Tony sings a
revolutionary song.
The Seventh Doctor loves a
good game of chess. He’s able to see things on a whole other plane to most of
the Doctor’s other incarnations, connecting seemingly random events to get at
the nub of a problem, and then solving it.
This is that kind of
story, though it’s not really as if there’s an Elder God or a Big Bad hidden in
the structure of this story from Una McCormack. In some respects it’s more
interesting than that – it’s a kind of Sliding Doors, overlapping realities,
slow-motion temporal implosion deal, which rewrites the history the Doctor
knows, but which Mel, for one, doesn’t recognise. It’s 1961 in Berlin, and 2017
in soviet London, and not a bit of it is right. Our three heroes are quickly,
even mercilessly split up, and each set to work on a thread of the story that’s
twisted together in a know that, if not unpicked in time, will see a familiar
timeline eradicated – possibly taking the Doctor and his companions with it.
So…no pressure, then.
McCormack’s storytelling
strands are of a type that it does no-one any good to question at length.
You’ll have a much better time listening to this story if you just accept what
she shows you and run with it. Ace trapped behind the Berlin Wall with some
vital information that needs to get to the West. Mel in the modern-day soviet
Republic of ‘Mokoshia’, remembering the history of post-war Russian expansion.
And the Doctor, playing the higher game, the longer game, aware that both his
companions have roles to play and having no alternative but to trust them to
each do their bit, and making his moves in the hopeful dark, trusting to them
both and working out the heart of the problem.
Red Planets is not the
story you think it might be – it’s bigger and broader and more trans-temporal
than its title makes it sound, but each strand of the storytelling is deeply
intense and intimate, grounding the listener in the lives of the characters,
which is particularly effective in Ace’s adventure, which unfolds like an
espionage version of Back to The Future, where her presence in the first place
knocks time and events out of kilter, and she has to do whatever is necessary
to get things back on track. Mel and the Doctor in Mokoshia is an interesting
alternative reality, grown from seemingly simple events. When strange signals
from Mars get involved, there’s a sense that perhaps – just perhaps – the story
is overstretching itself to make sense of the concept and the title, but what
you get here is a story that starts off odd, gets odder still with some
world-class cliffhangers, and a fourth episode that sets off like a bullet from
a gun and races to its end in a way that will have you shouting at your audio
device of choice like it’s a Grand National horse, as you urge the Doctor, Mel
and Ace on to success against seemingly impossible, utterly implacable odds.
It’s like Back to the Future with its veins full of Red Bull.
Red Planets is an odd but
tasty blend of John Le Carre, Sliding Doors, Red Bull and magic mushrooms,
where timelines are in jeopardy, secrets must make it past the iron curtain,
the future just ain’t what it used to be, and everything could go horribly
horribly wrong on the flip of a coin, the yes or no of a single incident, which
may or may not have been pre-determined by people from at least one version of the
future sending signals to at least one – but not necessarily the same – version
of the past. Seriously, we wouldn’t normally advise this, but psychedelics
might help when you listen to this story, because it’s written with such
terrifying cleverness that to listen to it while in your right mind is like
looking through 3D goggles at images that are in 2D. You kind of need to bring
in an extra dimension from somewhere for everything in this time-twisted,
potential-shifted, dimensionally transcendental story to click into the focus
it undoubtedly should have.
I mean, you can try it without psychedelics if you like, but
it’s best, if you do, to treat it like a Seventh Doctor chess-game. Do not at
any point concentrate unduly hard on any one piece, but dislocate your mind and
see the whole thing from above. If you can manage that, Red Planets will not
only make sense, you’ll be able to get the most out of both the plot and the
characters too, meaning Red Planets will stay with you like a smile of understanding,
rather than a bruise of a what-the-hell brain-strain.
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