Doctor who’s spin off proves the show must kill off this one thing

As The War Between the Land and the Sea barrels towards a dramatic finale, I know one thing for certain. UNIT has to go.

The Doctor Who spin-off focuses on the fictional military organisation (UNIT stands for Unified Intelligence Taskforce) run by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) that regularly appears on the main show for one-off adventures and has been part of the franchise’s canon since 1968.

Kate has been around for over a decade, with the new UNIT crew made up of characters like Shirley (Ruth Madeley) and Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) being introduced at the start of Russell T Davies’s return in 2023 – so going into the spin-off, we’re already familiar.

As a NuWho fan (someone who only started watching since the 2005 revival), I’ve always found their presence a bore, often skipping over episodes they crop up and, at times, actively groaning at the strange ‘all benevolent’ military presence.

Frankly, in a show which otherwise disavows violence and makes a point of the Doctor never using a gun, the hero-worship of a governmental military group has always seemed bizarre and oxymoronic. 

And this perspective has only been solidified by The War Between the Land and the Sea.

Honestly, for me, UNIT has been the least interesting part of the entire spin-off so far. 

Barclay (Russell Tovey) is interesting in all the ways he defies UNIT and blazes his own path, Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and the Homo Aqua species offer a gripping perspective of climate change with their oceanic fury, and we even have corrupt organisations vying for power and money.

Throughout it all, UNIT poses itself as the guiding middleman between earthly and non-earthly species, which in previous main show episodes, has always felt a bit naive. 

Of course, in the latest episodes, we can see the cracks in this facade appearing. 

I appreciate that the spin-off occasionally attempts to show that UNIT is not perfect, but it is nowhere near enough. 

In episode three, we see UNIT is the only group at the negotiation table advocating for diplomacy and peace in the face of various warmongering nations and company execs wanting to kill all the Homo Aqua and be done with it.

What’s more, the entire organisation seems to be held together by Kate and Shirley. Without the two of them, I’m sure UNIT would just cease to exist, which gives them a credibility problem. If they are so reliant on just two people, it doesn’t make sense they hold so much power. 

Nowhere was that truer than in episode four, when Colonel Ibrahim is shot dead, and Kate is almost assassinated, throwing everything and everyone into chaos until she returns to the helm again – overworked, grieving and on zero sleep.

All this to say that, with the way that UNIT is crumbling down – whether it is through their shambolic negotiations, tyrannical hierarchy system or warped sense of self-importance, the latest two episodes have set the show up to get rid of this narrative outlier once and for all. 

With Kate’s power going unchecked and a total loss of control over the Homo Aqua and the future of humanity, the organisation simply doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And, with one of the main crew already dead, I wouldn’t be surprised if more follow, or at least leave.

Ultimately, it has reached a point where I no longer care; I just want them to slink back into the background again – leaving ordinary people like the Doctor’s companions to be the true heroes of the show. 

With Ibrahim dying, Kate one crisis away from collapsing and the integrity of the whole organisation in question, the show has perfectly set itself up for UNIT to self-destruct by the end of episode five, and I can’t help but be rooting for it to happen. 

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mind the occasional UNIT episode in seasons past, but in recent years their presence on the main show has been near relentless, with the 60th anniversary specials and both 15th Doctor finales taking place with UNIT at the centre. 

Rather than being a novelty to see them crop up, it has become a chore to sit through yet more UNIT exposition with characters I largely struggle to care about representing a military-first approach that I don’t believe in and feels runs contrary to the show’s ethos. 

It’s even more strange when you consider that in earlier seasons of the revival, when UNIT did appear, there was a lot more vocal criticism of the organisation and its mission.

In the season four Sontaran two-parter, companion Donna (Catherine Tate) is genuinely horrified to see former TARDIS traveller Martha (Freema Agyeman) turned into a UNIT soldier and doesn’t hold back in her unbridled scepticism of the whole organisation.

If I never heard about UNIT again on the main show, I would probably be a happier Whovian for it. The concept is not only outdated and poorly handled in the Whoniverse but also actively hinders the anti-military ethos of the show. 

This spin-off is the perfect vessel to bid farewell.

Then, maybe, in a few Doctors’ time, I wouldn’t mind a callback to the Lethbridge-Stewarts dynasty or a brief cameo from a familiar face. 

So, as we tune into the finale next Sunday to see if Salt and Barclay can live freely together, the humans and Homo Aqua can overcome their differences, and the evil capitalist goons will be taken down – I’ll be holding my breath for one thing. 

The end of UNIT, once and for all.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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