Big Finish Reviews+ The Hunting Ground by Matt Rabjohns

Every now and then with Big Finish, after a run of already absolutely superb stories, you get one that is even that extra bit special. For me The Hunting Ground by AK Benedict is one of those stories. Colin Baker to begin with is on the top of his game here, its lovely in the bonus interviews at the end of the story to hear the writer herself show such warmth and love for this most undervalued and underrated Doctor. So good to hear that the writers love his oh so colourful and sparkly Doctor. And it ain’t hard to see why AK says what she does about Colin's sublime take on the role.

Colin gets to spar magnificently with the delightful Amy Beth Hayes as Yrsa Kristjansdottir. And one for certain can yet again that Amy should absolutely be a companion for his Doctor, oh boy yes, she should. She's a great cop, with a firm and logical head on her shoulders and takes care of herself well within this superb tale. She also gets to act some touching and stirring moments of pathos whilst trying to discover why her Dad was murdered, and whom committed the murder. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Amy has given one of my favourite performances of a character for a very long time in a Big Finish audio. Yes, I kid you not her strength of character yet her caring nature make her one heck of a character. Oh, Big Finish when you restart the Doctors in their own box sets in 2022 please please, please, don’t let Amy Beth pass you by again. It would be absolutely incredible hearing her be yet another new companion for Old Sixie.

I always love stories that are set in bleak and harsh landscapes too. And the sound and the score for this story work very very, well indeed. The feel of this being set in Iceland feels totally authentic, but then again one has come to expect no less from the great Big Finish productions. The Hunter is a rather unpleasant and vulgar creation too, played with zeal and aplomb by Michael Griffiths. That he turns out to be not a wholly black hearted psychopath in the end though does make his final scenes in the play saddening and stirring. It’s good that some writers seem to grasp the point that the best villains are written in shades of grey sometimes, and not just black and white. Yes, his ending is actually saddening in the end and gives yet another added touch of emotional impact to an already emotionally rich story.

You can tell that AK knows her stuff about crime writing too. This tale flows along superbly well. A succinct and tight plot which never has any overtly distracting humour to ruin the tone of the story. It does though have a vein of light relief, this time in the amusing form of the two headed alien being Marfick. Both heads are brilliantly portrayed by Will Hislop and Joe Jameson. Both of these guys never verge on stupid either, and they make a memorable and decent and even lovable character indeed who’s obsessed with all things administration!

Michael Griffiths also gets to portray Yrsa's father and it’s great to hear an actor being given two such polar opposite roles within a story. And Michael delivers fantastically for both roles. The story of her father's death is one that is extremely well portrayed. Malcolm James as the slimy creep Sigdor too really impresses with his performance. And we also get a very commendable performer in Harriet Colling's Frida too.

This story brings its twists and turns well, and has some moments I genuinely found quite surprising and brilliant to listen to. Margaret Ashley particularly as the DCI comes over very well as a character who isn't wholly ripe but at least still has a firm grip on her humanity, and throughout the story this comes over extremely well again indeed. The story has some great cliffhangers and the resolutions of those cliffhangers too are brilliant and inventive and all come together to make one of the most enjoyable and lovely stories I've heard in a while from Big Finish. In fact, this may even be my favourite Big Finish outing for quite some time, and that truly is saying something with the fantastic array of stories we've been getting from Big Finish for the last few years in all their ranges.

A story rich with strong characters, highly charged performances and some sublime scoring and sound design, The Hunting Ground truly is a total winner of a tale and I please hope that Big Finish have the sense not to let the chance of Amy Beth's Yrsa pass them by. I for one definitely want her to be a new companion. Honestly, I must even admit that shes made an even bigger impression on me than even Constance or Flip did in their debuts, and I adore both those characters to pieces. Sorry but I don’t care if I’m gushing. Its only due to the simple fact that AK has written a first class Old Sixie adventure where her writing of his character is absolutely spot on and Colin sinks his teeth into the role yet again and runs with it with the lovely Yrsa at his side. Honestly the vein of brilliant characters Big Finish create never cease to amaze me.

