#46 UNIT: Snake Head

My Randomoid Selectortron leaves the past of Skaro to take me to...

UNIT: Snake Head

Starring: Siri O'Neal as Emily Chaudhry and Nicholas Deal as Robert Dalton  
Format: One full-cast CD (or download) with no episode breaks.
Silly? Flirty banter comes into play in places where it shouldn't.
Standalone? Yes.
Recommended? No, but not necessarily to be skipped if listening to the series as a whole.

My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it and for the rest of the first UNIT audio season.

Before listening

I've only listened to this once, I think, but I have some vivid memories of moments in it. This UNIT series can be thought of as having two episode that set up the season arc, then a monster-of-the-week stretch, then two episodes closing the arc, with the unusual characteristic that there is only one monster-of-the-week episode. From what I remember, this felt like it was a slice-of-life status quo episode showing how things "normally" went between Chaudhry and Dalton after they established their working partnership and before the season climax started changing everything. It involves immigration and Eastern European vampires, and I forget whether it is politically problematic about it. I am certainly looking forward to continuing with my UNIT listens.

After listening

I had been compiling a list of minor nitpicks about cultural awareness, like the monster's name being in the wrong Slavic dialect, but I realized there's a more serious problem. By the end of the episode, every speaking foreign character has been significantly dishonest in a way that's gotten in the way of preventing murders, while Anglo-Saxon characters are allowed to be unambiguous good guys. There are hindering Anglo-Saxons and innocent foreigners mentioned in dialogue, but at a show-don't-tell level the story fails at cultural representation in exactly the way that a story about a foreign vampire should be careful about.

Chaudhry is ambiguously flirting with Dalton throughout the episode, even in moments when flirty banter isn't really appropriate. Chaudhry seems to be functionally in charge, though Dalton might still be nominally in command as he was introduced in UNIT: Time Heals. Dalton is in the "Scully" role; he knows aliens and cryptids are real but thinks improbably mutilated corpses should be considered to be victims of a bizarre human serial killer unless proven otherwise. This seems like a reasonable stance to be taking in this particular case, but it seems like the status quo between Chaudhry and Dalton is that he takes a similar position in less ambiguously paranormal cases.

The final action scene is pretty good if one ignores problems on the way to getting there.

ICIS is mentioned briefly, though no one from ICIS shows up in a scene; Dalton presents them as the "bad cop" to try to get cooperation out of someone. This episode doesn't add anything essential to the ICIS arc. Since it has a representation problem that's particularly bad given the nature of the story, and it isn't necessary to the overall arc of the series, I'm going to consider it not recommended overall, even though I did enjoy the climax and some of the banter.