They call it “Pulse” – a radio signal which has puzzled the world for 40 years. But now Toshiko Sato has solved it.
She’s uncovered a message which leads her to Russia, and into an uneasy alliance with the KVI – the Russian equivalent of Torchwood. Toshiko needs to get into Zone 10 – a frozen wasteland which officially doesn’t exist.
An intergalactic war was once fought in Zone 10. And it turns out there’s a survivor.
TORCHWOOD: ZONE 10
The second release in the second series of Torchwood audios is “Zone 10” from David Llewellyn, and most significantly it features the return of Naoko Mori to the role of Toshiko Sato, the crew’s oft-overlooked tech expert. It’s a fairly straightforward plot – she travels to Russia to investigate a mysterious signal from outer space – but the story is perhaps most significant in how it advances the ongoing Committee plot, with some interesting revelations about Torchwood’s involvement in the Committee’s arrival. Most disappointing, though, is that the story doesn’t spend enough time focusing on its characters. Toshiko and Maxim (Krystian Godlewski) spend nearly half the running time engaging in small talk and yet we hardly learn anything about either character. There’s a brief focus on how Toshiko feels like the forgotten member of the Torchwood team, how the other agents would steal this mission from her if they knew about it, and there are some parallels drawn between her and forgotten Russian cosmonaut Anna (Ella Garland). The conclusion therefore doesn’t earn the poignancy it’s trying for. There’s also a surprising amount of action here, and while it’s difficult to communicate a gun battle in a snow-covered Siberian wasteland on audio, Steve Foxon’s sound design does an admirable job. But even the action feels off: one scene features three characters moving through deep snow without any cover and taking fire from multiple snipers. By the time the snipers fire off 20 rounds without hitting anything, the scene has gone from exciting to laughable. All of this isn’t to say I disliked “Zone 10,” of course. The story moves at an entertaining clip, the ongoing plot threads are interesting, and Mori herself is an absolute delight in the lead role. So it’s still a decent listen, but I’m a bit concerned. Thus far, the second Torchwood audio series is significantly worse than the first, and that’s a disturbing trend.
6/10