Doctor Who Review: UNIT: Extinction (Doctor Who Audio Spin-Off)

When Big Finish announced earlier this year that they were finally making a new audio series of UNIT, I was excited for two reasons. Firstly, with the series featuring characters such as Kate Stewart and Osgood, it would be Big Finish’s first major dip into the world of New Who. (Of course, this was before the announcement of a new audio series of Torchwood would be released, too.)

The second reason, however, is that the last season of UNIT, Dominion, was absolutely incredible. A 4-hour long epic, the story featured a large cast of characters, multiple alien invasions, two Doctors, and one awesome cliffhanger. It was released primarily under the Doctor Who brand, but it was clear that future seasons of UNIT would have its own tone. It distinctly felt like a classic UNIT story, particularly from the Pertwee era, but with a blockbuster scale and a much larger focus on the soldiers who had to fight the alien monsters. UNIT: Dominion remains to this day as one of my favourite releases from Big Finish. Was new season “Extinction” going to live up to it?

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Absolutely. Despite the UNIT team only needing to deal with one major alien threat this season – namely, the Autons – that doesn’t prevent “Extinction” from being a fast-paced, epic story. Admittedly, I was initially concerned about the Autons being the focus across a story approximately 4 hours long, virtually the length of all their sole major appearances on TV combined (namely, “Spearhead From Space”, “Terror of the Autons”, and “Rose”). The fact that UNIT have met them before takes away some of the build-up of learning who they are as well as their strengths and weaknesses, as well. Dominion had a great deal to focus on, so how would “Extinction” maintain a fast and thrilling pace?

What immediately helped was its large cast of characters, on all sides, and how they’re explored. Kate Stewart especially springs to mind – while I’ve enjoyed watching her on TV, it’s great to hear her in a story where she’s unable to rely on the Doctor, for once. We hear how she tries to deal with an alien invasion on her own, and inevitably, she can’t help but look up to her father in those moments and wonder what he would have done. It’s beautiful moments like that that really make me thankful for Big Finish – they have a knack of tapping into huge potential that was barely explored on screen.

The same goes for Osgood. Admittedly, in her last two episodes, Osgood’s role and exploration were increased massively since her first appearance in “The Day of the Doctor”, with Ingrid Oliver portraying the dual nature of her character really well, but a lot of the time, she had been portrayed as essentially as a bit of a stereotypical fangirl of the Doctor.

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Again, this is another instance where the Doctor not being a part of the story actually helps, as we get to hear how incredibly competent Osgood is as a scientist and find out what she’s like in the field. Her character’s not quite as explored as much as Kate’s, but it’s still a great fresh way of seeing the character before “The Day of the Doctor”.

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