The Legacy of Time – Relative Time

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Written by Matt Fitton and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 4.

Spoiler-free verdict: A pleasantly zippy romp with modern aesthetics and values, filling an empty plot with strong performances and loving, varied fanservice.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins, The Split Infinitive, The Sacrifice of Jo Grant

***

Relative Time is fun. It’s not deep. It doesn’t have much to say. It doesn’t need to. What it does have is Georgia Tennant at her most charismatic, Peter Davison at his most snarky and bewildered, and for bonus points, John Heffernan as one of the most delightful Big Finish antagonists in their catalogue, the Nine. Throw them into a fizzy script written with love for all eras of Doctor Who, and I’d struggle not to have a good time.

The pairings in this story are just plain fun. Putting Georgia Tennant and Peter Davison together is just an obvious choice, and the father-daughter duo play a distorted version of their actual relationship with aplomb. The contrast of their classic/new values pays dividends, with Jenny’s fast-talking exhuberance and dubious morals contrasting wonderfully with the put-upon, straight-laced Fifth Doctor. The sequence of the Doctor teaching Jenny to drive is particularly genius, bringing the parent/child bonding cliche into a sci-fi setting with cheeky energy. And in parallel, the Nine gets himself his own feminist presence of a companion in Thana, who is every bit the impossible space kleptomaniac he is, while also getting in some jabs at the Nine’s absurdities and the general patriarchal presence of Time Lords. The two teams don’t face off against each other much, but their individual dynamics make each scene independently engaging.

The contrast between era values dominates the tensions of the story, and fuels both pairings. With Jenny, there’s a delightful tension between her and her Dad in terms of ethics, stemming from her TV episode but, for my money, much sharper. Where on TV she was a fairly shallow soldier learning from the Doctor, here she has a fully-formed set of values, which just happen to include stealing from the rich to build herself a time machine. It naturally ends in reasserting the Doctor as a “man who never would,” but does so in a far less messianic and all way; Jenny clearly has affection for his ideals, but remains her own person, with the story choosing to end in asserting she’s marvelous in of herself. Meanwhile, there’s some light new series jabs about from the Nine/Thana plot; Thana’s point about how the Time Lords are patriarchal is hardly a new observation, but it’s a fitting one for a story contrasting classic values with a new feminist character. And, of course, the delivery is hilarious.

In addition, the story clearly has a lot of love not just for the classic and new series, but Big Finish itself. The story is a collage of fandom, from a plot ripped from Russell T Davies’ TV episode The End of the World to a main antagonist from recent Big Finish and, perhaps most delightfully, the return of the Vortisaurs from the early Main Range Eighth Doctor audios. The sheer delight of being able to include space-time dinosaurs in this story is obvious and deeply relatable, with Thana’s comedic reactions to a bunch of rich jerks getting massacred by them providing great entertainment value; this is a story about playing in the Big Finish toybox and knowing that that can be an inherently satisfying thing to do. For a set celebrating Doctor Who at Big Finish, this is the one story that feels like it’s celebrating what their creative output has added to the show more than any other, and as a result, it’s a vital addition to an anniversary celebration.

It’s not the deepest story in the Big Finish catalog. Hell, it’s hard to find much for me to say about it, even with how much I enjoyed it. But I have space for that in my life. Georgia Tennant proves to be one of the most fun talents Big Finish has, and Matt Fitton proves to be one of the best at giving her fun things to do.

This is a simple story that puts a smile on my face.

8/10

The Legacy of Time – The Sacrifice of Jo Grant

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Written by Guy Adams and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 3.

Spoiler-free verdict: The Legacy of Time finds itself a second standout in an emotional high point that places meaningful character interaction first.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins, The Split Infinitive

***

The best fanservice is the sort that can be meaningful both for those in love with a thing, and those who never were. The Sacrifice of Jo Grant is such fanservice. The UNIT era is a low point of my personal investment in Doctor Who. But this episode manages to stir, because of how it uses its nostalgic affection for an era to find new emotional meaning.

The highlight of this episode, of course, comes from facing the marvelous portrait of adult Jo Grant provided by Russell T Davies for The Sarah Jane Adventures with her incarnation of the Doctor again. The expected beats are, of course, beautiful; Guy Adams continues his take of Jo as in love with her Doctor from Tidal Wave in the UNIT range, and it works just as well here as it did there, with climactic confessions and high stakes whipping up a frenzy of a climax. But the best scenes aren’t the big ones. For me, the standout moment is Jo confronting this Doctor about vegetarianism, an ideal he never held, but one she came to expect of him. It’s a sharp, mature discussion of ethics on a topic that can all too often be preachy, and even has in other Jo Grant stories this year. Not only did it succeed in making me contemplate vegetarianism, but it succeeded in saying something meaningful and new about the ways people rub off on each other through two beloved icons, helping me understand the love for them, too.

