How Series 9 Can Repair UNIT

Guest contributor Dom Daniells thinks UNIT need a better show of force.

Following the announcement that Kate Stewart’s UNIT (featuring Osgood) will be returning in a new Zygon adventure, I was extremely pleased. This was because it would give the chance for the abysmal Death in Heaven to be forgotten.

Okay, before you start throwing Jammie Dodgers at me, first hear me out.

Problems with Death in Heaven

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed Dark Water and I believed it perfectly set up the second half of the finale. However, my hopes were dashed the following week when Death in Heaven aired. The episode failed for two reasons: UNIT were extremely poorly represented, and the lack of genuine threat.

Expanding on the first point, it seemed to me that UNIT were used in the episode really just to make Missy look clever. They had captured her, but she escaped so easily and made UNIT look like fools. This is frankly ridiculous because they are meant to be a highly skilful and resourceful team, which shouldn’t have even incarcerated Missy on the plane in the first place. As a result, she had an opportunity to kill Osgood (who will now return) and shock the audience.

Now my second issue. When I saw this episode would be a Master-Cybermen team up, I was thrilled. This is because I thought there would be an enormous threat to the Doctor and Earth. Imagine it, Cybermen causing chaos, deleting and upgrading whilst Missy manipulated the Doctor and planned world domination. This was especially exciting as I believed the Series 7 finale had lacked a real villain. However, my expectations were crushed. The Cybermen did almost nothing and Missy’s big plan to defeat the Doctor was to give him a Cybermen army. It was obvious that the Doctor would never accept the offer, so the threat had disappeared.

Redemption

Now as UNIT are returning in Series 9, I hope they are more powerful and face a genuine threat. There are two ways I believe that this can be done:

Scenario 1: Zygon Invasion

Following the events of The Day of the Doctor, I was left slightly confused. The Zygons were the threat of the episode until about halfway through, were they were just forgotten about. I thought that that story would need to be resolved somehow and this is the chance. We only saw a handful of Zygons in the anniversary episode, but I think there were many more out there. A great idea for an episode could be that there are Zygons all over Earth, who are impersonating humans and causing mayhem. UNIT would be there to fight them and show their real power.

Scenario 2: Zygon Infiltration

This is an idea that excites me even more than the first one. This second story would involve the Zygons inside UNIT. It could show how Kate Stewart’s Zygon became the leader of UNIT and controlled Zygon operations from inside the taskforce. This story would be set before Death in Heaven and reveal that the UNIT in that episode were all Zygons. This would certainly make me feel a lot better about UNITs past frailties and could also account for Osgood’s return. Imagine an episode where the Doctor checks in at UNIT but he doesn’t know who is who (no pun intended).

So those are my two ideas. If you agree/disagree or have an even better idea, please share in the comments below. Thank you for reading.