How to Make a Killing in Time Travel

Ravenous 1.2

Released: 10 April 2018

Listened: 12/20/21

John Dorney’s second story in this set also has nothing to do with the main plotline, and this one is very nearly a farce. The Doctor and Liv are back on Helen’s trail, but a temporal anomaly pulls them off course, as these things often do. They end up on a space station where a scientist named Cushing is on the verge of inventing time travel, or a time portal, anyway. Rudimentary time-travel experiments always seem to be terribly dangerous, so the Doctor wants to stop this one and get on the road. There’s also a pair of novice thieves who are trying to steal the device on behalf of an alien prince who wants to overthrow his sister. And a tyrannical boss who’s unhappy with the progress of the time-travel experiments. And possibly the most ineffective security chief ever. It’s one of those stories where things go from bad to worse for absolutely everyone, as a result of individual plans overlapping and colliding with each other. Judith Roddy is hilarious as Dr. Cushing, who starts out high-strung and gets worse and worse as she gets caught up in conspiracies and murder. Sarah Lambie is also notable as a bear-like alien with a faulty translator that serves up word salad. But the best is Christopher Ryan (seen as Lord Kiv and various new-series Sontarans) as the Security Chief who can’t secure anything. His habit of saying he can’t disclose information, and then immediately disclosing it, is completely ridiculous, and could sink the whole story, but Ryan plays it completely straight, without a hint of self-reflection, and that makes it work. As with the previous story, it doesn’t really fit with the box, but this series was designed to be looser, and it’s a good idea to have a somewhat silly story, because there won’t be a lot of time for that soon.