Absolute UNIT

The daffodils are out and the sun's breaking through.  Despite my resolution of last week, I've been in school again on a Saturday to make plans of coursework to set in the event of a closure. My social media is a wildfire of fake news, doomsaying and images of bare shop shelves. A public library isn't the smartest place to visit now, I suppose.

If I do have to self-isolate, my reading list is robust enough to keep me occupied well into next month. I'm struggling through the interminable, circumlocutory Tenant of Wildfell Hall for Staff Book Group and I've finished Deborah Orr's memoir Motherwell. Like Damian Barr's Maggie & Me, it evoked parts of my Lanarkshire childhood and adolescence.I also made a start on a book  that was omnipresent in the middle of that adolescence, The Sword of Shannara.

I was still deeply embedded in my teenage Sword and Sorcery paperback craze when it was first published but, even then, I wonder if I wouldn't have found it awfully derivative and ponderous. It's a shameless Tolkien imitation but written in a very mundane American idiom. I don't know if I can get past the dreary Hobbit-iness of it all.

This morning I finally finished Star Tales, which I'd bought at the end of December. I've been bemoaning the dearth of prose fiction for Jodie's Doctor Thirteen and this collection of short stories was fairly enjoyable. Einstein and The Doctor, by Jo Cotterill is unmemorable, despite a Fourth Doctor cameo. Mike Tucker's Mission of the KaaDok is a whimsical, Doctor Who Adventures-style effort which was a bit too comedic for me.
 Jenny Colgan's  Chasing The Dawn and Paul Magrs That's All Right Mama are quite poignant, however. Trevor Baxendale's The Pythagoras Problem takes the Tardis Fam to ancient Greece for an extra-dimensional invasion and Who-dini, by Steve Cole, features the Capaldi Doc and Dr. Jodie in an exciting adventure with the most famous escapologist who isn't Mr. Miracle.  (4/5 Talmars)

The Eleventh Doctor's tragic encounter with Amelia Earhart reminded me that for my senior pupils, he was probably their first Doctor. They don't really recall David Tennant. And although Jodie's Doc still doesn't appear on audio outside Sophie Aldred's reading ( see previous post), Matt Smith's Doc lives on in Paradise Lost.

Jacob Dudman's vocal impression of Smith is uncanny in Darren Jones's BBC Audio original. Set on a planet which is a living entity ( like the recent 4DA, Chase The Night), this is a fairly inconsequential story which rips off the origin of Annihilus for its sentient insectoids. The REET NORTHERN insect warrior is amusing though, even if Clara is a bit generic in this story (3/5 Talmars)

I also have an extensive backlog of audios if school is closed: Graceless; Tales From New Earth; Diary of River Song 7; Gallifrey Time War 1; The Psychic Circus  and Twelfth Doctor Chronicles 1 ( more Dudman). And I still haven't even tried Big Finish's Torchwood series!

Last week, I finished Steve Lyons's House of Cards. Lyons wrote two previous adventures for Dr. Who's buddy Harry Houdini but here, he moves from variety theatres to gaming houses. The Second Doctor, with Ben, Polly and Jamie, visits a space casino infiltrated by DWA comic
 villains, the Sidewinder Syndicate.

I wish more comic strip or comic book creations appeared on audio, rather than tv monsters who had no dialogue anyway. This is another inconsequential story, however, although I always like to hear more adventures for Pol and Ben. (2/5Talmars)

Prior to that came UNIT Assembled. This is the fourth box set for the international task force, first launched in the Second Doctor Era but currently mothballed in that of the Thirteenth. Here, the surviving members of the 70s UNIT Fam team up with Kate, Osgood, Sam and Josh to combat the Silurian Invasion Of Britain.
It moves at a fair clip but it's largely a nostalgia-fest. Katy Manning's Jo Grant is really the star attraction but John Levene's Benton gives staunch  support and has some gravity. Neve "Vastra" McIntosh plays a sadistic Silurian huntress. (3/5 Talmars)

In the eighth box set, UNIT Incursions, the Moffat Era team takes the stage in three stories. The middle piece Tempest deals with an alien incursion at an oil rig and an alien elemental signalling through an old biddy's chimney. It could be almost be a lost early 80s BBC sci-fantasy drama.
The USP of this set is The Power of River Song. The interaction of the "fabulous" time traveller and the UNIT team is amusing and the scenario of Kate Stewart investigating her own murder is quite affecting.
However, the best story is This Sleep of Death, Jonathan Morris's sequel to Static from January 2018 (!). This macabre thriller with its reanimated UNIT troops and its suicide bomber is grim and sinister. (4/5 Talmars)


Coming up: maybe Far Sector? The Oracle Code? The Super Friends?
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