unitns03_slipcase_1417sqHow do you fight an enemy who you can’t remember?

Big Finish are really on a roll at the moment, with yet another excellent box set added to the roster. This story stretches over quite some time – but then that’s nothing new with UNIT tales in the parent series (Kate’s introductory story, for example) – and there’s plenty of scope for “smaller” stories to be inserted later on into this period.

John Dorney and Matt Fitton take joint credit for the writing, but it’s clear from the extras that the UNIT series is very much a collaborative process with director Ken Bentley and producer David Richardson, whose idea it was to bring in the Silence/Silents. As is often the case with Steven Moffat’s creations for Doctor Who, their timeline and genesis is somewhat convoluted, but all that you really need to know for this story is that the 11th Doctor defeated them back in the 1960s. Big Finish have exploited something of a loophole in what the Doctor did and then extrapolated what would be needed to fight them.

Doctor Who, and science fiction in general, can be at its best when it takes current day situations and throws a new light on them, and the middle two episodes of this story – Square One and Silent Majority (full marks to whoever came up with that pun!) – quite definitely deal with issues that fans around the world will recognise. The set was devised, written and recorded a long time before the Brexit vote and Trump’s election, but the rise of that sort of demagogue is at the heart of this (and there are a few references to comments made about Trump along the way). No, this isn’t an audio à clef with Nicholas Day’s Kenneth LeBlanc standing in for any particular potential ambassador; but it does look at a similar situation in the Doctor Who universe.

unitns0303_silentmajority_1417It’s not all a political thriller though – the first story has some quite horrifying moments in it as UNIT encounters the House of Silents, while the conclusion, In Memory Alone, sees Sam Bishop and Osgood out in space as things start getting very messy on Earth. Between the sound design by Peter Doggart and Howard Carter and Nick Briggs’ menacing voices, the Silents almost feel more of a threat than they did at times on screen – ironically, given the way that they operate, the Silents seemed to become less of a threat because we got used to their Munch-like appearance!

The core UNIT team – Jemma Redgrave, Ingrid Oliver, Warren Brown, James Joyce and Ramon Tikaram – are as strong as ever, with each given a thread that puts their characters outside their comfort zone, whether it’s Kate feeling uncharacteristically nervous, Josh pushed and pulled by events, Osgood and Sam out in space, or the colonel chafing against the restrictions of recovering from his injuries. The guest cast likewise rise to the material – it’s good to have Tracey Wiles back as Jacqui McGee, and Tom Alexander’s Cecil is suitably oleaginous when required. Ken Bentley keeps the sense of pace and place throughout with some very large-scale moments counterpointed with the more personal ones successfully, and ensuring that the “we’ve got to go over this yet again because we’ve forgotten it all” times never become grating.

Verdict: Another highly enjoyable set of adventures. 10/10

Paul Simpson