Finishing off this two story boxset, “Red For Danger!” is set in a particularly bad boarding school where not only is there regular bullying and hazing going on but aliens make up the faculty and a lot of the bullies too. It’s a… mildly interesting concept, but sadly the story doesn’t really climb out of mildly interesting, mostly due to setting being a naturally dull one and a “big twist” that wasn’t as fun to follow as the writer I assume hoped it would… Let’s take a look!
The story opens with The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri (Nicola Bryant) arriving at Latchford Boarding School posing as teachers, Dr. Sextus Pretorius and Professor Peregrine Brown respectively (Peri using a chameleon circuit to disguise herself as an old man) all because The Doctor got a mental image over the TARDIS telepathic circuits of a ginger haired boy screaming there in the near future. The two are shown around the campus by the most over-the-top sadistic Headmaster stereotype you’ll ever hear (voiced by David Holt) and meet some of the other staff, including Dr. Drylake (“Martin Kor”), while we the listener are then introduced to a trio of school students in Malcolm Travers (Charlie Hamblett), Reggie Biggs (Andre James) and Darius Strangerman (Akshay Khanna), the first two being your typical nice wimpy students who are being badly hazed by the latter and his “house”. The big difference here though is that Strangerman is the son of an alien warlord, Reggie is a regular human and Malcolm is under the impression that his father is called “The Doctor” and he has given him a TARDIS key to use when he arrives to pick him up at some point…
The twist comes when Malcolm actually finds the TARDIS and a KO’d Doctor (who was snooping around too much, as he does) and he drags him into the ship using his actual legit key. When The Doctor wakes he is obviously reluctant to believe Malcolm is his son even if his key is real but instead of using any number of instruments in the TARDIS to check it out he instead talks to Peri, who says that maybe he’s a son from his future, and decides to take it all at face value and goes on a bunch of TARDIS trips with him as a family bonding experience. As a listener who knows full well it isn’t true it was rather annoying hearing all this stuff being done to set up The Doctor being disappointed when he finds out because he really should’ve been more clued in. The only other thing to happen here is a meeting between Drylake and the Headmaster where the former pleads the latter to set up a meeting with a powerful warlord who could lend him ships to help free his home planet, and Peri befriending Reggie and saving him from some of the hazing. It all comes to a head when The Doctor and Malcolm return to Latchford and the latter has learnt a thing or two about how to handle corrupt regimes, or so he thinks anyway…
While it has some good moments scattered about the setting is dull, the characters unoriginal and the twist with The Doctor “having a son”, even as a “how will be revealed to not be true?” kind of twist, just fell flat for me. Ah well…
The Continuity:
At least The Doctor actually dressed in a school outfit in this story…
Not much, to be honest (well, excluding a twist at the very end of the story, anyway…) I will say that The Doctor going undercover in an unpleasant boarding school is a plot that’s been used before in the Seventh Doctor novel / Tenth Doctor TV story “Human Nature” (or “Human Nature/Family of Blood” in the latter’s case…) though that was using a method to become human and alter their memories, so quite a bit different in that way. The Tenth Doctor has also gone undercover in a more regular school in “School Reunion” now that I think about it…
Overall Thoughts:
“Red For Danger!” has a few fun wrinkles in it, but for the most part is a rather flat story featuring a dull setting and an equally dull guest cast. A twist that was immediately “Okay, that’s clearly not true so how long are they going to drag this out?” turned out to be “across the whole story” and a twist right at the end of the story was at least fun if it weren’t telegraphed five minutes into the story… Ah well.
Malcolm organises a rebellion at the school by destroying the filter that stopped the humans from seeing the faculty and select students as humans instead of aliens, and then arming themselves with legit alien weaponry and taking to the roof. Reggie doesn’t have the stomach for killing the aliens so it hazed out of the group by the now-power-mad Malcolm while The Doctor searches for Malcolm’s true lineage after finally getting the hint. He finds it in an old fanboy of his (whom he gave a key to in good faith) and his lover… The Terrible Zodin, appearing (briefly voiced by Nicola Bryant) for the first time, ruining the long, long running gag of her being a character mentioned but never actually appearing… I mean, if you’re going to stop the joke do it for a better story and reason than this! Anyway, Malcolm is taken back in by his real parents, finding out the truth that his Dad wasn’t The Doctor but a Doctor fanboy and joins him in his obsession, having seen it first hand.
As for the rest of the cast, Reggie, feeling the pier pressure, draws a gun on Drylake and shoots him, hoping to “fit in” but, as it turns out, it didn’t do much. Drylake then appears before The Doctor and Peri and pleads to Peri to get the Doctor because he needs his help. Upon being informed the man next to her WAS the Doctor he takes down his own chameleon circuit and reveals that’s he’s actually Turlough, and his planet needs the Doctor’s help. It was a fun reveal… if the “ginger school boy screaming for help in a boarding school setting” didn’t immediately make me think of Turlough, followed shortly by an alien who was using a chameleon circuit and needed help made me put two and two together. Ah still, a Sixth Doctor, Peri and Turlough adventure dealing with the planet Triton itself? Sounds like it could be fun…
Hogan Reviews 