Doctor Who: Red

Big Finish: Monthly Range #85

by Stewart Sheargold, Sylvester McCoy (Narrator), Bonnie Langford (Narrator)

Subject 2660 ­ Celia Fortunatè, designated citizen of the needle. Subject experiencing traumatic, violent delusions during waking moments. Subject remains passified and under control of Whitenoise. Medication has been prescribed.

Subject 0357 - Vi Yulquen, designated Matriarch of the needle. Subject is under constant surveillance due to her wish to experience harm. This is in direct contravention of Whitenoise's programming. Also supplier of the drug classified as Slow. Editing is required.

Subject 0841 ­ Chief Blue. Technician in symbiotic relationship with this Whitenoise system. Knowledgeable in human psychological evaluation. Subject has been diagnosed a voyeur, and has a dangerous obsession with the Red Tape. Machine augmentation is favoured to curb this defect.

Subject [error] ­ Melanie Bush, designated companion of subject 3999. Subject [error] is not chipped and is a threat. Her ability to harm has not been checked, compromising the continued security programming of this Whitenoise system. She must be inhibited.

Subject 3999 ­ the Doctor. Subject has committed homicide. This subject now in constant redline. His propensity for violence remains unchecked. Analysis suggests synchronisation with the killer. The Doctor will attempt to kill again. He must be stopped.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Time Travel

Audio CD

First published August 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

An fascinating concept that feels reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor era (similarities to The Happinest Patrol) though with a more modern take that works so well on audio.

With the TARDIS arriving within a society where violence has been removed by the aid of an implanted chip, the idea of suppressing it inevitably actually causes more harm...

The urge to kill and the repation of 'Red, Red, Red' is brilliantly effective - we all remember Danny Torrence in The Shining repeating 'RedRum' being a memorable way to increase the tension.

McCoy himself has great mileage of rolling his 'R's' in this one!

[Nemo ☠️]

so sandi toksvig mentioned on QI that she was in one of the DW audio dramas so obviously i immediately went and looked it up and i am buzzin to listen to this tbQh

(incidentally on the same episode alan davies went "i'd happily be a trans doctor who" and uhhh i think we need that too, @chibnall you'd better be fuckin takin notes)

(double incidentally i would kill for sandi toksvig as the fourteenth doctor, cOULD YOU FUCKING IMAGINE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

[Gabriel Mero · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was creepy. The Big Finish audios have gone to great lengths to develop and improve Mel's character so much!

[Twainy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A place where everyone is chipped. They’ve had their ability to harm removed so they consider it an art firm and relish the opportunity to experience pain.

The chip is monitored. The machine that chips also erases so when a digital killer starts body hopping and killing people, the hosts are having their memories erased before he jumps to the next host. The Doctor has been chipped & through a anomaly is seeing through the killers eyes.

Mel isn’t chipped but is having problems of her own.

Loved it!

[Linnea Gelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some elements of "The Matrix" and "The Exorcist" with body-jumping evilities who could be absolutely anyone. Set in a wishful thinking society which dreams of a World free of crime and ends up inventing a killer instead. Ironically the Red's insanity somehow reminded me of "Blue Velvet" in how something trivial triggered the violence, always waiting under the surface.

Interesting concept and quite chilling in execution.

[Finlay O'Riordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think there was a good concept on the drawing board here, but the story ultimately becomes very boring and the scene isn't set really well, so it's hard to follow. Mel and Seven are also both very bland. I don't know if maybe it's let down by a one-off writer who didn't understand the characters or if the story itself was just generally flawed to be quite minimalist due to its enclosed setting, but it doesn't really work for me.

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was weird.

I imagine I will have that reaction to most of the Seventh Doctor audios I listen to. Good grief. Still creative and interesting... but weird.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/3.5 stars.

A very bleak and dark concept. Very 80's kind of story.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got tired of all the times they said “violence.”

[Tabitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some spots where this was a mess, but it's a great concept. We're reliant on technology for so much, and this was a fantastic "what if it went wrong?" story.

[Lachlan McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

RED

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst audio I've listened to in quite a while. People say Doctor Who: Nekromanteia is bad (and it is), but it is more inept and immature. Red, however, is an attempt at defining whether murder is generated by the individual or the society wrapped in a murder mystery (that doesn't work as one) set in one of the most poorly constructed dystopias that I've ever read.

