Tony holds up a sign
saying ‘Aliens Welcome Here.’
Torchwood on TV arguably
hit its peak in its third series, Children of Earth. There, it first really
pulled off a series-long arc that worked, combined a massive worldwide threat
with the intimacy of personal impact, as human children were sacrificed to
alien drug addicts to stop them destroying the world and a personal love story
into which every fan bought ended with a tragic death, to which there remains
to this day a real-life shrine in Cardiff Bay.
Torchwood Series 4 then
had a few jobs to do – most notably, with only two of the original team members
left, it had to add new blood to the dynamic, and it chose to do it over an
even longer single-arc story, Miracle Day.
Miracle Day was bloated, overlong,
with a genius central idea that ultimately was poorly paid off, and the new
members of Torchwood failed to charm, as the original team – despite being as
inherently charmless a bunch of characters as you could wish to meet – had
done.
For the last few years,
Torchwood has been in the hands of Big Finish, delivering audio adventures from
up and down the arc of Torchwood history, from its Victorian beginnings to the
spacefaring far future.
But it’s never dared to do
this before.
Torchwood – Aliens Among
Us is an official Series 5. It takes us beyond the events of Miracle Day, which
of course means it faces many of the same problems Miracle Day did – it’s going
to be a long arc, and as Miracle Day did, it retains only two central
Torchwooders from the early series – the immortal Captain Jack Harkness, played
by John Barrowman, and the heart of Torchwood Cardiff, Gwen Cooper, played by
Eve Myles. There are other elements of consistency, most particularly Gwen’s
husband Rhys, but in essence Aliens Among Us faces the Miracle Day challenge – can
it build a new central Torchwood team that makes us want to take the long
journey of the series arc.
Part 1 is made up of four
one-hour episodes, and hopes are raised early, as Changes Everything (Series
Five, Part 1, Episode 1 – keep up!) explodes across your mind, with journo and
hacker Tyler ‘such a porn name’ Steele being courted to join the team,
alongside our two stalwarts and already in-situ newbie Mr Colchester – to all
intents and purposes an ex-army bean counter who gets things done. Changes
Everything is written by experienced hand James Goss, and wears its post-Brexit
social realism proudly, unfolding as a story about refugees coming to Cardiff
from other countries – and beyond – and the tensions that such integration
brings to the surface. Colchester, played by Paul Clayton, is actually the most
successful new addition to the team, as he’s possessed of the acerbic judgment
that stops Torchwood ever being too smug, too pleased with itself. He’s a great
new anchorweight in the team, and Clayton delivers him with a weary sarcastic
realism that makes you instantly want to spend more time in his presence.
Steele, less so – he’s young and cocky, and the role he’s aiming to take is
perhaps too near the bone, but there’s more to him, and certainly more to his
journey, than at first appears on a surface listen. Be warned when you listen –
the notion that there’s more going on than there seems to be is absolutely
valid, and if one central character sounds unlike themself…well, keep
listening.
Episode 2, Aliens and Sex
and Chips and Gravy, also by Goss, is a little less successful, mostly because
the villain of the piece is so successfully geared to annoy the living
daylights out of you. Imagine the hen night from alien hell, for the Bridezilla
From Beyond The Stars…and then imagine you’re her chauffeur-cum-bodyguard.
There’s a lot of driving around with a spoiled rotten teenage hellion in the
back in Episode 2, and while there’s at least some solid story here, and we
learn more about the main alien threat in this episode, sometimes the screechy
foot-stamping tantrum routine delivered by Sophie Coquohon as ‘Madrigal’ is a
little too real to make for enjoyable listening.
But it’s really in the
second half of this first box set where things start getting a little
pedestrian. Episode 3, Orr, by Juno Dawson, has some great inventive strokes –
particularly in terms of a specific threat the aliens bring with them in terms
of what they’re actually looking for, and the screamingly obvious parallels
with the modern world, where dialogue seems impossible with a group of zealots
with a higher purpose, but the addition of Orr as a new Torchwood team member
feels a little old hat, inasmuch as listeners who are across the TV sci-fi
waterfront will recognise an idea from (among others) an old episode of Red
Dwarf, though this is Torchwood, so the idea of Orr is given a modern gritty
twist, with overtones of sex trafficking, victim conditioning and the challenge
for an established understanding of the world that’s brought by trans-equality
and pronouns. To tell you much more than that would spoil the episode’s
surprises, which are impressive, but the episode does end on something of a
literal damp squib, rather than the big bang it goes out of its way to convince
you is coming.
And Episode 4, Superiority
Complex by AK Benedict, similarly recycles some fairly old sci-fi ideas, but
gives them a suitably Torchwood wash and brush-up. The aliens are properly
getting their feet under the table in Cardiff Bay, and open up a sentient hotel
that’s ‘aliens-only’ in terms of the guests. There are some highly guessable
elements of this episode, but it does rather uncomfortably pose a question of
relevance to the Brexiting world in which we find ourselves – if aliens don’t
come in ray-guns blazing, but work, and establish their community, and then
start establishing exclusionary areas, at what point do you draw the line
between immigration and invasion?
Torchwood Aliens Among Us,
Part 1 has a lot of potential – there’s much, much more going on already than
we see on the surface – the middle episodes bring that screamingly into focus,
and perhaps, just perhaps, it’s significant that new cast member Alexandria
Riley as Ng is credited, but never explicitly heard to be named in this first
box set. There’s a sense of credible continuation from the events of Miracle
Day (and the John and Carol Barrowman novel, Exodus Code), there are new
characters who appeal immediately, and new characters who feel instinctively
like they’re going to have a journey and an arc throughout Aliens Among us. Big
Finish, more than Miracle Day ever did, gets our teeth firmly sunk into those
characters and their potential journeys, and drags us along for the ride. Yes,
there are some recycled ideas along the way – Bridezilla, Orr, Sentient Hotels
– but this feels like Torchwood brought bang up to date in the post-Brexit-vote
world, with Torchwood rebuilding from more or less scratch. Sure, if you’ve
been a fan from (ahem) Day One, you’ll get a lot more from this new version,
but it’s also a highly effective jumping-on point for a whole new generation of
Torchwood fans.
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