Wolves, Hunters, murderous intrigue and even some superb moments of intense pathos. Honestly what more could one ask from a story? Oh boy am I glad Big Finish gave us a jewel of an adventure such as this. This is one of those very rare cases where every single element of a story works perfectly and comes together to make a belter of a story.

Articles Welcome to Issue 63 - WATNOW: Sleeper

Articles

Where Are They Now? Sleeper Cast

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/articles-where-are-they-now-sleeper.html

 Big Finish Reviews+

A Small Semblance of Home

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-small-semblance-of.html

Jeremiah Bourne In Time

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-jeremiah-bourne-in.html

Lady Christina

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-lady-christina-by.html

Sixth Doctor: Fortunes of War

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-sixth-doctor.html

The Dalek Occupation of Winter

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-dalek-occupation-of.html

Red Planet

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-red-planets-by-tony.html

Eleventh Doctor Chronicles

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-eleventh-doctor.html

The First Doctor Adventures, Vol 2

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/big-finish-reviews-first-doctor.html

TW Reviews

Deadbeat Escape

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/reviews-torchwood-deadbeat-escape-by.html

Connections

Bodyguard

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/connections-bodyguard-2018-by-dj-forrest.html

Beyond The TARDIS

The Sarah Jane Adventures:

Warriors of Kudlak part 2

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/beyond-tardis-sja-warriors-of-kudlak.html

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

https://projecttorchwood.blogspot.com/2018/10/beyond-tardis-whatever-happened-to.html

Editor’s Note

Five weeks is a long month, and September was indeed a gruelling time working through a lot of articles, researching and reviewing more than we could fit into this issue. Having found a copy of Sarah Pinborough’s novel Behind Her Eyes at a local table top sale recently, I’ve been enjoying some quiet times to read – however not read enough to write a review this month.

One exciting piece of news happened on the 26^th of September this year, when Guy Adams announced to friends on social media that he was now engaged to fellow writer AK Benedict. Congratulations to you both from all of us here at PT! Special thanks for the permission of the photograph Guy!

Tony has been mad busy making up for the reviews he was unable to add to last month’s Issue, so do look out for those.

Hands up if you have been glued to the television screens this past month watching BBC’s new drama series Bodyguard with Keeley Hawes. Absolutely fantastic episodes and edge of the seat watching. So much for putting it on in the background. I knew I’d seen Nadia before on the train but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where, but when I began the research I laughed out loud. Of course, I’d seen her before, it was Rani from SJA!!!

Who has been reading the web toon series Acursian? We’ll be putting our own review in next month’s issue as didn’t have enough time to put it together for this one.

If you would like to join our team and write reviews for us, do please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Welcome to Issue 63 – WATNOW Sleeper

Djak

Big Finish Reviews+ The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s in Eleventh Heaven.

Full disclosure – it took me until A Christmas Carol to see Matt Smith as the Doctor. There are Reasons, and you don’t need to know what they are, but the point is, it took a while for his Doctor to convince me it was anything more than a collection of tics in ghastly tweed suit.

But when you watch the Eleventh Doctor now, at some distance from the weekly over-dissection of being the newest episodes, he’s a stone cold masterclass.

In which spirit, woohoo, and wahay! The Eleventh Doctor has arrived at Big Finish!

With…out Matt Smith in it…Oh.

There’s a sense about the whole ‘Chronicles’ idea at Big Finish of ‘Why would you do that?’ – they’re stories featuring New Who Doctors, without any of the actors who played the New Who Doctors in, and it’s worth bearing in mind, there are fans who are annoyed that William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee have been recast, despite the significant inconvenience of their being dead, so the idea of recasting lead actors who are still alive is enough to make them heap their Big Finish CDs together in a pile and set light to them.

Well, perhaps not quite, but almost.

For those who have less of a problem with there being more Doctor Who in the world, the Chronicles are a chance to tell full New Who stories while getting around the real-life issues of actors having post-Who careers. While both David Tennant and Matt Smith have been agreeable to the idea of returning to their Doctors at Big Finish, and Tennant has so far done so twice (or twice and a bit if you’re in the know), getting recording windows with New Who Doctors post-Who is agonisingly difficult. Step forward, Jacob Dudman, who voiced Tennant’s Doctor in the Tenth Doctor Chronicles, and here elbows out all contenders to also play the Eleventh Doctor.

Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further. The Eleventh Doctor is a role Dudman appears to have been born to play. His Eleventh Doctor goes beyond uncanny, and he could quite easily play the role for decades to come, because while he’s technically not Matt Smith, if, say, Matt Smith lost all scrap of his voice, he could hire Dudman as a replacement voicebox, to go everywhere with him and say the things he needed to say.

It would be weird, certainly, but he could do it, and apart from the whole ‘two bodies’ thing, nobody’d much notice the difference.

So with that firmly understood, welcome back to the world of the Eleventh Doctor. This first Eleventh Doctor Chronicles set takes us through the Eleventh Doctor’s life and friendships on a buffet principle – a little of this, a little of that, giving an overall picture of the Time Lord’s essential self.

The Calendar Man by AK Benedict is a classic Eleven and Amy story, with that kind of mythic fairy tale sense of their early adventures. They follow a distress signal to a colony world with a problem it doesn’t remember it has, where people go missing in the mist, and then disappear from the memories of the world, including their families. The Calendar Man is coming for them, and only one young woman seems immune.

Benedict makes the Calendar Man something rather interesting - a villain that can even scare the Doctor, in a story that captures that sense of early Eleven whimsy and darkness. The solution relies on the Doctor’s personal bravery, but equally on the actions and characters of his friends, and there’s a solid heart-punch in the forgetful people’s forgetfulness too. A classic switcheroo with a twist at the end gives you plenty to grab hold of, and also some pretty heavyweight dramatic consequences. The Calendar Man kicks the set off with a cracking mystery and some honest personality-beats, and Dudman, as mentioned, is so good as the Eleventh Doctor, it’s practically identity theft.

The Top Of The Tree, by Simon Guerrier is an exhausting, relentless, ravening beast of a story.

Guerrier brings the Eleventh Doctor and Kazran Sardick (Danny Horn reprising his TV role) into a tree-world, where there’s a strong potential for ghastliness and danger almost everywhere you look. It’s a whole ‘Ecosystem Of Death’ deal, with bravery, sacrifice, more than a touch of horror and the kind of antithetical environment that frankly only Mother Nature (and now Simon Guerrier) would create, to put living creatures through the mill in order to sharpen their instincts and force them to adapt. When Kazran and the Doctor get separated from the Tardis, run into a species of evolving humanoids and discover that almost everything they touch is either horribly dangerous or downright lethal, they’re going to have to climb for their lives. The relentlessly dangerous environment of The Top Of The Tree, and the psychological trauma of some of the things we find out on our way through the story, makes it an exhausting listen, because by the end of it, you feel like you too have been through the evolutionary mill, but Guerrier, like Benedict, gives great Eleventh Doctor – particularly in terms of having conversations in which he assumes the  most likely response of the other party, based on his own somewhat skewed but endearingly barking mad outlook on life. Horn’s return is always going to be fun, because the Kazran Diaries will always fill in the gaps in our head-canon of A Christmas Carol. The Top Of The Tree is one that you’ll take a deep breath before re-listening to, but one that you’ll want to revisit for the character-work, despite the exhaustingly vertical storytelling and the sadness along the way.

Ohh, Dorium Maldovar. Who doesn’t love Dorium Maldovar? He’s clever and waspish and blue, for goodness’ sake, not loving Dorium Maldovar should probably be illegal.  

Hardly surprising then that bringing Simon Fisher-Becker, the man beneath the Maldovar, into official Big Finish stories is one of the better decisions the company’s made this year. He’s absolutely one of the best things in The Light Keepers, by Roy Gill. 

There are some pretty interesting issues tackled in the story – you could argue there are comments on fracking in there, as well as the rights of indigenous people. Mostly though, if we’re honest, it’s Fisher-Becker’s Dorium and the chance to learn more about him, while having him be spectacularly cross with the Eleventh Doctor, that will nail The Light Keepers to your ears and make you want to come back to it. Dudman and Fisher-Becker together are superb, a galactic odd couple whose dialogue is both beautiful and hilarious.

