EA 3.3 The Ravelli Conspiracy (spoilers)

According to the latest podcast this will be released on Wednesday the 9th

First episode had me chuckling all the way through. It's a great "Oh this is really serious but amusing" script, and the score helps tremendously. Everyone's doing top notch, and the split narration duties helps a lot. Will be listening to the rest later on but it's a great start thus far. I do hope they decide to pull some Second Doctor (or even Third Doctor) pure historicals in the future, as it's just great to see The Doctor interact with history without the threat of alien invasion or monsters on the horizon coloring everything.

my review now on Planet Mondas:

www.planetmondas.com/2016/11/11/review-ravelli-conspiracy/

I would really love to see a third Doctor pure historical, but so far they seem to be keen on recreating styles of stories that we've already seen in the Pertwee era. Hopefully they'll get tired of that eventually and will want to try and do something different. With Lisa Bowerman gushing so much about how she likes historicals in the extras, I think it's only a matter of time before we get a pure historical for the second Doctor EA's. 


I just wanted to let you know that I've been trying to read your review for two days and my browser times out every time. There might be something wrong with your website.

I really liked this one. The writers list Dennis Spooner as an influence, and I think this feels more like The Time Meddler than anything else. It's the Doctor going up against another big intellect as they mentally fence with each other. It's weird because I didn't feel like a lot of the elements worked, but it's definitely a case where the sum is definitely greater than its parts. I get what O'Brien and Purves were saying in the extras. The story by itself doesn't seem like it would be funny, but there's something about the performances combined with the script that makes the whole thing a lot of fun to listen to and had me chuckling a lot, especially towards the end. I'd definitely love to hear more from Khan and Salinsky. 

The one thing that did annoy me is the lack of continuity consideration. This story happens so close to The Empire of Glass both in geography and time that you'd think some consideration would have been paid to it. Changing Steven's line to ask the Doctor about how similar the situation in Florence would be to that in Venice would have helped. Instead, I'm forced to conclude that this must happen before The Empire of Glass, although that presents some problems there as well, although less so than placing it after. 

I realize that Big Finish doesn't have to acknowledge the books and that it's typically individual writers who like to go that extra mile and make sure that their stories don't contradict anything that's gone before, but one thing that I do expect Big Finish to do is keep their own continuity straight. It's only been two years since The Bounty of Ceres where it was established numerous times that Steven comes from a time before Vicki, and now we get this story that says that Steven comes from the 28th century. We know that Vicki comes from the 25th. Seriously, what point is there to have an editor on these stories if details like that can't be kept consistent? Nothing would have changed if the Doctor says that they were taking them to the 2384 Olympics instead of the 2784 Games. It's annoying and frustrating when stuff like that comes up. 

I posted more of my thoughts here.

Why have so few people commented on this one compared to other EA's? 

thanks for your interest
its on my Blog as well blogfinishplanetmondas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-early-adventures-33-ravelli.html
Planet Mondas is suffering tech issues at the moment - normal service will be resumed soon.

I've been thinking along the lines of what the next set of Hartnell EA's could hold. I'll assume that they already have some William Russell stories in the can, because if they don't I don't know what they're going to do for the EA's other than maybe do a Susan EA with the Doctor prior to An Unearthly Child, a Steven/Vicki story, a Steven/Sara story, and maybe a first/Ben/Polly story. Assuming the same setup though...

Ian/Barbara/Susan - Early Twenty-First century story. How do they react to being so near yet so far from their own time? 
Ian/Barbara/Vicki - Traditional sci-fi romp
Steven/Vicki - Something bizarre ala The Edge of Destruction, Planet of Giants, or the first episode of The Time Museum. 
Steven/Sara - Historical

I really want to see Ian and Barbara in our time and I really want to see Steven and Sara in a historical. Since Ian/Barbara/Vicki kind of got a side story with The Fifth Traveller this time around, I figure giving that to Steven/Vicki next time would work while we can get a traditional sci-fi romp out of Ian/Barbara/Vicki. 

I do wonder if David Richardson thinks in these terms. 

If anyone wanted the individual EP Titles

. A Friend in Need

2. A Friend in Deed

3. With Friends Like These...

4. Who Needs Enemies


Regards

mark687

I'm surprised this came out so long ago. It has been sitting in my queue to listen to for ages then. Finished it on the way to work today. It was quite a lot of fun with plots and double crosses and history unfolding.

Loved this!
Very intricate plot with betrayal and counter betrayal and very clever thought out and executed. There is also some humor among all these assassination attempts and plotting.
Very fun historical.
Performances also were quite good.
I felt much more at home with this story and performance than with the new 1st Doctor release and the re-cast new 1st Doctor.