A special feature-length story celebrating 10 years of Torchwood.
The Torchwood Archive is a forgotten asteroid in the centre of a great war. Jeremiah is its first visitor in many centuries. He’s come to learn something very important. And the ghosts of Torchwood are waiting for him.
THE TORCHWOOD ARCHIVE
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Torchwood, Big Finish commissioned a special two-hour release: “The Torchwood Archive,” which sort of wraps up the Committee arc and gives time to almost all of the memorable Torchwood characters. Like most other anniversary tales in the Doctor Who universe, James Goss’s script has too much going on to properly tie everything together, but it’s an entertaining way to pass the time nonetheless.
While this is an anniversary story, and while it is full of continuity references, this isn’t a “celebration” in any meaningful sense. Set thousands of years in the future, when humanity is locked in a war with a nameless Enemy, “The Torchwood Archive” describes the visit of Jeremiah Bash Henderson (Richie Campbell) to the titular Archive, a repository of alien technology located on a remote asteroid. Jeremiah is there to destroy the Archive, but to do so he must navigate a long series of holographic guest appearances and flashbacks.
For whatever reason, the Archive is operated by a series of holograms of the Torchwood team we know from television, with Andy guiding Jeremiah more than any other character. We learn of the mysterious Object One – the first alien artifact ever catalogued by Torchwood – and how it seems to be cursed, turning up like a bad penny and bringing misfortune in its wake. The Archive tells the story of Object One through a series of flashbacks to various moments in Torchwood history. There are a ton of them: we go back to Torchwood’s founding and Queen Victoria (Rowena Cooper); we see Jack in the past, present, and future; we spend some time with Yvonne, Ianto, and others at Torchwood One; we get a repeat appearance from David Warner playing the Committee; we get individual scenes with Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, Rhys, Andy, and Suzie. In keeping with the tone of the series, most of these scenes feature downbeat moments or characters making mistakes – the problem is that while this captures the feeling of Torchwood, it’s far too disjointed to make for an appealing story.
The other, more serious problem is involved with the story taking place thousands of years in the future. The Torchwood we know has been firmly grounded on Earth and largely in the present day; removing us to a remote asteroid disconnects us from the series in a way that damages our ability to relate. The revelations about the Committee aren’t that interesting, either: learning that they were created by Torchwood to provide an enemy to fight is a big twist, but “we did it ourselves!” is one of the oldest twists in the sci-fi book. I think it’s also a mistake to reveal how the Committee is finally brought down: that should be something we experience with the characters we know, not something related to us after the fact. There are still many answers to be discovered, and I’m sure they’ll come up in future Torchwood plays, but we now know the endpoint of the Committee and it’s far too disconnected from the Torchwood we know to have any emotional impact. The construction of “The Torchwood Archive” reminds me of “These Are the Voyages…,” the ill-fated final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise that everyone hated. While this isn’t nearly as bad – for one thing, we have more Torchwood stories coming – it fails to succeed for similar reasons.
The strength of the Torchwood releases has been their strong focus on characters. Whether we get into a regular’s head or whether we’re presented with a nuanced guest character, the best Torchwood audios have taken deep dives into character-focused storytelling. “The Torchwood Archive” is absolutely not that. It relies on a superficial similarity with its bevy of characters and doesn’t let us learn things about any of them. The final twist about Jeremiah would have been more effective if we had spent any meaningful time with him; instead, we got a brief flashback to his journey to the Archive and a series of scenes in which he reacts to holograms. The performances are strong across the board, which helps tremendously, and the production is equally strong. Scott Handcock has proven to be an excellent Torchwood director. Blair Mowat provides a particularly interesting score, especially in the story’s final minutes. It also features something for everyone – unless you were hoping for the return of Owen, every other significant character is here. I don’t want to be too hard on “The Torchwood Archive” because it’s an anniversary story, but it’s also an essential part of the ongoing plot arc so it must be judged on those terms. And as such it’s quite possibly the weakest Torchwood story yet released by Big Finish. I’m confident things will rebound going forward, but this was a bit of a misstep.
Uninspiring.
6/10