Call to Arms

UNIT #4.1

Released: 23 May 2017

Listened: 4/10/23

Since the new UNIT series started, a team-up between modern UNIT and 1970s UNIT was pretty much inevitable, and well done to Big Finish for holding off as long as they did. Of course, that means even more characters, so the carousel of who’s sitting out this story is rather pronounced this time around. Shindi doesn’t appear at all, and Sam and Josh have reduced roles. Naturally, if you’re going to bring in old UNIT heroes to help, the threat has to be the Silurians, because who else? In fact, because of the levels of nostalgia going on here, the plot kind of takes a back seat, in contrast to the previous boxed set. Osgood and Kate, along with a squad, were doing a routine checkup on some sleeping Silurians when, oops, turns out they’re not sleepy anymore. In past Silurian stories, we got a mix of peaceful and aggressive leaders, but this particular colony just has one military leader, Jastrok, who’s very clear on a “wipe out the apes” strategy. Things go very badly for UNIT, and Kate and Osgood end up fleeing to a local country pub, which happens to be owned by one John Benton, who’s having a retirement party, which luckily means there’s several old UNIT folks there, including Mike Yates. Benton spent a few years selling cars, but eventually bought this pub and married Margery Phipps, who he met in “Council of War.” Yates has been reinstated to UNIT (somehow), but seems to be mostly administrative. Unfortunately, the other UNIT alumni don’t make out very well in this story, which seems like poor treatment, even though they were made up just for this story. The story is primarily occupied with having the main characters get away alive, although they do tend to stop to reminisce a bit more than you’d expect for a life-threatening situation. Richard Franklin does a good job as an older, professional UNIT officer. John Levene seems thrilled to have been invited, and that comes through in his acting. He seems far too upbeat for the situation, and continually fanboys all over Osgood (who is fairly impressive, but still). Jastrok is played by Richard Hope, who played the scientist Malokeh in “The Hungry Earth,” but this character is nothing like that one. Unfortunate body count aside, this one gets the job done.