Torchwood

Review: Torchwood – Endgame

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

It’s been a while since we last saw Toshiko Sato in a Torchwood release, with Naoko Mori last appearing in 2022’s SUV. But we return to one of the more underrepresented members of the classic team with Endgame, which appears like your typical Tosh story on the surface; we’ve got a tech based threat and a cast of characters who spend most of  the runtime slightly underestimating her. Now the Tosh audios are a specific strain of stories that I do follow fairly closely, so I’ve usually got relatively high expectations when it comes to stories featuring her. Suckers, Cascade and Instant Karma all show just how interesting she can be when written well, and Endgame makes for a pretty interesting entry in the Tosh line-up.

Firstly I think first time writer for the range Tom Black has a brilliant grasp on the types of threat that feel natural for this series; a simulation of world threatening and extreme situations which goes awry because of mankind’s fatal hubristic flaws. It feels like the perfect story idea for a one hour audio, and Black’s small cast and sense of entrapment really makes the concept come alive. His focus on governmental bickering and inability for arms of state to actually work together for the betterment of innocent civilians feels pretty well chosen given current events, and Tosh fits really nicely in this story as we get to see how her ability to lead and manage a situation are shut down by people who simply believe that their rank gives them rights over others.

However I do think that Tosh is slightly underserved by the story itself, she doesn’t really get to do much until the end when the numbers of participants in the ‘simulation’ have been thinned out a bit. Naoko Mori continues to put in a great performance as the character, oozing professionalism and a strong sense of duty but the story doesn’t quite give her the opportunity to show that off until the final sequence of the episode.

The character that I ended up getting most interested in was Gerard Marsh, as played by Ed White. The supposed creator of the simulation who gets to slowly seem more and more sinister as the plot goes on, with Black writing in some good red herrings surrounding Marsh’s true motivations and morality. White does a good job at playing a dark reflection of Tosh and what she could very easily be had she abandoned her sense of good and justice.

Endgame partially feels like they just needed to get a new Tosh story out but I’m not going to complain about that because it’s generally a good little morality piece. Tom Black sets himself up for being a particularly strong new entrant to the series and I eagerly await to here what he writes next.

8/10

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Review: Torchwood  – Art Decadence

Review: Torchwood – The Restoration of Catherine

Check out the rest of our Big Finish reviews!

Review: Torchwood – Art Decadence

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Every so often we’ll get a Torchwood release where we get to explore some hitherto unknown department or station. Sometimes this works really damn well, such was the case with Double or the Torchwood Soho range, other times it can turn out fairly lacklustre like Dollhouse (which should work so well given it’s tone and concept) or The Dying Room. So I had no idea what to expect when heading in to Ash Darby’s latest script, especially since I have found them to be a relatively inconsistent writer; however they always have some amazing concepts and I sang the praises of Sigil when I reviewed it a while ago. Art Decadence was not the story that I was expecting, and I mean that as high praise.

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Review: Torchwood – The Restoration of Catherine

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Norton and Andy, Andy and Norton. A double act which continues to always provide a pretty entertaining hour of sci-fi comedy antics as they bicker and fight their way through a series of bizarre occurrences. This month the pair have something of a love triangle to construct as the world ends unless the wedding bells ring in James Goss’s new outing for the pair.

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Review: Torchwood – Disco

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

May sees the end of Big Finish’s ‘Ianthology’ with Disco, a story which allows for Gareth David-Lloyd delve into a side of the character we have not really had any information or development around; Ianto’s relationship with his estranged father ‘Disco’. There were some hints in the tv show about Ianto’s relationship with his dad but this episode and the latter two episodes of I Hate Mondays attempt to explore the effects of Disco’s death on Ianto.

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Review: Torchwood – I Hate Mondays

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

That title says a lot really. It hits home to that instinctual hatred we have for the work week, that knowledge that we have to wake up and head out to the office for another day of doldrum and mundanities. Even at Torchwood, Monday is a day worthy of dread. As a thematic premise for a set of stories, a series of bad days at work caused by mundane and ordinary reasons, it is a perfect set-up for this trilogy of Torchwood One tales.

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Review: Torchwood – Odyssey

Posted on by indiemacuser

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.

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Review: Torchwood – Doghop

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

*contains spoilers*

I’ve slowly come to realise why I like the PC Andy focused Torchwood episodes, its all down to how human and borderline slice-of-life they feel. Sure you could argue that the Ianto episodes are equally full of humanity due to how emotionally driven that character is, but the emotional stakes are always relatively high in a Ianto centric story. Whereas with Andy there’s the sense that nothing feels too dangerous, with the exception of his double-act stories with Owen that it is. This brings us to Dog Hop by Stewart Pringle, the latest outing for the beloved Cardiff copper. This time he’s on the case following a string of missing persons and rapidly appearing dogs, with some help the regulars of the Red Lion pub it is up-to Andy to solve this strange canine case. 

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Review: Torchwood – Sigil

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

 

I’ve sort of been holding off doing this review for one central reason; this is the last time we will ever hear Murray Melvin as Billis Manger. I assumed that Cuckoo in the second Among Us set would have been the last time but Big Finish surprised us with the reveal of Sigil by Ash Darby, who has been a really strong recent writer that Big Finish has brought into the Torchwood range. So I went into this knowing it would be a bittersweet story, and I honestly think the ending is as good as you can get in terms of celebrating Melvin as a performer and everything he brought to the character of Billis.  Continue reading →

Review: Torchwood – Among Us 3

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

 

Among Us comes to a close with this third and final volume and it may just be the strongest of the trio. It always had the hard task of wrapping up all the plot threads in a neat bow and it sticks the landing, although that is mostly helped by the concept behind the narrative being small in scope but able to maintain a really high set of stakes. The themes of social corruption, media influence and technological fascism all comes to great conclusion with particular praise for the first story in the set which offers us a glimpse into one of Torchwood’s strongest and most interesting adversaries yet.

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Review: Torchwood – Among Us 2

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Among Us is back for another set, exploring Torchwood’s battle with the idea of altered perceptions and false knowledge. Much like the previous set we’ve got a story about the modern problem of fake news, but also a look at influencer culture, memory implants and finally a story focusing on racial profiling and targeted hate. I’m a big fan of this more social commentary focused approach to Torchwood but this set is really giving the themes room to breathe and are giving us more conceptually experimental stories for those thematic studies. I sincerely hope that the next, and final, set in this series is as good as these previous two because we are currently dealing with the best Torchwood series yet on audio.

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