Thursday, 4 October 2018

Big Finish Reviews+ Red Planets by Tony J Fyler



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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