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This is Red Panda Report episode 001. Too many narrow-oiders spoil the grump.
So I'm talking about Red Panda Adventures episode 1 which originally aired
October 15 2005 the title of it is The Riddle of the Sphinx. It is written and directed by Greg Taylor.
This is episode season 1 of season 1 of Red Panda Adventures, which you can find at Dakota Ring Theatre dot com.
Your source for adventure.
Alright, I'm gonna read you this little blurb thing that I'm pretty sure Taylor wrote because it's just that good. Here we go.
This is your intro to the episode and then I won't summarize it. I will only talk about it.
Assuming that you have listened to it. So here we go.
A stolen sapphire, a mysterious murder, and purloined plans add up to amazing adventure as the Red Panda and his trusty sidekick
Kit Baxter the Flying Squirrel race against time to decipher The Riddle of the Sphinx.
I don't know if Stephen Burley does those or not, but he should. He's the narrator for the show.
I absolutely love his narration. It's so good and he gets to be a character or two later on.
Well, he gets to be a main character later on in the series. I absolutely love that guy.
Anyway, so I'm just gonna go ahead and let you know, again assuming that you've listened to this episode of Red Panda Adventures,
what I thought of it.
So first of all, some of the characters narrating their own actions to themselves while by themselves was a little weird and
that's what I'm referring to when I say too many narrators spoil the grump because honestly if you're gonna be
grumpy and uptight, I don't know that this is the show for you.
You might want to go check out Black Jack Justice from Dakota Ring Theatre, and I gotta say it's a different style.
It's a different presentation. It's a detective show specifically. You have the one-on-one narration of
the two characters there,
Jack and Trixie, and I
was listening to an episode of Black Jack Justice earlier before I wrote up my notes for this and I thought
or and as I was thinking about the fact that there is a little too much narration in Red Panda Adventures,
it struck me that I don't think it's the same in
Black Jack Justice, but I don't know if that's because the detective stories that were going on,
if they were developed later, which I don't think is true, then like The Shadow for example, or if
they
just don't have any of that dialogue at all like, all right Trixie,
I'm opening up the drawer to get the scotch. You can see me plainly,
I have a stain on my t-shirt, because Trixie would just say, Jack, you spilled mustard on yourself again.
You're such a slob. Clean up before we have a client coming here.
And he would say something to the effect of like, oh, you know, funny that you would think that we have
clients that are attracted to us, you know. They've all been scared away by your, you know, dragon scent or whatever.
You know, like they would dig at each other and
you know, instead you'd you would hear the narration of, you know, it's another early day.
So I'm, you know, pulling out the whiskey early and I'm hoping I can get a few licks in before
Trixie walks through the door and makes my life that much more of a living hell.
And then, you know, it was just, you would know what's happening because the character is telling you what they did or what they're doing.
But it's in a different way because it's narration, which is why I specifically used the term narrator in my title for this, as opposed to,
you know,
somebody in the Shadow
documentary that I
listened to, but I have yet to. I'll make sure to
publish it on
MJwinters.com before I release this episode of Red Panda Report.
It mentions
sometimes they would have to do silly things like, see I've got this gun here,
I've got you all covered. If any one of you moves, I'm gonna shoot ya.
And that might feel natural, but it might not, depending on how it's delivered and exactly how it's phrased.
So I can understand it being a little weird. Yeah, there were some things, you know, where the the guard is
talking, you know, do this, do that, some of that was good and solid,
but some of it just sounded a little weird. And again,
because it's radio theater, you have to be willing to let go and
accept some level of
contrivance, let's just say,
for it to work and for you to fully understand what's going on without the direct narration of, and now the guard approached the door.
He is puzzled. He pauses, puzzled at the light streaming from under it in the sound coming from the other side.
He approaches it carefully and knocks.
No answer. He knocks again.
Hey, mister! You know, whatever.
Which,
you can do that, and they've done it in episodes of The Shadow,
and I think they'll do it in episodes of Red Panda as well, where they'll say, such and such happens now.
Let's watch, and you know, Stephen Barrelly will do those
introductions, but those are mostly for the start of an episode, but anyway, it'll come up later,
but I just wanted to point out, you know, if you don't want to have fun,
and you want to let it be ruined for yourself, you can go ahead and do that and just stop listening right now,
but if you'd like to have fun and enjoy a really well-told story,
then stick around because it just gets better from here.
