Vanguard

UNIT #1.1

Released: 9 November 2015

Listened: 3/29/23

Welcome to the most recent, and most successful era of UNIT. This series premiered in 2015 with the burst of new-series spin-offs, and started with this boxed set called “Extinction.” Kate and Osgood appeared from TV, and new characters Colonel Vikram Shindi (Ramon Tikaram) and Captain Josh Carter (James Joyce) were introduced. Although the speaking cast isn’t much bigger than previous iterations, the writing and sound design manage to give an impression of a much larger, better-funded, and better-equipped UNIT than ever before. And yet, somehow still a secret, despite the multiple public alien encounters over the past couple of decades. Which means we need a nosy journalist character, Jacqui McGee (Tracy Wiles). The stories in this set are fairly short, under 45 minutes each, and form basically one long story. And if you’re going to start a new era of UNIT, why not start with Autons? I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but Autons plus 3D printers is a fairly clever concept. So we have Simon Devlin, a super-rich business type who’s selling the printers cheap, and is extremely shady. UNIT, to their credit, don’t stay in the dark for long, recognizing a Nestene signal almost immediately. It’s just going to take a while to put the pieces together. Because this is a Matt Fitton story, we get a lot of focus on characters: Kate is cool, calm, and efficient, and wants to change the “shoot first” policy UNIT seems to have had in the early 21st Century. Osgood is twitchy and nerdy, and no good in the field. Shindi is by-the-book, and not entirely comfortable with the “science leads” policy, but fiercely loyal to Kate. And Josh Carter is a maverick, overly convinced of his own invincibility and way too headstrong. He also flirts with Osgood a lot; at this point, I’m not sure if he’s sincere (which might be odd) or teasing (which would be cruel). This one is all setup, but it’s good setup.