Red Dawn by: Justin Richards directed by: Gary Russell: A Creeping Mars Day

Red Dawn stars Peter Davison as the Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri.  It was written by Justin Richards, directed by Gary Russell and released in May 2000 by Big Finish Productions.

Red Dawn is a rather odd story.  It is the introduction of the Ice Warriors to the audio dramas which was a big thing as at the time the Ice Warriors were very popular as The Seeds of Death and The Ice Warriors had been released on VHS recently and to good sales.  Justin Richards was also the editor for the BBC Books range so he was an easy pick for the writer of the story especially considering his own book and previous audio output.  That said Red Dawn sounds like a story that should really stick out as it takes place on Mars and mixes The Ice Warriors with The Tomb of the Cybermen mixing two of the most highly regarded Troughton stories.  Almost nothing could go wrong except it did.  A lot of things went wrong with this audio for a many number of reasons.  It isn’t all bad however as there are quite a few things to really like about this audio.

First and foremost Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant have such a good chemistry that wasn’t really explored much on the television series.  They interact great with Bryant’s Peri being almost tourist like and gets extremely excited with getting to Mars.  She is far from the damsel in distress on television while here she takes part in the events with relish.  Finally she gets a script worth sinking her teeth into and she gets to develop a relationship with the Doctor to keep her going when he eventually regenerates into his sixth self.  Davison also gets to have a good performance as he clearly relishes the chance to be the Doctor again and just has all his faith that Big Finish will succeed in their audio series.  The voice acting on the Ice Warriors and Ice Lord in this story is top notch.  They’re a lot better than the odd Dalek voices from The Genocide Machine and they really help with the atmosphere, making it feel a lot like you actually on the planet Mars.  The basic plot of the story and its premise, while traditional as Justin Richards is known for, is still pretty good overall but when you get to the supporting characters you get all the problems.

The largest problem in the story is the villain.  The villain is not the Ice Warriors, but is Paul Webster played by Stephen Fewell, who is a human motivated by greed.  That is nothing terribly bad except the character is a spoiled rich brat who is used to getting everything he wants.  This makes the story insufferable.  The rest of the supporting cast is also just as boring with a lot of them being Americans or Canadians brought in to try and make it sound like a NASA mission.  I applaud the effort, but there isn’t nearly enough here.  The other large problem of the story is just how slow the pacing is.  It is four parts and they are pretty short parts, but there isn’t enough substance to keep the story going for the four episodes.  It honestly made the story suffer from being what could have been a pretty good story.

To summarize Red Dawn tries to be a mashup of classic stories and includes some great Ice Warriors.  The Doctor and Peri are great but the supporting cast is awful and the pacing is really quite slow.  A weak point in Justin Richards’ career.  45/100