The use of modern UNIT leads here is less of a headlining feature, and successful, but less remarkable. Both Treolar and Culshaw put in strong performances recreating their characters, but unlike Jo Grant, Kate Stewart is not a character that has had much space to stand on her own terms outside her relationship with a Doctor Who icon, and thus her internal debate over contacting her father is a bit more perfunctory. I do like that, rather than go with “no changing history”, Kate is allowed to use the plot situation to make something good happen. But on the flip side, while hearing her speak to the Brigadier is new, it ends up not saying much of note. Similarly, while it’s delightful hearing Osgood lauded as a genius by the Doctor and geeking out over him, those are beats we’d seen from her in her debut. Jo turns out to be the catalyst for the most relationships here as well, and I could listen to her and Osgood hanging out at water parks forever.

Ultimately, and rightly, the plot chooses not to get up to much to facilitate these relationship beats. There’s some guff about holes in time, leading to some action scenarios in Osgood’s c-plot offering varying levels of thrills, but the real draw here is the time a group of characters get to spend together as a result. There’s never a real sense that Jo will end up sacrificing herself, or that Kate will destroy history as a result of messing up with her dad, but the situations are handled fully on the emotional level of the characters, elevating them far above the fairly simple events. It’s a celebration, and it feels like one.

Beyond that, there’s a fundamental niceness to this episode, which makes it a nice contrast to the other set high point, the bitter Lies in Ruins. For example, when Kate falls for an obvious alien impersonation of Osgood, nobody blames her, all agreeing that trusting Osgood was the right call and that Kate couldn’t have known. And, of course, as mentioned previously, Kate’s interaction with her father isn’t treated as a threat to history, but rather as a chance. Ultimately, the whole time travel plot comes down to that, with even its big sacrifice beat coming down to the Doctor cheating with time travel while the Time Lords look the other way. What we get here is a story about how the Sirens’ destruction of time isn’t so much a major threat as it is an opportunity to have a few more quality moments with relationships long lost. There’s just something tremendously pleasant about that.

Maybe we can’t have this every day. Maybe it doesn’t make for the most interesting hour on a plot level. But it’s so lovingly written and positive, with an eye for sharp character work, that you aren’t left wishing for anything else.

The Sacrifice of Jo Grant is exactly the sort of fanservice you want from an anniversary.

9/10

The Legacy of Time – The Split Infinitive

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Written by John Dorney and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 2.

Spoiler-free verdict: A solidly acceptable nostalgic thriller elevated by high-concept storytelling.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins

***

The Legacy of Time is an unusual aniversary special. Unlike most Doctor Who celebrations, this isn’t a tribute to the show, but rather a tribute to what Big Finish has done with it. That was clear in what the previous episode did with Bernice and River, but it’s even more clear here. The Seventh Doctor and Ace teaming up with the Counter-Measures team isn’t really something one would typically propose as a tribute to the Seventh Doctor era, but it is something that pays tribute to a major Big Finish spinoff.

This ethos greatly governs the story. There’s not really any revelations to be had about any of the characters, and the Doctor and Ace take their time to even turn up in their plot. In terms of style and structure, this is an episode of Counter-Measures, with grounded sci-fi thriller trappings and Cold War claustrophobia. The choice of villain widens the net a bit, with the Rocket Men, originating from some rightly beloved Companion Chronicles, turning up in a surprise fanservice twist. But that’s about all this story has in terms of meat on its bones: loving homage to other things Big Finish has done. Themes beyond nostalgic gaze at action stories and thrillers are in fairly short supply, and the story doesn’t really flex any emotional manipulation muscles.

It’s fortunate, then, that it’s told by someone as talented as John Dorney. The unfolding of the plot in two time periods, with Ace and the Doctor in each with a different period Counter-Measures team, keeps the familiar thrills bubbling into more exciting material. The set-pieces are pleasantly bonkers and largely well-judged; it’s hard to go wrong with throwing characters out of an airplane. And overall, the script oozes love for what it’s getting to do. It’s fun hearing the characters compete with pop culture references from different periods of what thriller the plot reminds them of (Bond references aplenty!), it’s fun hearing the distinctive Counter-Measures incidental music offering up oodles of stye, it’s fun hearing hints of Ian and Rachel going out together, and it’s fun having the whole story come down to a shaggy dog joke about UNIT dating.

But, I have to confess, this just isn’t the sort of fanservice that I live for. I enjoy the Counter-Measures range, but it’s not something that occupies a very large space in my heart (aside maybe from Lady Clare, who is wonderful and needs to be in everything and I got very excited by hearing referenced here). The Seventh Doctor era, including and especially at Big Finish, is something that means a lot to me, but more for the long-running arc with Hex, who is sadly absent from this set, or the stuff with Benny, who’s already been covered by the previous story. And aesthetically, it doesn’t hit the political or emotional depth I associate with the Seventh Doctor era (which, it must be said, featured nicely in The Assassination Games, the Seventh Doctor’s last run-in with this team), or even the splash of camp I controversially love from season 24. This is fairly white, traditional action romping. So while The Split Infinitive is a clever story that it’s hard to muster much critique for, I equally find it hard to muster much investment.

It’s a perfectly welcome addition to the box set. But it’s not something I’d buy a set for.

6/10

The Legacy of Time – Lies in Ruins

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Written by James Goss and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 1.

