Tony’s getting a
classic Torchwood vibe.
Aliens Among Us is the
official fifth series of Torchwood, and in many ways it’s delivering a ‘Classic
Torchwood’ vibe, albeit with a few new twists – the team are back in the Hub,
dealing with an alien incursion-cum-migration into Cardiff and the complexities
of giving a welcome to visitors from elsewhere in the galaxy while still
maintaining the human world in its (at least perceived) ‘normality.’
The first story in this
box set, Love Rat is absolutely classic Torchwood – almost to the point of
being a re-tread of the Day One storyline. Buckle up, everybody, it’s alien
sex-parasite time again. This time with added rat-glands. So…that’s special.
Especially when you have Jack Harkness, Tyler ‘anybody’s for a cute smile’
Steele and Orr on the team. It’s fast-paced, fun and entertaining, without
being overly demanding in terms of its social conscience, meaning it gets you
into the set quickly, almost before you realise you’re in.
A Kill To A View, by Mac
Rogers, is rather meatier fare and a parable of modern shallowness, the will to
power, and the fight to be the king of any given swamp – it’s a pitched battle
for the best apartment in a block, and death by dinner party, a kind of Come
Die With Me, without the arch narration. That said, if it’s arch narration
you’re looking for, A Kill To A View brings back Torchwood’s middle-manager of
death, Bilis Manger (played as ever by Murray Melvin), organising the ascent of
the most brutally bloody-minded ‘winners’ among the apartment block’s tenants. As
with the on-screen Bilis Manger story, there’s a logic to why he’s doing what
he’s doing, but compared to the action that it motivates, the logic falls away
and cowers in the background, leaving A Kill To A View one to enjoy on its own
terms. Those terms thankfully include a shining turn by Mr Colchester (Paul
Clayton), as his husband (played by increasingly omnipresent member of the Big
Finish Repertory Company Ramon Tikaram) is threatened by Manger’s schemes and
the tenants from Hell.
Zero hour, by Janine H
Jones, is a tale that gets its curiosity-hooks deep into the listener early. It
develops a theme that’s been toyed with in Doctor Who and Sherlock – the people
who move through our cities and lives without us ever really noticing them, and
what they might actually be up to –
but delivers on the strength of its core concept with a beautifully dark
Torchwood touch as it takes Tyler Steele into a courier firm with several
differences. ‘Deliverables’ is a firm with an alien touch, and it plots its
workers’ movements down to the ever-productive second, with an app that drives
their schedules – but where is it taking them, and why? There’s some
deliciously geeky science at the heart of this story, but capped with the
nihilistic doctrine that claims individual human lives don’t matter in the
picture of the whole. While Love Rat is fun and easily digestible, and A Kill
To A View has a touch of the sardonically satirical that makes it irresistible,
it’s in Zero Hour that you’ll probably stick with Aliens Among Us Part 2 for
the sheer power of the concepts and the storytelling – and it’s the episode of
this box set that will stay with you longest and make you think hardest
afterwards.
That said, The Empty Hand
by Tim Foley punches at a heavyweight level too, especially in the era of ‘fake
news,’ the ‘post-truth society’ and the delicate balance between believing
victims who have the courage to speak up about abuse and the potential to
direct an emotional public into a lynch mob. Sergeant Andy ‘Nice Guy’ Davidson
has been accused of a race-hate killing. What’s more, there’s CCTV to prove he
did it. But Andy has no memory of the action – with Cardiff balanced on a
knife-edge of acceptance and hate between various groups, is it possible that
Andy’s gone off the deep end of a nervous breakdown? Or is someone manipulating
the public into a frenzy and using Andy as a trigger?
This is Torchwood, don’t
forget – nothing’s ever entirely as certain or as straightforward as you might
think, and The Empty Hand is a deeply effective and affecting piece of writing
and performance, most particularly from Tom Price as Andy. Ultimately, the
question remains – whoever’s right or wrong in a complex case, can anyone’s
life ever be the same again after incendiary events tear lives apart?
The third box set is
destined to round out Torchwood – Aliens Among Us. While the first set kicked
us off with a degree or purpose and direction, the second box set is far more
loosely connected, like the episodes of Series 1 or 2, rather than part of a
bigger overall picture, as with Children of Earth or Miracle Day. There is a thread running through the episodes
of the second box set, but it’s much more thinly woven than it was in set 1,
leaving each of the episodes here to focus on the issues and situations with
which they deal. As such, the second box set is a well-chosen collection of
stories, rather than a layered arc that builds episode by episode. It’s new
Torchwood, certainly, with a very early feel, updated for the post-Brexit
world.
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