Companions: Melanie Bush, Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Kate Stewart
Quality always helps win out, and the 60th anniversary delivers well enough there, but you still can’t shake the feeling of wondering what we’re all doing here.
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories:
Wild Blue Yonder: 10/10
The Star Beast: 8/10
The Giggle: 10/10
There will be a lot of overlap with the Fourteenth Doctor review, so let’s stay focused on the tv stories for this post. The Star Beast was fun enough, and the Meep brings his iconic comic-villain status to the screen, but ultimately got bogged down with some weird dialogue that got a bit too heavy-handed. Then we got our first out and out classic in years with Wild Blue Yonder, an absolutely terrific terrifying story that reminded us what we love so much about this show. Finally, The Giggle starts with some great satire, and then left us with a resolution that left us with more questions than answers. For people who wanted classic series fan-service, they were at least covered by The Power of the Doctor. Now, we wonder what the future holds.
8.667/10 The 60th anniversary definitely feels more in line with Series 1-10 than the Chibnall era did, but hardly surprising with all the same people coming back. The real question is what will the bold new future have in store for us?
Doctor: The Fourteenth Doctor, the Fifteenth Doctor
Companions: Melanie Bush, Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Kate Stewart
The Giggle brings the 60th anniversary festivities to a close with a very fun episode that just ends with a bit of whimper while introducing some major lore changes that feel a little more half-baked than game-breaking.
The Review
David Tennant gives it his all, as usual
The first two-thirds of this story are a lot of fun. In what I was unaware of was a very true story, the first television image was of a creepy puppet. It turns out none other than the Toymaker supplied this puppet, and its evil giggle has been embedded into every television screen, getting stuck in people’s brains. Now in the 21st century, all of the world is turned online, and guess what: the Toymaker is making everybody think they’re right and everyone else is wrong, the modus operandi of the 21st century. This is all great social satire, but they don’t do much with it in the second half of the episode to my disappointment. Neil Patrick Harris is a ton of fun as the Toymaker, the sequence of him lip-syncing Spice Girls and terrorizing UNIT is sensational (including turning two soldiers into bouncy balls). UNIT has a full team with Kate, Shirley, this alien called the Vlinx, and Mel! Mel explains she got a lift back to Earth after Glitz died, and found a home in UNIT. Bonnie Langford does a great job in this episode. I like this new UNIT team here, but I do need to hear from Osgood, even Chibnall at least shouted her out in Flux. Then we get the final third of the story…
The first every bi-generation
The Toymaker eventually shoots a big ‘ol laser at the Doctor, and he bi-generates, with Gatwa basically spawning out of Tennant. This is the big thing that caused endless controversy, and honestly…I don’t mind weird stuff like this. What matters is how it gets used. The Toymaker’s defeat is a game of catch which has some fun scenes, but eventually he just misses and gets stuck in a box. It’s a bit of a whimper, and the shock of the bi-generation really steals the Toymaker’s thunder away. Secondly, there’s a lot of confusion about what exactly is going on here. Gatwa seems a lot more with it than Tennant, and basically says he needs therapy and to settle down with the Nobles while Gatwa heads out of there. He even hits the TARDIS with a mallet and creates a duplicate Tennant gets to keep. Honestly, my main question is just: why? Was it worth it to risk overshadowing Gatwa and still keep the specter of Tennant out there? It’s such a kind ending for the Tennant Doctor, but it also has made it feel like everything we saw in-between The End of Time and now and the three Doctors we had was really stealthily character development just for Tennant. Hopefully the unfolding of the RTD era will ease my concerns, but it’s a change I’m going to see RTD need to put more leg-work in to justify. At least we’ve mentioned the Flux.
The Giggle starts off as potentially a potent satire of 21st century outrage culture, and ends up getting bogged down by some lore that leaves us all with more questions than answers. I’m just glad we’re finally going to see Gatwa in action. (And I didn’t even mention, the new Master is all but confirmed to be coming).
8/10: The first part of the episode saves this from the 7 range, but the ending kind of falls apart in a RTD-way reminiscent of old.
We go even further beyond in a story that becomes an immediate classic.
The Review
The TARDIS is perfectly fine
At last…this is why Doctor Who is incredible. We regrettably went the entire Chibnall era without a true classic episode you could point to and declare that is what the show is about. Demons of the Punjab was incredible, but not necessarily something that only Doctor Who could’ve done. This is (okay maybe Star Trek). Following a hilarious cold open where Isaac Newton discovers ‘mavity’ instead of ‘gravity’ (which is just a joke and isn’t hinting at anything…right?), we land on a massive abandoned spaceship. The TARDIS’ hostile action system kicks in, and it vanishes with the Sonic, leaving the Doctor and Donna to unravel this mystery. It’s a two-hander…and then the penny drops when the two split up and start talking to two people who are very decidedly not the Doctor and Donna. The true villain are these ‘Not Things’ from the edge of the universe, who occasionally turn into revolting body horror. It’s the Other Mother from Coraline, horrifying copies who just can’t quite get the arms right.
