Reviews Torchwood: Believe by Tony J Fyler

Torchwood Believe is the ultimate dream for most Torchwood fans – it’s the whole crew from Series 1 and 2 back together again for a full Big Finish adventure.

But if you’re going to do that, and bill it as that, you’re going to need a story that’s both big enough to justify the excitement, but which doesn’t outstay its welcome. You’re aiming for Children Of Earth, rather than Miracle Day.

(Cue the angry emails from Miracle Day devotees.)

Torchwood Believe delivers, and then delivers some more. And then, just when you think you’ve had your fill and couldn’t possibly manage another earful, it delivers just a touch more on top.

Torchwood Believe is not, really speaking, any friend to organised religion. Owen is already in his ‘dead man walking’ phase when Believe opens, and his experiences of conscious nothingness make him the Richard Dawkins of the piece, if Richard Dawkins ate ground glass for breakfast. When confronted with a religious cult that claims humanity is evil and broken, and that only by meeting and mating with aliens can we be redeemed, Owen wants to tear them limb from limb, but more than that, he wants to take them down, and he’s prepared to use Torchwood as his instrument to do the job, against Jack Harkness’ wishes.

You could argue that its moral stance is what happens when you put a nihilist in charge of a powerful organisation, and point out the existence of a group that deals in lies and hope. Things are going to get dark and driven before Believe is finished.

The Church of the Outsiders takes elements of a couple of real-world religions (Mormonism, Scientology, we’re looking at you), blends them with the likes of the Heaven’s Gate cult, hurls a bit of practical Star Trekking into the mix and creates its own space-based religion, to suck up all the people who think everything’s horrible down here on Earth and that ascension to the stars and mating with aliens is the only way to go. Owen Harper really hates this kind of space-hippy gibberish. Granted, Owen Harper really hates most things, but space-hippy gibberish especially, since he knows that life is all there is, and that at least for him, there’s nothing after life but darkness and non-being.

He pushes the team really hard to investigate the Outsiders, because surely, with a messiah who used to draw comics for a living, and every tax dodge under the sun being pulled for them by a sleazemeister accountant (played unrecognisably by Arthur Darvill), they must be up to something dodgy. His campaign to get them Torchwood-shocked gains some traction when occasional hardcore members post videos of themselves self-immolating to shed their earthly bodies, and others self-modify to look like typical ‘Grey’ aliens. Most of all though, he pushes his case on the basis that the Church wants to get its hands on alien technology and possibly weapons, so they should be shut down.

The three episodes of Guy Adams’ story then sing a song of modern philosophies, freedoms and realities – where’s the line on religious freedom? Is simply having a patently invented mythology and exploiting the weak and the broken enough to warrant taking a church down? Is it still justified if people actually get what they’re seeking from it – community, a belief in something bigger and higher and grander than themselves?

Each of the Torchwood crew have their views on these issues, but Believe is not by any means just three episodes of science-fiction navel-gazing. There’s plenty of old-fashioned Torchwood action too – Gwen saves someone from being kidnapped, and gets well and truly zapped for her trouble. Ianto, being Ianto, gets charged with infiltrating the church, makes friends with a really rather nice person, and ends up on the wrong side of an alien autopsy, and Tosh…

It would be too much of a spoiler to tell you what happens to Tosh, but while his death may have made some degree of crucial difference in their relationship, it’s true to say that Owen’s friendship with Tosh is put under more strain by what he makes her do in this release than the simple matter of him being dead and still walking about would ever have done.

Perhaps inevitably, it’s John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness who has the most effective reaction to Owen’s push against the Church. They have a point, he insists: Mankind’s future really is in the stars, getting down and boogieing with all the groovy aliens. The extent to which he goes it alone in this story isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s done with more vigour and energy than it was in the TV show, which makes it feel like one of Jack’s more minor rebellions – we never feel he’s about to leave everyone in the lurch this time round, just that he has a broader perspective on aliens and the universe than any of the other Torchwood members, and so has a better solution to hand.

The solution that Adams gives him is little short of genius – and importantly, it’s little short of exactly the Jack kind of genius that makes him such a beloved character, despite his darker moments. Again, we’re not going to spoiler you with what he does, but it feels so entirely persuasive, it’ll make you think for a while after you’ve finished Believe.

There are solid consequences here, too – less for Torchwood, and more for the people affected by their actions, and particularly by Owen’s push against the church. People are dead, people are institutionalized, people have had their way of life destroyed by the time we get to the end of Torchwood Believe, which if anything shows the moral of the piece: if you have the power to destroy lives, think very, very carefully before you decide it’s a thing worth doing.

Torchwood Believe would have been a big deal for Torchwood fans whether or not it delivered a cracking story, with rich characters all given their head and their space, and an arc with a moral wrapped up in it to make you think.

Torchwood Believe does all of that and more, making it the Torchwood version of Avengers Infinity War – a reunion gig that’s better even than the hype, and about so much more than hearing your favourite characters again.