14.02.2022

It's fine. I enjoyed the constant barrage of crises to be solved. The Ice Warriors' depiction is one of the strongest I've seen (or rather heard) so far. The message about honor is great, though rather flat in this play.

Sometimes you still get lost though. I caught myself not understanding how we got to this point in the story several times. Also mirroring attempts between Ice Warriors and humans don't really go anywhere and aren't really addressed, and I expected it to be the most interesting part of the story when they went there. Still, a solid story. 3/5

Red dawn is pretty fun and I like the characterisation it gives the ice warriors, probably the most interested I've been in them from anything I've them in seen yet (only revival who). That said, this feels kind of pain by numbers. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, just kind of meh, not something I can ever see myself going back and relistening to.

If this is what the ice warriors are like on big finish (or in classic) though, I understand the hype for them and wish they were used better in the revival.

Overall a solid and high 5/10.

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.

it's okay, nothing too extraordinary but it's nice. a little slow to get to the point, with a very irritating villain!

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Planet of Fire

I'd be lying if I said this was an interesting story, but it does play with some interesting ideas. Most notably, the Ice Warriors here are not the villains. That's not an entirely unique idea, but it's done distinctly enough to make this story a bit of a breath of fresh air. Also, this features a fairly different portrayal of the Ice Warriors in that they aren't played by Nick Briggs. So while the actual adventure isn't outstanding, it was different enough to not make it a chore to listen to.

In fact, I quite liked how competent the Ice Warriors were. They could have easily added an extra part or two of the Doctor getting captured and re-captured while trying to convice everyone that they should all be friends but they didn't. The Ice Warriors trusted him fairly quickly and that gave a chance for another antagonist. Unfortunately he was fairly unremarkable, but I'd say he served his purpose well in the story.

The cast are not exceptional here, all giving average performances but it is an interesting note that Georgia Moffett (Peter Davison's daughter) plays a role here. But in the end, this story is pretty much standard fare for a Doctor Who story, but pretty unique for an Ice Warrior story.

Next Story: The Eye of the Scorpion

The Monthly Adventures #008 - "Red Dawn" by Justin Richards

Sometimes you don’t have much to say on a story, and that’s fine. What you have to say is what you have to say but it can make writing a review rather hard. Is Red Dawn one of these stories? Yes, obviously. I wouldn’t be talking about this if it wasn’t. I can’t imagine this review will be too long so I might as well get started, we have our second legacy villain in a row with the Ice Warriors in a story about everything from the weapons trade to genetic cloning and hybridisation.

Finding themselves in an anomalous structure on the surface of Mars, the Doctor and Peri join forces with the first manned mission to the red planet after a tomb of frozen Ice Warriors awakens and threatens to destroy the peace aboard the space shuttle.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Red Dawn isn’t a boring story per say (though, following on from The Genocide Machine, watching paint dry would be a Michael Bay movie), it only clocks in at roughly 90 minutes after all, but it feels quite narratively bare. On one hand, you have some nice political messaging weaved in, most revolving around our antagonist: a villainous member of the NASA team, trying to extort weapon technology from the Ice Warriors and spark an intergalactic war to boost sales in his company. I like that there’s something being done with the story and I’ve certainly seen worse political messaging than here. Adding onto this, I like how we have a decidedly human enemy and the Ice Warriors are actually quite reasonable lifeforms and decide to join forces with the Doctor. I much prefer the Ice Warriors when they act as allies, it makes them feel a lot more developed as a species and I actually think Red Dawn’s greatest strength is the fleeting glimpses we see into Martian culture. Our side cast is one of my problems here, and I’ll get to that, but I did quite like Peri, especially in the first part, when we got her and the Doctor exploring the Martian catacombs. All her notes and observations really made her feel equal to the Doctor and Bryant gave a great performance, which was needed amongst the other American accents. Other than that, I noticed the music here was particularly good. I don’t usually talk about the music or sound design unless it’s especially great or especially terrible but I really jived with Red Dawn’s soundtrack, it gave some great atmosphere to the quieter moments.

