Ravagers: Food Fight

"We eat to survive."

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

Format: Audio

Released: May 2021

Series: Ninth Doctor Adventures 1.03

Featuring: Ninth Doctor

Synopsis

The TARDIS is starting to get a little crowded! Audrey finds herself haunted by a ghostly Doctor.

Verdict

Food Fight was an excellent conclusion to Ravagers and to the first series of Ninth Doctor Adventures! It really has been a blast to get brand new content featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and I really do look forward to the next three boxsets (and hopefully more!) to come. Whilst they are rumoured to all be standalone adventures, I thought the way this series tied up here was very impressive and brought everything from Sphere of Freedom and Cataclysm full circle very nicely. The Doctor doing all he could to defeat the Ravagers and stop Audrey from making her fortune from them and the Immersive Reality games was great and it was wonderful to hear this incarnation of the Doctor in a pacy episode. I think that excitement might have been slightly lacking from the first two episodes, but despite being the longest of the three stories this just felt full throttle which worked magnificently. It was fun to have the Doctor meeting both Audrey and Nova out of sequence and his going back to Nova at a point before she knew and travelled with him was brilliant because he could open up and really question her about the knowledge she had on time travel. She was clever, sure, but there were some things she shouldn't ought to have known and I liked that the Doctor had cottoned onto that fact. The plan to use DNA with the TARDIS to reverse journeys was very good and I thought the issue of it picking up other people's DNAs such as Lieutenant Farraday was terrific. Once all of the drones were added we had quite a packed TARDIS by the midway point of the story! That didn't seem something that the Doctor would enjoy. His promise to Nova of finding her somewhere nice to live was still felt which was good and I loved at the end where he offered her a journey with him and he already knew the destination she wanted to go. That was a really nice touch. Finding out that the Ravagers were intrigued and addicted to the Immersive Reality games of Audrey's was good and it actually turning out that their 'sweetness' that they craved was actually their own fear was a brilliant twist. Audrey had thought that it was the fear of others and that's where the time eddies had come in, but in actual fact the Ravagers liked feeling scared. I thought that was very unique and something I didn't see coming so I very much enjoyed. The Doctor getting to meet one of the Ravagers at the very centre after sacrificing himself to save Audrey was very good and I loved that the TARDIS came back to find him. Although I think the title of this episode is atrocious (like come on, seriously?), it actually ends up being a fantastic finale! Speaking of which, the moment we get to hear the Ninth Doctor utter that famous word once again was really good and a terrific occasion, as it should have been. Everything came full circle in an impressive way and even though we didn't get to see the game loop that would keep the Ravagers happy with their sweetness, we didn't need to and it actually ended up being a relatively simple conclusion to the story and the series as a whole. Overall, a fantastic audio to finish!

Rating: 9/10