Daniel Hopkins thought he knew what he was letting himself in for when he joined the top-secret UNIT organisation as its latest Medical Officer.
Racing about the countryside, chasing strange lights in the sky? Check. Defending the realm against extraterrestrial incursion? Check. Frequent ear-bashings from UNIT’s UK CO, the famously no-nonsense Lt-Col Lewis Price? Check. Close encounters of the First, Second and even Third kind? Check, check, check.
But he had no idea what alien beings were really like. Until the day of the Fallen Kestrel. Until the day he met the Doctor.
THE HELLIAX RIFT
In the latest monthly Doctor Who release from Big Finish, Scott Handcock’s “The Helliax Rift” introduces something potentially earth-shaking: a new iteration of UNIT! Yes, it’s a new set of characters brought in as foils for the Doctor, ones we can expect to see face off with all three main range Doctors. So naturally we’re getting a dense, exciting story, full of meaty character development sure to make us interested in these new UNIT officers, right? No? We’re not? We’re getting a generic runaround with cardboard cutout characters that steadfastly ignores any serious moral debate? Oh boy!
This story has the same problem as the new series UNIT range: the newly-created UNIT characters aren’t interesting. Lt. Col. Price (Russ Bain) is angry, impatient, and demanding, always ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Why is he like this? No explanation is even attempted, which just makes me wonder how on earth a hotheaded idiot managed to rise to command of an elite investigative force. Lt. Daniel Hopkins (Blake Harrison) is the medical officer, so naturally he’s much more sympathetic, but even though he spends most of the story with the Doctor we learn virtually nothing about him. Cpl. Linda Maxwell (Genevieve Gaunt) is basically just there to yell “Yes sir!” a lot – I can’t even tell if she’s important enough to return. There’s also virtually no attempt to make Price sympathetic, which is odd if he’s going to return as anything other than a villain. I do think there’s potential for an interesting relationship here, with UNIT taking an openly antagonistic posture regarding the Doctor, but the execution here is quite clumsy.
Apart from the poor characterization, the script also ignores some of the obvious problems it presents. In sum: a wealthy woman named Annabel Morden (Deborah Thomas) loses her husband in tragic circumstances. An alien called a Helliax travels to Earth and takes the appearance of Annabel’s dead husband in order to mate with her before promptly disappearing. She is left with a half-human, half-Helliax child, who is unable to survive in Earth’s atmosphere without constant medical care under isolation. In the following years, she teams up with Dr. Jennifer Harrison (Anna Louise Plowman), using a transmitter to attract aliens to Earth in the hope of studying their biology to find a treatment for her son. In the process, they use their findings to create new medical treatments to help humanity. To start with, misleading someone about your identity in order to have sex with them is rape, but nobody in this story even considers for a moment that the Helliax did something wrong. Annabel’s flashback to this rape is even delivered with romantic overtones! Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but the Doctor does a complete moral 180 later in the story when the true motives behind Annabel’s actions are revealed. When he learns she’s trying to save her child, suddenly he’s on her side – even though nothing has changed about her abducting and experimenting upon innocent aliens.
Despite my reservations, there are still elements to recommend “The Helliax Rift.” Peter Davison is fantastic throughout and he settles into an easy chemistry with Blake Harrison, who serves as a fine pseudo-companion. Jamie Anderson directs a tight, action-packed production. The sound design from Joe Kraemer and Josh Arakelian is mostly good, though some gunshots and battle noises are rather unconvincing. Overall, though, “The Helliax Rift” doesn’t work. It introduces uninteresting characters, fails to grapple with the moral implications of its own plot, and doesn’t seem to be laying the groundwork for anything compelling.
Below average.
4/10