Doctor Who review: UNIT: The Coup is a short but effective beginning for the audio spin-off

After watching some of the earliest Doctor Who stories to feature both UNIT and the Silurians, we listen to UNIT: The Coup, an introduction to the military organization’s own spin-off series from 2004.

Big Finish have revisited the original Silurians a couple of times. In the regular Doctor Who audios, they’ve appeared in Sixth Doctor story Bloodtide and Seventh Doctor story The Silurian Candidate.

But they’ve also appeared in the audio spin-off series UNIT, too. In fact, they appeared in the first episode of the series, an episode that you can actually listen to for free. At under twenty-five minutes long, it’s also rather short. Still, it does a good job of setting up the spin-off’s first series, at least.

Simon Guerrier keeps this story relatively simple. In what looks to be the final days of UNIT, we’re introduced to the organization that will be taking over: the Internal Counter-Intelligence Service, or ICIS for short. (Yeah, that admittedly didn’t age well.) But while they’re planning to deal with extra-terrestrial threats like UNIT did, are their methods as reasonable?

The story was originally included on a free CD with an issue of Doctor Who Magazine.

(Image credit: Doctor Who Magazine/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

The changing of the guard?

More from Winter is Coming

• For All Mankind finally gives us information in Episode 405, “Goldilocks”
• Watch a stunning VFX breakdown of The Wheel of Time season 2
• Of course Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) thinks Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen) should rule Westeros
• Confirmed: The Last of Us season 2 will air in 2025
• Final season of Star Trek: Discovery will have “a lot of action, a lot of adventure, a lot of fun”

While the first season of UNIT primarily focused on a new team of characters exclusive to Big Finish, this prelude to it (originally released with Doctor Who Magazine in 2004) heavily focuses on General Lethbridge-Stewart. (Best known to the fans as “the Brigadier”. Even with a change in rank, he’ll always be the Brigadier.)

We get an idea of how the Brigadier feels about the upcoming handover, as well as possible regrets he might have made in the past. Particularly when the Silurians show up. It looks like they’re ready to attack, but what’s really going on?

Unsurprisingly, being the length of your average Classic Who episode, the Silurians don’t appear too much. Still, The Coup does present an interesting angle on both them and UNIT, particularly during the final scenes. These key scenes also let us know that, unsurprisingly, UNIT isn’t going anywhere.

Overall, this is an effective little prelude to the original UNIT audio series. The spin-off has changed greatly over the years, moving from the Classic era firmly to the New, so it’s nice to revisit its earliest episode – one that makes it very clear that they don’t always need the Doctor. Expect reviews on the rest of Series 1 of UNIT soon.

Did you ever listen to UNIT‘s own series? Do you think The Coup was a decent enough start to it? Were you glad to hear more from the Brigadier? Let us know in the comments below.