Vanguard

"It's your lucky day. You get to blow something up."

Writer: Matt Fitton 

Format: Audio

Released: November 2015

Series: UNIT: Extinction 01

Featuring: Kate, Osgood 

Synopsis 

From a state of the art bunker beneath the Tower of London, Kate Stewart leads a secret army protecting the Earth from extraterrestrial threat. Crashed UFOs, strange meteors, a giant lizard in the Severn - all business as usual for UNIT.

While Scientific Advisor Osgood attends a 'skyfall' incident with Colonel Shindi and Captain Josh Carter, Kate's duties take her to visit Devlin FutureTech, and reclusive billionaire Simon Devlin.

Journalist Jacqui McGee is also on FutureTech's case, and nothing's going to get in the way of her story: a product launch that will change the world...

Verdict 

Vanguard was a very good audio adventure and a decent start to the new series of UNIT stories. This marks the first appearance of the post-revival UNIT team that we were first introduced to in The Power of Three and were then more prominently featured in The Day of the Doctor and Dark Water/Death in Heaven. It's a fantastic idea and basis of a spinoff audio series and having Kate and Osgood as the lead characters can only be a good thing. We get to hear the characters shine in their own light and not be overshadowed by the Doctor and I think these audios are going to help with the familiarity and my liking of the characters as I go on. This was only the first story of the first boxset, released some nine months ago now, and a third boxset is close to release as I type, but when I go back and rewatch the episodes featuring UNIT, these audios are definitely going to give me a different perspective on the characters. The boxset cover makes it no secret as to who the enemies are going to be and I must admit the idea of the Autons and Nestene Consciousness returning is the main reason I bought this boxset. It's probably been about five months since I actually purchased it but I just haven't got around to listening to it until now for a variety of reasons. I liked the gradual build to the arrival of the Nestene Consciousness and the new characters we were introduced to were all very good. Kate and Osgood obviously steal the show as they're the characters we know and love so much from their televised appearances, but the likes of Colonel Shindi and Captain Josh Carter were very good indeed. I think Devlin is going to make a good villain and him being the brains behind FutureTech is intriguing as I love the concept of 3D printing coming into a Doctor Who story. With all the thing that can be created by one of those printers, the Autons certainly seem suited to the story. They're yet to appear and my assumption is that the enemy will predominantly be the Nestene Consciousness, I'm looking forward to the Auton arrival, in whichever story that may be. The intelligence of Osgood really shone through in this audio which was terrific and I loved how she had to dumb things down for her colleagues on more than one occasion. The story starting off with a crocodilian threat under the Severn Bridge was good and I liked that choice of setting as it's very familiar to me, living in South Wales but attending university in Bath just across the border. I've travelled over it enough times when coming home. Kate taking authority was very good and I enjoyed the numerous mentions of her continuing the good work of her late father. Jacqui was a good character and I liked how determined of a journalist she was in going so far as to place a tracking device on Kate and get herself somewhere she really shouldn't be. She was in the midst of a skyfall and after a call from Geneva, it seemed that Kate's branch of UNIT dealing with this threat would not solve the problem. Earth was under invasion from all areas of the gloves. UNIT recognised the Nestenes, presumably thanks to files noting the events of Spearhead From Space and Terror of the Autons, but it looked like they were too late to prevent anything now. The Nestene Consciousness was here. It was a very good way to end what was a solid opening story of the boxset. Overall, a great start!

Rating: 8/10