The irony of Red is that it is set at a time where
the BBC was told to not make the show violent and make it as comical as
possible while Stewart Sheargold’s debut audio is about a society that cannot
commit acts of violence. It sends Mel
into a group of outcasts who are masochists obsessed with having acts of
violence be performed on them while the Doctor has to solve a murder that he
helped commit in an area where it is impossible to commit violence. So you can see how this thing would never
really been made on television at the time even though it’s got some great
stuff that would have beaten out all of Season 24 in a heartbeat. Sheargold writes basically the violent
version of Paradise Towers where
everyone is absolutely insane and masochistic.
The story even acts like a rip off of Paradise Towers which is really where the story fails as it takes
place in a huge high rise where the overseer has gone insane and is spreading
the ‘red’ disease while thoughts and actions are controlled, Harrison Bergeron style. It’s a weird amalgamation of plotlines that
in some ways really works especially when it’s trying to be an homage to Harrison Bergeron but really fails with
a lot of cringe inducing comedy that really makes no sense.
Sylvester McCoy as the
Doctor is honestly alright here as he’s playing the same crazy Doctor as seen
in Unregenerate! for most of the
story, which works just as badly in that story.
McCoy isn’t giving a poor performance, but the writing is what really is
off in this story and I just cannot enjoy it.
Bonnie Langford actually picks up the slack as Mel deals with a lot of
insane people who want her to cause them pain.
She actually goes to her limits here as she gets to be cut by
psychopaths, be threatened with violence, put under the influence of time drugs,
yes time drugs and have to save the Doctor.
Yes Mel, one of the most worthless companions actually saves the Doctor
in this story, yet people still ask why I love Big Finish so much. The icing on the cake for this story is that
there is a great segment where Mel is put on drugs to make time slow down
around her. While the drug is honestly a
silly idea along with the rest of the story, the image of Bonnie Langford
getting high is just hilarious to me and really who can blame it.
The supporting cast on
the other hand actually suffers a lot from being very much similar to the
cookie cutter characters of Season 24.
Chief Blue is the chief example of this as he is basically a less insane
version of the Chief Caretaker from Paradise
Towers, but is it really possible to be crazier than Richard Briers? There are a few exceptions to this rule with
Sandi Toksvig’s Vi Yulquen being a drug dealer who gets quite a few good scenes
especially with Mel which really can be said about every character. Mel makes the scenes a lot better than they
would be without her nice mix of optimism and realism to make everything seem
even more out of proportion than they already are. It’s as if we had a really dark script that
Season 24 just vomited up on to make its mark.
To summarize, Red is really a mixed bag when you get
down to it. Sheargold has some great
ideas mixed into a plot that Kurt Vonnegut showed better in a short story set
in a living room I front of the television.
Sylvester McCoy isn’t at his best while Mel’s got a lot of good stuff
here even if it really feels straight out of Season 24 in quite a bad way, yet
there is something that brings me back to this one as an experiment into what
might have been. 65/100
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