The actual Big Bad in The Light Keepers is a returning enemy, and it’s learned a new trick since the last time we heard it. Whether it works or not partly depends on a) whether you heard the stories in which it appeared previously, and b) whether you thought it worked originally, but Gill certainly gives the new twist enough vigour that it feels like it has a reason to be at the heart of things here either way, giving the villain probably its strongest showing to date.

‘Jane Austen. Amazing writer, a brilliant comic observer, and—strictly amongst ourselves—a phenomenal kisser.’

So said the ever-incorrigible Clara Oswald.

If you ever wanted to hear the story in which Clara kissed Jane (at least for what seems the like the first time)…buckle up, space-babies, because Alice Cavender has you covered in False Coronets.

This is not, however, some internet fan-fiction where Jane and Clara get their smooch on for the sake of it. It’s a kickass ‘time’s gone wrong’ story of Regency alien nastiness, and what might have happened if England had followed France’s lead and lopped off the heads of its aristocrats in a big revolution.

Anti-revolutionary propogandist-in-chief? Your own, your very own Jane Austen, locked in a cell and awaiting execution, before she had a chance to write all the books that Clara loves so much. And so, as much to put right this affront to literature as to do the history-saving thing, the Eleventh Doctor and Clara skip back to try and find out what’s gone wrong, collapse the living botheration out of the revolutionary timeline and get home in time for tea and Persuasion.

It’s a complicated one, this, but that’s what you get with alternative timeline stories. Nevertheless, the combination of Cavendar’s relentless commitment to never be boring, Dudman’s continuing quest to put the actual Matt Smith out of a job, and the bright, engaging voice-work of Nathalie Buscombe as Miss Austen means you feel like you’re in a sparkling quadrille – there may be twirls and partner-swapping and bowing galore, but it’s always bright, and controlled, and going somewhere interesting. In a more run-of-the-mill collection, False Coronets would be an eeeeasy stand-out. Here though, with more than something to recommend every story, it punches at least at the weight of the other three. And then, y’know, it has Clara kissing Jane Austen. So…there’s that too.

The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles is, for our money, the brightest, most energetic, and most fun of the Chronicles sets so far, and while Dudman is a scarily convincing Tenth Doctor in the absence of David Tennant, his Eleventh Doctor takes personification to almost absurd new levels. More Eleventh Doctor Chronicles might conceivably hurt somebody’s feelings, somewhere.

They wouldn’t hurt ours in the slightest. 

*Cough, cough* Eleventh Doctor and Strax, anyone?

Reviews Torchwood Outbreak by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s breaking out all over.

Torchwood on Big Finish audio has been tied up with the Committee for its first two series and its first special release.

Torchwood Outbreak is, in a real sense, Torchwood breaking out of its mould. It’s free of the Committee for the first time, forced to deal with an enormous problem, while still being true to its characters. Let’s say this before we start – it’s quite a relief to free Torchwood from its internecine war against the non-corporeal aliens who take over pensioners. Torchwood Outbreak is Series 2.5 - it has the vibe of Series 2, with Jack and Ianto establishing themselves as a couple, and Gwen and Rhys very strongly in love, with Rhys just needing a smidgen of reassurance that it’s him Gwen really cares for, not the swanky yank in the damn good coat. The storytelling scale of Outbreak though is much more Children of Earth or Miracle Day than it is Series 2. Hence Series 2.5.

As you might expect from the title, Torchwood Outbreak is also Big Finish smashing a couple of ranges together – it’s Torchwood to its bones, but it brings in a Survivors-style threat, a plague virus that kills and causes havoc throughout Cardiff, and beyond. That said, there’s something altogether more creepy about the Torchwood infection than the Survivors version – imagine wires burrowing under your skin, moving, burning, making you so nuts you tear yourself open to try and pull them out. This is Torchwood, remember – there will be blood.

There’s also a really weird progression pattern to the disease, which gives you intense feelings of love for the most natural object of your affection, then turns that emotion into an even more intense need to kill that person. There are hallucinations along the way, and as Cardiff, and the Hub go into simultaneous quarantine lockdown, we learn where the infection comes from, and what the nature of the insidious plot behind the virus actually is.