The Fourteenth Doctor looking fabulous
The plot is relatively simple once you know it, but watching this story was exhilarating and tense. Many scenes of trying to figure out who was real and who was the copy, and unraveling that the ship was about to self-destruct to prevent these non-things from entering the universe. We get more insight into the Doctor and Donna, Donna’s newfound confidence, and how the Doctor is feeling after the whole Flux thing with half the universe getting eaten and not knowing their origins. I am so happy that RTD is dealing with the fallout from Jodie’s run head on, and not papering it over like it doesn’t exist. That’s one big fear for this era gone. The resolution is thrilling, climatic, with the Doctor almost taking on the wrong Donna. At the very end back on Earth, we get a reunion with a now wheelchair-bound Wilf, and to see Bernard Cribbins still in top form at the end of his life was so bittersweet.
Regardless of what happens in The Giggle, this dynamite episode proved that Doctor Who still has the goods 60 years later. For people wanting more characters and fan service, I get it, but The Power of the Doctor filled that role well enough for me not to be worried here. Also, shout-out to the fun interlude comic preceding this story with the Doctor and Donna careening through history.
10/10: Been too long since I’ve given out a ten. A slimmed down cast in an impossible problem has worked wonders from Midnight to Heaven Sent and even on audio with Scherzo, add Wild Blue Yonder to that canon.
Wilfred Mott/Bernard Cribbins you lovely lovely man. We all miss you
We’re back for The Star Beast, a special that gives us that Doctor and Donna reunion we were promised, and shows that RTD is still going to bring some flaws with him.
The Review
Our new Rose
RTD is who RTD always was: an incredibly gifted writer who sometimes just can’t quite help himself. The Star Beast, an adaptation of a 70s comic, features the Doctor, freshly David Tennant and jumps right in (well, after a very cheesy/bizarre Series 4 recap). He meets Donna immediately, and we’re away, with him being confused by her having a daughter named Rose. A lot of the fun comes from The Meep, an incredibly evil villain who can appear like it’s just a harmless little child in order to gain sympathy. Seeing it switch from harmless to evil is a ton of fun. A lot of the joy (and some weirdness) comes from seeing Tennant and Donna in modern high-def cameras looking older, it’s familiar but a bit disorienting at the same time. We have a new UNIT contact in Shirley Bingham who rides a wheelchair with rockets in it, and more people who might evolve into UNIT mainstays. For such a brief role in The End of Time, Shaun played by Karl Collins is quite excellent. Sylvia also seems to have gotten a little better…I think. It does all feel ‘proper’ Doctor Who, and there were enough references to the Doctor having been a woman recently to feel like we’re not throwing out the Whittaker era, which I appreciated it. The claustrophobic crystal TARDIS that was generally a miss is also gone replaced with a gigantic antiseptic TARDIS, a fusion of old and new I love, and will love more with some furniture.
The new TARDIS interior!
My big worry with this whole Tennant stunt is there wouldn’t be a reason for it outside of PR or RTD playing with his old toys, and that feeling unfortunately is still here, no matter the predictably great performances by Tennant and especially Tate who reminds us how incredible Donna is. Donna’s mind-wipe is resolved by having gotten pregnant and passing down part of her Time Lord brain to her daughter. RTD can’t help to try and make things more complicated than that but somehow saying that Donna’s daughter (Rose, because, duh) is trans or non-binary because Time Lords are genderless? There are some good moments about trans identity in here, a topic never seriously touched on by the show whatsoever, notably the conversation with Donna and Sylvia about trying to get it right with her. Still, Rose saying the Doctor won’t get something as a ‘male-presenting Time Lord’, as bit ham-fisted as the Twelfth Doctor saying the future better be all female. I know RTD’s heart is in the right place, but if you play the ‘this person’s so-called difference is a secret superpower’ card too many times it just feels a bit silly.
The Star Beast feels like something that would be firmly mid-tier in Series 4, but in RTD we trust. We even had London cracking apart and then just…un-cracking apart. Still, I was frustrated that it didn’t feel like this was an earned reunion and worth revisiting an old Doctor for the first time. Two more specials to go through!
8/10: RTD’s characters naturally already feel more self-assured and lived in than the Chibnall era which is a sigh of relief, but I’m waiting to see the plotting catch up.