Spoiler-free verdict: Two of Doctor Who‘s very best characters, River Song and Bernice Summerfield, meet at last, something that could easily sell a story in of itself, but Paul McGann has to go and give one of his best performances ever and steal the show. In other words, shockingly good.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time

***

19 July 1999, the first Big Finish Doctor Who audio, The Sirens of Time, was released. It wasn’t their first release overall (Oh No It Isn’t, September 1998), nor even most of the creative team’s first Who audio work (the Audio-Visuals and BBV productions), and it is not even their best, but there is nonetheless something totemic about it, and it ushered in much that is worth celebrating. Someone had to draw a line somewhere, and it was as good a place as any. So here we are, twenty years later, with a six hour celebration of everything that’s been built off that audio. What is there left to build on it?

Well, as Lies in Ruins reveals, quite a lot. Time has passed, and Big Finish has changed with it. The company is full of writers who hadn’t worked on a single line of published Who in their lives in 1998, one of whom wrote this story, and the company has acquired rights to beloved characters who had yet to ever exist.

So, River Song, face of the new, meets Bernice Summerfield, the first face this company saw. I expected this to be fun; these are two of my favorite characters in an anniversary celebration story, fun seemed guaranteed.

This was not fun.

Lies in Ruins is a prickly, difficult, angry thing, with characters who can’t stand each other being driven to desperate places, brought to life by some of Big Finish’s most talented performers bringing their A-Game. There’s a degree to which that’s dissapointing; I still want a story of River and Benny having flirty fun quite desperately, and it’s a shame neither character gets much lighter emotional interaction with the Doctor here. But what is offered in its place is so incredibly good that complaining seems a foolish thing to do.

For starters, the River and Benny relationship is in no way interpreted how I’d have imagined it. Author James Goss notes in the extras that it would be easy to have a version of this story in which they’re terribly witty and tearing each other apart the whole time. I can’t say that’s something I agree with at all as a reading of the characters, but in practice, it works, and works particularly well for an aniversary. These characters are two tremendously different takes on a similar starting point, divided by the existence of the new series, and so discussing the ways they compare and contrast in the midst of the Time War, the metatextual break, between classic and new, is particularly sharp. But beyond that, it works because the story gives them another take on the companion to use as a punching bag.

Enter Ria, played by Torchwood star Alexandria Riley. She is, by design, a fairly vapid and hateful character, impossibly naive and far too eager. In my fairly critical review of The Sirens of Time, I said I felt like the Sirens themselves were a less than charitble commentary on the companion archetype, complete with twisted ankle joke. Well, here, Ria does, in fact, twist her ankle, and in general feels like a response to those themes in Sirens. The difference is, while in Sirens, the twist was that the apparent companion is an evil temptress, here, the apparent siren is, in fact, a creation of a man, the Doctor, to fill a reductive role and make him feel good.

It’s a tremendously difficult balance to strike. The Doctor is particularly monstrous here, both in what he does with Ria and the murder he is willing to commit against the scavengers to save what he believes to be the ruins of Gallifrey. Perhaps the strongest scene of the episode, for my money, is Ria’s confession to Bernice that the Doctor terrifies her; I don’t think there’s ever been a more unnerving picture of what the Time War does to the character. And my God, Paul McGann sells it. The script sells it. This is unmistakably the Eighth Doctor, and unmistakably as dark as he can go. Plus, there’s one other twist: while Ria is naive and empty at first, she reaffirms love for this series that overrides all, for the adventures, the heroism, the cleverness, the heart, the words over weapons. Her death hurts, but it’s a necessary hurt for the darkest of days, and restates why what she embodies does, in fact, matter.

And while this story fails to be in any way about River or Bernice themselves, it needs them to show the light on either end of that tunnel, calling the Doctor out (and checking him out, this is McGann’s Doctor) in a way Ria never could. “War doesn’t suit you,” declares River at the climax; it’s an obvious conclusion, but a necessary and beautiful one. The final scenes are full of grace notes, finding the beauty coexisting with the tragedy, and reminding the listener that, however dark it gets, Doctor Who comes out the other side, out of the wilderness years, through the new series, and beyond to whatever lies next.

This is an unpleasant, difficult hour of audio drama, with the most harsh and prickly performance I’ve ever heard the Doctor given. But because of how it faces that, building on and responding to an old story by applying new values and great humanity, it captures everything I love about Doctor Who along the way.

Lies in Ruins is a masterpiece.

10/10

Eighth Doctor Adventures – Vampire Science

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Written by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman.

Eighth Doctor Adventures book 2.

Spoiler-Free verdict: A pacey, character-driven romp that establishes its new leads well, if shortchanging some of its ideas and guest cast in the process. Overall, a solid introduction to a new books range and Doctor.

Recommended pre-reading: None.

***

Vampire Science is a book that cannot be divorced from its context. As the second EDA, and the first in the line engaged in creating a sustainable new direction for its undeveloped Doctor and companion, it has a lot to do. What follows is, essentially, 280 pages of pilot material, and the book lives or dies based on how well that material works for you.

