The Unzal Incursion

"You don't have the resources for planetary conquest."

Writer: Mark Wright

Format: Audio

Released: May 2021

Series: Third Doctor Adventures 7.01

Featuring: Third Doctor, Liz, Brigadier

Synopsis

Under the supervision of the Doctor, the Brigadier and Dr Liz Shaw, UNIT are getting ready to activate Hotspur: their new, advanced early warning system.

But something goes wrong. Can it be that UNIT has been betrayed from within? Suddenly bases are falling across the globe, and only the Doctor and his friends are able to escape.

Not knowing how far the conspiracy goes, the Doctor, Liza and the Brigadier become fugitives. Their investigations lead them t the Fulcrum military training facility. And something beyond the Earth.

Verdict

The Unzal Incursion was an excellent start to the seventh series of Third Doctor Adventures! I think it’s rather fitting that the seventh series harks back to the era of the seventh season on screen with us revisiting the time of the Third Doctor and Liz. It’s such a shame we only got four on screen adventures with this pairing because they really are tremendous, and with the Brigadier also around in a prominent role we have the basis for a terrific tale. And that’s exactly what we got! I think Tim Treloar and Dasie Ashford did wonderfully well in bringing the Third Doctor and Liz to life and I do hope we can get more and more from this era. Just having the Doctor still fresh from his exile to Earth after the events of The War Games is a fun place to be, especially with the image of the TARDIS console being outside of the interior! That’s still something rather odd but it ties in brilliantly with the on screen continuity and came in handy for the first part cliffhanger resolution as a means of transport. The Brigadier’s reaction to that was very amusing, as was his line about needing to hide the purchase of Bessie in UNIT’s accounts. I’m just glad that the infamous car featured at all. The Brigadier’s reaction to something akin to mutiny was great and he was less than impressed with his own soldiers firing on him! I thought it was really good stuff to have UNIT soldiers falling under a mysterious influence and the Doctor realising that it was some sort of hypnotic factor was great. With the post credits scene, that was confirmed as the Master which is just magnificent. I love that with his debut not coming until Season 8, he was engaged in a stress test here to conjure just how difficult it might be to infiltrate and cause chaos on Earth. The continuity there was tremendous and just hearing Cherilyn Dankworth writing in her journal ‘you will obey me’ repeatedly was a fantastic way to end. The Unzal themselves weren’t much of a threat and I think Dankworth was actually better as the villain than the titular monsters. The Doctor knew that the Unzal weren’t capable of the hypnotic influence they had exerted on UNIT personnel and it was nice for him to acknowledge it and almost try and prepare the Brigadier for a bigger test to come. Of course, the Master’s arrival for that wouldn’t be too long away. I really enjoyed Liz’s remarks in the story about being unhappy with her position in just passing the Doctor equipment. She couldn’t understand when or why people had stopped referring to her as Dr Shaw. She was actually pretty brilliant and wanted some recognition which I thought was fantastic. It’s also good in building on the reasons for why she departed as she could offer so much more. That was clearly evident with her role in the Hotspur development and that device was a strong concept in being an advancement in detecting alien threats and imminent arrivals. The idea of the Unzal trying to access the codes for it to ensure they weren’t detected was quite fun and showed they weren’t a huge threat really, but the scale of their operations being an incursion on the UK rather than a full scale planetary invasion was nicely done. I thought Sergeant Attah was a good character and her annoyance at being subjected to the mind control was really great. The Brigadier was quite forgiving though which was nice to hear. I thought the Unzal being defeated by an overload was decent stuff but the highlight for me was Liz’s defiance in not giving up the codes even when subjected to the immense mental torture. Overall, an excellent adventure that would perfectly fit into Season 7. 

Rating: 9/10