SHADO experiences losses as the aliens step up their attacks…

Spoilers

It’s hard to discuss this new box set without some spoilers but before getting into that area, it’s interesting to note that the style of the opening episode is closer to the original TV series than the initial trilogy of adventures – probably caused by the switch of writers from Andy Lane to Nicholas Briggs and Jamie Anderson (who also script edit the series between them). The initial impressions aren’t good – we get the update on what’s been happening between box sets in some very “as you know” dialogue – but as the story settles down, it becomes far more the game of cat and mouse that is familiar from the TV show.

However, that’s where some of the issues begin – and we’re now into spoiler territory. The episode follows a quartet of UFOs that are spotted soon after Moonbase and SID (the Space Intruder Detector voiced by Wayne Forester that is eerily like the original) come online. The Interceptors still have the same problem they always have – basically they’re a guided missile: one shot and they’re out of action till they can be fitted with a fresh bomb (an image that’s too iconic to lose), although there’s a bit of dialogue that could easily be overlooked that suggests that a wide spread is feasible. Trouble is there’s only three interceptors vs. four UFOs, so odds are one of the alien craft will make it through… and in fact two do, with one of the Interceptors destroyed, along with its pilot.

At the start of the episode, a test pilot who’s got caught up in an earlier UFO incident is basically blackmailed into joining SHADO (I don’t think there’s any other way of describing Straker’s actions – he deliberately makes the pilot blind, thereby ensuring he loses his job, before saying he’ll restore his sight if he works for them). Slightly incredibly, he’s allowed to take out Sky 2 – hence the cover image – to deal with one of the two UFOs that got through (SHADO must be very sure of the efficacy of their drugs to put someone who was just blind in their highly expensive kit) but it seems the only way he can destroy the UFO is in a kamikaze attack. Sky 2 is destroyed, along with its pilot.

One of these men is mourned, his loss apparently affecting Ed Straker; one is glossed over with a few words. The test pilot’s loss seems to be far more important – someone who’s been around for hours rather than the person who’s trained for months at SHADO and become an integral part of the Moonbase crew (presumably). And the reason for this? You have to suspect it’s because the pilot’s name is Paul Foster. If you’ve come to this cold, you might well ask, so what? Well, his counterpart in the original series was a key part of SHADO, so there’s a “shock factor” in killing him off… But in this version, we hardly know him, and we don’t really care about him any more than the Interceptor pilot. It looks like Briggs and Anderson are using the same play as Adrian Hodges did in his reboot of Survivors, that JJ Abrams and co. did with the first of their Star Trek movies – kill off a fundamental part of the original and show an edginess to the new version that sets it apart. Coming to the end of that episode, I’m not convinced it does so.

But events in episode 2 prove that this was actually not what happened. A lot of ideas are thrown into this with regard to the aliens’ abilities and technology, and even exactly who they are. There’s a throwaway reference to the name of the film that Harlington-Straker are shooting which gives away the source of some of the plotlines (it’s the name of the relevant original episode, not a Doctor Who reference, much as the comments made about it might seem that way), and Briggs and Anderson fold in the idea of the aliens’ control over time to their own ongoing storylines.

This mix of everything continues in the third – and it now seems final ever – story. We’re back involving Straker’s family, and we’re meant to be horrified by events… but the fake-outs of the earlier episodes (something that has seriously affected the other Anderson reboot series, Space: 1999) remove any real sense of jeopardy. And we’re still really only at the beginning of the SHADO journey.

Verdict: Briggs revealed in Vortex magazine in May that the range isn’t continuing because of licensing issues – which is a shame because this set felt nearer to the series it was emulating. Chances are, we’ll never know where it would have gone, and these two box sets stand as a reminder that not everything Big Finish chooses to reboot works. 5/10

Paul Simpson

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