Structurally, this is well done. The first chapter in particular is a marvel, written as its own self-contained short from the perspective of guest character Carolyn. It succeeds tremendously, showcasing business as usual for the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones and freeing up the rest of the book to get under the hood a bit more. The choice of setting this section in a lesbian bar is immediately engaging and fresh, it must be said; there’s still not enough sapphic content in Who two decades later! And beyond that, framing Sam through Carolyn’s crushing gaze is a strong way to reintroduce this new companion, as well as to define Carolyn’s later dynamic with both characters. After a taste of self-contained adventure, Carolyn misses out on life as a companion, setting up the main concern of this book: what does it take to be a Doctor Who lead in this new era? The rest of the book exists to find answers, and as is expected from these authors, the findings intruige.

From here, the book builds itself around challenging who this new Doctor and Sam are. Primarily, this comes from their relationships with Carolyn and new UNIT head Adrienne Kramer. The Doctor is immediately set in contast to his predecessor, who knew Kramer, winging it and hyperfocusing on resolving minor struggles and emotional crises rather than master plans. For me, the best moments of this book come when he gets distracted from the plot to buy ice cream, or cook breakfast, or arrange funerals for bit players. Meanwhile, instead of the typical first trip beats familiar to new series fans, Carolyn’s dilemma of whether to choose her life with her husband or travels with the Doctor helps fuel an arc about whether or not Sam really wants to be the companion, a decision I have been lead to believe is far less developed in the preceeding book. Additionally, Kramer and vampire Joanna Harris challenge Sam on how prepared she is for this, with the latter confronting Sam over political correctness in a standout scene.

The open-ended responses to these character questions are generally the strongest parts of the book. For the Doctor, whether his fiercely small-scale view is more humane or more dangerous is left in the air, through application of emotional realism to the consequences of his recklessness in comparison to his predecessor’s manipulations. He may be there to fix your marriage or make sure you get a good night’s sleep, but he might also forget you at a Greenpeace rally for a year. The book even directly questions the audience on whether they’d prefer “Someone who knows exactly what he’s doing and has it all under control, or some fellow who makes it up as he goes along, and still makes it happen”, suggesting him to be the former, though with hints of the latter still present for readers to seize upon if they wish, particularly in the final plot resolution. This all sets up a rewarding model for characterization, as well as a tension for future writers to play with.

Sam, meanwhile, gets a bit more closure, but only enough to get her to a new starting point. Her ultimately realizing that she chose to travel with the Doctor so that her political ideals wouldn’t just be all privileged talk is interesting, giving her a strong call to action without making her seem preachy or naive. There’s plenty of debate that can be had over whether the role of Doctor Who companion particularly qualifies as praxis, but it works well at giving her a proactive role in the series. Her role in the climax to the book is pleasantly grueling, as well, putting her in a visceral fight-or-flight situation against a particularly deadly and unstable vampire to prove herself to herself and the reader. It’s easily the tensest and most horrifying moment here, and as is frequently the case for putting Who leads through the wringer, she emerges stronger for it.

Beyond these successes, the story starts to reveal its limitations. The debate between Sam and the Doctor over whether the vampires deserve sympathy and to be saved, for example, fizzles out without practical solution. There’s sharp choices there, such as putting Sam against the saving of their lives despite her beliefs, but it’s slender enough to start to feel stiltedd. The plot of creating a human blood substitute, the center of this debate, is a bit of a disappointment; the concept of a human blood farm is suitably horrifying, but undercooked here. The book struggles to substantiate why Joanna Harris is worthy of redemption while also arguing that she’s created an entire sentient species to exploit, no matter how efficiently unpleasant the antagonist, Slake, is, to draw attention away. Harris’ final redemption is one of the book’s most interesting moments, but I’m not entirely convinced of all the groundwork. I can’t fault the ambition of the debate, but I’m sure the book is up to the task, especially not when it has so much else to do.

This same issue reflects even worse on the plot with Dr. Shackle, a depressed doctor manipulated by Harris into contemplating suicide and, eventually, vampirism. While it’s hard to picture a version of this book not featuring a character getting turned, my personal feeling is that a depressed character being driven to self-harm is a plot that deserves more breathing room than it can possibly have in a book that’s busy establishing what will go on to be a 73-installment range. As a result, it feels a bit crass to me, and choosing to end the book not on the establishing of the Doctor and Sam, nor Carolyn’s PoV, but rather Shackle contemplating suicide by sunlight, feels a little tasteless to me. For such a warm, witty, and enjoyable book, it felt very out of place as a closing note.

Overall, then, Vampire Science is a qualified success. It succeeds where it matters most, creating sustainable characters and storytelling modes for a long-running book line and sprinkling in enough genuinely compelling ideas to function on its own terms. It also oozes charm, from strawberry ice cream to vampire crack squirrels. But it can only go so far with even its best ideas, and it’s clear the best of the range lies ahead, not here.

It’s good. But as far as Orman and Blum go on this range, I’ll take Unnatural History over it any day.

7/10

Torchwood – Serenity

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Written by James Moran and directed by Scott Handcock.

