Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358641 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-30
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

The icssssssse warriorsssssss return
"Ares One: NASA's first manned mission to the dead planet Mars. But is Mars as dead as it first 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..."

Justin Richards' Red Dawn is one of those Big Finish stories that doesn't entirely live up to expectations. Apart from anything, it feels very short, with one episode only being twenty minutes in length.
The return of the ice warriors is a nice idea, but they lose something in translation from screen to sound. None the less they are recogniseable, and the entente cordiale that they spend much of the story in with the Doctor and the crew from NASA reminds one of The Curse of Peladon. Unfortunately, with the real villain of the piece being one of the American astronauts, the appearance by the ice warriors is somewhat wasted.
The cast are good, with Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant in fine form. Peri is perhaps a bit too plucky and comfortable with the Doctor given the story's position in the timeline, but it makes a change from her on-screen bickering with the Sixth Doctor in the following two seasons of the original TV series. There are no real standout performances amongst the supporting cast, some of whom who aren't given a great deal to do, but they all read their parts well.
What lets Red Dawn down is the lack of a real story. None the less, it's an enjoyable 110 minutes, and the sound design is excellent as ever, with Russell Stone's morose score being one of the best aspects of the production.

Dawn of the re-tread
A privately funded NASA mission to Mars seems to have a hidden purpose involving a mysterious anomaly that the crew of the Ares One have come to investigate. The Doctor and Peri arrive on a mysterious planet and begin to investigate, although the Doctor does not realise where he is straight away, the tomb like area they find themselves in contains several of those indigenous Martians that have become known as the Ice Warriors.

Justin Richards can usually be relied upon to produce a good tale but this is distinctly below-par. The problem is not in the writing itself but in that if offers nothing new; it's actually pretty forgettable. If you want a decent Ice-Warrior story then listen to the Judgement of Isskar instead.