The murder is generated by the society (spoiler?) because repression is bad. Yup, that's it. The characters in this society have built a living spire as their home and given their lives over to a computer who weeds out their bad thoughts and edits out any bad memories. This seems to be recent history, but I can't imagine these idiots developing any of this. They are edited and compared to robots, but all the characters are obsessed with violence in one way or another, quite unrobotic. This obsession in all the listener's primary examples of this society make them unrelatable and, worse, largely unlikable. Their characterization is not helped by a large amount of conversation that amounts to: "but I really wanna do it!" To which, the Doctor or Mel says: "you shouldn't." It happens at least once during each part.

The murder plot fails as well. Not that the murderer doesn't kill a bunch of people, but that there's no murderer. The murderer is a composite of all the evil feelings crystallized by one of the characters, but it isn't created purposefully. It is attracted to time travel because... it was solidified or possibly created by time travel, I guess? The drama isn't even clear on that point. Leaving a mystery without any way to solve it. It's frustrating. This is all exemplified by the end where Doctor tricks the murder consciousness into a confrontation while Mel uses her computer magic (she just knows how to reprogram this LIVING SYSTEM) to stop it. The plan nearly fails but is saved thanks to pulling out wires- lazy writing at its worst. The worst thing is that it seems like something they could have just done AT THE START. Hurrah for making the Doctor and Mel look completely incompetent.

One of the best ideas is that the Doctor is linked with the murderer. He feels the killer's desire and recognizes it in himself. It is a shame that the Doctor just rejects it. Yup, he feels a bit bad then moves on, what a way to waste an interesting idea. The other interesting thing is the living building. It functions to cover up crimes and act as an escalator... that's it.

Skip this one and its pathetic moralizing, poor plotting, and complete waste of any ideas of merit. It's cheap and even uses ear splitting sounds as a cheap way to drive tension. Avoid at all costs.

[Jadetyger Sevea · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interestingly creepy concept that became a bit of a muddled mess at the end.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stewart Sheargold sure knows how to write a creepy story. His audios aren't necessarily Big Finish's scariest, but they're among the most unsettling, tending to feature alien things that get into the fabric of the characters' worlds, and get into their heads. And then sometimes turn out not to be so alien after all.

Red finds the Doctor and Mel arriving in the Needle, a habitat where a computer controls all the inhabitants by means of chips implanted in their brains to suppress their urge for violence. With a setup like that, the story seems constantly in danger of straying into direct ethical debate, with characters arguing with each other about whether the capacity for violence is a necessary part of being human. However, this is offset somewhat by Sheargold's characterization - none of the characters come across as merely a mouthpiece for a debating position.

The story has some nice twists - there were two points where I thought I'd figured out what the resolution was going to be, and I was wrong both times. There's some business involving time travel and a drug called "slow", which I thought was confusing and mostly served to provide a technobabbly way for the Doctor to dispose of the baddy at the end.

And a nitpick: While it is lovely to see Mel's computer programming skills get a nod, it's not really reasonable to expect a computer programmer from 1986 to be able to nearly instantly hack an unfamiliar computer system from centuries in her future. But, hey, it's Doctor Who.

[Leela42 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audio adventure with the seventh Doctor and Mel. Not awful, but a good idea badly written. Dark and edgy, but sloooow. Some of the dialogue is conspicuously filler (puzzling since these audio adventures don't have a fixed length and thus it could have been eliminated), and a lot of dialogue is just plain bad, not to mention contradictory and repetitive. The arbitrariness on the part of the author in part 1 annoyed me. It's obvious from the beginning of part 2 what's going on, so it's annoying that it's drawn out through another hour and a half. And there is one repeated hole that keeps pestering the listener which could have been explained with a single line.

[Nicholas Whyte]

The best thing about Red is Sandi Toksvig, whose society is under the control of a computer protecting it from violence. Of course, it is under threat from a) the outcasts who are still capable of violence and b) the computer going mad. The plot goes as you would expect, Sylvester McCoy does a lot of shouting and Bonnie Langford doesn't do very much. It wasn't as actively bad as the plays immediately before and after, but not great either.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some rather nice ideas that never quite come off, and that basically come down to your classic mad computer (as is fairly obvious from almost the beginning). The story is fundamentally about the effects of violence and the supposed futility of trying to suppress it. The end result, of course, is that it's pretty violent itself, which rather (ahem) colours the impression it gives. It's not actively dull, though, and it works moderately well for what it's trying to do.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seven and Mel arrive in a society where everyone has a chip in their heads, controlled by a computer that removes their criminal impulses and creates a perfect society. So why are people being murdered? And why does no one know about it?

[Debra Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor and Mel land on a planet where people are chipped to stop violence from occurring. Unfortunately violence is still happening. Can the Doctor help to stop the killings?

[Nathan Friedl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible on every level.

[Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seven and Mel find a society totally free of violence. Or is it? Red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red ...