Review by Cavan Gilbey
The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit are amongst my favourite episodes of Doctor Who; they bring a much needed sense of cosmic and occult horror to the Tennant era and the show in general with a return of the classic base under siege formula. Those episodes are always ones I tend to rewatch when I want to dip back into Tennant’s stint on the show, which I’ve been doing quite a bit in the run up to The Star Beast. So when Big Finish announced a trilogy of stories featuring survivors from those episodes I was naturally intrigued, and this first story certainly made me far more excited to hear the next two chapters of this Ood trilogy. Here we are reunited with Ida Scott and we finally get to see what exactly the Beast meant when he teased about her relationship with her father, which isn’t exactly the best.
Claire Rushbrook’s return to Ida Scott isn’t something I thought I necessarily needed, but after hearing this I really hope we see her pop up again at some point because Rushbrook is such a dynamic and highly emotive vocal performer. Rushbrook does a great job at delving into the depths of Ida’s anxieties and traumas following her appearance in Series 2, you get a real sense that she is weary and defeated at points but able to surge on. Her conversations with her father’s assistant in particular demonstrate Rushbrook’s strengths in playing someone with that cynical edge.
A lot of Odyssey doesn’t feel like your usual Torchwood story. There’s not a lot of action, or investigation, or camp sci-fi antics. What we have here is a family tragedy, a story of two people who have become so fractured and detached from each other they struggle to take each other seriously of sympathetically. Ida has never been seen as a real academic by her father, and her father has been seen as real family by Ida. The pair constantly bicker, with the undertones of each one secretly wanting the respect and admiration from the other. Odyssey manages to craft its action around the complexity of Ida’s emotional state when around her father, she often can’t think rationally or control her anger around a man who mocks her constantly but shares the voice with the creatures that gave her lasting trauma.
Odysseus Scott is the voice of the Ood, giving Silas Carson a chance to demonstrate his range, and this feels like such a brilliant writing decision from newcomer Patrick O’Connor. It allows O’Connor to really get into the minds of the father and daughter duo, exploring the fear Ida feels from hearing that voice and the lack of legacy Odysseus fears he will leave behind. All of this ends up tying nicely into the cosmic horror elements of The Resilient which combines these issues of legacy and identity perfectly to create a race with real presence. The central plot does unravel somewhat when this revelation is revealed, but the strength of the core concept keeps you fully engaged.
Possibly going to end up as one of Torchwood’s most underrated audios, but you really should give this one a go if you are thinking of getting into the range as its direct connection to a New Who story make it more accessible that other entries. It also happens to be a powerful family drama with O’Connor writing a good study of shared trauma and lost relationships.
9/10
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