The final set of Ninth Doctor Adventures Series 2 has arrived (though frankly I should probably just start counting them as individual sets at this point, Mr. Eccleston seems to be fully invested now!) and it comes in form of “Shades of Fear”, and while there isn’t a two-part finale like last time the opening story of this box and its final episode are strongly connected… Oh and the one in the middle is a bit crap. Let’s take a look!
This cover doesn’t make it hard to guess which colour is the titular Colour of Terror, that’s for sure.
“The Colour of Terror” has a really unique twist to it as a race from an alternate universe breaks through into ours but can only travel through specific lightwaves, in this case the colour red. They’ve found their way to a charity shop and jump between a lot of its red items, including a red dress that ends up consuming a woman whole to open the story. The entire story is based in this shop (making it a “Charity shop under siege” story I guess!) as The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) arrives and tries to sort things out but gets side tracked by the likes of crazy store owner Mrs. Bevell (Susan Penhaligon); local lonely older man Peter (Frank Skinner); a young offender by the name of Robbie (George Naylor); Cath (Laura Rollins) who was the partner of the girl who vanished into the dress in the opener; and the owner of the nearby café but I’ll be honest I’ve forgotten her name and nothing on the overall box’s cast list is jumping out at me. Sorry!
The story has various twists but I’ll admit to being disappointed when the alien race itself, pronounced “Vermeen” but I obviously don’t know the spelling, turned out to not be a race from another universe accidentally trapped and killing people because it only communicates via lightwaves but instead a race intentionally invading this universe in order to feed on the living creatures and generally take over, complete with evil threatening voices. Now, retrospectively I really liked what they did with the Vermeen in Part 3 so it’s not as bad looking back, but at the time I was disappointed it went down such a generic route. Overall it’s still a fun story, though the guest cast are all one-note caricatures, especially Mrs. Bevell whose single personality trait of “really wants her charity shop to continue with its sterling reputation” means she’s completely nonplussed about people literally being killed in her shop so long as people don’t find out. Got a little bit too stupidly one-minded in the end…
A fun cover for a not very fun story. Well, for me anyway…
“The Blooming Menace” on the other hand just didn’t connect with me at all. It’s all based in that posh twee early 20th century setting I always dislike intensely and starts Dave Hearn as “Toby Entwhistle” who is your classic young toff who takes in the most absurd things and just says “I say, that’s not very proper, is it!”. In this case all his friends are getting married to giant flower creatures due to some hypnotic effect they have, which is a funny idea for a light-hearted story but I just found all the characters annoying. Toby is also oblivious to that fact that his friend Phil (Milanka Brooks) who he really gets on well with is a woman pretending to be a man to get into his all-male club and get close to him. I’m sure it’s a fun parody of a specific series of books whose name escapes me right now, and due to that I’m sure it will really appeal to certain people, but just not to me, sorry.
The Continuity:
Nothing really links either of these stories directly with any other. Well, apart from the next story in the box set, “Red Darkness”…
Overall Thoughts:
The overall cover, which like a lot of these overall covers recently could very nearly act as a cover for just the final story of the box…
“The Colour of Fear” has a really great central idea and some good twists but is somewhat undermined by the paper-thin cast of characters and disappointing villain turn. Still, a lot better than “The Blooming Menace”, which I didn’t like at all, so… it’s got that going for it! Happy to say the third story in this set makes up for these two, and even makes the first one far more interesting…
The Colour of Terror:
The Blooming Menace:
Not much to say here, in the first story the Vermeen are trapped in a red jewellery box with The Doctor planning on trapping them in a red nebula while Cath gets to talk to her lost love by putting on the dress, while in the “Blooming Menace” it turned out the evil flowers were actually just doing their natural seed spreading across the universe but they were being kept against their will not by the crazy old scientist of the story but by his landlord Nanny Lewis (Rachel Stanley). The flowers escape to continue their natural ways and Toby and “Phil” fall in love.
Hogan Reviews 