We’re back to the Big Finish-exclusive “post War Games” era of the Second Doctor with “Conspiracy of Raven”, featuring three strongly-linked stories moving the plot forward. I stress moving forward rather than “bringing to an end” as it is just the next chapter is this storyline rather than anything else, and as a chapter it’s not really that interesting. Still, the performances are great, so that elevates the material a bit! Let’s take a look.
The story picks up from the end of the last set as The Doctor (Michael Troughton) and his companion Jamie (Frazer Hines) are falling through a mysterious Time thingy and end up on an equally mysterious space station, separated from each other but still able to call out and hear the other, occasionally. Meanwhile the antagonistic Time Lord Raven (Emma Noakes) is freed from the sentient weapon that she was trapped by in the previous box and also arrives on the station with Paul (Mickey Knighton), the previously mentioned sentient weapon in physical form. She initially thinks her Time Lord masters have saved her but it soon becomes apparent that she doesn’t know anything either, something The Doctor finds amusing when they meet up. There’s a lot of slow and often uninteresting dialogue before we get the debut of the “Kippers”, barely described floating things that are so against nature that it hurts to even directly look at them. One of them kills Paul before The Doctor and Raven manage to reunite with Jamie, although its short lived as by the end of the first two-parter The Doctor is separated from Jamie again but sees another familiar face in Zoe (Wendy Padbury) who suddenly appears in the TARDIS.
While The Doctor and an older Zoe get reacquainted Raven is stuck on the space station still and is desperately trying to reach her masters, but the Kippers begin closing in. Meanwhile Jamie ends up on a space-liner heading to disaster and tries to help, befriending a cabin crew member called Magrit (Susan Harrison) as he does. Once again there’s lots of not-a-lot and some poor dialogue before we get to the resolution: The Doctor and Zoe end up on the same space-liner and help Jamie save it, which The Doctor realises is actually something he shouldn’t have done as although he saved countless lives both on the ship and on the planet below the disaster was actually a fixed point in time, something he shouldn’t have changed, making him even more suspicious of the Time Lords’ actions with him. The reunited TARDIS trio heads back to the ship and soon picks up Raven for good measure when she calls for help.
This leads to the final double-bill, though the first episode is a big old helping of nothing as The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and Raven talk about what to do about the still-appearing Kippers while we cut to a mysterious location where two people talk about overseeing the timelines and how an odd reading one of them got is a bad omen. At the end of part one (or really part five of the boxset given how closely knit everything is) Jamies goes missing AGAIN and The Doctor, Zoe and Raven use a forbidden book to head towards “the Vanishing Point”, a long-thought mythical location where all time meets…
The story has some fun concepts and Michael Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are on fine form, but it just doesn’t click. It feels like it should have been a tight four parter rather than six episodes, three of which have a cliffhanger of Jamie vanishing and needing to be found. Also given all the character goes through Raven really should’ve dropped the one-note sarcastic and uninterested voice thing by the end, feels like she’s stuck in limbo unable to actually evolve in any meaningful way… Oh well.
The Continuity:
I mean, sure… The art isn’t bad, but I still don’t get the idea of using really old versions of Jamie and Zoe. It’s audio, why not have them younger? It’s not like you can say “they won’t sound the same” when The Doctor is being played by someone else entirely!
I mean, it’s sort of a middle chapter in a story arc, so beyond continuing on from “The Shroud” in a storyline that started with “The Final Beginning”, there isn’t much else! Zoe gets her memories back after they were taken by the Time Lords in “The War Games”, though I assume they will somehow be re-lost by the end of all this…
Overall Thoughts:
“Conspiracy of Raven” really should’ve just been a four part story with less Jamie getting lost somewhere and more focus on the plot at hand. For a story with that overarching title it didn’t really feature any conspiracy to do with Raven either, and instead she went along for a ride with The Doctor and co. and was just as confused as they were. With weak writing to top it off (lots of characters describing the action rather than letting sound effects and subtle dialogue do the job for one) it’s not a great release, honestly. Even the big cliffhanger was a bit “meh”. Michael Troughton’s performance can only raise it so far…
The last episode sees everyone arrive on the Vanishing Point and as The Doctor and Raven look at the whole of eternity with Morai (the people who exist on the Point) overseer Ananke (Jacqueline King) Zoe befriends the younger-sounding Morai Aither (Callum Pardoe). Sadly it’s short lived as a Kipper appears and seemingly kills the young man, but is then destroyed by Jamie, who is “caught in between dimensional plains” and was therefore able to physically attack it. Zoe meets back up with everyone else just in time to see “the whole of eternity get rewritten” as countless Kippers appear across it, with the same planet popping up across space and time, the planet is soon identified as Skaro…
Hogan Reviews 