Torchwood monthly range release 29.

Spoiler-free verdict: A burst of concentrated fanservice which never quite manages to unite its disparate elements into a deeper meaning, but is far, far too much fun to care.

Recommended pre-listening: None.

***

Where to begin with Torchwood fandom? Well, perhaps where this story did in its promotion, with a single copy left for whomever might claim it at a shrine devoted to Ianto Jones on Mermaid Quay in Cardiff. The popularity of Ianto and his relationship with Jack Harkness is a powerful core of Torchwood‘s reception, and continues to dominate fandom conversation to this day, particularly in terms of shipping and fanfic.

What that means is, when it comes to an easy sell of a Torchwood audio, official Jack/Ianto fake-married comedy is utter gold, the easiest success story since some bright little guy decided to tell the story of how the two shacked up in the first place. Serenity is a perfectly-engineered tactical strike in getting the approval of anyone who considers themselves a Torchwood fan.

As a Torchwood fan who eats this stuff up, but also a bit of a miserable git of a critic, that puts me in an interesting position. Serenity is genuinely, thoroughly delightful. The first 30 minutes or so are some of the most fun I’ve ever had with Big Finish, and that’s alongside competition as stiff as Jackie Tyler, singing killer Muppets, or the Grel (if you don’t know that last one, you haven’t lived… or laughed). The pleasures come quick and hit the mark beautifully, with a wonderful wave of innuendo and mundane passive-aggression perfectly capturing the horny hell of suburban repression. There’s a few things to take away from this, most importantly that Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto is utterly incredible at playing this material, his seething rants about the “Best Kept Lawn” competition and “spit-roasts” adding up to, for my money, possibly his best performance ever. He attacks this tremendously witty script with gusto, with incredibly rewarding readings to every line.

Similarly rewarding is the pathos in plonking Jack and Ianto down in a domestic situation. The script wisely keeps this from being perfect fluff; fanservice without in-character frission somewhere along the line can feel a bit empty. Instead, there’s always a sense of this being an awkward fit for the characters, with Jack dumping Ianto in this life 24/7 while skipping to and from the Hub being a particularly delightful source of tension. But that sense of tension makes the amount of joy they get from this life all the more rewarding; small moments like them washing a car together, with Ianto eagerly ordering Jack to take off his shirt, combine with the tension to create a properly lived-in sense of domestic bliss. Their arguments also provide a source of external relationship commentary from neighbor Vanessa (Ellie Darvill), whose monologue about losing her husband and the value of loving each other in every moment perfectly hits the balance between the angst of Torchwood fans knowing Ianto’s fate and the joy of them seeing the moments they’re happy together first. In short, this is a sharply done relationship study that knows exactly which buttons to press to get the crowd going wild.

But the fanservice also ticks a different box in the return of a monster from the Torchwood TV series. As with Broken, Serenity shows Big Finish saving their big Jack/Ianto monthly slot for the return of a writer from the TV series, in this case James Moran, author of, most notably, Children of Earth Day Three, but most relevant to this audio, of series 2 episode Sleeper. This is, it has to be said, functioning on an entirely different register of fandom consumption; certainly, my experiences with Torchwood fandom has rarely produced people interested in discussing monsters of the week as the draw. Most conversation about Sleeper I’ve seen have revolved around Ianto’s sass and the “let’s all have sex” line. And in my view, it strains the pleasures of the audio somewhat.

That is not to say the Sleepers aren’t a good fit. They are, for the themes of this story, a fantastic fit. But the tone of this story entirely changes when they arrive, emphasized by Blair Mowat’s excellent score, which shifts from the glib suburban new compositions of the front half to bringing back the thrilling motif composed for Sleeper on TV in the back. Much of the first half of the story sets up a world and characters that ultimately matter little to the final thrust of the story, and the comedy quickly dies away into action-adventure. Structurally, a lot of this mirrors the TV episode, which went from an intimate personal drama to a budget-breaking action movie midway through. But whereas that episode higned itself around one woman’s quest to hold onto her human identity, this just isn’t interested in the question; Bob, Kelly, Vanessa, all the neighbors are not valued much by this story once the invasion switch is flipped, and their personas are never heard from again. While the deneument does make a nice parallel between the Sleepers and Jack and Ianto as people who can sit in this suburban ideal but never quite stay a part of it, it never quite makes deeper connections I’d long for between this suburban world and the invasion lurking underneath.

Most notably, the climax features the Sleeper formerly known as Bob (Joe Shire) lecturing Jack and Ianto about how the violent tendencies of humanity will doom it, which is itself a strong, weighty idea. And this story does provide evidence of that destructive evil in the suburban world it creates. For me, one of the most expertly-written and overall memorable moments is the thinly-veiled homophobia in Bob’s reaction to Jack and Ianto winning the lawn award, which is just the right amount of pleasant external packing on underlying evil to be so, so human. But the thematic connections never quite materialize, which feels like a missed opportunity; for all the teases of Bob’s crushing on Jack and potential swinging, the story’s handling of destructive sexuality never quite erupts into anything, and franky, I feel cheated out of more swinger comedy, because that was gold. Contrasting the Sleepers with Jack and Ianto is as far as the script overtly goes toward thematic resolution. The big ideas are juggled, and they are good, but they never quite get there the way I’d like them to.

