Beyond the Sun is a standalone release and there's no content-related reason for me to be overriding the selection, but it was never released as a download and I can't find it among the physical CDs in my immediate possession. I am pretty sure it's in my room somewhere, but I'm not going to ransack the entire room looking for it today. I will manually select it when I find it. For now, I'm going to mash randomize some more and get to...
UNIT: The Longest Night
Starring: Siri O'Neal as Emily Chaudhry, Nicholas Deal as Robert Dalton, and Michael Hobbs as Francis Currie
Format: One full-cast CD-length episode.
Silly? No.
Standalone? No. This is the beginning of the end of UNIT audio series 1.
Recommended? Yes.
My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it and the rest of its season.
Before listening
I am remembering Francis Currie as a major character in the UNIT series, and so far he hasn't been with just two linked episodes left, so I assume he is coming fully into play here.This is a story where a really bad thing happens affecting the whole of England and UNIT make a desperate attempt to stop it. I forget if this one is a virus, zombies, a virus that causes zombies, or something else. (I am remembering a virus and zombies from my previous listen-through of this UNIT series.) Judging by the credits on the Big Finish site, Lethbridge-Stewart doesn't show up again until next episode. David Tennant (who wasn't as big a deal when this came out) also doesn't show up until next episode. From what I remember, UNIT resolves this episode's crisis within this episode, but while they're doing that an even worse crisis starts up. I remember it being fairly dark in tone but well-made, and I'm looking forward to listening.
After listening
The Longest Night is a big story. It feels larger than its 1-CD length. An act of terrorism affects UNIT bit character Will Hoffman, then it turns out not to be an isolated incident, then it turns out the wave of terrrorist attacks is part of a conspiracy, and the various scopes of the story are presented well, using newscast scenes where it's too big to fit into audio dramatization. The writing and editing that fit this whole story into this length are impressive. It is not an entirely self-contained story; UNIT have uncovered the conspiracy by the end of the disc, and there is a suitably climactic ending, but UNIT has not won.A great deal of The Longest Night uses traditionally reactionary, xenophobic narrative tropes, modifying them to be less so in a way that I think is worth listening to with a critical ear. A significant amount of the conspiracy plot concerns exactly the kind of thing that conspiracy theorists commonly attribute to Jews or to the UN, but here the UN are the good guys and the conspirators are of the British upper class. As is often the case in spy fiction, ubiquitous surveillance is presented as a good thing as long as it's the good guys who are doing it; UNIT track down the conspiracy by using photographic identity databases and cell phone records. The story is anti-xenophobic, but ultimately not anti-authoritarian despite some trappings to that effect; the conspiracy is presented as a corruption within a good system, not a sign of a bad system.
The events of UNIT: Snake Head are pointedly mentioned, though their relevance to this story is not (yet) clear. The events of UNIT: The Coup and UNIT: Time Heals are more directly relevant, with ICIS being closely connected to the conspiracy.
On the subject of what I thought I remembered from previous listening, there aren't zombies or a literal virus, but there is something I could have misremembered as a virus. Francis Currie does take a much more active role in this story than previous ones. David Tennant's character's absence is a plot point; Lethbridge-Stewart is not notably mentioned.
The Longest Night is an impressive achievement in audio storytelling and I highly recommend it, given the aforementioned critical ear for its use of conspiracy-theorist talking points.
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