Liberation of the Daleks features for the first time, a Doctor’s debut story taking place in comic-form. Does the gambit work? Let’s find out.
The Review
I mean, come on, Daleks taking on dragons!
Initially, I wasn’t sure how ‘canon’ to take Liberation of the Daleks, but it became rapidly clear that this was as official as it gets. Fitting the gap perfectly between The Power of the Doctor and the following minisode, it is a great anniversary look into everything Dalek. Let’s talk Fourteenth Doctor, and thirteen months from his appearance it is clear Tennant truly is getting two numbered Doctors to his credit. For understandable reasons, there’s nothing made of the mystery around the Doctor’s creation. I did enjoy getting to see older Tennant in the Thirteenth Doctor’s TARDIS and using her screwdriver throughout the story. I didn’t read this comic, I watched it, courtesy of a full movie made by the YouTube channel Cloister Room with a full score, sound effects, and even directorial decisions. I was floored at the high quality, and can highly recommend it. Finally, Lee Sullivan’s art is absolutely spectacular, from Tennant truly looking his current age to the beautiful varieties of Daleks, it’s a feast for the eyes.
The Tenth Doctor met the real Golden Emperor, the Fourteenth meeting a dreamed up one somehow makes sense
The plot starts with the 1966 World Cup Final and a seeming Dalek invasion, but it turns out this was taking place in one of the many dream realities of the Dalek Dome, a Dalek-themed reality park powered by the real dreams of captured Daleks. Naturally, the woman in charge, Georgette, underestimates them, and soon the Supreme Dalek has entered the real world. The escalation is done well here, this invasion seems as bad as it gets until the Doctor defeats it and leaves…only to be drawn right back and now the golden Dalek Emperor is in charge! The story is definitely too out there for a tv episode, but it is a great homage to the 60s Dalek comics and constantly upping the stakes. The Doctor saves the day of course by playing other Dalek Emperors (and Imperators and weird Daleks we’ve never met) off each other, jealous at the golden emperor’s success. In the end, he leaves Georgette to decide if she has the right to kill her captive Daleks.
Liberation of the Daleks is a lot of fun, and despite initially thinking the comic strip was a weird choice, it gives us hardcore fans an immediate post-regeneration story and some Dalek gloriousness just not feasible even on a Disney budget. The motion comic came out to 75 minutes or so, and I truly had a blast. Who knows if the Doctor Who Magazine strip will be this in-continuity again, but a fun anniversary adventure.
9/10: The full motion comic gets a 9.5, but I know that’s a little unofficial, seriously though, a lot of fun. Don’t miss out!
Doctor: First Doctor, Second Doctor, Sixth Doctor, Eighth Doctor, Ninth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor
Companion: Charley Pollard, Brian, Jackie Tyler
The follow up from Time Lord Victorious goes in an unexpected direction featuring a brand new assassin Doom trying desperately to find the First Doctor.
The Review
Doom being hunted by Death
Doom’s Day had one brutal rollout. The main criticism of Time Lord Victorious was its rollout was confusing, things came out of order (though covid could largely be blamed) and some things like most of the Victorious Days stuff were late adds that were folded in. This time, there are 24 hours to the story and they’re coming out sequentially. The introduction being an extremely low-budget fourth-wall breaking video by Sooz Kemper, the avatar of Doom, was cause for immediate ridicule. Still, I was willing to give it a chance, but it started painfully slow. Fresh off a triumphant achievement in Torchwood, James Goss’ first hour was incredibly underwhelming and more confusing than anything. Then hours 2-5 came in Four Hours From Doom’s Day, a Doctor Who Magazine supplement that rushed through the hours. Seriously, in hour two we don’t even know what Doom’s job was but she chats to River. Oh, did I forget to say: the badly named Doom is an assassin who only has one hour to complete a job lest Death catches up to her. Literal Death.
The many faces of Missy
Things were marginally improved in Hours 6-9 taking place in a Titan comics two issue miniseries called A Doctor in the House? featuring Missy. Missy was in her ‘trying to be the Doctor’ phase and was mainly just getting irritated by Doom getting to do all of the killing. While I’ll never complain with Missy (and even a Twelfth Doctor cameo), the actual overall storyline seemed frustratingly unclear. As well, every Titan Comics EU release and this one have had the exact same writer and art style team, and they’re serviceable but it’s B-quality work. Also, Doom’s actual personality seemed elusive. Hour 10 was AI Am the Doctor, told in slides in a limited time weekend event only in a predatory mobile game called Lost in Time. The first event I didn’t even realize would be limited time and I started a day late, relying on the generosity of someone who uploaded the slides on YouTube. Believe it or not, I don’t hate the limited time events as it made it feel like Doom’s Day was an ongoing saga, but there need to be opportunities if you miss them. In this one Doom supposedly meets the Thirteenth Doctor and K9, but the Doctor turns out to be Kamelion, who K9 saved from Planet of Fire I guess. If the Master survived that story, why not them too.