All right, moving on to the things that I did enjoy.
The dynamic between Red Panda and Kit is fun. The premise of the locked-room mystery is neat, and the Red Panda's hypnotic power
tricking the Sphinx was really cool.
Something I thought was kind of odd is Red Panda getting himself pumped to take down the Sphinx. It was really fun. It's like a...
It's a monologue, basically.
And where he like, and this is like a trademark thing, where he whips himself up,
and he says, you know, so-and-so is gonna have a date with the Red Panda, and, well, you know,
the Red Panda swears it, which isn't in this episode yet, or is in episode one, but it'll be, I don't know, episode two or three,
I think it makes an appearance, and he's got those,
these things where he just gets all worked up, and it's really exciting, and I,
the joke for me to say is that it feels hypnotic. Obviously, it's not hypnotic.
I'm not being hypnotized by it, but it is interesting how, like, compelling it is for
just a guy over the radio, over the podcast, whatever, to say this stuff, and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I'm all jazzed up.
He's gonna go fight this guy. It's gonna be really cool, and,
again, it's the theater of the mind, I guess, that's at play there, and,
yeah, I guess Taylor understood that well and did a good job with it, so it's just, it's odd how cool it is.
Another odd thing is the mystique of not knowing the true identity of Red Panda adds something to the show.
I found myself listening for clues or tells about his identity, like,
when Bellamy, I think, talked to him in the,
was it in the club of car talking or not? I can't remember. Anyway, they're talking somewhere, and
the guy calls him old friend. He calls him friend and old friend and
pal and, you know, a couple different things a few times, but then again, Red Panda also calls the guy,
you know, old man, and, you know,
boy, and old bean, or whatever, so he calls him a few things too, which, naturally, you would do in
conversation with somebody who you know well. You're not always saying, hello, so-and-so, full name, you know, first, middle, and last name,
my friend who I have known for many years,
how are you doing today at this place that we visit all the time? And then they say, oh,
my friend who I've known for this many years,
first name, middle, initial, last name, I am doing well in this place that we visit all the time.
Today, I was talking to my wife, to whom I am married for so many years, you know, her name is, whatever.
You don't do that, right? That's not natural conversation. So,
while there is some unnatural dialogue, or monologuing, or self-narration going on, there's also some interesting
clever
natural dialogue happening, and it's just kind of interesting to mix the both of them together, and again,
you know, more than that,
you know, getting into that detail, it is interesting to me that I found it so interesting and exciting, and, you know,
this is not my first time listening to Red Panda Adventures, as I've mentioned previously in the introduction episodes,
so I
remember though, as I was listening in carefully for clues that, hey, I did this the first time I listened, and maybe that's just me,
and every time I re-listen to it, I'm gonna think about, oh, are they gonna drop any clues to his identity, or not, and
yeah, they sure didn't hear, so that's kind of fun.
Kind of fun. So, some gadgets were introduced here. Red Panda has lots of gadgets, and I, I think I'll, I
don't know, well, whatever, I'm just gonna list them off in each episode, just for fun,
so they use, they use, and they talk about static shoes, which allow them to
walk up, or climb up walls, as if they're walking, you know, across the floor,
and
as if they're walking over to the, to grab the blue coal, and shovel it into their fireplaces, or furnaces,
by which they've been specially formulated, and then the flying squirrel has gliding membranes in her suit that allow her to fly and give
her the name, the flying squirrel, and we get to hear her fly and swoop in at one point during the episode, and
that's, you know, towards the climax of the fight, I think, is when it is, and that's fun.
She'll be doing that a lot in the future. As far as the villains are concerned, so this
Sphinx, that, this, yeah, Sphinx character that Red Panda fights,
he's somebody who Red Panda put away for, I believe, for acting saves, or, you know, breaking into burglaring stuff,
his name is Matt Murdock, which I thought was funny, because it's almost like Matt Murdock, the
the blind guy, Daredevil, from Marvel Comics, and I don't know how much that was a play on him, or not,
but here he is, and
what else was I gonna say, special, interesting about this guy?
Oh, just, I like that he calls himself, or that he wants to be the, what do you say, the Pharaoh of,
the, the Philonius Pharaoh, or the Pharaoh of Felonies, or something like that. It's a very funny
appellation he wants to give himself, as he's trying to, aspiring to be this, you know, crime kingpin, or whatever, and
yeah, that was fun, and his scheme, well, his scheme's a little convoluted, but it ultimately makes sense for him to pull off these, like, perfect crimes, and
had he not been
sloppy, like, like Lefty, in the very first episode of The Shadow, he wouldn't have been caught.
And what I mean by that, which I want to point out, because it's just kind of fun, is that in the first episode of The Shadow, the Death House rescue,
there is a guy, there's two guys, Red and Lefty, and they get, they basically make this guy a patsy for them,
to go down for the bank robbery that they commit, and Lefty, who's left-handed, I guess,
at one point, he takes off his gloves, and to be sure, he was wearing them the whole time he was committing his crime, but he takes off his gloves one time
to adjust a mirror, so that he can keep holding, I think so he can keep holding the patsy at gunpoint, to force him to do, you know, what they want to do, and his
thumb and index finger print are left on the mirror there, I believe that's exactly what it is, and The Shadow gets the
patsy to reveal that, and then ultimately, the bad guys are taken care of, but the point is here, the left thumb and forefinger are the prints that the Sphinx, or Matt Murdock,
leaves behind, as he arrogantly and foolishly thinks that he's unable to be caught by anybody, because they won't be able to, even if they, well, he doesn't think they'll be able to crack the code at all,
or crack his crime at all, so he arrogantly leaves his fingerprints at the scene of the crime by taking off his glove and feeling around, and dropping the same exact fingerprints that Lefty did,
in the back of the safe deposit box, or vault, or whatever it was, and that's really cool, and I'm like 99.9% sure that that is an homage to the first episode of The Shadow, but I'd have to ask Taylor to be sure, because I don't think I've ever heard him talk about that in a,
in an interview or anything like that, but that's pretty cool. For you eagle-eared listeners out there, you too would have caught that if you checked out The Death House Rescue, and The Sphinx, Riddle of the Sphinx rather, within a short amount of time.
It's been like a couple weeks since I've listened to that first episode, so anyway, but I only pick up that detail now after having listened to it recently, so that was kind of fun.
Getting into the lore, so I don't know if this really counts as lore or not, but Kit became the flying squirrel, so a red panda could keep her quiet about his secret identity, because she figured out what his secret identity was, and I think this says a lot about them, but I'm not going to delve into that so much right now.
I'll just, I'll just leave it at that basically, and there's a little clue about what that might mean for Kit, and her character, and her motivation, other than like she's clever and resourceful.
But anyway, there's a little bonus thing in there that you'll pick up on later as you continue listening to Red Panda Adventures, so that's pretty much all I have to say about this episode.
I thoroughly enjoy Red Panda, like I said, this is like my third time going through it again, and I'm going to have a lot of fun listening to it all again.
I believe the show took, I don't know what, 10 to 12 years to produce all the 120 episodes that tell the full saga of the Red Panda, at least that Taylor has made so far, plus the four novels, pulp novels, that I'll be covering here as well.
But yeah, I basically like every episode of Red Panda Adventures. There might be some that I like less than others, and I'll point that out as we go, but I really enjoy this Riddle of the Sinks as a starter episode.
You get introduced well to the characters and their dynamic, and you meet Dr. Chronopolis, who's going to be a big, big, big deal as things go down the line.
He's a regular member of the cast, which is fun, and I like that performance as well. I like all the performances.
Yeah, I don't really have any other issues to point out. It was a fun adventure, a little mystery, a little crime, and it hints to a larger, already running, already established world where Red Panda is facing people who have
superpowers or semi-superpowers, because he says a line to the effect of every two-bit criminal who gets their hands on a cape and a wand thinks that they're a sorcerer or something like that.
And that's kind of fun. So it's obvious that he's faced all sorts of weird criminals and crimes before, even leading into the supervillains, and we'll get to hear more about those later.
Definitely, in season one, I think there's three supervillains that he fights, which it's 12 episodes, so that's not bad. But he fights all levels of crime, the regular criminals to super criminals, and that's fun and exciting.
And like I said, I think this is a great introduction to Red Panda and Kit, or Flying Squirrel, and their dynamic with each other and their adventures together.
In this crazy world where we're following the adventures of, or the career of, Canada's greatest superhero. That in itself is kind of funny. But anyway, yeah, so that's it.
I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJmunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have. There you can find all of my analysis, art, and fiction.
I cover books, tokusatsu, comic books, anime, and more. Look around, you're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well. This has been a Story Over Everything production.