One of the joys of the Third Doctor’s adventures, which I’m nearing the end of on a full rewatch of Doctor Who, is his relationship with UNIT (initially the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, now the Unified Intelligence Taskforce).

Or more specifically, his relationship and the recurring appearances of supporting characters such as the wonderful Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates, not to mention the fact that his companions in the era were often serving with UNIT too.

In the modern era, UNIT have been a great asset on screen too, with their first appearance in NuWho coming in Tenth Doctor adventure The Sontaran Stratagem. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter Kate Stewart appears for the first time in Eleventh Doctor story The Power of Three and makes an immediate impression; she’s still heading up the organisation now, during what is the Fifteenth Doctor’s era.

Superfan of the Doctor, UNIT scientist Petronella Osgood, also made quite a big impression in numerous recurring appearances (though there’ll be no spoilers about her ultimate fate here, suffice to say it’s probably not what you’re thinking).

So when Big Finish launched a new series focusing on UNIT, naturally Kate Stewart and Osgood head up the cast; it’s always great to see them on screen supporting the Doctor, so it makes sense to have them at the forefront of their own UNIT spin off, right?

In this first series, the Devlin Future Tech corporation is rolling out revolutionary 3D printers around the world, but something is not quite right.

UNIT are sent to uncover what’s going on, and it soon becomes clear that a very familiar, very plastic enemy is looking to exert their control over the world.

Though that’s a massive oversimplification of the four story saga of UNIT: Extinction, that really is what everything boils down to.

There’s lots of globe-trotting action, with plenty of big set pieces occurring; it feels like a sort of James Bond/Mission Impossible style espionage adventure on a large scale, only in audio form.

It’s great to hear Jemma Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver reprising their roles as Kate Stewart and Osgood respectively; I’ve always loved seeing them pop up again in Doctor Who and thought a UNIT spin off would work really well, even without the Doctor involved.

The problem is that it’s not that interesting. It’s full of clipped accents, gadgets, exotic locations and high stakes action, as you’d expect from something that feels very Bond in style and structure (sci-fi elements aside), but it also just feels a bit bland and humourless.

UNIT are basically a much more overtly heroic and pure Torchwood on a bigger scale, which just makes them a bit boring as a set of characters to be honest, especially without the chaotic Doctor for them to counterbalance their seriousness.

None of the supporting cast make much of an impression and even Redgrave and Oliver feel a bit underutilised, as good as they are when they’re featured.

With Torchwood, for example, the characters are often complete bastards, despite having the best intentions of the country at heart. And that moral greyness is something that the characters and cast have an awful lot of fun with.

In UNIT: Extinction, there’s nothing like that at all; at least, not until the closing moments, when something genuinely interesting happens.

In fact, the closing story’s cliffhanger is superb and, as much as I kind of plodded along with Extinction’s slightly dull heroics, it does intrigue me enough to want to see if the next series improves at all on the seeds that have been planted here.

Don’t get me wrong; UNIT: Extinction is definitely not bad, at all, but it just doesn’t really do anything interesting.

Given that there’s a pretty astonishing twelve UNIT box sets overall from the new series, with some pretty amazing guest stars/characters popping up, perhaps UNIT: Extinction is just the concept finding its feet.

With a reuniting of the Third Doctor’s surviving UNIT family occurring in the fourth series, I’m certainly inclined to stick around at least until then.

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