Seizure [AUDIO/2018.10.9]

★★★☆☆

  I can imagine Seizure either gripping you tight or boring the living daylights out of you. For me, thankfully, it's the former; I know I rag on Ken Bentley all the time, but the fact is that he's still a very good director, and adventures like Seizure benefit greatly from his keen ear for crisp sound design that brings alive the claustrophobic atmosphere this story demands. The mysterious TARDIS is realised with such style, with echoing hallways and ominous hums and all, and Mark Bonner brings exactly the kind of manic energy that such a closed-room haunted-house type story needs. The Ravenous itself is an effective story arc baddie, at this point anyway, by simply being the menace that this claustrophobic adventure needs, scaring the life out of the living and the dead.

  See, Seizure has one up on practically everything about Escape from Kaldor... except for the conclusion. While Kaldor indulged in an effective and fun, albeing blatant, year-long gap for Liv to have her spinoff adventures, this installment leaves the Doctor and co. stranded in another world with a dying TARDIS that isn't theirs (because the Eleven stole his), and it's been less than three boxsets since the last time these three got dumped in the middle of nowhere with seemingly no way of getting out. It goes to show how reliant Seizure is on established tropes and elements, and it can become a detriment sometimes when the pace grinds to a halt for a few minutes in the middle. Still, this isn't the worst way to end a boxset. I like that Gy Adams decided to make this a lowkey affair, much more focused on the Eleven and what drove him to near insanity like this -- and it gives us good moments for the Doctor, Helen and Liv. A diamond in the rough, so to speak, except the rough in question constitutes about 40% of the story.