Big Finish News: new Eighth Doctor series ‘Ravenous’ announced!
By James Aggas
Where ‘Doom Coalition’ ends, ‘Ravenous’ begins! In April, the Eighth Doctor returns in a brand new audio series from Big Finish!
I’ve been waiting almost a year for this news. Doom Coalition was a fantastic series for the Eighth Doctor. When it finished in March last year in its fourth box set, most of the storyline had been resolved. However, it had still ended on quite a significant cliffhanger. Helen Sinclair, one of the Doctor’s companions, had been left trapped with their old enemy, the Eleven. As Doom Coalition concluded, the Doctor and his other companion Liv were off to try and find her.
While there’s no question that the Eighth Doctor box set released since then was brilliant, The Time War 1 was clearly set a long time after Doom Coalition. And fans have been waiting for news on how that cliffhanger will be resolved. Now, they finally have a much better idea of how that’s going to happen, and more importantly, when.
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Big Finish have released details on a new Eighth Doctor series called Ravenous. Like other Eighth Doctor series in recent years, including Dark Eyes, Doom Coalition and most recently The Time War, it will take place across four box sets of four episodes each. The first set will be released in April.
Winston Churchill and the Kandyman
So what can we look forward to with this series? Well, quite a bit, judging from what producer David Richardson has revealed about the series so far:
"The Doctor will cross multiple timelines, and meet old acquaintances and familiar foes in these adventures, including ally Sir Winston Churchill (played by Ian McNiece) and (as a sweet treat for classic Doctor Who fans) the return of the Kandyman from TV episode The Happiness Patrol."
The return of the Kandyman does sound interesting. Particularly as it sounds like we’re going to get a very different take on the character, compared to his original TV appearance. However, it’s the return of McNiece as Churchill that I’m really excited about.
Victory of the Daleks very quickly established that Churchill and the Doctor had known each other for a long time. In fact, we got to hear a couple of their earlier encounters in The Churchill Years. But it’s a nice link to the past that it’s the Eighth Doctor who will be meeting him this time.
One of Doom Coalition’s greatest strengths was how well it seemed to merge the Classic era with the New. It wasn’t just that there were Time War foreshadowings, but River Song was also wonderfully used in the latter half of the series. So it’s great to see that Ravenous will continue that seamless merging of old and new.
More Eight and more Eleven!
Another great strength of Doom Coalition was the creation of one of Doctor Who’s greatest villains in any medium: the Eleven. An insane psychopath, he’s a Time Lord in his eleventh body who retains all of his previous personalities. As such, it makes him more unstable and unpredictable than your typical enemy.
Brilliantly portrayed by Mark Bonnar, he was a hugely popular character in Doom Coalition. So it’s unsurprising that he once again features in its sequel. It’ll be interesting to discover what he gets up to next.
One more thing I love about this news? How regularly Ravenous will be released. Unlike The Time War, which will only have one box set a year, Ravenous will have two. So for the next two years at least, Eighth Doctor fans will be getting three box sets a year. If you’ve followed my retro reviews of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, you probably have a good idea how happy I am about this.
Next: Ranking the regenerations in the new series
