The BF Time Team 008: Red Dawn

[Anthony Williams]

Another double-whammy this time round on The Big Finish Time Warp, as we look at both The Genocide Machine and Red Dawn! This thread is for the discussion of Red Dawn. Click here for The Genocide Machine...

Ares One: NASA's first manned mission to the dead planet Mars. But is Mars as dead as it seems?

While the NASA team investigate an 'anomaly' on the planet's surface, the Doctor and Peri find themselves inside a strange alien building. What is its purpose? And what is frozen inside the blocks of ice that guard the doorways? If the Doctor has a sense of deja-vu, it's because he's about to meet some old adversaries, as well as some new ones...

The Ice Warriors at last return to the world of Doctor Who! Did this play live up to your expectations? Have you revised your opinions since? Do you think it has been retconned by The Waters of Mars? Let us know!

Ant x

[stuartdg]

Again this is just average.Certainly the scenes set on the rocket or atmospheric and it's laudable seeing the more noble side of the Ice Warriors being explored,but ultimately the plot isn't very interesting and the voices of the martians are far from convincing either

[Lissa]

It makes sense for the Ice Warriors' voices to be different as they're on their own planet with an atmosphere specifically designed for them. Less need for wheezing and hissing than there is on Earth or similar worlds.

Maybe.

[brandynigma]

This play has one of my favourite Doctor Who moments in any media. As Peri is in a spaceship approaching the ground at great velocity, the Doctor jumps on the radio to ask a vital question:

DOCTOR: Peri! Are you there?
PERI: Where else would I be, Doctor?

Beautifully delivered by Nicola Bryant, who goes from mild panic to complete disdain in just six words.

[MacNimon]

This play has one of my favourite Doctor Who moments in any media. As Peri is in a spaceship approaching the ground at great velocity, the Doctor jumps on the radio to ask a vital question:

DOCTOR: Peri! Are you there?
PERI: Where else would I be, Doctor?

Beautifully delivered by Nicola Bryant, who goes from mild panic to complete disdain in just six words.

I love that line too!

It's not enough to save this one, though. Although I'd rate the Fearmonger as my personal least fave BF at this point, this one was certainly more of a disappointment. I just had such high hopes for this (which I didn't regarding The Fearmonger), it had it all on paper...a good Doctor-companion team, great returning villains, and a good writer...I listened to this with great anticipation but it all turned out to be something of a damp squib. Not awful by any means, rather just a bit on the boring side...nothing particularly exciting happens at any point in this story.

A missed opportunity.

[Jon Masters]

2/5 from me - this may be accurate in terms of space travel (or so the BF book says JR wanted it to be) but it .....is.......ponderously.....dull.

The cloning stuff is a load of pap, its only just believeable that the Doctor doesn't know where he is until the Ep 1 cliffhanger, but the rest just shuffles from one stand off to another and contains almost no real drama.

The biggest problems for me are production ones though - Stephen Fewell makes a pretty poor villain, but Matthew Brehner's performance as Zzaal is so like his performance in Whispers of Terror that you'd expect the cast list to say Lord Zhaal played by a slight asthmatic Visteen Krane. That takes me right out of the story and makes RD a very difficult audio to enjoy.

[Anthony Williams]

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

This is up there (or should I be saying "down there"?) with The Land of the Dead in terms of quality. This is really quite abominably awful.

Scientific accuracy and a good score do not make a good story. That's pretty much all that this turgid story has going for it. Really, that's about all. There's very little else to redeem it. Frankly, I'm surprised that this was written by the same man who wrote the frankly sublime Whispers of Terror! If nothing else, it just seems to be a clunky yawn-fest.

What I find utterly bizarre about this story is how a great set of monsters like the Ice Warriors have essentially been turned into Klingons from Star Trek (and in particular, Worf, the most boring Klingon of all), obsessed with honour. As I write this, I'm five episodes into The Ice Warriors, and the ones here bare little resemblence in terms of character to those from that story.

Even the main actors can't really salvage this. I find Peter Davison's performance to be rather lacking, to the point where I just can't get the "feel" of the Doctor in this. Nicola Bryant really seems to be trying, but despite her clear enthusiasm, she just doesn't convince me as Peri.

This storyline - a manned mission to Mars stumbles upon a group of Ice Warriors and accidentally wakes them up - should have been done SO much better. This was the first appearance in acted Doctor Who in almost thirty years, for God's sake! There were other themes that really should have been explored more than they were - genetic manipulation to create human-Ice Warrior hybrids. I mean, that should've been a big thing, but it seemed to me to be just a few throwaway lines.

Overall, this was a huge disappointment to me. BF could really have done better. Heck, I KNOW that Justin Richards is capable of writing better! For me, this is a rather lowly 2/5, rescued only from the lowest rating by the superb musical cues.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I do remember this one being a snooze fest. It's worth noting this was the new Mrs Tennant's first appearance in Doctor Who appearing alongside her Dad (more than a year before her husband made his debut in Colditz alongside Sylv)

[Nyder]

Not as snoozy as Land of the Dead but still pretty humdrum. Nicola Bryant brought some energy to the proceedings, but it's hard to make Ice Warriors seem menacing when their voices are so soothing. They should do relaxation classes!