Hosts of the Wirrn

UNIT #7.1 & 7.2

Released: 21 November 2018

Listened: 4/19/23

In which we learn that Osgood makes a terrible people manager. This boxed set features a whole raft of new writers, and a new format, with the first two discs being a single story, this one by Chris Chapman. When the Master cleared out in the last story, he left a note for UNIT indicating that the Auctioneers had a Wirrn egg, which UNIT now needs to dispose of safely. Of course that doesn’t work, and a soldier gets infected before we even get going. UNIT is trying to take the egg to a secure biohazard facility hidden under Lake Windermere, never mind that there’s a town nearby. We get a ton of description of how secure the facility is, with decontamination chambers between each of its seven levels, each of which can independently self-destruct. We also get Shana Siddiqui, entomologist and science geek, who gets recruited by Osgood after the world’s most awkward interview. Because even in a UNIT where “science leads,” Osgood is apparently the only scientist who can be trusted with anything, unless she decides to recruit somebody else. (And Malcolm, who’s eternally off-screen.) Although Shana seems like she’s being set up as a new recurring character, things go badly almost immediately, and of course the super-secure facility isn’t secure enough to cage a Wirrn. Osgood is portrayed as more flippant than usual, even careless, which really isn’t like her. I’d think she’d be especially careful after her recent cyber-conversion, but apparently we’re glossing over that. Once again, UNIT troops are shown to be disposable unless they’re main characters. Clearly Chapman wanted to show that the Wirrn are a threat, because the body count includes not just numbers of troops, but also people from the nearby town, which seems a bit egregious. It also represents a big failure on Kate’s part, who has the chance to stop things sooner, but doesn’t, because it would mean losing characters whose names are in the credits. She gets some dialog where she beats herself up about that (apparently at Jemma Redgrave’s insistence), but it doesn’t lead to any growth on her part. Osgood doesn’t even get that much. She talks a good game about wanting to give all life a chance, but she should have some feelings about the collateral damage she caused because she didn’t supervise the new recruit. There’s some snappy dialog, but I’m kind of disappointed in this one. Maybe it would be different if I liked the Wirrn better, but I’m kind of indifferent to them.