Unfortunately, it’s in the plot where Red Dawn falls short. The whole story is pretty rushed and the narrative feels very underdeveloped, around halfway through part two the story halts and never really picks up again, the plot very quickly loses its fervour. On top of that, it’s very much small in scale; it’s a story you’d imagine would take place in a whole nation with diplomatic meetings and the such, but it really takes place over a couple of hours in one tomb, with a lot of characters standing around arguing. These characters are also just quite underdeveloped. Perfectly serviceable but if anyone lived or died I just felt nothing, nobody had particularly notable features (except for one character, who’s revealed to be a Martian-human hybrid, mostly for plot convenience - it doesn’t really work). All in all, everything actually on the page falls flat, not bad, just unimpressive.

Red Dawn is a weird little in-betweeny story. It definitely has some positives but it also has literally nothing that makes it stand out. It’s the first appearance of the Ice Warriors in the Main Range, but that doesn’t seem to help it. There’s just not a lot to talk about, it’ll go in one ear and out the other and I’m sure that by tomorrow, I will have forgotten most of it, even if I did enjoy it.

6/10

Pros:

+ Great glimpse into the culture and world of the Ice Warriors, and I love it when they’re not antagonists

+ Has a tightly written political backbone to support the story

+ Peri stands out amongst the cast and has a nice amount of agency

+ Really fantastic score that added some nice atmosphere where needed

Cons:

- Dull and underdeveloped sidecast

- Story that grows stagnant very quickly

- Feels too small, like it should be done on a grander scale but is confined to a single tomb complex

- Really weird twist that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the narrative

Red Dawn had a lot of potential. It's got a pretty great start that has all the ambition of human space exploration brought to the forefront with some pretty impressive special effects. However, after a while, things just sort of fall into a very typical Ice Warriors story. The sort of thing that's been done a lot before and especially with these characters.

I think the problem with the Ice Warriors is that they represent this sophisticated race that isn't simply villainous, and sometimes (too often in lesser Ice Warrior stories) the plots don't live up to that sophistication. And I guess I just want or expect these sort of stories to dig a little deeper than just shrugging our shoulders and wondering "can't we all just get along?" It's not a bad message, it just feels a little reductive, and Red Dawn makes things too easy for listeners by making the humans too over-the-top (or at least the one guy bossing everyone around) while the Ice Warriors are a little too bland and inoffensive. It's not even necessarily unrealistic - one bad faith actor can spoil delicate situations like this in real life, and a lot of politics come to mind to that end - it's just the sort of thing we see a lot in these sorts of stories. It results in a story where the conflict feels less organic and more forced.

I did appreciate Peri being in this story and Nicola Bryant's dedication to this role. Maureen Oakley wasn't too bad either. On the other hand, the Doctor doesn't really get to stand out much here. Overall Red Dawn was very uneven. Bristling with unused potential, competently made but very lacking in the writing department. I don't think I'd recommend it, but it is a shame as it feels like the talent behind the scenes went to waste, to a degree.

Red Dawn was a solid idea, let down by a combination of poor writing and an overdramatic acting choice. The basic premise has a decent amount of things going for it, and to start with everything was good, but about 1/3 of the way through there is a dramatic 'twist' that unfortunately makes the rest of the story almost unbearable. Mostly this is down to the way one character is written and, ultimately, portrayed. The overdramatic performance makes it so about 2/3 of the way through the story, there is little imaginary set left to chew on. There are little gems left here and there, but ultimately it doesn't save this story, which is a shame because the Ice Warriors are well realised in this story.

The problem with this story is the awful amount of padding. Some events get dragged out too long for their dramatic weight. A fair amount of the details in the plot feel superfluous. The human guest characters aren't that interesting (and given how well all four actors do in other Big Finish audios, this is a sad waste of talent). It should be cut down to a two-parter at the longest.

In addition, the Doctor and Peri don't do much, even considering the padding. They are almost in the role of witnesses. I wished the core idea had been developed as a short, Doctor-free story.

If you love the idea of complex, interesting Ice Warriors enough to ignore the bad points, go ahead and get it. Otherwise, It stinks.