastic, even when they have some less than ideal dialogue to work with, which is really admirable. The Nine’s actor, John Heffernan, thankfully adapts quickly, and after the first bit of the story, really shows why he was chosen to play the Nine. Not only do all of the Nine’s other selves sound extremely distinct, they sound really caricaturish, which honestly fits the Nine’s personality so well, but the Nine also frequently puts on different voices while messing around with his prisoners, which really helps to show the difference between the Nine and the Eleven. Although, it does raise the sad fact that Mark Bonnar was told to keep his voices very samey rather than super different from each other when John Heffernan clearly wasn’t. I hope the Eleven is allowed to be a lot more diverse in their voices in later appearances. (Not in Ravenous, obviously, I’ve already finished it, but maybe in other upcoming stories with the Eleven!)

Moving on from the acting to the effects, let’s talk music. The music in this story is incredible, the problem is that there is surprisingly little and sometimes it just doesn’t feel like it fits. The more somber and sad music is particularly strange, and the awesome action music often feels like it gets cut off too soon since this is a very fast-paced story with a lot of scene changes. Speaking of scene changes, the transition effects of this story are practically nonexistent, which is far from a bad thing when done right. This story does them right. The background effects are rather rare too, albeit not as rare as the transition effects, which isn’t to say that they’re not as good, because they are. Now, the action effects are really strange, much like basically all of the plot ratings, because the first few scenes really have some poor effects, which in turn ruin the pacing of the beginning. So much at the beginning happens without an effect, which makes the scenes go by really fast. It’s just strange. Plus, of course, the occasional effect later on also proves to be less than great, which only further drives down the rating. Thankfully this story has some frankly fantastic effects in it, such as the Nine dragging Liv and Helen’s unconscious bodies into their cell. The voice effects in this are perfect except for, guess where… the very beginning again! When River is in the vortex and being picked up by the Nine, her voice is just destroyed by the voice effects laid over it, and I frankly consider it to be so bad, that I dropped the voice effect rating from a 10 to a 9, despite the fantastic distance effects and the incredible disembodied, ghostly voice of the Handmaiden near the end of the story. Still, the effects are overall fantastic, even if they do run into some problems, especially at the beginning.

Ah yes, the lowest rating of the entire review finally comes around. Let’s talk about the replay value. This is a really incredible story, and it’s one that’s so fun to listen to all on its lonesome. In fact, I recommend you listen to it all alone at some point, because it frankly works as a standalone story really well, since you don’t realize just how bad certain parts of it are continuity-wise. Of course, nothing can save you from noticing more and more problems with the first half as you listen to this story again and again, which is why the New Details rating is so low. Each time you relisten to this, you are likely going to find more annoying bits and pieces in the first half of the story, which really sucks considering how fun this story is.

All in all, this is a story of two halves, but unlike a story like Corpse Day, this story’s halves are based on quality, not morbidness. The first half suffers from a lot of bad continuity and exposition, as well as some bad effects and lackluster acting, while the second half suffers from very little of this and presents a really fun prison break story that showcases the 8th Doctor's companions in really unique and fun ways. This story is definitely incredible, don’t get me wrong, but too much of it is just so poorly written for me to actually be all that kind to it, even though I love John Dorney, the Nine, River, etc. I just can’t ignore the bad parts of this story, and believe me, you won’t be able to either. But those bad parts don’t completely ruin the story, which means that, if you can get past them, you CAN still have so much fun with it. You just have to grin and bear it for the first 25-ish minutes.

“She was called Katarina.”

Total - 8 (I want to fudge it, but what almost amounts to the first entire half of this story suffers from really bad writing.)

Plot - 8

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Story - 8

Pacing - 8

Dialogue - 9

Narration - NR

Exposition - 7

Enjoyment - 8

Twist/s - NR

Resolution/s - 8

Ending/s - 10

Acting - 8

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MC/s - 9

SC/s - 7

BG/s - 9

Narrator/s - NR

Effects - 9

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Music - 8

Voices - 9

Actions - 8

Background - 10

Transitions - 10

Replay - 6

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Re-Enjoyment - 8

New Details - 3

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