An Autist Reviews: How To Make A Killing In Time Travel (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Ravenous 1.2)

*This is an older review, it is not as detailed as my more modern reviews*

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

After getting kicked out of the vortex, the Doctor and Liv find themselves running in circles trying to shut down a rudimentary time portal created by the genius, if not slightly unstable, Stralla Cushing. Along the way, they find themselves in the midst of a murder, a massive space-time calamity, multiple crimes from the small and financial, to the large and treasonous. With blackmailing amateur thieves and a hapless security guard thrown into the mix… It’s going to be one long and hectic day for Liv and the Doctor.

Let’s get my big complaints out of the way quickly. This story is long. Really long. It won’t seem like it just looking at it, but look at the description I made for it. It’s a full meal of a story and it takes a while to work through. The Doctor and Liv hop back and forth between the TARDIS and Stralla’s lab for the first quarter of the story, and then things turn hectic fast. Also, the hapless security guard guy got his name displayed on the cover art, but the girl who played Stralla, the character you follow for somewhere between 50 to 60% of the story. Stralla is the best part of this. Every line of hers is comedic gold and it hurts that I had to give the bad guys’ acting 9/10 because hers is top rate! There is one good guy in this other than the Doctor and Liv, which is sorta weird, but okay. Outside of this, this story is darkly comedic and amazing. It’s sort of a character piece, mixed with a heist story, mixed with some other things as well. It’s just chock full of stuff, so enjoy all of that! Also, this truly begins something that will be built up more and more throughout Ravenous and I hope the consequences of which will be built up in Stranded when it comes out.

The acting is solid gold. My one complaint, my ONLY complaint, is that the scorpion people weren’t great. There was literally one side character, and he was amazing. Everyone else acted like bad guys and then there was the Doctor and Liv. Still, top-of-the-line stuff. I would listen to a soundtrack and just Stralla’s lines.

Easily the worst part of this story is its effects. The music is pretty good, but it fades away a lot, and outside of that is quiet, to begin with. The voice effects are grand except for the scorpion people’s voices. They just sound slightly muffled and like if you spoke down one of those crappy tube phones at a children’s playground. The action effects were also pretty good, but some real bad ones drag this thing down. For every body dragging sound effect, there’s the computer effects and so on. The effects don’t suck, but they really aren’t great by my count.

I’m upset. My replay score should be much higher. This was, by my first listen, a story I never wanted to revisit. But upon listening again, I grew to appreciate it for what it is. It’s the Guinness of audio dramas. It’ll be your fill for the day, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Listening to it again gave me a lot more enjoyment, even if it brought very little out that hadn’t been there previously.

All in all, I can pick out a lot of problems with it, but that hardly means it’s bad. This story takes a lot to listen to because of how slow it can feel, but it’s a fun and darkly comedic masterpiece. There is one good person in the entire guest cast, and he’s a hapless moron. The acting is almost as good as it can be, only being brought down by one or two small characters. The effects are far from great, but they certainly get the job done well enough. I loved listening to this story for a second time, so I gotta say… give it a try. If you don’t like it at first… try it again. It somehow, for some reason, gets better. I don’t know why. But it does. It just does.

Total - 8

Plot - 8
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Story - 8
Writing - 8
Enjoyment - 9
Twists - 6

Acting - 10
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MCs - 10
SCs - 10
BGs - 9

Effects - 7
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Music - 7
Voices - 8
Actions - 7

Replay - 7
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Re-Enjoyment - 8
New Details - 6

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