Jack Talmer Review
Spoilers follow...
A mission to an alien world, funded privately and ostensibly run by professional personnel, cracks open the tombs of an ancient race whose guardians emerge with terrifying deadliness.
Red Dawn is fabulous. A Tomb of the Ice Warriors it may be, but the scenario is sufficiently special to make the whole thing a joy. Justin Richards rarely misses a beat - the story is full of character twists, successful plot high-points (episodes one and two end especially well - I gulped it all down in one sitting because of these cliff-hangers), and moments of Who-ish magic. The red dawn itself - and it does come - is as telling a moment of physical and character honesty as you could want.
The plot concerns a joint NASA/Webster corporation mission to Mars. Episode one follows the crew down in all its Houston-we're-crapping-ourselves-out-here glory. A mixed bunch of professionals and suspicious corporate types, they meet the Doctor and Peri who've hit the tombs first time. Both teams have attractively defined relationships - the politics and revelations colouring the NASA/Webster team drive the plot in intriguing - if overly signposted - directions. What they find is expected, but what happens then and the humans' true motivations are grin-worthy surprises.
Of the characters, the Doctor and Peri work well together. Peri is intelligent and it shows her in a light perhaps too mature for the character we knew in 1984 - but to hell with that, it's a massive improvement. She gets a nasty near burn-up experience with the chief baddie, some decent interaction with the chief victim of Webster's games, and no-one rambles on for ages about how gorgeous she is. This strength is also apparent when she is with the Doctor: there's a lovely put-down late in the script that had me laughing aloud. The Doctor, meanwhile, seems to be buffeted between parties, but Davison is so good you hardly notice.
The chief human baddie (SPECIFIC SPOILER ALERT) is Paul Webster, played with clinical, reasoned zeal by Stephen Fewell. He's the one who wants stuff from Mars, having abetted some dreadful work with relics collected by automated landings in the past. He's a lethal, corporate scumbag of the first order, and Stephen Fewell brings just the right focus to all of his scenes. For me, he's the stand-out human in the production: a perfect radio voice given all the best lines.
The other NASA/Webster personnel are a bit of a blur in retrospect, with the happy exception of Georgia Moffatt as Tanya Webster who is distinct and meaningful throughout. There's a touch of the Nyssa's about her character - and her performance for that matter. I guess she's the one the caustic fan ears will be on: PD's daughter playing a token teenager. Nepotism and conceptual ghastliness all wrapped up in one - but she and it work really rather well. I may be projecting like crazy here (I'm still struck by the romance of Sarah Sutton watching her world die in Logopolis), but Tanya Webster has her own loss of identity to take and the performance kept it real.
And then there's the Ice Warriors. But I don't really want to tell you about them, because they're the best bit.
The sound effects, the music, the pacing and the scripting all create an excellent adventure. The occasional moment of clip-clop walking could be avoided, and one-punch editing to cliff-hangers might work better, but other than that this production is strong, well-told and just tremendous fun.
Original review here.