Side Trip - U.N.I.T: "The Coup"

I promised all ten of you a couple of side trip adventures and I aim to keep my promises. We should be back on track in November as a full team. We're looking at maybe upping our audio count to three a session for a few sessions which means in theory we'd be doing The Land of the Dead, The Fearmonger, and Walking to Babylon.

On the pimping front let me point you to Magnatune. Magnatune is another source to buy or license music and as their tagline says, they're not evil. You can pick what you want to pay and download in a number of formats including Flac and Ogg or pay a flat fee and get a real cd sent to you in the mail. You can download as often as you like in a 60 day period upon paying for the download and they encourage you to share with your friends. The best part is that up front they tell you the artist is getting half of whatever you decide to pay. Thanks to Matthew Cochrane for pointing me in their direction.

This lunch break at work I'll be doing The Coup by Simon Guerrier, a prelude to the four part U.N.I.T series.

It opens with explosions and sirens and you can never go wrong with a little mayhem to get things started right. We get a BBC reporter telling us what's going on and to propel us into the main thrust of the action. Nothing really out of the ordinary using this technique since it's hard to show and not tell in the audio medium.

I so would not want the job of being the press secretary for U.N.I.T. One must be proficient in the art of BS to convince the media and public that you're not being attacked by aliens but traffic gone horribly wrong. I was stuck in Evacuation Rita and let me tell you, while it looked ugly it definitely wasn't an alien attack. In this case Colonel Chaudhry is stuck with this unenviable task.

It seems as if U.N.I.T is being wrapped up into some new international deal and they're brought out Lethbridge-Stewart to help usher in the new era. But no sooner do we hear him than helicopters come on the scene shooting.

Back to the reporter and I'm already wondering why we should care about him.

And then back to helicopters shooting at Lethbridge-Stewart and no one seems really concerned that they're getting shot at. I don't expect them to go all Bill Paxton Aliens but a little anxiety might be in order. The Brig seems to have shot down a helicopter with one shot and then we get some more exposition, this time regarding the Silurians.

Some more "fun" with the reporter and the new ISIS bloke. Nope, still not caring about him. And again, if some guy is going all Andy Sipowicz on me I'm acting a little more terrified than Curry. But ISIS gets what they want out of Curry, let Curry go free, and then he goes running to Chaudhry. Anyone really surprised he did that?

Some more stuff happening between Lethbridge-Stewart and the Silurians and then Lethbridge-Stewart and the ISIS bunch. More telling instead of showing as we dance around why the Silurians are going after the Brig.

We get another press conference and we finally get some fun stuff as The Brig just busts out with everything U.N.I.T has done in the last thirty years and then busts out with the Silurian Ambassador. He brings peace, love and moist towelettes for all of thirty seconds until the ISIS chick shots him in front of everyone. That's when everything ISIS has planned goes all pear shaped as the Brig and U.N.I.T reassert their authority. Eventually it all gets sorted and the Silurian Ambassador goes back to bringing peace, love, and moist towelettes while the Brig slips out the back.

As a set up for the U.N.I.T series it wasn't horrible. I understand that it's just a prologue but I felt like everyone was going through the motions, even Nicholas Courtney. It all felt flat and two dimensional. My interest on the purely fan level wasn't tickled enough to continue on, though for the purposes of this blog I will get to the series eventually.

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Now playing: Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat [Unedited Form]
via FoxyTunes