Review of The Cannibalists by dema1020
9 November 2024
This review contains spoilers
I loved The Cannabalists and found it a very impressive audio on the whole.
The Cannabalists themselves are absolutely brutal in how they dispatch their victims and I found it very striking. It feels like the Doctor and Lucie have a lot less to do here than in your average Doctor Who story, but thanks to excellent sound design in the Cannabalists, this is an audio I won't be forgetting any time soon. It really feels like the robot victims are being torn up while alive and experiencing every moment of it with a degree of discomfort comparable to a human victim. It took me off guard but I think it was pretty great in giving the story a strong sense of stakes.
With other memorable aspects to The Cannabalists like the poetic robot, and even just how weird and quirky the whole thing is as a plot completely focused on robots. I think it worked well enough with the story's ending and there were some creative elements to it, but this is where it wore a bit thinner for me. Still, I had a very memorable time and did enjoy myself. It works really well as a nice, standalone Eighth Doctor story built around a specific theme, and I think it largely worked with that.