Insidious plot behind the virus? Of course. This is Torchwood. There’s usually an insidious plot behind the grimness in Torchwood, and Outbreak doesn’t disappoint in that regard.

Where it might disappoint is if you stop and actually think about it too hard. There’s an old project from the Fifties which has been unearthed, in the failed destruction of which – naturally – Jack was involved, alongside cheeky Torchwood ghost chappie Norton Folgate, who seems to be here largely because of the joyful quality of Samuel Barnett’s performance. The infection, which at first seems like a random lab accident, quickly becomes something rather darker and more deliberate. While maintaining a grand tradition of Torchwood figures of authority being deeply amoral wrong ’uns, there’s something about the development of the story in AK Benedict’s third episode of Outbreak that ventures dangerously close to justifying the real-world ‘anti-vax’ conspiracy theory, which is based on little more than idiocy. Granted, in the sci-fi arena and established as fiction, it’s a solid, resonant plot device, but you might get just a little uncomfortable with it before the end.

If we’re being really picky, there’s a sense of some padding throughout the three episodes too. The mid-section, with Jack locked up in the Hub after contracting the virus, Ianto trying to work out what to do for him, and Norton switching sides almost more often than he takes a breath, means Emma Reeves’ episode has a feeling of Tochwood: The Shining more than anything that especially moves the plot along, and in Guy Adams’ first episode too, there’s quite a lot of quirkiness involved in the way people succumb to the outbreak – bus drivers suddenly imagining they’re playing the violin etc – though that does, in fairness, add to the Torchwoody strangeness of it all, and allows people not to see the true impact of the citywide apocalypse coming.

What’s excellently done throughout is the relationship between Gwen and Rhys, which is thankfully allowed to drive quite a lot of the plot forward. With Gwen trapped inside a hastily-erected ‘ring of steel,’ Rhys has to use his nous to break through and reach her, and as the episodes unfold, their chemistry together is beautifully…Welsh, Eve Myles and Kai Owen working if anything better together on audio even than they did on screen, creating a real force of optimism and brute bloody-minded force to stand, and occasionally smash things, against the cynical forces of darkness behind Cardiff’s outbreak. PC Andy’s a force to be reckoned with here too, the writers continuing Big Finish’s campaign to give Andy a fair crack at rounded, deepened characterisation, and Tom Price delivering on the character’s potential. He’s the voice of ordinary coppers here, faced with a (fairly literally) demented situation, and only his own resources of ingenuity to call on to deal with it. In many ways, he’s the voice of human reason, outside the scope of Torchwood and its world-saving mission.

The ending of the story is just a touch anti-climactic, and dependent on Jack – who uses up one of his infinite number of deaths here (because after all, it almost wouldn’t be an epic Torchwood story if he didn’t) – pretty much ‘deleting’ the virus, as he can, because he’s Jack, leaving the story powering on, and on, and on, and then, suddenly, not powering anywhere any more.  While not detracting from the power of the story overall, or its sense of worth, the relative ease of the eventual ending is discomfiting given that people have died to get us to that point.

For all the Shining-padding, and the anti-vax closeness (as we say, that does at least give the plot here an extra dimension of breathtaking cunning and evil bastardy), and the ‘Oh, that’s sorted then’ ending, Torchwood Outbreak is an engaging story, that powers through its run time with a combination of growing weirdness, panic, retaliation and cynical evil, as the forces of goodness, personified by Gwen, Rhys, Ianto and Andy (Jack optional) battle to keep control of their sanity and their city. Is it up there with, say UNIT: Extinction or Survivors, Series 1? No – but it’s as good a way to spend some hours as UNIT: Shutdown or Survivors Series 2. On that basis alone, it’s worth your money. The extra bonuses here of freedom from the Committee, great written chemistry between Gwen and Rhys and great performances from Myles, Owen, Price and Barnett make Torchwood Breakout more than a solid addition to your collection, and more like the must-have it’s striving to be.

