And so we have a setting in the imaginable future, in which a NASA beholden to private money undertakes a mission to Mars with a secret agenda. It’s an exciting premise in and of itself, without Ice Warriors, and the first episode is constructed so that the dynamics between the Doctor, Peri and the astronauts sustains itself. The episode ending is a classic Doctor Who monster reveal- Ice Warriors wouldn’t be Ice Warriors without a dramatic appearance, preferably thawing out from a block of ice- and within a few minutes it’s encouragingly apparent that Justin Richards’s conception of the Martian race is every bit as complex as that of their creator Brian Hayles. Lord Zzaal is, to be perfectly frank, probably the best-developed character the Big Finish range had devised up to this point- within minutes of reviving, his disarming intelligence and eloquence are apparent, a credible alien with his own sense of values, dignity and honour but not wantonly destructive or violent. Susan’s death is a particularly good illustration of this- shot down by an Ice Warrior in a misunderstanding, she takes several minutes to die, and while Zzaal justifies his subordinate’s actions, he offers Commander Forbes his condolences and uses Martian medical technology to ease her passing. Throughout the story, it’s the Ice Warrior scenes which are the most compelling, as Zzaal’s nobility and honour are put to the test time and time again and the Doctor tries to maintain some kind of truce between Martians and humans, Peter Davison’s Doctor being particularly good in this situation.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the human supporting characters, who tend to fall into predictable stereotypes. Commander Forbes is decent but dull, Paul is the unpredictable one with the hidden agenda and Susan gets killed early in Part 2, which leaves Tanya who is, for a number of reasons, the interesting variable in the story. The sleeve notes make no attempt to conceal the fact that Georgia Moffatt is Peter Davison’s daughter (although we should probably be grateful that Sandra Dickinson didn’t come from Clackmannanshire, or indeed Angus), nor that Justin Richards was asked to include a part for a teenage girl in the script, so in the circumstances it’s not difficult to envisage a set of circumstances where Big Finish agreed to find a role for her to boost her acting CV and maintain cordial relations with Davison himself. Which is a complete disservice to Moffatt’s performance- she does invest Tanya with a personality and, when the truth about Tanya’s origins is revealed, it adds an extra poignancy to know that it’s Davison’s daughter saying the lines.

The sense of general disappointment sadly carries on into the real reasons behind the mission to Mars. We’ve heard the genetically-engineered supersoldier story so many times before, and particularly when the likes of The X-Files were setting that kind of story in the 1990s, it’s a disappointment to find the same ideas being set in the near future in Doctor Who. But having said that, on balance the weaknesses of ‘Red Dawn’ are more than outweighed by its strengths; the obvious padding in parts 2 and 3 and unoriginal motivations are compensated for by an intelligent and sympathetic revival of the Ice Warriors and a strong sense of atmosphere in the first episode, combined with a genuinely educational slant in the last episode when Richards brings his research on the Martian atmosphere and NASA first contact protocols into play. It’s not brilliant by any means, but it’s an effective attempt at doing an action-based story in audio with a small supporting cast and not surprising that I listened to it straight through in one go.