Orientation, 101.
Suzie Costello was the
member of Torchwood Cardiff who was stealing and collecting alien tech, who
died in episode one of TV Torchwood, and was briefly revived later on in the
series. Torchwood on audio has been slightly kinder to Suzie Costello, showing
more of her character and allowing actress Indira Varma to stretch her dramatic
legs rather further than she got to do on TV.
Blon Fel-Fotch
Pasameer-Day Slitheen was one of the family of fart-gagging aliens who
attempted to turn the Earth into a radioactive slag-heap shortly after the
Ninth Doctor met up with Rose Tyler, and who – much more insidiously - later
became mayor of Cardiff before being youthed back to egghood so she could start
her life again with better influences than her family had been.
Naturally.
The point of which is that
we’ve seen how both their stories end, and there’s a fairly limited timespan in
which their lives overlap. Bringing them together could undoubtedly be fun, but
is there a strong enough story to warrant doing it?
Err…yes. Yes, there is.
Glad we had this talk. K…bye!
No, seriously – Lisa
McMullin delivers just enough plot here to hook you in and keep things
interesting. Supposedly crashed spaceship, Suzie goes to investigate, Blon,
looking for a way quietly off the planet before the rest of her family catch up
with her, wants the ship for herself, and then… then something interesting
happens. The two find themselves linked by a safety protocol in some alien
bangles, meaning they’re essentially ‘handcuffed’ together until help arrives.
Wellllll…help or a bunch
of missiles that will destroy the whole of Cardiff. One of the two. Possibly
both.
And so we’re off to the
races – there’s a pick-up rendez-vous to make, missiles to avoid, and a
cross-cultural exchange between the human and the Raxacoricofallapatorian to go
through. Torchwood - Sync is The Defiant Ones with a Torchwood twist.
No-one?
Really?
Google The Defiant Ones
right now, it’ll make your life better.
Anyway, the situation’s
fairly straightforward – neither of them can kill the other. Neither of them
can wander too far away from the other. They’re stuck together till the result
of the crash plays itself out. That, while high on concept, satisfies the
plot-itch in your brain and allows for much of the rest of the episode to be an
exchange of characters, a forging of links, a testing of boundaries and –
particularly joyful when you have actresses of the calibre of Indira Varma and Annette
Badland playing Suzie and Blon respectively – the formation of an unlikely
almost-friendship.
Essentially then, Lisa
McMullin gives you the best of at least two worlds in Sync – a plot idea that’s
both simple, evocative and works as a way of keeping the two central characters
together and alive, and the space to grow what we know about those characters
as they interact in interesting ways. Suzie’s a classic outsider, and while she
keeps her Torchwood credentials a secret from Blon for much of the episode, we
gain insights into the scale of that feeling of isolation as Indira Varma plays
her with great sensitivity, adding more shade and detail to the already more
fully-realised portrait of the character we’ve had in audio.
Meanwhile Blon, an outcast
from her clan after the failure of the Downing Street gambit, is forced to come
to terms with her own awkward position as a disgraced member of the Slitheen
family, and as mayor of Cardiff. They grow to these realisations and
conclusions while running from the would-be salvation of the crashed ship, and
while slowly peeling back the layers of each others’ characters. There are more
revelations in store than we’ve detailed for you here, and they show more of
Suzie’s character particularly, already turning to the ‘Dark Side’ as a
Torchwood operative when we meet her here.
The story ends with an
understanding that almost begs for sequels, if not a mini-series of Torchwood
stories in the pre-Gwen era, to allow Suzie and her new ‘friend’ at city hall
time to explore their friendship arc together, and add extra poignancy to
Blon’s eventual undoing at the hands of the especially hardline Ninth Doctor.
There’s great chemistry between the characters, and Lisa McMullin’s script
allows them both to breathe while they add layers to our understanding of them
both as individuals, and as they might be when working together. In fact, such
sequels would neatly tie together the mid-2000 world of the Ninth Doctor and TV
Torchwood and the eventual audio Torchwood of Aliens/God Among Us, where –
surprise, surprise! – there’s an alien as mayor of Cardiff. If you’re going to
use previous Doctor Who villains in a Torchwood context, there’s got to be
enough of their essence in the script, enough reason for them to be there, and
enough of the more grown-up Torchwood vibe to let them sit and act within that
new storytelling environment. Lisa McMullin smashes that balance out of the
park here, delivering a story which is both logical, resonant and fun, with
some lovely beats of character and profundity as it goes along. Annette Badland
is almost absurdly faultless in everything she does, and she brings back the
turn-on-a-dime playfulness of Blon here with a precision that sends shivers
down the spine on audio. Meanwhile, it is a truth universally acknowledged that
there should be more Indira Varma in the world, and her performance here is
strong enough to balance Badland’s energy, and make us yearn for more Suzie
Costello on audio, to fill in the contours of her story-arc between now and the
beginning of TV Torchwood.
Get Torchwood – Sync for
the balance of performances, the diligence of the storytelling and the layering
of character-dynamics and dilemmas as two early favourites in New Who and
Torchwood prove why they’ve earned their places in our hearts and minds. The
story makes sense, the actors excel, the pace is brisk and you end up wanting
more in a similar vein – which can’t be bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment