MR 008: Red Dawn

A fairly straightforward story of humans coming into contact with the last ice warriors on Mars. A corporation funds an expedition to Mars with NASA. Naturally, of course, the corporation has other motives than just putting a human on Mars for the first time.

This is also the first time we're getting a Five/Peri story! That's actually pretty exciting. I think Peri makes Five more interesting. Much like he is most of the time, the Fifth Doctor is very passive in this story. He's led around by the nose, observing what's happening while other people do things and then ultimately getting kidnapped. It's Peri who actively participates in the plot. And she's a queen. She takes control of the situation when she's kidnapped by the evil corporation rep. She helps land a shuttle. She negotiates with the Ice Warriors.

The corporation is here because they've already found evidence of alien habitation on Mars and they want even more. They ideally want an alien to bring back and dissect with the ultimate goal of making Human/Ice Warrior hybrids. Like with a lot of Ice Warrior stories, the Ice Warriors themselves are not at fault here.

It ends up being an average "humans suck" story, and I'm generally here for those kinds of stories, particularly when the human that sucks is doing it for a corporation. He kidnaps one of the Ice Warriors and then when that doesn't work he plants a bomb on the remains of a warrior that the other Ice Warriors are guarding.
He gets away with hostages and agrees to a hostage swap with the Ice Warrior commander. The other Warriors will not fire to kill their commander and so the commander sacrifices himself in the "Red Dawn." The atmosphere is too thin to protect from UV radiation which kills him as soon as the sun comes up. Thus leaving the warriors open to attacking the shuttle. It's a nice ending and fitting for Ice Warriors.

There's also an Ice Warrior/Human hybrid already that had been cloned in a lab. The corporation brought her as insurance for when they needed to use the Ice Warrior technology. She decides to stay as an ambassador to humanity, which is also a nice ending.

Despite it being fairly straightforward and average, I still liked it. Just a nice little tale about human greed running headfirst into the honor of the Ice Warriors.