Ravagers is more of a three-part story than three individual stories. Reminds me of Charlotte Pollard Volume 2, which I also liked. But yeah, I'm still really liking Ravagers! Nova is a fun character.

A.

16.09.2021

Better. I get the stakes now, I sort of get the characters more. The audio format requires more adjusting than I expected, it's difficult to follow some of the plots, particularly the time switcharoos. But it's quite entertaining, 3/5.

an improvement upon the generic and unfocused mess of “sphere of freedom”, but still fails to remain interesting for most of its runtime. everything to do with the centurions in the last story felt like an unimportant detour, and the fact that it gets continued in this one - for one short sequence - both makes it seem more important but also more frustrating since it has nothing to do with anything else happening

i go back and forth on liking nova or not, but for the most part i think she fulfills her purpose and has occasional moments of likability. audrey has potential to be a decent antagonist, and the elaboration on her character in this story proves that further, but she still has ways to go before i feel that she actually fully works

in short, better than the last story but still just not good. i hope “food fight” can at least wrap things up decently

Unfortunately, I wish I had heard of the more common advice that it is better to start with the second volume of Ninth Doctor Adventures. Having found Sphere of Freedom a little disappointing, Cataclysm feels like a step down from even that.

I feel like the story has some neat ideas but we are constantly derailed by pretty boring dialogue and other stuff that get in the way of a potentially more interesting story with Audrey and time doing weird things. It just feels almost like a trivial part of the adventure, though. Really though, it feels like this didn't need to be three parts, and I might argue even one would have been too much. I'm just not a big fan of Briggs' script here.

Still, there was one great part I definitely appreciated. The doctor flirting with the guard and the whole thing around his use of psychic paper was both very entertaining and pretty well written. Cataclysm has its moments, and is competently acted and edited, yet nothing really feels like it is pushed into anything special. The music is fine but not amazing - on the other hand the acting does have its moments. Eccelston does get to shine, especially near the tail end of this story, basically letting Audrey make a mistake in a pretty cool moment I wish the rest of the audio better lived up to.