Torchwood: In the Shadows
by Joseph Lidster
Produced by Heavy Entertainment
BBC Audio release 7 May 2009
read by Eve Myles
'Ring-a-ring-a-roses, a pocket full of
posies. A-tishoo! A- tishoo!
We all fall down.'
Set between the second series'
episodes of 'Meat' and 'Reset', the audio book of 'In the Shadows' sees the
Cardiff Hub team once more facing the afterlife question. Is there nothing beyond death but a black and
lonely void or is there something moving in the dark? Either of these might be preferable to what
waits in the shadows.
Narrated by Eve Myles, best known to
fans as Gwen Cooper, this audio production is, at two and a half hours long,
fast-paced action from the start while still giving small, intimate glimpses
into the minds and hearts of its characters.
We are both reassured of what we know about them and then given new
perspectives that add to the larger arc of Torchwood's second series. Myles has a beautiful voice and she gives
each character their natural intonations to the best of her vocal
abilities. The incidental music used
reflects the intensity and urgency of the mission, while the use of one
character to tell the story through the lens of an open letter to her dead team
mates gives 'In the Shadows' a reflective tone which elicits both sorrow for
the loss and hope for the future.
We are given a glimpse into the
Cooper-Williams pre-marriage dynamic from the beginning of the story, as they
are shopping for new settee cushions when a call from PC Andy Davidson
interrupts their moment of domesticity.
He's got a body, a suspect, and an impossible murder. It's all a bit Torchwood.
The body is really a skeleton and it
was found on Queen Street, Cardiff's main pedestrian shopping area. This unusual find appears to be that of a
seventy-year old man who, according to his dental records, is actually Stephen
Ballard, a young professional who went missing two days previously. The suspect in custody was the last person to
see him alive. Mousy beta-man Darren
Sowersby has no memory for what happened but knows that he last saw his friend
in the taxi they were sharing on the way home from an evening of post-work
drinking.
Torchwood gets involved.
When a second body, that of a young
woman named Jade Russell, turns up on a Queen Street club's dance floor, the
same circumstances are present. Alive,
she was in her twenties but at death she's eighty-something and her body is in
a state of decay which suggests she's been dead for a while.
What's happening here? What does it have to do with huon
particles? Is there a serial killer on
the loose in Cardiff, destroying people with something otherworldly and
malignant? Where did this form of death
come from? Is it Torchwood-created and
now in the hands of a mentally-ill human with a desire to rid the world of its
sin? Here we have no rampaging aliens,
no Weevils to track and trap; the danger comes from within the dark corners of
the human psyche, a place we should all fear.
Who knows what lives in the heart of the person sitting beside us on the
bus or the train? Are we being judged by
those around us, stranger and friend alike?
What happens when we're found lacking?
Just when you think the team has
caught up with the unlikely villain, whose invisible presence in life gives him
the perfect opportunity to punish those whom he sees as sinners, things go
pear-shaped. Jack is sent to hell.
'Silence. Darkness.
Alone in a world of shadows, Jack Harkness had no idea where he was.'
The team works to find and retrieve
Jack, well aware that hell for someone who can't die is perhaps the most
monstrous fate of all. Jack's longevity
gives them time to find a solution, but if they fail to do so, Jack's stay in
hell will be eternal and he has so many regrets to re-suffer through. While Owen and Tosh handle the technical
aspect of huon particles and the weapon of choice, Gwen and Ianto pry answers
out of their perp, an enigmatic psychopath who believes he's doing God's work
by releasing the angels to punish those mundane and unlucky sinners who cross
his path.
As seen in second series' episodes,
Jack and Ianto's romantic relationship at this point is developing; there is an
acknowledgment of bondage play with handcuffs and safety words but it's a tease,
leaving you to wonder which of them was holding the keys. They are physical with one another and the L
word is tossed out. Jack is his flirty
and bigger-than-life self, while Lidster's Ianto is sweet, funny, and a bit
innocent but deeply intuitive into the workings of the human heart; his darker
side, revealed on occasion to great effect, casts him in chiaroscuro which both
startles and excites.
