1970s Los Angeles – the city of angels and broken dreams. Three remarkable women keep the West Coast safe from alien attacks – they are Torchwood Los Angeles.
So many young girls come to this city hoping for something better. For some, luck is just around the corner. For others that golden ticket never arrives and they just fade away.
But it’s not that simple. Everyone has a value to someone, and Torchwood are about to discover Hollywood’s darkest secret.
TORCHWOOD: THE DOLLHOUSE
I’ve been quite impressed with Big Finish’s Torchwood audios. The standard releases have cleared a high bar of excellence, while the special box sets have been entertaining and expertly produced, if not quite as well written. So I was dismayed to hear Juno Dawson’s “The Dollhouse,” which stands without competition as the worst Big Finish Torchwood release of all and is arguably the worst product ever released under the Torchwood banner.
To be fair, I see what they were going for, and I appreciate the attempt. Set in Hollywood in the late 1970s, “The Dollhouse” involves a Torchwood outpost on the West Coast of America with a secretive male leader (Guy Adams) employing three female operatives. It’s a Torchwood take on Charlie’s Angels, in other words, and the tone matches the irreverence of the source material. I like that the story uses three capable, intelligent women in the lead roles. I really like that the range has commissioned a transgender author. I like that the range is trying different things and not just pumping out generic stories month after month. Unfortunately, what I absolutely do not like is the result.
Almost nothing about “The Dollhouse” works. Of the three lead actors, Kelly-Anne Lyons as Charley (no, not that one) is by far the best, but they lumber her with a Southern accent that she dials up to 11, robbing scenes of their dramatic impact. Marlow (Laila Pyne) should be a great character – she’s a black scientist who grew up in the civil rights era of the 1960s. Unfortunately, the only part of that description the script is interested in is “black,” so she’s constantly yelling things like “My ass!” and “God damn!” This is clearly intended as a pastiche of blaxploitation film – there’s even a Richard Roundtree reference to hammer the point home – but it feels uncomfortable. Pyne, furthermore, is dreadfully unsuited for the role, as her diction is so precise and free of personality that she sounds like a vocal coach reading off a page. And then there’s Gabi (Ajjaz Awad), the Latina stuntwoman that rounds out the crew. There’s no pastiche here: she’s simply a broad ethnic stereotype. She’s not a bad character in other respects – like the others, she’s heroic, resourceful, intelligent – but she’s constantly calling people “mama” and “papi,” making references to conversations with her abuelita, criticizing the enchiladas at local restaurants, and so on. Also, does Awad have any Hispanic/Latina heritage? If not, that adds an extra problematic layer to an already difficult character.
The plot is functional enough, if incredibly basic. There are aliens buying actresses to use as “dolls,” hence the title. Our heroes stop them. Okay. But there’s a more fundamental question here: why is this story being told in the first place? It doesn’t feature a single familiar element from the Torchwood series. It doesn’t flesh out anything about Torchwood – you leave this story knowing exactly the same information about the organization that you knew going in. And to my knowledge it’s not intended to serve as a pilot, so we’re likely never going to see any of these characters again. So as a Torchwood story, it’s worthless. But even taken purely as a piece of drama, it fails on all but the most basic levels. Sure, it’s a pastiche, but it doesn’t have anything interesting to say about the source material. For that matter, it doesn’t have anything interesting to say about anything – there’s no attempt at deeper meaning here, nothing about Hollywood, nothing about the characters, nothing at all. The sound design isn’t even convincing in all cases. Heck, even the cover has a giant continuity error – the story takes pains to point out that Charley is blonde, but Kelly-Anne Lyons isn’t, and guess what we see on the cover?
“The Dollhouse” is a bad, boring story that serves no discernable purpose. Why anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me, as it’s barely even fit for release. If there’s anything positive to be taken away from this story, it’s that the Torchwood series has absolutely nowhere to go from here but up.
Embarrassing.
1/10