Set 1 of the Ninth Doctor (audio) Adventures concludes with Food Fight, a quirky title for a story that is actually quite hefty in content. A lot of unanswered questions continued to linger through the middle story, especially concerning how the antagonist in the first story came to be as we get to know the same woman as a scientist dedicated to saving her planet from the Ravagers. This is where everything comes together, while the universe is unraveling – the Doctor has to save everyone and everything, and his own interference in Audrey’s strange project on the game station (the Sphere of Freedom) has apparently advanced the universe’s destruction unavoidably.
Like both previous stories, Food Fight is fast paced and a little hectic. I think Cataclysm (the middle story) is the most confusing one on first-listen, where this story ties together both that have come before. Here, after picking up a support crew and struggling to stop them from trying to kill one another, the Doctor and Nova finally initiate their plan, dropping a bunch of robots on the Sphere of Freedom who “eat up” all the corrupted time particles, with amusing support from some soldiers from British history from the Roman era through the 1950’s running distractions. Unfortunately, the Doctor learns too late that the Sphere of Freedom is running an operation that’s actually holding the Ravagers at bay, so once his plan is set in motion the Ravagers advance and the entire universe convulses in the storm of time eddies.
The Doctor himself is caught up in one such time eddie and rides it all the way to the Ravagers themselves. Along the way he makes ghostly appearances to Audrey throughout her lifetime, explaining the mysterious apparitions throughout Cataclysm. Face to face with a Ravager at last, the Doctor learns of their hunger, and the “sweetness” that they crave. He then pulls a trick with the TARDIS key akin to what he would later attempt to do in Father’s Day, rescuing himself from this wave of destruction and skipping out of this timeline entirely. Returned to beginning of the sequence of events that unfolded in Sphere of Freedom, the Doctor is free to pursue a modified plan that will save the enslaved population on the Sphere, end the kidnapping of people from throughout time and space to play in the immersive (virtual) reality games, and provide a permanent solution to entrapping the Ravagers. It turns out they’ve been feeding not only on the adrenaline and fear of the people captured in the games, but have actually become addicted to their own physiological responses to that fear and excitement, meaning that rather than needing real people going through the experience of being kidnapped and thrown into these games, the Sphere can simply broadcast the games already played, with minor edits to the scenario in successive broadcasts, to keep the Ravagers appeased in perpetuity.
It’s an unusual sort of solution, and I’m a little surprised (and uneasy) about how delicate the setup is. Surely one day the Sphere will stop running and the broadcasts will cease and the Ravagers will continue their rampage, eating up the entire universe star system by star system? Is this a loophole in the story’s resolution, or is this an intentional open door to revisit them in a later set of stories? Maybe we’ll find out with box set 4 in 2022. <shrugs>
On the whole, Ravagers was not an extraordinary story, starting off the 9th Doctor’s audio stories with a groundbreaking bang. It was a good story, kind of a normal story – the sort of high quality that one expects from Big Finish Productions. Nothing to get embarrassed about, as modern Who on TV can be a bit silly sometimes, so that’s a plus. Besides which, it’s got to be a difficult task to live up to the emotional tenor of Series 1 from 2005. So I see the greatest value in this box set to be not so much the story itself, but the fact of its existence. Eccleston is clearly enjoying the role of the Doctor once again. The 9th Doctor is playing post-War clean-up (like we see him in The Oncoming Storm). He’s looking for good in the universe, and not yet ready to accept he can be a “nice guy” again after his War persona’s tenure. What this story represents is that there is something new to be explored in the 9th Doctor without having to repeat, rehash, or recapture the television series in 2005. I don’t expect Ravagers to top my favorite adventures of the year, but these stories do make me very happy to have this Doctor back and look forward to the next three sets.
Ripples in my Tea 
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