But then, maybe that’s just because Jack and Ianto are just too big to do anything else with, and maybe this story is just clever enough to know it. The biggest dramatic moment doesn’t come from the Sleepers themselves, but from Ianto shooting Jack to prove he is him. And similarly, the heart of this story doesn’t come from the neighborhood that Jack and Ianto let get blown to smithereens, residents included, for dramatic effect, but rather the moments we get to spend with them trying to make a life work there, just for a little while.

Perhaps Serenity doesn’t entirely get where it’s going on the big monster plot. But it knows what matters most to Torchwood fans, and goes for the jugular. And they, like me, will love it.

8/10

Torchwood: God Among Us – A Mother’s Son

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Written by Alexandria Riley and directed by Scott Handcock.

Featured in Torchwood: God Among Us 3.

Spoiler-free verdict: The high-stakes escalation of the God Among Us arc takes a much-needed step back for a furiously poignant series standout.

Recommended pre-listening: See list.

***

God walks the Earth. A group of space bureaucrats called the Committee have exploited God’s powers for their own gain. Yvonne Hartman is back from the dead via parallel universe shenanigans, leading Torchwood, and cutting deals with said Committee. Oh, and all this leads to God’s powers flooding Cardiff with an enormous tsunami.

Suffice to say, there’s been a lot going on in God Among Us, Big Finish’s “sixth series” of Torchwood, particularly after the cliffhanger to Eye of the Storm, the finale to the previous set. So, as is becoming structural custom for this range, we pick up the action many days later, from a new point of view. This is a strategy that can work brilliantly or backfire, and Big Finish Torchwood is full of numerous examples of both, even in this box set. But for this episode, at the very least, it is an approach that yields nothing but gold.

A huge part of why it works in this case comes down to the choice of point of view. Bethan, a grieving mother looking to find her son in the aftermath of the tsunami, is a very poignant construction, and is made an even better idea through the casting of Mina Anwar. As viewers of The Sarah Jane Adventures can attest, Mina Anwar is always a good idea. The script is also full of cynical sharpness that takes this good idea to painfully real heights, such as in Bethan’s willingness to be exploited by TV and force herself to cry again and again just to sustain ratings and keep her son’s name in the public eye. Strongest of all, though, is her obsession with keeping her phone battery charged, a pleasantly ordinary fixation that turns into a deeply poingnant, understated reveal in the end, elevating Bethan’s plight with just the right sort of gut-punch of guilt and personal failure. In short, Bethan is a winning presence on every level, and is responsible for a good portion of the story’s success.

Also successful is the way the story uses the scaffolding of previous episodes in the Torchwood audio range to create a vivid portrayal of a community at breaking point. Unlike most episodes in this range, there are no actual new science fiction conceits here, and there don’t need to be. Instead, A Mother’s Son takes existing characters, locations, and concepts and shows new angles to them, both as a result of Bethan’s perspective and as a result of the flooding crisis. The use of Mr. Colchester’s apartment complex established in A Kill to a View in the second set of Aliens Among Us, for example, elegantly ties the class tensions and community concerns of that story into the new status quo without need for establishing significant new material.

Best of all, however, is the integration of Orr, a character who was sadly absent from God Among Us 2 and who I feel hasn’t always been given as much material as they deserve. The desire-based shapeshifter has moved on past taking the form of whatever people desire to get off with and onto deeper personal needs, with heartrending results. Having the grieving of a mass disaster latch onto them for comfort is a breathtakingly good idea, and Bethan’s failure to keep that comfort to herself is a wonderfully human tragedy. Not everything about Orr’s use here is perfect—their survival at the end of God Among Us 1 isn’t explained until far too late in this set, and there’s a mildly awkward moment where Bethan refers to this non-binary character with she/her pronouns—but the strength of this concept and the rawness of the execution mean it is nonetheless the best use of the character, bar none, and a very memorable emotional experience to hear. Once again, Bethan’s interactions with the fixtures of this world showcase all of humanity, in its personal needs and its large-scale failings, and mapping that onto the story of her needing and then failing Orr is a truly gorgeous thing.

Other characters get far briefer look-ins. We hear Colin and Tyler working to try to help after the flood, Jack trying to take Yvonne down for her complicity, Yvonne herself on trial for her role in these events, and most troublingly, Andy working with the Disaster Recovery Committee. But as the climax shows, in which Bethan dooms Yvonne as part of a greater game she has no sight of, these broader motions aren’t the point, and aren’t necessary to what works here. This is a story about feelings in a big tragedy being deflected and scapegoated onto the smaller scale, from clinging to Orr for support to blaming Yvonne for a far bigger catastrophe. A Mother’s Son is at heart a portrait of mass loss in the world of Torchwood through a deeply personal lens, with an eye on all the insight that lens creates, as well as on all the understanding that is lost by holding to such a small scale. There is heart and there is fury, both from and toward Bethan’s life here, and by stepping from the big picture to the small, the small picture just feels so much bigger.

