UNIT: Silenced

Big Finish Productions are a company best known for making audio dramas, most of which are based on licensed properties. They’ve done works based on The Avengers, Dan Dare, Dark Shadows, The Prisoner and Survivors to name but a few, but they’re probably best known for their Doctor Who line. Until recently this was limited to the original 1963-89 run (commonly referred to as the ‘classic series’) as well as most of the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann, but about two years ago this changed with the announcement of their first releases featuring characters and concepts from the series’ 2005 relaunch. This first series was UNIT: The New Series, starring Jemma Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver as Kate Stewart and Petronella Osgood (recurring characters in the eras of Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s Doctors), and it’s the third boxset, UNIT: Silenced (released in November 2016), that’s under discussion today.

A quick confession: I didn’t buy the first two boxsets because I’m not hugely keen on the characters, or indeed the era of Doctor Who they originated in. I know Big Finish have successfully managed to rehabilitate a lot of maligned characters (all of their stories featuring 80s companion Adric have been rightfully critically acclaimed, as have many of their releases with Melanie Bush), but the first two sets garnered a lot of lukewarm reviews that didn’t really make me reconsider. But I was drawn to Silenced for a couple of reasons; chiefly that it got far, far stronger reviews than what had come before, but also because it was co-written by my favourite regular Big Finish writer, John Dorney, and it had a strong political plot, which I’m always a sucker for. The plot in question concerns a controversial political movement unexpectedly gathering momentum… which some people who’ve recently experienced Real Life may find sounds vaguely familiar.

The political aspect in question is what I’m going to try and analyse here in my capacity as some random bloke on the internet; the set was written, produced and released in 2016, a fairly dramatic year for politics. Yet it was made before the EU referendum had even been called, and the idea that Donald Trump could actually win the US presidential election seemed utterly ludicrous until about two weeks before it was released. In the liner notes, John Dorney acknowledges that in the months since the stories were recorded, the release has started to seem “a bit less sideways and a bit more… full on”. Well, it was about to get even more full on.

The whole politics plot, with the character of the political movement’s leader Kenneth LeBlanc, takes place in Dorney’s episodes 2 & 3, so that’s what most of this post will be looking at (with apologies to episode 1 & 4 writer Matt Fitton, who is also one of my favourite Big Finish writers). SPOILERS for the whole set follow, obviously.

We learn a few details about Mr LeBlanc and his political campaign across episodes 1 and 2; he’s dismissed by one character as a “stupid conspiracy theorist”, and we’re also told that he’s so incompetent he held a press conference whilst wearing his trousers inside out. Despite this rather extreme ineptitude (no, I don’t know how you manage to put your trousers on inside out either), and the rather vain, raving nature (only caring about which photograph of him tomorrow’s papers use, saying he “doesn’t like news” and plans to change it to breakfast TV only and introducing himself as a “PM-in-waiting” in spite of the fact that his party currently has no MPs whatsoever) he shows in his first proper scenes in part 2, he inexplicably appeals to a large proportion of the electorate due to the fact that he’s not like other politicians. It turns out that this appeal is thanks to the interference of the Silence.

The Silence are a rather interesting idea for a Doctor Who monster, badly let down by the fact that they’re part of an overly convoluted and appallingly mishandled story arc in its 2011 series. Essentially, whenever you look away, you instantly forget them – everything about them is wiped from your memory. In both the TV episodes and the audio dramas, this leads to many scenes of characters in mortal peril then suddenly completely forgetting about it, and having to have the concept of the aliens explained to them repeatedly… to be honest, it feels like their use in UNIT: Silenced hits a lot of the same beats their principal television appearances did. But that’s not a bad thing, since they’re still a good idea and the scenes are well played by all concerned. Inspired by the manner in which the Doctor ultimately defeated them back on telly, they interfere in Kenneth LeBlanc’s election campaign by appearing in subliminal messages during his television appearances, telling people to trust him and vote for him.

Kenneth LeBlanc, as pictured on disc 3's cover art.

In other words: the plot of UNIT: Silenced, a story written in January-March 2016, concerns a hostile alien power meddling in another planet’s election, to try and ensure a victory for a leader who is a serious liability but can benefit them. It feels extraordinarily timely in a way the writers surely can’t have anticipated when they first came up with the idea.

As the third episode progresses, Election Day arrives and LeBlanc – now admitting to aides that he doesn’t actually want to be Prime Minister and has no understanding of what the role actually entails or what he’d do – arrives at the count in the constituency he’s contesting, which so happens to be that of the current Prime Minister. And then we discover what the Silence’s plan is.

In their principal television appearance, they were defeated by a subliminal message (inadvertently recorded by one of their own) planted in one of the most watched pieces of footage ever – the moon landing. They now plan to overwrite that message with another one, which also has to be placed in something that a lot of people are going to see. The assassination of both the outgoing and incoming Prime Ministers live on television should do it.

This also explains why the inept LeBlanc has been chosen by the Silence. Although we never learn much about his politics, it is implied that he’s on the far right – and he’s being used by the Silence because one of his supporters could conceivably be driven to do something like that… which, in context of what has happened in the world since the play was written, is actually fairly chilling.

Unfortunately, the story then makes its one big misstep. LeBlanc is indeed assassinated, the message is successfully implanted in the television footage – and then the LeBlanc plot disappears from the story completely, and the fourth episode is about something else entirely. All of LeBlanc’s MPs decide not to take their seats, and a new election is called, by which point the Silence’s brainwashing will have receded enough for people to vote more sensibly.

There’s still a political aspect to the fourth episode, as the various world powers are now poised to tear each other, and their planet, apart – because the Silence also used the assassination footage to implant a message of fear and mistrust in your fellow man. That’s a very interesting idea. And yet it doesn’t tie into the LeBlanc plot at all (beyond the fact they used his assassination to air the message), when it feels like it really should, and the political stuff is pushed pretty far into the background in comparison to the previous two episodes overall.

The abrupt disappearance of this dangerous brand of politics feels wrong even without the real-world parallels – the story feels unbalanced as a result of the sudden change in direction for the final episode, and there’s a significant aspect that feels like it really should tie together but doesn’t. But taking how things turned out in reality into account, I wonder if Dorney and Fitton might have gone for a different ending. Because we’ve very clearly seen that things like that won’t just suddenly go away.