Post by Kestrel on Jan 9, 2022 17:09:51 GMT
The MR has so many gems that the stories that are merely "pretty good" don't stand out much, huh?
Spoiler: yeah, I'm putting this one in the "pretty good" pile. Pretty entertaining, but not a lot of staying power--and an easy tale to forget.
That said, the premise is basically Waters of Mars, right? So maybe this story might've given good ol' RTD a bit of inspiration back then? Several story beats, especially early on, in Waters of Mars could be read as direct reactions to how the story played out here. EG in Waters a significant element of the first act is the astronauts' distrust of the Doctor due to the sheer impossibility of his appearance. Here, the (younger) Doctor and Peri appear equally impossibly, but this is glossed over fairly quickly so that we can more efficiently move into a more conventional Doctor Who story.
And while I've definitely said before that I appreciate how Big Finish can quickly skip past some of these more tedious tropes, sometimes they're called for. The Doctor popping up on a restricted military base? Inside a rich dude's mansion? Yeah, definitely, absolutely skip all of the, "Who are you? Why are you here? How did you get in?" stuff. We don't need to hear it. But popping up out of a nowhere on a dead planet? Yeah you kind of need the characters to address it. And also, as Waters of Mars so ably demonstrated, it can be a magnificent source of narrative tension.
Well, enough of that.
I leave this story mostly just kind of disappointed that they wasted the Ice Warriors premise. The actual Ice Warrior guy was pretty fun, and I am definitely a sucker for the wholeKlingon "honorable warrior" bit, but... I dunno... we've just all seen this basic story so, so many times before, right? Yeah, yeah, we know: humans suck. And? The noble savages were both noble and savage? You don't say. And?
Which isn't necessarily a fault of Red Dawn. This story came out, when? In 2000? So I'm listening to it with an extra 22 years or so of Doctor Who media out there. Perhaps back then Red Dawn was a bit less rote. A bit less expected.
Spoiler: yeah, I'm putting this one in the "pretty good" pile. Pretty entertaining, but not a lot of staying power--and an easy tale to forget.
That said, the premise is basically Waters of Mars, right? So maybe this story might've given good ol' RTD a bit of inspiration back then? Several story beats, especially early on, in Waters of Mars could be read as direct reactions to how the story played out here. EG in Waters a significant element of the first act is the astronauts' distrust of the Doctor due to the sheer impossibility of his appearance. Here, the (younger) Doctor and Peri appear equally impossibly, but this is glossed over fairly quickly so that we can more efficiently move into a more conventional Doctor Who story.
And while I've definitely said before that I appreciate how Big Finish can quickly skip past some of these more tedious tropes, sometimes they're called for. The Doctor popping up on a restricted military base? Inside a rich dude's mansion? Yeah, definitely, absolutely skip all of the, "Who are you? Why are you here? How did you get in?" stuff. We don't need to hear it. But popping up out of a nowhere on a dead planet? Yeah you kind of need the characters to address it. And also, as Waters of Mars so ably demonstrated, it can be a magnificent source of narrative tension.
Well, enough of that.
I leave this story mostly just kind of disappointed that they wasted the Ice Warriors premise. The actual Ice Warrior guy was pretty fun, and I am definitely a sucker for the whole
Which isn't necessarily a fault of Red Dawn. This story came out, when? In 2000? So I'm listening to it with an extra 22 years or so of Doctor Who media out there. Perhaps back then Red Dawn was a bit less rote. A bit less expected.