London, 2005. Yvonne Hartman is the undisputed head of Torchwood One. Above the government, beyond the police, she has excellent people skills; enjoys regular tea with the Queen; and effortlessly defends the British Empire from alien threats.
Yvonne Hartman is excellent at her job, and inspires devotion in everyone who works with her – until, one day, she makes a terrible mistake. We all make mistakes. But only at Torchwood can a single mistake plunge your world into interstellar war.
Yvonne Hartman’s facing the fight of her life. One she’s going to win.
TORCHWOOD ONE: BEFORE THE FALL
After the success of “One Rule,” the monthly Torchwood release that featured the return of Tracy-Ann Oberman as Yvonne Hartman, it made sense for Big Finish to return to that period of Torchwood history. That return comes in “Torchwood One: Before the Fall,” a three-story miniseries showing just how things worked for Yvonne, Ianto, and their coworkers at Canary Wharf. Despite the relatively obscure subject matter, the set works well – it’s easily the best of the three Torchwood box sets thus far released by Big Finish.
The set consists of three separate discs: “New Girl,” by Joseph Lidster; “Through the Ruins,” by Jenny T. Colgan; and “Uprising,” by Matt Fitton. This is misleading, though: despite the three titles and three authors, “Before the Fall” is very much one story, with each part taking place at a different time in the overall plot. It tells the story, start to finish, of Rachel Allan (Sophie Winkleman), a new Torchwood recruit who rises rapidly through the ranks until she supplants Yvonne as the director of Torchwood One. Lidster’s story – the best of the three – starts with her first day, and walks us through employee orientation at Torchwood. While it was obvious on TV simply from the scale that Torchwood One was much different from Torchwood Three, here we see the daily activities of the massive corporation dominating Canary Wharf. Rather than a few people scrambling to protect Wales, this is a gigantic organization that looks from the outside just like any other large office. In fact, some of the characters comment on this – much of the clerical staff works there for the salary and benefits rather than out of any strong desire to protect Britain from extraterrestrial threats. It’s fascinating to watch Rachel go through this – there’s a very clichéd moment where Rachel talks to Yvonne without knowing who she is that is undercut later on when Yvonne darkly mentions how they torture spies and infiltrators.
But, of course (spoilers), Rachel is an infiltrator, and she’s actually there to gain control of the organization. The plot has to take a major leap to make this happen, and sadly it doesn’t work. While it’s very convincing in showing Rachel gaining the trust of her coworkers and casually manipulating people into doing her dirty work, it has her do this under the appearance of a clumsy, nervous new employee. This explains why people trust her, but it doesn’t explain why she’s suddenly put in charge of the entire organization when a disaster threatens Yvonne’s control. The story also takes pains to show that she’s relatively ordinary, and that her vendetta against Torchwood is based around her father’s accidental death, “collateral damage” from an alien invasion. You might recognize this as the plot of “Captain America: Civil War,” but here the story considers that someone like Rachel wouldn’t actually know what she was doing. Thus, as soon as things go awry, she has absolutely no idea how to solve the problem, and her regime collapses, allowing Yvonne to take over once again. It all makes sense, but it results in Rachel looking stupid and making me wonder how Torchwood fell for her ruse in the first place.
Of course, I understand that the authors are also telling a story about Yvonne, about how she is a genuinely good leader, one who understands her employees inside and out and one who has gained their respect, even if her methods are sometimes questionable. Rachel is a good point of comparison – she sees her staff as interchangeable means to her ends rather than as individuals with wants and desires. It’s no surprise that Ianto never stops trusting Yvonne – he’s got the best sense for that sort of thing – and it’s also good to have him around as a grounded counterpoint to the ambition on display. But I keep coming back to the point that playing up Yvonne’s ability minimizes the threat posed by Rachel, and that’s not good if you’re expecting drama to take up three hours of running time. Scenes like the “away day” are gripping enough in the moment, but the idea that Rachel would be so incompetent as to get her own people killed and that there wouldn’t immediately be an uprising – when they threw Yvonne out for something very similar – just defies belief and takes me out of the story.
Overall, though, this is a successful release. Apart from the one massive leap of logic, there’s nothing flagrantly wrong with the plot, and the character work on display allows us to get to know several new, interesting personalities. I came away from “Torchwood One: Before the Fall” thinking that I wanted to hear more from this group, and in the end that’s what you’re looking for in an ongoing range.
Recommended.
7/10