For the sake of brevity, Owen and Tosh
are not fully involved here, but not every story can showcase every
character. Even so, their place in the
mission is important; each plays a role in both dimensions, as team members who
are working to solve the problem and as thorns for Jack's experience in the
shadow world of hell, where he is urged to think that he's gotten it all wrong
about everything.
Captain John Hart makes a momentary
and appropriately slimy appearance to show us how Jack fears the intrusion of
his less-than-noble past. Hart's tiny
place in the story comes laced with a mental image of Ianto Jones which is
haunting far longer than the fifty seconds it takes within a track full of
glimpses into what life might be like for the team if Jack was well and truly
dead. There are also a few cameo
appearances for characters from the background of both Torchwood and its parent
television show, 'Doctor Who', such as Trinity Wells from AMNN.
Jack's realization that things are not
as they seem comes after the listener has started to see that our hero is not
behaving like our hero; that, in fact, he's crossed a line into darkness. Hell, for Jack Harkness, only truly begins
when he has lost everything and everyone he cares about and he knows there
won't be an end to his lonely penance.
This is a story that, once you have
heard it, may keep you awake at night with questions that are raised by its
premise and its execution. Is hell a
real place and, if so, is it another dimension where your venial, work-day sins
and miseries are exploited and used against your heart? Even in the end, Gwen Cooper doesn't know and
neither do we and maybe it's better that way, for hell is personal and subject
to individualization.
When we think about what hell is, we
give it many definitions. Hell is unique
for each of us, no matter what we've been taught in faith or school or by our
families, and we experience it in small doses every day. Stephen Ballard's hell is the experience of
being totally alone in a silent world while Jade Russell's is a reversal of all
the hateful gossip which she indulges in.
Jack's is the unending nightmare of being completely on his own in the
Hub, having destroyed and forgotten everyone that he cares for.
We all have little darkly bitter and
hateful thoughts about the people around us, the tiny irritations sparked by
perceived slights enacted by those who are seemingly unaware of how they get
under our skin. We resent their good
luck and their happy endings, as Tosh resents Gwen's and as Owen resents
Jack's.
With grin-worthy cultural references
like 'murgatroyd', free DVDs that come with the papers, the Rob Dougan song
'Furious Angels', the movie 'Silence of the Lambs', and other titbits, the
story is firmly grounded in what we love about Torchwood. It's 21st century (where everything changes),
its immediacy is poignant, and we can identify with the beta personality who
feels like they are forever second fiddle, the eternal wingman. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. But, as Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato prove,
sometimes it's the little people who save the day.
Through the eyes of our beta-man
Darren Sowersby, the listener is left to wonder if it is technology or the
human heart's ability to forgive which saves Jack from what he fears the most.
Joseph Lidster is also the writer of
the second series episode 'A Day in the Death', a fan favorite for its glimpse
into hope, despair, and freedom of choice from the perspective of a dead
man. To date, he has contributed several
pieces to the Torchwood paradigm as well as to other television shows such as
'Wizards vs Aliens', and 'The Sarah Jane Adventures'. Other audio-based works include scripts and
stories for Big Finish Productions' lines such as 'Doctor Who', 'UNIT', and
'Dark Shadows', to name but a few. Fans
of his 'Torchwood' stories should definitely check out other projects and
offerings from this author.
An excellent review Echo..really makes me want to buy this CD and add it to my ever growing collection! Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteGreat review of a great story. Hero Ianto and Evil Ianto rolled into one. What's not to love?
ReplyDeletea note from the reviewer: when I heard the serial killing cabbie's name, I thought...wow, that's familiar. and then I begin re-reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and realize that it's a form of the name given to the revenge-seeking cabbie in A Study in Scarlet. this was reiterated for me with BBC's Sherlock episode A Study in Pink where the cabbie had the same name. beautifully done, Joseph!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I thought this was familiar to something I'd read before, but I couldn't put my finger on it. This is one of my favourite audiobooks
Delete