Review by Jacob Licklider
Perhaps the saddest thing about UNIT: Brave New World is that it is only two box sets long and is currently the only thing announced to use this particular UNIT team. Seabird One was already an excellent set and start to the miniseries bringing back Angela Bruce’s Winifred Bambera, but it’s up to Visitants, the second set, to take all the open threads and tie them up. The miniseries is one that genuinely feels different from the other Big Finish ranges, taking what Battlefield started bringing in a new cast of characters that through the great script editing from Robert Valentine and brilliant direction from Scott Handcock. Producer Emily Cook has also really gotten to come into her own in her role as this is a range that is essentially all her own.
Vistants opens by continuing the anti-authoritarian bent of the first set and the Andrew Cartmel era with The Frequency by new writer Tajinder Singh Hayer. Hayer takes Bambera, Rix, and Savarin as investigating technology developed by the US Air Force in an attempt to bring together military squads using a frequency discovered by Colonel Alexander Hagen, played by David Menkin, which inevitably goes down the road the listener may be expecting. The idea of the armed forces to brainwash soldiers into obeying without question and giving up their free will is nothing new, but how the UNIT team in this episode are sent down that rabbit hole is interesting. The set up is simple but Singh Hayer also uses it to really explore the distrust people should have in the authority that is the military as well as reflecting on the state of the military in the 1990s. This was the time period of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which is explored through the dynamic between Savarin and Hagen, Hagen using homophobia (both subtle and unsubtle) and status as an authority figure to convince Savarin to submit to the experiments. The idea of the Hoplite Frequency is also an interesting idea as it genuinely seems like an idea that the US military would develop and even disavow before keeping it in their arsenal to be used at a later date which does eventually come back around in the finale of this box set. This also adds this extra layer of humanity to the main UNIT trio as they are essentially outsiders form what would be the typical UNIT group in Doctor Who. It’s a great start to the set.
Haunt is the second episode of this set and perhaps the closest thing this miniseries has to filler, though it’s really good filler. Lizzie Hopley’s script is concerned with the haunting of a hotel by a ghost which has a tendency to hold hands. It had already been investigated in the past but the investigator disappeared so Bambera and Rix come to Greensands to investigate. What follows is a mix of classic ghost stories and horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, especially Candyman and The X-Files, in a very slow script. Angela Bruce brings this brilliant skepticism to Bambera throughout this episode while Yemisis Oyinloye as Louise Rix is the one who fully believes in the ghosts. As this is a slow script, this is one of those episodes which really takes the time to develop the atmosphere and character interactions. Because this is the second set of the miniseries, this is the perfect example of how comfortable these characters have become with each other and really work as a team. This is something that each episode does really well, especially this one as Savarin isn’t really present in this one outside of a few cameos and being called in without being in Greensands. Despite Hopley taking tropes, Haunt can be described as a simple meal well made, meaning that while there are a lot of tropes they are implemented incredibly well and able to make a great story out of parts that work.
The anti-authoritarian bent returns in The Last Line of Defence from script editor Robert Valentine who sets up a typical UNIT Pertwee story: there’s a World Peace Conference as the world is going towards the brink of war, something eventually hushed up by the government, and the millennium is about to turn and Bambera is charged with protection. Of course there is an alien invasion, this time of the Zeta Hydrans who have taken the Hoplite Frequency and adapted it to their own ability to use frequencies as weapons biologically. They also have a contact in the government which leads to the inevitable betrayal of Dame Lydia Kingsley, played to perfection by Liz Sutherland-Lim, who breaks any trust she had given to UNIT at this point which helps bring threads together from this and Seabird One into a brilliant finale leaving UNIT: Brave New World as a great jumping off point for more adventures with this particular team. 9/10.
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Review: UNIT – Brave New World 1 Seabird One
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