Tony helps burn suburban hell to the ground.
Ten years ago, Torchwood
– Children of Earth terrified a nation and later a world with its gritty,
ghastly prospect: aliens who were addicted to the secretions of children, and
who wanted to take a job lot away with them, or they’d kill us all. The horror
of the concept made Children of Earth a dark high point in TV
Torchwood’s career, and one of the particular spikes of horror was that
(spoilers, but get over yourself, it’s been ten years), Ianto Jones, Torchwood
operative and lover of Jack Harkness, was killed.
To commemorate that ten
year deathiverssary, Big Finish has released Torchwood – Serenity, a
story featuring Jack and Ianto set back in their heyday, when they were working
out exactly what it was they had together. As if to highlight the uncertainty
of that, James Moran (whose last Torchwood work was apparently on Children
of Earth – how has a decade gone by and allowed that to happen?) puts
Jack and Ianto in a kind of Desperate Housewives – Of Death! scenario, a
gated community in Cardiff, where life couldn’t be more Stepford, more suburban,
more passive aggressive if it tried. It’s all cheery greetings, beaming smiles
and prizes for the best kept lawn.
It’s hell on earth, and
Torchwood’s investigating.
To anchor the episode back
in the days of Ianto being alive, Serenity also gives us a return
engagement for a Series 2 villain, an organisation ideally suited to invasion
and destruction through weekend barbecues and very small, small talk. The
episode unfolds like Mr and Mrs Smith meets Men In Black… in
Cardiff, with Jack going cheerily off to work each day, leaving Ianto to be
househusband and to deal with all the helpful, polite, smiley visits by the
neighbours to discuss the length of his lawn grass and the state of the
as-yet-unwashed car.
It’s a subtle but
staggeringly honest satire on the domestic Fascism of collective ‘niceness,’
and the difficulty of not punching neighbourhood busybodies in the face. And
Ianto, remember, is no domestic slouch – he’s a man who wears a suit to serve
coffee.
As the episode unfolds, so
does the alien threat, but not before Jack and Ianto have enormous fun
impersonating each other’s characters, fend off threesomes and foursomes,
endure a barbecue full of meat-based knob gags and realise the consequences of
foiling this particular alien invasion.
Underneath all this of
course are those awkward questions any relatively new relationship doesn’t want
to ask, but has to find ways to get past – what is it we have? Are we just
having fun or could this be a serious thing? Do we want it to be a serious
thing? Do we want to blow up the house and take everyone else’s house with it?
Standard stuff, but given an effective Torchwood twist in this story. By
putting these two characters in the environment of ultra-nice neighbours,
picket fences, and suburban gated ugliness, James Moran forces them to look
themselves in the heart and ask ‘What the hell do I want out of this
relationship? Is it going to end up here anyway, and if it does, is that right
for me?’
On top of all that, there
are ethical questions tackled in this otherwise relatively light-hearted script
– if you have an alien threat that can ‘infect’ other people, are you justified
in killing those it’s infected as a first response? Do you not have a duty to
try to help the infected, or do you just kill them? Imagine the zombie
apocalypse – do you reason with the zombies as they march towards you, or do
you shoot first, run away second, and agonise about the morality of it all at
some later, safer date over a bottle of wine or whiskey?
And just when you think
that’s the peak of moral indecision with which this story will present you,
Moran adds another layer to the question. If there was a threat to your way of
life, and you could press a single button to make it go away – silently,
distantly, with no immediate impact on you – but to press the button meant
death for other people, meant potentially genocide, could you press the button?
In an age of nuclear
weapons and drone warfare, these are important questions, and here they
underline a fundamental difference between a Jack who still feels he’s bound by
the ideas of the Tenth Doctor, and Ianto, who for all his experience at
Torchwood One, still has qualms about standing at that moral crisis point and
doing the deadly thing. In this story it actually makes you ponder the question
of whether the Tenth Doctor is the best example to learn from, and whether
Jack, perhaps, has grown so used to having ‘no choice’ but to do the deadly
thing it’s become his first choice. It makes you wonder how far he is
down the path of remote-access death and destruction, how far divorced he is
from the consequences of death, as an immortal. How far his vision of the
‘bigger picture’ has deafened him to the immediate, horrifying consequences of
his actions – a crisis to which he’s re-introduced through the events of Children
of Earth.
But before you get the
impression that this is all angsty death and consequences, that’s just a moment
towards the end. For the most part, this is a celebration of Jack and Ianto, a funny
scenario of domestic bliss and whether they’re ready for it now, or ever will
be. But, y’know, with aliens wanting to take over the world, one barbecue at a
time. It’s a cracking listen and a laugh-out-loud reunion for the winners of
Team Torchwood’s Hottest Couple Award. Give it a go, and then get out and trim
your privet – you never know who might be watching…
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