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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.

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Welcome to Red Panda Report. I am talking about and analyzing Red Panda Adventures Number Nine,

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which was originally aired on April 29, 2006, written and directed by Greg Taylor.

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And here is the copy. An ancient killer stalks the city through shadows and fog. Each night brings

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new terrors, new victims. With each new dawn, there are more questions, more outrage, and the

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lingering dread of the darkness to come. Who dares to hunt the hunter? To bring the light of justice

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to a metropolis under siege? The city cries out for its champions, but can even the terrific

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twosome of Toronto, the red panda and the flying squirrel, withstand the fury of the shadow hunter?

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So I thought it was a little strange that, and by the way, of course, I will go into full spoilers

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for this. So if you're not prepared for that, then go ahead and stop over at DakotaRingTheatre.com

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to listen to this episode. It's very easy to find. It's from season one of Red Panda Adventures,

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which like I said, is very easy to find. So I didn't like that the professor's notes, which

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were ostensibly being read silently or to themselves by Kit and Red Panda, were spoken in his voice with

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background music. So I liked the professor reading them because I think the voice actor did a good

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job and he's in the beginning of the episode, but then he's indisposed and unable to talk. So they go

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through his notes and they have, you know, Taylor had it set up so that the guy who did the voice for

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the professor went ahead and read the notes in his voice and with his cadence and all that stuff,

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which I think was really good. And I thought it sounded nice, but there was a kind of haunting

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or like creepy, spooky background music aspect to it. And it just didn't really sit right with me.

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I didn't think it was necessary. I thought it was good enough on its own, the performance. It didn't

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need that kind of, I don't know, atmosphere to it or whatever you want to call it.

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It was surprising to me. I think by the end of the episode, there's a total of nine victims of

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the actual attacking beast that is called the Shadow Hunter, not within the episode, but outside

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of the episode. And that's shocking. It isn't that Red Panda always saves everybody, but they

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usually don't go into it as much as they could. And where the circumstances are a little different,

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where the supervillain, he would be able to pull out a more dramatic, desperate victory that ends

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up saving hundreds of people in an auditorium, for example, and then proceeding to defeat the

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bad guy. And in here, we have this tragic thing where there's this man turned into a monster or

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an animal, really, and you don't get that grand superhero versus supervillain sort of thing going

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on. And you get all these people who are left dead in the wake of it. And it's kind of an

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interesting take and it's an interesting set of losses to give to Red Panda and Flying Squirrel.

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And it's different from your run of the mill episode or even your run of the mill superhero

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story, which is good. So I'll stop beating around the bush. I called this episode, Essence of Smilodon,

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because it turns out that there is a saber-toothed tiger that has been brought back from extinction

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in the form of a man. Think of it as Dr. Connors injecting himself with lizard DNA to grow back

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his arm, and instead it's the mad doctor, the mad doctor, the mad doctor, the mad doctor,

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it's the mad doctor Steven's... Steven's? Steven. I don't know. Dr. Steven injects somebody else

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with Smilodon or saber-toothed tiger DNA and forces a transformation on that guy.

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As the shadow hunter, as the saber-toothed tiger terrorizing Toronto,

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the intelligence is retained of the lab assistant, Derry, who's the one infected with this thing and

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who becomes this creature at night. And he is smart enough to use his animal

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capabilities as directed by a human. So he has this full human intellect, despite the fact that he

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wants to hunt, attack, and murder, and I guess eat women who have been killed by the

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human. Attractive women. And it's his animal urges. The more attractive they are physically

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to the man Derry, the more they appeal to the saber-toothed with manimal intelligence

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to attack and kill for whatever reason. And that's kind of interesting. It was really neat the way

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that this fusion of the power of an animal with the intellect of a person was able to

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really outdo and corner Kit and put her in a bad position, which it totally makes sense if you

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had all the ability of an animal, but the mind of a person, I would imagine that would be quite deadly.

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Okay. Let's see. Oh, there was something really cool in the episode, which is you could tell if

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you were with Flying Squirrel or Red Panda when they were using the radio rings based on the sound

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design. It was layered in such a way, there was a distortion in such a way that you could hear

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Flying Squirrel's voice very clearly, and then you would hear the radio effect on Red Panda's

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voice in that scene when you switched over and you were with Red Panda, you could hear Kit's voice

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distorted over the radio ring, and that was really clever and it added a lot to the episode.

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Which later on at the end near the climax, they are outside in the middle of the night in a park

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and it's dark, and there are a bunch of crickets going off chirping and making their noises in the

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night, and that also added to the ambiance. It made it feel like they were outside and I thought

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that was a really good audio design aspect of it as well. I did think it was strange.

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Well, I hadn't planned on talking about the nature of this transformation thing, but basically,

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there was this abandoned healing technology serum drug type thing that was meant to help humans

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regenerate, but it was stopped by light. So if you've ever seen Dark Man, just think about that.

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It was stopped by light and Dr. Aster Steven combined that with

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saber-toothed tiger DNA and tried it on, I think animals probably, but eventually he decided he

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had to try it on dairy because the regenerative

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formula was tailored to human physiology and that's what it would work with. So he got the

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bright idea that if he injected a human with the stuff, it would turn them into a saber-toothed

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tiger. And I don't know if the transformation was supposed to be permanent at some point or not,

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like if over the course of a year or a month or whatever, he would become the saber-toothed

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tiger 100% of the time and have this intellect of a man. But it was a very interesting idea.

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But the body of an animal, I don't know if that's how it was intended to work or what, but it was

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really interesting that because of the way that it interacted negatively with the light, that meant

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that he can only transform when darkness came, when darkness fell, when it was nighttime.

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And therefore, we learned that during the days, Derry was trying to figure out how to reverse

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his transformation so he could stop turning into the hunter, the killer at night, and he was

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unsuccessful. But then at the end, the red panda basically lures him into a trap using

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flying squirrel as bait and has all these bright lights turned on and the creature

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stops being a saber-toothed tiger and it turns back into dairy. But somehow, that ends up killing

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him and I don't quite understand how the photons reacting at night when he was fully transformed

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ended up causing his death versus during the day. It just causes his transformation to cease and for

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him to revert back to a normal human. That doesn't really make sense. I don't think there was an

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attempt to explain that. We got new gadgets this episode. I talked about the radio rings already,

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but this is apparently the debut of them, episode nine. So that's a pretty cool idea. They might

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have been in a book before this, but this feels the way it's talked about here. It definitely feels

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like it's the first time that he introduces them to Kit. So I'm pretty sure this is the actual

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debut of the radio rings. I think that's really cool. So you'll learn more later as time goes on.

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And maybe it's in the books specifically, but you press a jewel or a ring because there's

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like contensive circles on the radio ring, kind of like the logo of Red Panda or Dakota Ring Theater.

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So you push one of those and it activates a beacon or it activates the ability to talk or

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whatever, which is pretty cool. Let's see. Oh, so about the villains. So technically, Derry

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was a villain because he turned into the Saber Two Tiger and then was killing women

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all over the city. But really, Dr. Astor Steven is the villain because he forced this transformation

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upon somebody and I guess he got eaten for his trouble. So they ended up finding the remains

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of his body in a trunk in the lab somewhere, which is, he got his comeuppance, I guess. So

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yeah, that's interesting. So I really liked this episode. I don't have more to say about it. So

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I'm going to go ahead and stop there. And yes, you hear that meowing? I think I've got my own

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Saber Two Tiger to take care of. So I'm going to go ahead and get out of here. I thank you for your

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time and attention. I hope that you are well. And until next time, this is MJ signing out.