Those are the moments I will treasure most from this episode, and, indeed, from God Among Us as a whole. Moments like Bethan musing about her smoking habit, or a woman trying to fill the loss of her lover by sharing a mediocre pizza with Orr in her form, or a TV crewmember admitting to Bethan that she should make herself cry for the cameras to please the audience, devastate in a way hearing a rush of water on audio never can. This is a piece that shines in how quiet it is, letting every strong feeling burst forward to the surface. And slowly, surely, quietly, it showcases the very best of what Torchwood can be.

10/10

Torchwood Committee Arc Guide

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As of July 2019, there are now more than sixty hours of Big Finish Torchwood content. For fans like myself, this is an utter treat. It is also, however, a lot to go through.

To make things easier, the following are the releases I would consider vital to a complete understanding of the Committee arc, the main storyline of the range. Note that many stories do feature the Committee in some capacity; these are just the ones that advance the storyline significantly.

This is not a review or recommendation list (many of my favorites are not on it!), but merely what I’d consider to be necessary to get a full picture. Reviews of individual stories will hopefully be written in due time.

  • The Conspiracy (Monthly Range 1.1): An introduction to who the Commitee are, with events that will be frequently referenced throughout the arc.
  • Forgotten Lives (Monthly Range 1.3): Provides further worldbuilding on the Committee and establishes their modus operandi.
  • Uncanny Valley (Monthly Range 1.5): Follow-up to The Conspiracy.
  • The Victorian Age (Monthly Range 2.1): Provides important setup for The Torchwood Archive.
  • Zone 10 (Monthly Range 2.2): More important setup for The Torchwood Archive and crucial reveals about the Committee’s history with Earth.
  • Ghost Mission (Monthly Range 2.3): Introduces key character Norton Folgate.
  • The Torchwood Archive (Tenth Anniversary Special): First climax to the Committee arc, weaving together strands from preceding monthly audios and setting up plot and characters that feature in Aliens Among Us and God Among Us.
  • Torchwood: Outbreak: Further development of Norton Folgate.
  • Aliens Among Us 1: First set of Big Finish’s “series 5” continuation of Torchwood, concerning the Sorvix occupation of Earth.
  • Aliens Among Us 2: Continuation of Aliens Among Us.
  • Aliens Among Us 3: Conclusion to Aliens Among Us, setting up the arrival of God.
  • Goodbye, Piccadilly (Monthly Range 4.4): Sequel to Ghost Mission.
  • God Among Us 1: Follow-up to Aliens Among Us, concerning the arrival of the Sorvix God on Earth.
  • God Among Us 2: Introduction of Committee arc elements into the ongoing God Among Us narrative, including Norton Folgate.
  • God Among Us 3: Conclusion to God Among Us and the Committee arc (or so it seems).

Short Trips – Still Life

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Written by Max Curtis.

Spoiler-free verdict: A gorgeous emotional piece, rich with thematic depth and resonance and some wonderful high concept work.

Recommended pre-listening: None.

***

Well, that was pretty damn incredible, wasn’t it?

Classic Who has something of an awkward space in regards to characterization. There are many beloved companions, Jo Grant chief among them, but so few experience consistent growth or development. Jo, for her part, was a character elevated to spectacular heights through a winning performance by Katy Manning, but who existed as a character consciously designed as someone less strong-willed and story-defining than her predecessor. This makes her both remarkable and frustrating, remarkable because of how much she transcends to be as spectacular a character as she does, frustrating because she never quite escapes those roots. The flip side of that is, there’s a lot of blank space within her problematic confines to paint in. Enter Max Curtis, who beautifully does just that.

It’s remarkable to think that, in the 48 years since the character’s debut, nobody has ever thought to tell a story about Jo Grant’s parents (her mother still has yet to be named). Filling in this gap is immediately satisfying, and told with a sensitive touch that grips from the off. The opening scene in particular is just masterful, an instantly relatable slice of life moment far from the science-fiction conceits of Who, but which nonetheless fits into this world perfectly. But more than that, it’s built on treating the weaknesses built into Jo Grant as wonderful quirks of humanity. Of course the character designed to be a bit of a ditz got lost as a kid. And equally, of course the ditz brave enough to become a secret agent wasn’t scared so much by that as not remembering the moment she let go of her father’s hand.

This is, ultimately, a story built around all the oddities, charms, and failings of Jo Grant as a character. Facing an impulsive, clumsy, and full of heart character like her with the chance to stop time, just for a bit, to say goodbye to her father is a scenario that offers endless pathos specific to her, both in what we know of her and what needed filling in. She makes massive, selfish mistakes here in taking the Bloodline’s offer of the device, but they’re never treated as anything less than infinitely human and infinitely understandable. That it’s an obvious scam in the end, with a clever twist about the true nature of the three presses on the device she’s granted hitting that inevitable endpoint home with style, is beside the point. It’s what Jo Grant would do in all her humanity, and that’s why it’s a story worth telling.

