Tony checks in. But
will he ever leave…
Bilis Manger is an unusual
Torchwood villain. He’s not big and stompy and apocalyptic by any means
whatsoever – to all intents and purposes he looks and sounds like a harmless,
rather sweet old man. But Bilis Manger is a turner of screws, an opener of
portals to ultimate chaos, a steel-spined streak of self-interest dipped in
poison and chocolate.
And now he’s back.
This, in case you’re
getting the wrong idea, is very very good news for Torchwood fans. Bilis has
started appearing here and there in the audio Torchwood stories from Big Finish,
perhaps most effectively in A Kill To A View from Torchwood: Aliens Among Us,
Part 2.
Deadbeat Escape from James
Goss though feels like it knocks all previous Bilis stories aside and claims
the top spot, because it’s both focused and layered, delivering the horror of a
kind of Hell – with Bilis as its maitre d’.
The script is teeming with
what seem like influences – imagine Hotel California, just outside of Cardiff –
‘my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night…’
When you stop at this
particular bed and breakfast though, you really, truly stop. Not for nothing is
it called the Traveller’s Halt. Not Rest – Halt. Strangely depressed people
fill the dining room eating Soup of the Day, whatever day that is. A dripping
tap in the room next door keeps you permanently awake, and the person in whose
room you hear the tap is asleep like an ageing Sleeping Beauty, as though time
didn’t stop when she fell asleep.
And then there’s the rain.
Torrential, aggressive rain that stops you leaving. Ever.
Billis is there for
reasons of his own, which it would churlish to spoil for you, but suffice it to
say the story takes the form of a kind of grand tour of the guest house, Bilis
showing newbie Gareth Pierce, played with a brusque aplomb by Hywel Roberts,
around the physical space, the oddities it encompasses, the hopes, the
opportunities – and the ungovernable, inescapable dangers, as though welcoming
a fellow prisoner to this guest house of the damned.
It’s never that simple
with Bilis Manger. There’s lots of talk about time, about a broken clock and a piece
of the regulating clockwork, the Deadbeat Escape of the title. The thing that
puts all deviations right. That’s how Bilis claims to see himself in this story
– a mender of clocks, a person sensitive to the needs of time. His lectures on
time and timekeeping bring a chill of Sapphire and Steel to the audio, with
time as the enemy, time as the trap from which there seems to be no escape,
while Gareth frets about reaching his father in hospital, who doesn’t have long
left. There’s a poignancy in Gareth’s
rush to reach his father – like many of us, he has a need for closure with a
parent with whom he’s had a complex relationship. But Bilis and the guesthouse
of doom have other ideas.
The story has a deeply
satisfying sense of pace – it’s confined, tense, almost Hammer horror stuff,
but it feeds you, one clue, one revelation, one shock at a time, making you
hungrier and hungrier to reach some sort of conclusion.
‘You can check out any
time you like – but you can never leave.’ That’s the darkest line of Hotel
California, the final shock, and it’s a line with relevance to Deadbeat Escape
too – the notion of autonomy in a house that’s pitted its wits and its time
against you is a cruel one, and we hear Gareth come to this startling
realisation in a thoroughly vivid way. The ending of the story is perfect and
chilling and a testament to the strength of Bilis Manger as a character, and to
Murray Melvin’s performance as the man who does whatever is necessary. It will
punch you when you finally realise what’s been going on and why – and Goss,
directed by the hardcore vision of Scott Handcock, spares not a single nerve in
making that punch hurt. Bilis Manger is by no means a serial killer, but his
words and his attitude at the end of this story show the patience and the
dedication to his own interests that you’d expect of one, as he reveals the
trick behind the trap, the fix that exists for the clockwork of the house. It’s
horrifying. It’s utterly, utterly horrifying…but in a way you’ll rush to listen
to time and time and time again. Although, to be fair, perhaps you won’t
re-listen that much – when time is so much the enemy in this story, looping
your listening might feel too much like tempting fate.
Deadbeat Escape is a
staggering, steel comb down the spine of a listen, that will make you gasp,
make you sniff, and make you revel in the darkness of Bilis Manger. It’s a
Torchwood story with only one real mention of any of the Torchwood regulars,
but it works sublimely in their absence, free from the pressure of any
particular goodie. Take a walk on the dark side with Bilis Manger, and dare to
check in to the Traveller’s Halt – then see if you can fathom out the Deadbeat
Escape.
No comments:
Post a Comment