We need to talk about UNIT

There has been quite a bit of fuss about the call centre scene in Resolution and the 'suspension' of UNIT.  This is being taken as either a political comment on Brexit or one on government spending cuts more generally.

To my mind the Brexit theory doesn't stand up.  UNIT is not, and never has been an EU organisation. Originally, it was an offshoot of the United Nations (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) with its headquarters in Geneva.  On occasion, the Brigadier would go direct to Geneva when the British government was proving difficult.  In more recent years, whilst the UN connection has gone (it is now the 'Unified' Intelligence Taskforce) we have seen even more of its international side, with Martha working for its US base in The Stolen Earth. The government cuts argument doesn't really work either.  The implication in Resolution seemed to be that UNIT was a British organisation, whose 'international partners' were re-evaluating their financial commitments, not that the British government had cut their financial contribution.  I think we could easily conclude that the organisation has simply tightened security and forgotten to let the Doctor know the new password.

Irrespective of the reasons, I am not sorry to see UNIT being dropped from the series for the time being.  It had become too big and powerful.  An organisation with the resources to fit out an aircraft carrier like the Valiant, or set up Osterhagen stations across the globe, or establish a 'Black Archive' with memory wipe technology and anti-TARDIS shielding has little need of the Doctor. It's a long way from the days when UNIT HQ seemed to be run by a Brigadier, a Captain, and a Sergeant, with some canon-fodder privates, and the nearest they got to sophisticated hardware was when the Brigadier asked Benton to 'lay on a chopper.'

New Year's? Resolution

January the first so time for a Resolution - the first New Year airing of Doctor Who since The End of Time Part II (which did not go well.) 

It started well with the legend of the ancient vanquished enemy, divided into three parts and buried at the ends of the earth (or Sheffield, whichever is further.) All was going well until those pesky archaeologists started digging in the sewers beneath the Sheffield Town Hall. Which brings me to my first quibble.  Those sewers looked amazing.  The council are really missing a trick if they aren’t offering guided tours.  But leaving that aside, the archaeologists made two fundamental errors - leaving an unknown thingy under a UV lamp, and wandering off alone, which provided a classic Doctor Who set up, though it did take them quite a long time to get around to it.

Sadly, things lost their way a bit in the middle of the episode.  We had the brilliant concept of a Dalek mutant hitching a ride like the Old Man of the Sea, but everything stopped for what seemed like ages whilst Ryan and his dad had a chat in a café, and his dad tried to sell a dodgy oven to the café owner.  There could have been a bit more subtlety with the oven. We definitely got the message that it was going to come in useful later. 

Meanwhile, back at the action, the mutant had found a workshop and cued the music, just like in an old-style episode of Top Gear, though the finished casing looked rather better than most of Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May’s efforts at customisation. I really liked that scrapyard Dalek casing. A pity that it was not robust enough to withstand a combination oven.

But this story was not really about the Dalek, but about family, and Ryan’s relationship with his father.  There’s nothing like the possibility of being sucked into space with an angry Dalek mutant to provide a resolution to a family rift.

All in all, a good story which also looked good, but was let down by the pacing of the script.