Red

The TARDIS suffers a telepathic attack, bringing the Doctor and Mel to a controlled colony where all the inhabitants of the Needle are monitored by a system called White Noise. The system is breaking down, though, and something is driving the inhabitants to kill ... something Red. Every colonist in the Needle has been fitted with a chip that inhibits violent actions, but over time the chips have deprived the colonists of the ability to feel anything. White Noise needs to stop the killings in keeping with its function, but something Red has other plans...

Every utopian setup has something wrong with it, although the problems with the Needle are all there for anyone to see: the building itself is for all intents alive, and White Noise acts like a god using chips to curtail the violent impulses of the people who live there, and when they experience a thought outside the parameters of White Noise's functions, the computer edits them out. The Doctor, of course, won't stand for it, and when he is fitted with a chip against his will he is able to resist White Noise's intrusions but he becomes linked to Red and witnesses the killings first hand. Red, in turn, is able to see into the Doctor's mind and comes up with more creative ways to kill.

The whole identity of Red is a bit unclear for the longest time; is it a collective manifestation of everyone's repression? Is it a telepathic alien? It is a rogue computer virus? Whatever Red is, it knows what it is doing and speaks through its agents as it kills, chanting the word red over and over as it throttles the life out of whoever is nearby. And seeing as only White Noise identifies the behaviour as "red-lining", it is obviously somehow part of this process.

Melanie falls in with people who have left The Needle; people who realized that surrendering their control of themselves to White Noise was a mistake, but they are all still chipped and vulnerable to the influences of Red. Their recreational escape from the otherwise dull reality is a drug called "slow" which places them out of synch with time around them, slowing everything down to their perception and leaving them vulnerable to attack.

I'm going to have to admit though that as clever as some of it sounds, I fell asleep through this one. A lot. Maybe it was a bad week. Or maybe it just wasn't that gripping. I do remember enjoying bits that I was awake for, but the rest... I think I'll need to go back and see.

Later.

NEXT EPISODE : DRAGONFIRE