Gorgeous as the high concepts are, they aren’t the focus here. That makes for one moment of weakness, in that the Bloodline selling the life essence of their victims, while an interesting idea, in no way fully materializes as a villainous plot, least of all because it’s presented as a snake-oil cure alongside very real ones like the timepiece this story is built around. As such, those stakes are hard to buy, and the Bloodline’s scam mostly ends up a patchy footnote in a far stronger story. But it’s a Short Trip, and hell, it’s already running on the longer side. I can accept skating over the spacey stakes, particularly when the human ones are so incredibly strong.

In the end, what matters here is the time Jo Grant gets to spend with her father, Terry, not talking about impending death or grief, or even the shocking fact that Jo fights aliens for a living, but about capturing the moments they have together, through painting. Perhaps the cleverest choice of all, in fact, is taking a story about a dying father and refusing to show the death, instead just ending on them sharing one of a dwindling number of moments together learning still lifes. This could have been a story that was more obvious and eventful, big alien action and heartwrenching deaths. But as with the fan-favorite ending to The Green Death, sometimes dialing things back and focusing on small moments has more weight than anything else could.

“While there’s still life, there’s still time”, says the Doctor, and the triple-meaning of the title carries so much weight. It, of course, references the frozen time Jo creates, as well as the paintings she shares with her father, and the final words the Third Doctor will finally share with Sarah Jane. Recontextualizing this Doctor’s final speech from Planet of the Spiders into a musing on the art of paint and capturing frozen moments in time creates something deeply stirring, in keeping with the Pertwee era’s fleeting moments of Buddhist philosophy and odd poetry that occasionaly burst forth from its military action r exterior. These are moments worth preserving to last forever, and Still Life succeeds in drawing them out and highlighting their art.

I am not, to be honest, often a fan of the era this story pays homage to. But I am a huge, huge fan of the era as this story sees it. This is a wonderful story full of love and grace, and I don’t think I’ll be likely to stop raving about it anytime soon.

10/10

Missy – The Belly of the Beast

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Written by Jonathan Morris and directed by Ken Bentley.

Spoiler-free verdict: The delerious joy of Missy as a character becomes strained, though not erased, in a bleaker piece of traditional action fare.

Recommended pre-listening: A Spoonful of Mayhem; Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated; The Broken Clock

***

Throughout Missy series 1, there’s been a sense of the darker side of the character being held at bay. There’s been a fair few gleeful murders, but it’s been light on outright evil and horror. It’s inevitable, then, that in the end, the set changes pace, reveling in the character at her most brutal as a slave-driving tyrant. It’s in some ways necessary, and provides a welcome contrast to the previous stories, which while wonderful, are sometimes a bit too whimsical.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to say this makes for as enjoyable an experience. As I highlighted in my review of The Broken Clock, the success of Missy as a character, and of this set at its best, has been in recognizing she’s something more multifaceted than previous Masters, and is on the road to redemption. However, here, there’s no question what side she’s on. She’s evil, just in a chaotic ADHD variety (and that isn’t an approach that lends itself well to heavy topics like slavery). As a result, the hard turn to brutality makes her less interesting to spend time with for me, even while Michelle Gomez continues to be a winning presence — one which this story wisely doubles for its strongest sequence.

Another problem arising from this grimmer approach is that the story never quite decides whether it wants to be a hard, traditional rebel story or a satire of the same. The plot construction suggests it’s leaning more toward satire, with a rebellion and a slave force both run by competing Missys for their own amusement during an easy, low-stakes scheme. But far too much of the story comes from the perspective of the rebels, rather than Missy, even while it refuses to develop them as distinctive characters for plot reasons. And sure enough, the plot that they are all clones used by Missy because it’s cheap is effective, if a bit nonsensical (this is Missy, nonsensical is never an issue). But it never quite goes anywhere with it. The reveals happen, and we stay focused on the rebels in their responses to them, but they never really transcend or develop past that. Indeed, we have to hear the same characters respond to this news a few times. And in the end, Missy wipes the lot out, her victory having been achieved. It’s nearly poignant, with the clones returning to their false past memories only to be wiped out entirely during that vaguely happy ending, but they never make enough of an impression as characters to feel to saddened by it, and their backstory is presumably deliberately stilted as part of the core satire. It’s brutal, but it’s hard to get much out of it.

And so Missy waltzes off in a triumphant cliffhanger, assuming power over some vaguely defined “Master TARDIS” I can only presume will be a focus for a future series, but it’s difficult to feel particularly swept up by it all. There’s magnificent moments, but the depth never quite materializes, and the aesthetics clash with the more positive anarchy of the previous stories. Maybe that’s inherent to building a range around Missy; again, it’s probably necessary to showcase her more evil side. I also expect it’s an effective olive branch to people who long for the traditional Master, with the apotheosis of her plans feeling more like something out of a War Master story, all calculated brutality. But it’s nowhere near as meaningful to me, nor as fun.

A frustrating end, then, but after three stories of utter delight, it’s acceptable enough. And Missy dancing with herself is always, always a good idea.

4/10