6.1 Future Pain by James Goss
Torchwood pick up the pieces and move on. After all, there’s a whole new set of alien threats to deal with.
While Yvonne Hartman is asserting her authority as the new leader of Torchwood, Jack Harkness is hunting an alien god in the sewers – but what’s he really hiding from?
6.2 The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood by Guy Adams
Brent Hayden. To some he’s the darling of the alt-right, to others he’s a far-left crusader. A lot of people watch his videos, hang off his every word. Crisis actors? Conspiracies? Black Ops? Brent knows you deserve the truth. And Brent’s come to Cardiff, because he’s going to expose Torchwood. Don’t forget to Like and Subscribe.
6.3 See No Evil by John Dorney
Cardiff goes blind.
There’s a hunter out there in the darkness. With no escape, and the screaming getting louder, Jack Harkness and Yvonne Hartman each set out to save the city in their own ways.
6.4 Night Watch by Tim Foley
The Black Sun has come through the Rift. When it visits, sleep comes with it. Orr is the guardian, appointed to watch over the city while it slumbers. What will they find as they wander the streets?
Who are the lost souls, trapped with their demons? Who are the ones fighting even sleep? Who are the broken meeting their dreams?
TORCHWOOD: GOD AMONG US, VOLUME ONE
The Big Finish Torchwood range has been excellent from the start, and the putative “series 5,” Aliens Among Us, that they released last year was delightful. So now it’s time for “series 6,” called God Among Us, and it picks up where Aliens Among Us left off. It follows a similar format: largely standalone episodes with an arc plot running in the background, very much in the style of the first two seasons of the TV show. But the arc plot and individual character arcs carry on directly from Aliens Among Us – this is absolutely not a jumping-on point for new listeners.
“Series 5” ended with an alien “god” lurching through the Rift and threatening Cardiff and presumably Earth itself. The first episode in this set, “Future Pain” by James Goss, concerns the fight against that god as well as Colin and the Torchwood team coming to terms with Colchester’s death and the sudden reappearance of Yvonne Hartman. The “god” feeds in a sort of quantum state, consuming the future pain of its victims. Naturally, nobody has as much anticipated future pain as Jack, and so we get a fairly predictable ending of Jack overfeeding the “god” until it dies. It feels easy, almost too easy, almost as though this isn’t the actual god that came through the Rift… but we’ll come to that in the other reviews. The character work here is spectacular, seeing how the various Torchwood team members react to a friend’s funeral. I love Jack in particular – he’s unusually uncomfortable, knowing exactly how insulting it is for an immortal to attend a funeral. We also learn much more about Colin and Colchester’s relationship. It’s a great season premiere – it sets up some pieces, clears others off the board, and leaves the listener ready for more.
“More” is “The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood,” by Guy Adams, a darkly comedic story about a conservative vlogger and influencer who aims to bring down the shadowy forces controlling society. It’s Brent Hayden (Tom Forrister), and he’s exactly as awful as you’d expect: he’s rude, racist, sexist, and he lives in his mother’s basement. Yes, it’s a broad portrayal that resorts to cliché, but it’s not really a caricature: there is a disturbingly large number of people just like this. Frankly, I’m surprised he isn’t American. Tyler comes to this man pretending to betray Torchwood, but actually – and laughably easily – manipulates Brent into doing Torchwood’s dirty work. Brent is disposed of through surprisingly cruel methods, a reminder that Torchwood with Yvonne in charge is a much different organization. When it’s all said and done, we’re left with the question of just how Brent got so many followers in the first place and the identity of the mysterious woman who helped him do so.
That leads us right into “See No Evil” by John Dorney, a concept piece about an alien hunter that takes all the light from Cardiff, rendering the population effectively blind. Jack and Yvonne, with the only two functional pairs of night vision goggles, are on their own to save the day. This gives us a chance to see how they coordinate despite mutual distrust, but it’s the interactions with other characters that reward. I refer specifically to the relationship between Yvonne and Andy, which is both thoroughly unlikely and yet somehow utterly believable. Andy sees the good in everyone, and sees it in Yvonne – and that’s particularly hard to do given the cavalier way she treats him. But for Yvonne, he’s a grounded, kind person who doesn’t have the worries or responsibilities she carries – it’s complicated, it’s difficult, and it’s great writing. The darkness plot is carried off with similar skill, if a bit predictably – the fear and paranoia of the people of Cardiff is palpable through the speakers. Great stuff.
And finally we have “Night Watch” by Tim Foley, a story in which the alien Black Sun comes through the Rift and puts the people of Cardiff to sleep while it quietly (and apparently harmlessly) feeds on their mental energies. It’s here that we finally meet the real “god” – and it’s in the unassuming and disconcerting form of a woman voiced by Jacqueline King. She’s been pulling strings behind the scenes in service of a greater plan we cannot yet discern – this box set has been an excellent demonstration of arc plotting through standalone stories, very much in the vein of Torchwood’s creator. In their dreams, people are given the chance to communicate with the dead or otherwise lost, and this leads to a series of heartbreaking scenes between Colin and Colchester. Naturally, the ending leaves the listener hungry for more – I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens next.
This is one of the best box sets Big Finish has ever released. The plotting is skillful, the characterization is masterful, and the structure measures up well to any similar TV series you can name. Torchwood is one of their greatest ranges, and these “new series” sets see the company and its creative minds at the peak of their powers. I cannot recommend this highly enough – and don’t worry, if you need to catch up, Aliens Among Us is damn good too!
10/10