I still haven’t touched that series, but I’ve heard good things
yeah!!! Counter-Measures I love you!!!
I cannot begin to express how brilliant this series is - all of it is just so well done and thought through, and Allison is one of my favourite characters of all time to the point where I can’t even say anything articulate about her 
My favourite episodes are probably The Fifth Citadel because I always love it when Toby and Rachel get paired together, The Forgotten Village because as mentioned, Allison breaks my heart, Troubled Waters because I find it incredibly compelling, and The Hollow King because it has everything I love about a CM episode in it
This is making me want to give the whole series a relisten and then launch into the New Countermeasures afterwards. It’s been a good year or two since I listened to Who Killed Toby Kinsella.
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Who Killed Toby Kinsella? is an episode that’s really grown on my the more I’ve listened to it, and I really like New CM too. Pretty much my only disappointment with the whole series was with the very final two episodes, but that is perhaps due more than anything to my own expectations for it
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ARG all this Remembrance campaigning has really put me in a CM mood again and I have accordingly spent all afternoon listening to s1 again. In case it wasn’t completely obvious, I adore Allison Williams so much it’s not even funny 
I really need her to stop being put in traumatic situations right now actually somebody pls rescue my girl
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I remember listening to Volume One in… I wanna say January 2022.
‘Threshold’ was something of a bland episode to kick the set off with, but everything else was brilliant. I loved the political tones of the adventures.
‘Artificial Intelligence’ was also quite a good listen, especially since I heard it not long after finishing ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ from the Torchwood range - both utilising numbers stations in different ways.
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Series 2 is easily the best boxset of CM - I like the first one a lot, and The Pelage Project is one of my favourite episodes, but s2 is just brilliant
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From their humble beginnings during the Shoreditch Incidient, the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group began their defence of Great Britain against threats from beyond the stars…
Quite possibly one of the most underrated spin-offs, ‘Counter-Measures’ offers something a bti different.
The writing feels more mature and intelligent than something like ‘UNIT’, without becoming NSFW like tha majority of ‘Torchwood’.
A bit James Bond, a bit more classy, but always fantastic.
Sir Toby Kinsella could also give Irving Braxiatel a run for his money in terms of how cunning and wily they both are.
This thread was inspired by the one @sircarolyn made for Bernice Summerfield.
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I have MUCH more to say about this when I get back from LIWho becuase I LOVE CM so so desperately. Watch this space…
But also shall we merge this with Counter-Measures?
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Okay. I promised I had more to say. And now I’ve had a sleep and my brain works a little more again, I do indeed have more to say. I love CM; you’re right that it’s devastatingly underrated. I hardly know anyone who’s listened to all of them, and that’s so sad because they are SO good.
I don’t even know where to begin with talking about these. The first four boxsets have some of the best plotting and payoff and vision right from the beginning I have ever seen from BF - like sometimes you get the sense they’re making it up as they go along (cough Gallifrey: Time War) but with CM, it all builds up.
Series 2 in particular is so great - Peshka and The Fifth Citadel are two of my favourite ever stories, and in series 3 The Forgotten Village is just brilliant. And that’s just the first half - NewCM is different (and, I think hilarious that on the covers, in just ten in universe years they’ve all aged almost 25) but it is still a lot of fun. I think the ending of NewCM is a little weaker than the rest of it, but there are some banger episodes in there too such as Troubled Waters and A Gamble With Time. I also quite enjoy Who Killed Toby Kinsella? though that one had to grow on me a little bit.
If you’re following all these rambles and you know what I’m talking about, my favourite episodes are all ones that are strongly Allison episodes. Which is not an accident. Because I love her (she’s not in my icon for nothing lmao). She is so compelling and devastating to me and I need bad things to stop happening to her for two minutes (also why does John Dorney hate her >:( she’s always underutilised in every one of his episodes. I mean she’s not even in the first 40 mins of The Assassination Games at all!!!). Genuinely though, she fascinates me and I love that she’s off the rails all the time - so easily she could be the lovely girly girl scientist to Rachel’s frumpy spinster scientist but actuallly neither of them can be categorised quite so easily which is wonderful. Female scientists get such a bad lot in SF in general, but these two are allowed to be real people when they’re written at their best and that brings me a lot of joy.
And Allison makes me want to cry all the time. Because I love her. Like seriously, The Forgotten Village just stomps all over my heart and I want to beat Julian to death with a stick.
Actually all the character relationships in the series are brilliantly realised - Allison and Rachel have such a strange codependency; I love that Rachel and Toby grow into an understanding of each other; Ian and Allison are so sweet together and you just know they enable each other into shenanigans; and I just love that Ian adores Rachel and chases her affection constantly and Rachel is just like ‘oh yes. Ian. My friend Ian’ and completely goes oblivious to his romantic inclinations (I know that’s not necessarily how everyone interprets it but I think they would be AWFUL as a couple and it’s funnier to me for it to all go totally unrequited. And Simon Williams said it best that Ian is like a little puppy always following Rachel around. And it’s a little bit what winds me up about The Movellan Manouevre/The Dalek Gambit because it (imo) gets wrong what makes the Ian/Rachel and Allison/Rachel relationships work. But that is a whole other rant).
Okay that will do for now. I could say more but this is already long enough. That was very cathartic actually, I’ve kind of fallen out with the person who got me into this series and I’ve been trying to figure out how to enjoy it without letting her ruin it for me. Because I do love this series very dearly and I’m actually way overdue a relisten.
Yes. Listen to CM. It is excellent.
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I have MORE to say!
Couldn’t sleep last night so listened to The Hollow King which is one of my always go-to episodes for nights like that, and it just so encapsulates what I love about later CM. We’ve got Allison as world’s best 30-something year old hippie getting mind controlled, again. leave her mind alone!!! We’ve got Rachel in the lab sniping at Toby and destroying things with heavy machinery <3 We’ve got the softer side of Toby and Gilmore geeking out about planes.
And then there’s the whole end sequence ‘We’re a team Allison and we’re never letting go’ Because by that point they really are all they’ve got. I often wonder about after Who Killed Toby Kinsella? because they’re all supposed to be dead. And indeed, at the end of that one, Toby says as much. By NewCM, do they have any other friends? Clearly Gilmore speaks to his family still because he buys his niece a present in whatever the Spain episode is called. They’re all so dysfunctional, arg.
Yes. I love this one. I almost wish it really had been the finale bc I think MM/DG is a real letdown… something I may elucidate on at a later date. Maybe I’ll write a scathing review
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