This is not the
Torchwood you’re looking for.
Almost beyond a shadow of
doubt, this is not the Torchwood you’re looking for.
By that, we don’t mean
it’s bad necessarily, just that it bears only the tiniest resemblance to the
Torchwood anyone knows or understands.
It’s Charlie’s Angels.
This script of the latest
Torchwood audio story from Big Finish, written by Juno Dawson, isn’t even really
‘Torchwood does Charlie’s Angels.’ It more or less is Charlie’s Angels. The
only things that make it more Torchwood are the voice on the phone which gives
the three female American 1970s investigators, which is British and talks about
them being the last vestige of the British Empire (which in itself seems odd),
and the fact that the threat here is alien, rather than crookedly human.
Having this American
Torchwood, and making it so rag-tag and under-resourced as three specially
talented young women in LA who take orders from a disembodied British voice
feels a little like trying to bend one show far enough out of shape that it’s
actually another show altogether, and there’s a disconnect early on with all
the usual Cardiff-based shenanigans. But once you accept that this is in almost
no way whatsoever the Torchwood you probably signed on for, there’s plenty of
enjoyment to be had in The Dollhouse.
Torchwood’s Angels are
Marlow Sweet (played by Laila Pyne), Charley Du Bujeau (Jelly-Anne Lyons) and
Gabi Martinez (Ajjaz Awad), and they’re African American, corn-fed Southern and
Latina respectively, bringing a more inclusive dynamic to its set-up than
Charlie’s Angels ever did. Together they’re investigating spikes in cosmic
radiation, leading them to a very sleazy casting agent by the name of Don
Donohue. Big Finish strikes casting gold here, with Donohue played by Stuart
Milligan, who was seemingly born to embody self-justifying sleaze with an
American twang. Milligan gives the bad guy more teeth than you might otherwise
expect, and while you struggle for a little while to accept that this is a
Torchwood release you’re listening to, and probably fantasise more than
somewhat about the version of a modernised Charlie’s Angels that, say, Gwen,
Tosh and Martha could have delivered, Pyne, Lyons and Awad work with what
they’re given to create a more grounded, realistic team of crime-fighting,
alien-busting sisters than seventies TV ever allowed. There’s just a little too
much reliance on the baddies being stupid in the story, as angel after angel
investigates Donohue’s very special casting service for what is revealed to be
the role of a lifetime, but Pyne, Lyons and Award quickly become a very
audio-friendly team – you’re anticipating their characters’ reactions long
before the end, and Awad surprises by occasionally pulling off so convincing a
Rosie Perez vibe as Martinez that you prick up your ears.
Where Torchwood Dollhouse
is at is best is in its underlying message, which is clever and depressing by
turns. Donohue’s operation funnels clueless actresses off the carousel of
potential humiliations awaiting women who aspire to change their lives in
Seventies Hollywood, but what happens to them then is a lesson in the weary
acceptance of objectification. Lyons’ Charley even says at one point, ‘So
what’s it for? Intergalactic sex trafficking?’, and she says it with a sigh in
her voice that’s indicative of the passive acceptance that that’s what it would
be if there were a human behind the idea, the simultaneous valuing and
devaluing of a handful of biological real estate driving men to do appalling,
unspeakable things to women, and to deny what should be the obvious reality of
female bodily autonomy throughout our species’ history – a theme that’s still
so, so depressingly relevant in the age of Trump. What it’s really
about…that, admittedly, has a properly Torchwood vibe, an alien species
teaching even humanity a lesson in shocking objectification. Dawson plays with
us and delivers her shocks well on this level, especially when Donohue is asked
how he could agree to be a party to something so grim. His answer will punch
you in the face and give you things to think about long after the more
action-based climax of the story.
Torchwood has always been
for grown-ups, its language and its content dealing with more overtly adult themes,
and this is such a story (there’s even a sub-argument here about pubic hair as
a feminist cause, given the originally porn-driven infantilisation of women’s
bodies to match some moderately dark male fantasy from the age of their sexual
peak – don’t panic, it’s not as overtly stated as that in the story, but it’s
there). Frustratingly then, while it makes the most of Torchwood’s ability to
use more adult language, when people swear in Torchwood Dollhouse, it feels
like a wasted opportunity, adding little if anything even to the emphasis of
lines.
Ultimately, this is a very
unusual Torchwood story, and listeners expecting anything of the ‘usual’
Torchwood vibe from it will be disappointed. What it is is an attempt to tell a
new kind of Torchwood story, with some solid messages and good politics. As
Torchwood, it would be misleading to call it a spectacular success. As an audio
story that gives you more than you might have expected to think about though,
Dollhouse is definitely worth giving a spin.
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