The Battle of the Tower

UNIT #2.3

Released: 30 June 2016

Listened: 4/5/23

This one does what it says on the tin: it’s a battle, at UNIT’s Tower of London HQ. In fact, there’s so much detail provided about the Tower that I almost expected the story to be sponsored by the London Tourism Bureau. Still, if you’ve been to the Tower – which I have, and which Andrew Smith admits he hadn’t until he was writing this story – it’s remarkably easy to visualize the action. The plot has become clear now: The Kamishi lost an energy cell, UNIT has it, UNIT now know what it is, and the Kamishi are going to raid the tower to get it back. The irony is, by the end of the story, UNIT agrees with the Kamishi that this tech is too dangerous for humans at their current level of development, but they don’t have a chance to peacefully hand it over. You might expect, as I did, that because the Tower is a real-world building and a major historical site in the middle of London, it would have the equivalent of plot armor. But we’d be wrong. Pretty much every bit of the Tower comes in for a major bashing, which somehow heightens the tension, even though that’s not logical. Not a lot of time for character development this time around, but Josh does some more commanding, and he’s pretty good at it.