Breach of Trust

UNIT #7.3

Released: 21 November 2018

Listened: 4/20/23

This boxed set is called “Revisitations,” and for the Wirrn story, that was pretty obvious, but this one is more complicated. In fact, this story is more complicated in a number of ways. An alien woman with a powerful voice comes to Earth with her child, claiming asylum. She’s being pursued by her people, who have turned war-like under the influence of their current leader, and she claims they’ll destroy the Earth to get her back. David K Barnes is setting this up as a variation on a “believe women” story, with complications. It even opens with Kate having a business dinner with a misogynistic general accused of harassing a soldier under his command. Why exactly Kate would discuss that over dinner, I have no idea, and the general would be a complete caricature if he weren’t also accurate. Where it gets complicated is that the woman insists on using a bit of tech from her race that UNIT recovered back in the 70s to destroy the fleet she says is coming for her, and she isn’t willing to give much explanation. Osgood, of course, is all-in on the woman’s side, especially with a small child involved. Kate, however, is torn between sympathy and her duty to protect the planet. She’s not about to start an interstellar war on the word of one person. The “revisitation” part comes because this alien tech was recovered in an earlier encounter, handled by Mike Yates, and the Doctor had it sealed away because humans “weren’t ready,” the way he often does. Notes from that encounter are scarce, but indicate that the aliens aren’t trustworthy, which just makes Kate’s dilemma worse. It seems like that older story might be “The Rings of Ikiria” or “The Other Woman,” both stories in which Mike and UNIT encountered alien women who couldn’t be trusted, but it’s neither of those. Where the story becomes dark, and even hard to listen to, is that Kate believes she’s in a no-win situation, and is trying for minimal damage, whereas Osgood believes she’s in a Doctor Who story, in which there’s always another way out. And while it’s fun to deconstruct your show’s premise, especially after 50-plus years, I don’t like nihilism in my Doctor Who. It’s the same problem I had with “Torchwood: Children of Earth,” which makes it more of a me problem than the story’s problem, but there it is. In the interest of fairness, I’ll mention that this story does not feature a mass slaughter of UNIT troops, which is a nice change. As an ethical drama, it’s effective, but as a one-part story with no connection to anything on either side, it suffers a bit.