Shadow Unit

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of stumbling upon “the greatest television show that never existed” well, get to it!

This “TV Show” is Shadow Unit Shadow Unit’s third season just began on Christmas with the release of the episode On Faith. The easiest way to explain this show is to think Criminal Minds crossed with the X-Files. The origin of this show is thus: Elizabeth Bear encouraged some of her author friends to write fan fiction for TV shows as an attempt to reconnect with writing for pleasure. This sparked the idea of Shadow Unit in the mind of Emma Bull, who then brought the idea to life with the help of Will Shetterly, and eventually Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and the list of involved authors keeps growing.

The amount of time and effort these authors have put into Shadow Unit is amazing. There is tons of background information available, each season has extra’s that add to episodes and bring in back story, and several characters even have active LiveJournal’s. With the extended format of this show the reader gets to know the characters better than one can with real TV or even most novels or series.

Each episode is built in five acts and the episodes tend to be longer than most short stories. The exception to this is the final episode of season 1 which is easily long enough to be a novel, and also probably the best episode thus far. On Faith is different from most episodes in that it takes place before the Shadow Unit officially formed, but it gives the readers a little more perspective on the overall story and a few more tidbits about the settings history.

If this is the first time you have heard of Shadow Unit, or you have never checked it out before I recommend starting with the Shadow Unit Wiki. You will find character descriptions, some more explanation of the premise and background, and also the suggested reading order as some of the extras were not released chronologically with the episodes. Do yourself a favor and get hooked on Shadow Unit!