Hearing red
★★★★☆
RELEASED OUT NOW!
156 minutes I CD/vinyl/download
Publisher Big Finish
The second season of Ninth Doctor audio adventures comes to a close with this set which, going by the title, you might expect to focus on the scarier side of the series. In fact, only one of the stories here edges towards horror. Still, this is a strong collection with wider ramifications for the future of the range.
"The Colour Of Terror" fills the present-day Earth slot. All is not well in West Morebry's local charity shop. People are going missing, and the Doctor thinks that it's all down to the colour red... Lizzie Hopley's script is a sharp mix of silliness and weird Lovecraftian ideas, but the story is most notable for continuing Frank Skinner's late-career association with the series. He plays Pete here, a likeably bluff fella not a million miles away from Perkins, the character he played in "Mummy On The Orient Express".
In historical tale "The Blooming Menace", the wealthy bachelors of the Fellows Club are falling one-by-one for a race of moving flowers. This is Who with the whimsy dial turned all the way up - for better and worse. The story is certainly original and Christopher Eccleston is clearly enjoying the witty script. Still, the reliance on OTT "posh" voices quickly grows tiresome, while a hackneyed gender-swap subplot comes off more panto than Blackadder.
Finally, "Red Darkness" brings the terror with a well-judged village-under-siege story. Tennant-era monsters the Vashta Nerada may be a headline-grabbing villain, but it's the likeable duo of Callen (Adam Martyn) and enhanced talking dog Doyle (Harki Bhambra) who steal the episode. There's a genuine sense of peril here, and while the "twist" will be obvious to anyone who's been paying attention, it continues this range's tradition of saving the best story till last.
Harki Bhambra previously appeared in Peter Capaldi-era story "The Magician's Apprentice", as UNIT scientist Mike.
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