News Happy Birthday AK Benedict 29th May 2016

AK Benedict

AK Benedict, writer of Big Finish Torchwood: The Victorian Age, celebrates her birthday today along with Frederick Jaeger (1928) who played Professor Marius/Sorenson and Jano in various episodes of Doctor Who from 1966 – 1977. Neville Jason (1934) who played Prince Reynart in Doctor Who: The Androids of Tara in 1978. Mike Lucas (1941) who played Tom in Doctor Who: The Smugglers in 1966. Oliver Smith (1952) who played Drak in The Twin Dilemma in 1984. David Kinder (1964), who played Billy in Delta and the Bannermen in 1987. Dursley McLinden (1965), who played Mike in Remembrance of the Daleks in 1988. Sam Callis (1973), who played a Security guard in Bad Wolf in 2005. Brian Treitler (1977) who played Dr. Murphy in Torchwood: Miracle Day: Dead of Night in 2011 and

Anita Briem (1982), played Sally in The Christmas Invasion in 2005.

Episodes:

In 1965, episode 2 of The Death of Time saw Ian and Vicki threatened by a Mire beast, while the First Doctor and Barbara meet up with the Aridians who then have no choice but to hand them over to the Daleks.

In 1971, episode 2 of The Daemons saw the Third Doctor frozen by the energy release from the barrow, leaving Jo calling for UNIT’s Yates and Benton for help. When the Brig tries to help them, he discovers the village is surrounded by a heat barrier.

In 2010, Cold Blood saw the Eleventh Doctor and Nasreen Chaudry go deep underground to find an ancient society disturbed by the drilling above. When one of the creatures is captured and subsequently killed, the Restac, a Silurian seeks revenge and is ready to go to war on the humans above.

Have a great birthday from everyone at Project: Torchwood!

News Happy Birthday Project: Torchwood 3 Today! 7th May 2016

Project: Torchwood

3 Today!

To celebrate our 3^rd birthday we’ve got a treat for all our Torchwood fans. We’re giving away a signed copy of Torchwood Big Finish audio ‘The Victorian Age’ by A.K. Benedict, who we interviewed in April.

This giveaway is open to all our fans across the globe. All you have to do is tweet this to be in with a chance of winning:

@ProTorchwood #3rdBirthday #TorchwoodBigFinishGiveaway #TheVictorianAge RT

This Giveaway is only open to those with a Twitter account (sorry). The Giveaway starts now and ends midnight Sunday 8^th May 2016.

One lucky winner will be chosen at random.

Good luck.

Reviews Torchwood - The Victorian Age by Tony J Fyler

Tony yearns for some eminent Victorians.

We’ve been advocating for Torchwood, Year One for a while now – a show that takes Torchwood back to its roots, its glorious, ruthless, potentially steampunk-as-all-get-out roots.

This is not that story.

This is A Royal Night Out, with Jack Harkness and an alien.

For those not familiar with the reference, A Royal Night Out tells the apparently true story of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret escaping from their palace and their chaperones to celebrate ‘among the people’ on VE Night, encountering common folk in pubs, in crowds, in dubious nightclubs, knocking shops and parties, and more or less having a right royal knees-up with them.

Torchwood – The Victorian Age, by A K Benedict, brings Queen Victoria, twenty years after she founded the Institute, on an annual inspection of Torchwood London, where she’s met rather incongruously by Torchwood Cardiff’s Captain Jack Harkness, just before alien mayhem erupts, in the form of a creature that seems able to suck youth and vigour out of its prey (the Victorian Age of course gaining another meaning by virtue of this particular trait). With Torchwood London’s boss, Archie, being withered to old age, we’re off to the races with Captain Jack and Queen Victoria (played here by Rowena Cooper, of many other things and in Big Finish terms, The Last post and Cloisters of Terror, where she played Liz Shaw’s mum). Cooper is a good audio queen, delivering the extraordinariness of that singularly redoubtable monarch, but with a combination of an older sensibility and a twinge or two of twinkly mischief around the edges. Barrowman as Harkness shifts his performance too, so we get a younger, newer-to-all-this Captain Jack, rather more puppy-dog than old warrior, but still old enough to be aware of his mortality-shunning habit.

