Tony’s not a member of
the god-squad just yet.
Torchwood ‘Series 5’ –
Aliens Among us introduced us to a new, post-Miracle Day Torchwood 3, and then
basically blew up any rulebook we thought we knew. New characters joined, old
characters left, new characters were
old characters. Old characters came back from the dead. Jack had sex with
anything that stayed still long enough – it’s nice to know some things about
Torchwood at least stay the same with the passing of time.
What we should presumably
call ‘Series 6’ – God Among Us, begins at the funeral of a Torchwood regular.
So – that’s a bit of a
bugger then.
Seriously, the opening to
Future Pain by James Goss will kick you right in the teeth. Much of the action
of this first episode takes place at that funeral, and much like Gwen’s wedding
in on-screen Torchwood, there’s also a big alien-hunt/battle to attend to. God
– not any god we’ve invented here on this silly little blue marble of a planet,
but the god of the Sorvix (from which they fled to Earth and ended up more or
less running 21st century Cardiff), has arrived, looking for its
chosen people. Or…well, really any
people. It’s a mark of the make-up of new Torchwood that it has people on board
these days who can if not exactly deal with
its presence here, then at least tackle the impact of that presence in a whole
different way to that in which ‘old’ Torchwood would have been forced to do.
Future Pain explores some of that, while, did I mention, repeatedly punching
you in the face with the death of a much-beloved Torchwood member. Particular
fans of that character might well not want to push on through the rest of the
set. Do, because without getting appallingly miraculous about the whole thing,
the situation’s more complicated than you can possibly imagine at this stage.
The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood, by Guy Adams, is both a bit cool, and a touch ragged round the edges. It brings us into contact with Brent Hayden, right-wing incel-adjacent tin-foil hat-boy conspiracy junkie and Youtube self-realising entity, who wants to get to the bottom of Torchwood (insert, if nothing else, your own jokes here), the takeover of Cardiff by aliens, the Deep State, the Fake News and the Libtardocracy of disinformation and media manipulation.
On the one hand, this is
all vaguely pathetic and actively funny, though we never actually discover
enough about Brent’s background to understand what has set him on his path of
mum’s-basement net-riocrity. On the other hand of course, it doesn’t work so
well in a world where the basic premise of our drama is a secret organisation that
works above and beyond the government and traditional law enforcement agencies,
that deals with alien incursion, and which frequently wipes or messes with the
memories of innocent civilians to keep itself the most open secret on the
streets of Cardiff.
With Tyler Steele acting
as an information-feed for Brent’s online rants, actor Jonny Green gets the
chance, as he puts it in the Behind The Scenes interviews on this release, to ‘do
the right thing, while still being a bit of a dick about it.’ The rationale for
his involvement in the first place feels flimsy though, and so The Man Who
Destroyed Torchwood, while an interesting study in how people feel the need to
matter, to be the heroes of their own stories, and so to edit their own
experiences in a way that puts them forward positively, feels a bit
disconnected from any passing storylines – it’s a time out take on Torchwood
from a completely right-field angle, enjoyable in and of itself, but only
vaaaaaguely to do with the ongoing storyline of God Among Us.
See No Evil, by John
Dorney, could be said to be tangential too, inasmuch as there’s not a whoooole
lot of God-action, but there is most certainly an entertaining premise –
Cardiff has gone suddenly blind. Except it hasn’t really, it’s gone dark. And somewhere in the dark,
something is hunting.
It’s a creepy premise,
well delivered by breaking the cast up into groups and giving them each a
mini-mission, with Jack of all people on humanitarian duties, while other
Torchwood and non-Torchwood members go to hunt the hunter. It’s an episode long
on character development and interaction, without sacrificing the need for
Stuff to be happening to terrify the bejesus out of listeners and act as a spur
to all the interaction. We learn interesting things about one leading Torchwood
member who’s perplexingly back from the grave, as they get closer to someone
else and are called on some self-defence mechanisms they regularly employ.
Meanwhile, Jack gets closer to someone entirely else – and reveals a shocking
new development in his Torchwood story. Seriously – franchise-alteringly
shocking new development, at least potentially.
But that’s by no means the
end of the shocks in Dorney’s script, and it ends on an entirely different
bombshell, which leads us directly into Night Watch, by Tim Foley. As stories
go, that’s creepy in a whole different direction, as a vampiric space-nonce
arrives to feed on the dreams of humanity while they sleep – a process which is
potentially dangerous to those who are hurting, those who are broken. Torchwood
to the rescue – the usually active members get usually active, while one of the
newer recruits to the hub is sent on a gentler, more nursemaiding duty to keep
the dreamers of Cardiff safe until the break of day. Foley’s script allows for
anger to flare between Torchwood members – understandably so given the end of
Aliens Among Us – and yet while the threat and the solution are both firmly
within Torchwood’s remit, there’s something rather fairytale and magical about
the scope of Night Watch. In particular, it allows us as listeners to come full
circle from the first episode of this box set, to soften the kick in the teeth
dealt us by the funeral and to hope for positive developments in the next box
set.
God Among us, Part 1, is a
set of four episodes which are loosely connected but which conjur an atmosphere
of something immense, something powerful, no longer on the horizon, but not yet
entirely ready to manifest whatever destiny it has planned for us. Torchwood
always prophesied that the 21st century would be when everything
changed, and that it was ready. On the evidence here, there’s lots of division
and dissension in the ranks, but this is a Torchwood that does individually or
in small teams all that it can to keep the world turning for one more day. When
God is more fully among us, it remains to be heard whether this new Torchwood
can cut it.
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