UNIT : THE LONGEST NIGHT

Siri O’Neal and Nicholas Deal are back as Colonel Emily Chaudhry and Colonel Robert Dalton in the third of Big Finish‘s full UNIT adventures, The Longest Night by Joseph Lidster.

Pre-dating Brexit by about 10 years, this story tells of how a small group of right-wing nut-jobs has brainwashed perfectly normal people into carrying out “anti-foreigner” acts in order to rally pro-Britain/anti-Europe sentiment.  Also pre-dating Brexit by about 10 years, we have a PM talking about closer ties with the EU in a press conference which the news media turns about to say it’s all about Europe.  Even today, a couple of years after the Brexit referendum we have people who should know better telling us we’re leaving Europe, even though it was never about Europe.  The EU isn’t Europe.

Today we’re being told that those who voted “Leave” were effectively brainwashed by clever media groups such as “Cambridge Analytica” and, just like in this story, had they not been so brainwashed, they would be perfectly normal sane pro-EU people voting to “remain” just like everyone else.  As if being pro-EU is the only way to be considered “perfectly normal”.

There’s the usual muddying of the whole pro-EU/anti-EU arguments, suggesting that if you don’t want to be part of the EU then you must be a xenophobic middle-aged white man clinging on to past Empire glories whilst being against multi-culturalism.  Again confusing the EU with Europe.  It’s perfectly acceptable to want to remain part of Europe and to love Europeans without having to be part of the EU.  Yet, propaganda would suggest otherwise.  It means that adventures such as this purport to highlight the propaganda on one side whilst being propaganda for the other.  Fortunately, this is fiction but we live in an age wherein it seems life imitates art.

In this adventure, we have the usual endless fighting (apparently that’s required for a UNIT story), and we see the further rise of I.C.I.S. (it’s with some irony that the ISIS-sounding I.C.I.S. is now portrayed more as a terrorist group than as a replacement for UNIT).  They’re the ones apparently causing all the trouble in order to force the PM into declaring Martial Law and giving I.C.I.S. the authority to mow anyone down they don’t like.

The story does have flaws, however.  It opens in a pro-Europe bar which sees a Scottish man (complete with Scotland-themed t-shirt and kilt) become a suicide bomber and blow the place up.  This is then followed by undercover I.C.I.S. troops killing any eye-witness/survivor so that the incident can then be claimed as having been a Muslim terrorist attack in order to incite anti-foreigner and anti-Europe emotions.  We later learn that I.C.I.S. brainwashed this man, and others, to commit terrorist acts.  If so, why didn’t they just brainwash a person of Indian descent so that they wouldn’t have to kill the eye-witnesses?  The eye-witnesses would do their job for them and would then further the propaganda lies that the suicide bomber had been a “muslim”.  Instead, we’re left with this bizarre situation of I.C.I.S. brainwashing people to do the deed and then having to ensure there are no eye-witnesses in order for their propaganda to work.  Seems awfully messy, and not in-keeping with their usual manipulativeness and planning.

The usual Colonel Chaudhry and Colonel Dalton double-act continues in this story, although we still learn nothing about either character.  Through them we do become aware of how UNIT have practically been sidelined, and we see I.C.I.S. rise as a real threat.  So, as a third part in a four-part story, as this is how these UNIT adventures are starting to feel, it is an important part in the ongoing narrative.  There is still the sense that it’s taking an awful long time to tell a very simple story, however.