The Turn of the Tides
The Eighth of March #2.3
Released: 8 March 2022
Listened: 5/2/23
This special story is a bit of a mash-up, kind of hard to categorize, so it’s going here. It doesn’t feature any of the regular UNIT cast, but it does feature Jo Jones and her assistant Rio; Jac, the poor UNIT scientist who never got a last name on TV; and Rani Chandra, presumably before her own series begins. Whew, that’s a thing. There’s a group of aliens who are messing about with the moon, with the effect of disrupting the tides, causing earthquakes, and generally damaging the ecosystem. That’s enough to draw Rani’s attention in the UK, but it’s a bit beyond her skills, so she gets in touch with Jo. Jo is in the Amazon with Rio, so of course they notice the disruption. Jac is stationed at Gibraltar, where they gather data on it as well, but without more info, she can’t get the funding to launch an operation. All of them meet up in the Amazon and eventually head to the moon. As with many Eighth of March stories, the plot is less important than the interactions between the characters. This one does a very good job of making the story not about women’s empowerment specifically; it’s a group of women who each have different agendas. Jo is concerned about ecology, but cares about a lot of people, and wants to follow the Doctor’s example. Rani is following in Sarah Jane’s footsteps, with similar goals to Jo, but more focused on freedom of information. Jac seems more concerned with her authority and UNIT status than anything; she’s not afraid to use violence to achieve her goals. And Rio thinks that Jo and others like her are thinking too small, that the world has problems that can’t be solved by individuals. I note that Rani has Sarah Jane’s sonic lipstick, and Jo has psychic paper, although I have no clue where she got it. This is writer Nina Millns’ only contribution to Big Finish so far, but she does a pretty good job capturing the voices of the disparate characters, and throws in a couple of nice twists I didn’t see coming.