The adventure itself though is rather a case of wondering ‘what had Victoria probably never done, and how can we get her to do it?’ with occasional alien confrontation along the line. So we see Victoria go to a pub and eat winkles (Americans – don’t ask; it’s a peculiar British perversion); riding the Underground, travelling by car, and leading the chase for a vigour-sapping alien menace across Hyde Park on horseback. We see her interacting with what amounts to a fairly random selection of Victorian commoners – a pubful, a parson who’s preaching the end of the world, an anti-monarchist, a woman who’s either simply old or a bit doolally, sitting under a tree, advocating the soothing benefits of a strawberry ice. Victoria’s at her most appealing though towards the end, helping a mother whose young daughter has been touched by the monster, and who now looks like her own grandmother, her future stolen. Cooper brings the Queen Empress right down to size as one human being talking to another, giving comfort, helping the hysterical mother to see there are still blessings in the world, and that her daughter being alive is one of them.

It's also Victoria who delivers the decisive action at the end of the story – both leaving ‘Hard to Kill Harkness’ alone in the Underground to face the beast, and realising, from events she’s observed, how best to actually deal with its peculiar penchant for stealing, or indeed returning, vital energy. The Queen Empress on the march with what might be called the provisional wing of the Silver Cloak is a thing to hear, and we find at the end of it a mellower Victoria than Pauline Collins in on-screen Who, having faced a great and timely temptation, and beaten down the inner demons urging her to give in to it. All may not exactly be well that ends well – there are genuine victims of the alien aggressor in The Victorian Age – but Goss rounds off his story with a neat bow and serves it to us as a complete thing, with few if any dangling threads to pull on for future Victorian Torchwood stories.

Does it satisfy, then?

Welllll, a basic yes – it hits the points you expect it to hit, and Cooper, Barrowman and Louise Jameson, giving voice to a couple of roles, are all on good audio form.

But this is an audio that suffers both from its position and the scope of its potential. The first series of Torchwood audios from Big Finish was fairly staggering in its quality – it hit a wide variety of notes, sometimes focusing on the comedy elements (as in Fall to Earth and One Rule), and other times foregrounding the horror (Forgotten Lives), while most regularly, as in the likes of Uncanny Valley and More Than This, it achieved a beautiful, enjoyable balance between its elements, delivering something that could be enjoyed by a range of listeners.

This one, to be absolutely fair, and to apply the least appropriate word in the history of Torchwood reviewing, feels a little too…straight. Its premise is revealed early on, and it’s not long before we get the idea that this is Victoria’s grand adventure out among the people. It strives to deliver more than that on a couple of occasions, and in that moment with the mother of the stricken daughter, it achieves that moment of mattering on a deeper level. But other moments, like the run-in with the apocalyptic pastor, feel by comparison like they miss their mark, leaving the listener wondering at the point of keeping them in. So overall, this feels like a slight step down from everything that’s come before it.

Why that’s especially worrying of course is that this is the first story in Series 2 of the Big Finish audio Torchwood. As things have turned out, that means relatively little – there’s not much in the way of temporal continuity involved in the Torchwood stories Big Finish is choosing to tell, and the release date of this Series 2 opener is just a month after the Series 1 closer, but if you combine a series-opening slot with the premise of a form of Torchwood we’ve only seen in flashbacks before, and the idea that it’s the very epitome of steampunk time, you incite high expectations in your potential listeners. You say ‘Torchwood - The Victorian Age’ and show Captain Jack with sideburns on the cover art, and you evoke all sorts of stories, which set the blood pumping and the mind racing. And then, what you get is Queen Victoria on a jolly. In itself, there’s nothing wrong with the story or the idea, and there’s certainly little enough to quarrel about in the execution (though again you have to wonder at the inclusion of some scenes – neither the pastor nor the anti-monarchist scene particularly comes to anything, and there’s a degree to which the ‘man woman with a strawberry ice’ scene is just padding, bordering on time-wasting), but it just doesn’t live up to either the expectations you have based on all that’s come before, or the expectations to which you’re incited by the premise and the slot.

While not usually given to faint praise, we would have to say that Torchwood – The Victorian Age is a perfectly nice Torchwood story that does some of the things you expect of it. But in living up neither to the storytelling and emotional complexity of Series 1, nor the potential of its premise and its Series 2-opening slot, it feels like it struggles to compete in a range that has previously been known for its verve, its darkness, its comedy and its humanity.