Threats to our planet come in many forms. Some are alien visitations, some lay dormant in Earth itself, and occasionally, danger arrives with a big gun and fantastic hair.
Whatever the threat, whoever the enemy, UNIT is ready to defend the world.
8.1 This Sleep of Death by Jonathan Morris
Abbey Marston. UNIT’s dark secret. A place where the laws of space and time, life and death, can be suspended. Where remembering the departed has consequences…
When UNIT faces a threat from a dead man, Kate has no choice but to return to Abbey Marston once more, to disturb the sleep of death. But the Static are waiting…
8.2 Tempest by Lisa McMullin
When the planet’s weather systems start behaving strangely, Osgood is worried. Soon, she and Sam Bishop are heading to a remote Scottish island where an eccentric old woman speaks to the wind itself.
Meanwhile, Kate Stewart visits a deep-sea oil-rig where strange things are afoot. A tempest is coming, and it could be disaster for the entire world.
8.3 The Power of River Song Part 1 by Guy Adams
UNIT has been assigned to monitor the switch-on of a revolutionary new power system – they know from experience such things can be tricky.
Nearby, Osgood and Lieutenant Bishop investigate mysterious disappearances – and appearances of trans-temporal phenomena. Kate would like to ask the Director some questions, but she’s proving strangely elusive… until there’s a murder.
8.4 The Power of River Song Part 2 by Guy Adams
There’s a dead body in the power station. River Song is the prime suspect. And Kate is most concerned by the identity of the victim.
Meanwhile, Sam and Jacqui chase Vikings, while Osgood finds herself out of time. As deadly predators focus their attention on Earth, it seems activating the power of River Song could spell the end of everything…
UNIT: INCURSIONS
The eighth UNIT box set, and supposedly the last one for a while, is “Incursions,” a set of three stories whose linking theme is “there are threats to the planet.” If that “theme” doesn’t inspire you, don’t worry, because none of the stories will inspire you either.
We begin with “This Sleep of Death,” by Jonathan Morris, a sequel to Morris’s own monthly range story “Static.” UNIT has secretly preserved the stone circle from Abbey Marston, occasionally using it to resurrect dead soldiers for debriefing. Apparently, the Brigadier decided to keep it around, or something – like everyone else, I’m really unclear on who was running UNIT at what times – but only the highest levels of the organization know of its existence. But the secret gets out, and when Sgt. Warren Calder (Andrew French) realizes he’s going to die, he contrives a way to ensure he’ll be resurrected. But when he comes back, he brings the Static with him, and the story is on. “Static” was a very good story, full of drama and character beats, and “Sleep” starts out that way – but funnily enough it turns into more of a runaround once the Static show up. It’s a nice callback – Big Finish should do more sequels to their original material – and it’s entertaining, but by the end it just feels like everyone is in a rush. The solution to Calder’s betrayal is “talk to him for two minutes,” which doesn’t feel right at all. But it’s a good start to an otherwise unimpressive set.
Unfortunately, next we have “Tempest” by Lisa McMullin, a bizarre, off-putting story that fails to get anything interesting out of a decent premise. It’s a simple theme: what if a threatened, harmless alien race caused uncontrollable destruction merely by calling for help? While Osgood and Sam head to a remote Scottish island to investigate strange wind patterns, Kate visits an oil rig positioned almost on top of a crashed alien ship. McMullin seems to be aiming for anti-capitalist themes, as the cruel foreman of the rig cares only for his parent company’s profit margin, and the government appears to side with the company over UNIT. But it’s thinly-sketched and largely ineffective, as the foreman is such a caricatured jerk it makes you wonder why Kate doesn’t have her UNIT soldiers detain him. Meanwhile, over on the Scottish island, we have one of the most bizarre performances in Big Finish history. I’m not sure if Alexandra Mathie actually sounds like that, and if she does it’s an unfortunate coincidence, but Mother McCracken sounds like one of the old lady characters from Monty Python. To add to the problem, the alien voices are nearly incomprehensible, especially when coming through McCracken. The idea is fine; the production is not.
That brings us to the final story, the two-part “The Power of River Song” by Guy Adams. This is an overstuffed story with a ton of moving parts that never really coheres. It’s divided over three separate time periods: Kate and Josh in the present day, investigating her own murder; Osgood in the future, meeting River; Sam Bishop and Jacqui McGee in the past, battling Vikings and dinosaurs. (Yes, Jacqui McGee turns up for this one, presumably because they didn’t have Ramon Tikaram for this box set and they needed another character.) Adams never ties these time periods together satisfactorily: the Osgood sequences feel stagnant until River turns up, and Sam and Jacqui never get off the ground. As for River herself, the story appears to be doing something interesting: she’s the CEO of a company providing a new energy supply to the planet, but she’s quite secretive and stubborn about the whole thing. In other words, she’s acting totally out of character, which rightly makes the listener wonder what she’s really up to. So of course we get the worst resolution possible: it isn’t her at all, just an alien taking her shape. When the actual River turns up, she’s exactly the same as always, with none of the moral ambiguity that marks her best appearances. Rather than an epic, action-packed tale that unites beloved characters for the first time, we get a bland, overlong runaround that wastes its potential. Yes, it’s cute to hear Osgood say “You’re very annoying” to River and listen to River revel in it, but there’s no good reason given for River to be in this set at all.
UNIT is the most consistently dull Big Finish Doctor Who range. The stories are almost never terrible but they’re also almost never great. Each set provokes little more than a feeling of “eh, that’ll do” no matter what gimmick is attached to it. We’re eight box sets in and we still don’t know much about Josh Carter – and we know even less about Sam Bishop. Hopefully the hiatus after this set will enable Big Finish to actually do something interesting with the range, because right now you could wipe the whole range from existence and barely lose anything memorable.
Disappointing as usual.
5/10