The most random crossover ever?
Thankfully, things picked up with the book Extraction Point, written by MG Harris. Finally, there was space to give some more explanation as to what was going on: somehow Doom’s timeline is collapsing, and she specifically needs to find the First Doctor. The others won’t help her (presumably because they remember being the First Doctor and meeting her again), but will assist in saving the universe. Doom actually gets some much needed characterization, revealing her conflicted thoughts about being an assassin (thinking sometimes it does help society, other times not so much), and that maybe her really talent is being a singer? The book turns out to be a love letter to Series 1 and the Ninth Doctor, with the overarching villains of the Slitheen and checking in on good ‘ol Satellite 5. Hour 14 brings in the Second Doctor (who never meets the Ninth), which comes off as a bit random, but since he’s close to the First does allow Doom to wring some more info out of him. It was a fun book that made Doom into an actual character. Hour 15 was back to mobile game events with Wrong Place at the Right Time being a little vignette about Doom killing a man who will become a martyr inspiring a revolution to overthrow an authoritarian regime. Again, limited time event not necessarily bad, doing it in that game was rough. So many ads for Merge Mansion.
Hey, more Twelfth Doctor is always a win in my book
BBC Audio’s contribution was Four From Doom’s Day, four half-hour read stories. The first one united Doom with Ian and Barbara aboard a cruise ship in some Cold War intrigue, which was…fine. The second story was about an ancient Ice Warrior queen which was also perfectly fine. I got some more enjoyment about the return of Time Lord Victorious‘ break-out character: Brian the Ood. Set in San Francisco 1999 but on Halloween this time, hearing Ood dealing with Doom did some to make this feel part of the TLV-verse. The highlight was the final story featuring the Twelfth Doctor called Dark Space with Doom meeting a time-sensitive who has visions of the Doctor constantly stopping their dreams of conquest. This boxset exemplifies the crossover, the stories all work, but with the overall plot still frustratingly a mystery it doesn’t feel like the story is moving in any propulsive direction.
Doom in The Dalek’s Master Plan
The idea of returning to the delightfully alien and weird galactic council of The Daleks’ Master Plan is a good one, except this story doesn’t entirely do that? (Full disclosure, I had a nasty headache listening to this one). Dawn of an Everlasting Peace is really the story of Doom helping a poor woman in her three year old son who has been aged by taranium into an old man and is trying to expose the conspiracy. Too much of the story is spent dealing with Fynix, the annoying cat-voiced leader of the Sixth Galaxy. On top of that, if I wasn’t super versed in lore, it would be super easy to completely forget that this is supposed to be about the Master Plan. We don’t even get a Mavic Chen or Daleks reference! Additionally because we know the First Doctor saves the day, the best Doom can do is make that woman and her kid’s life better. Also, still frustratingly lacking on Doom related character development.
Maybe my favorite story of the whole thing?
I was very happy to get to A Date with Destiny, because it meant I could now point to at least one thing that was high quality form this whole adventure. There are two reasons: one, Doom tangles with Destiny, who is also an assassin. We get some more exploration of the culture of assassins, and find that many of them have stupid names, which is all great fun. There was also the ominous hint that maybe Doom’s laconic handler Terri is the true villain, which I actually hadn’t considered. The second is Camille Coduri is somehow even better now as Jackie Tyler as when she was on tv. She perfectly nails the portrayal of someone who isn’t book smart, but is street smart and independent. Having her in this story was a delight. There were a few small references too, Jackie’s neighbor Peggy is mentioned in Army of Ghosts, and a mission Doom turns down is to kill legendary EU character Abslom Daak who made a cameo in Time Heist too. This story actually gave some development to Doom and leaned into the stupid world of the Lesser Order of Oberon. Pleased to say: good job.
The Howling Wolves of Xan-Phear I think runs into the same issue that hurt Dawn of an Everlasting Peace and really this whole arc: we still don’t know enough about Doom. Structuring this crossover around an original character might’ve worked, but we still have very little backstory to Doom and her only motivation for meeting the Doctor is just not go get killed. This story is perfectly fine, we meet a race of wolf people with an insanely powerful howl who have manipulated by the Silence, because they want to be able to literally shut up the Doctor at Trenzalore. The audio design is good, Sooz Kemper’s performance is good, but at this point I’m desperate for some answers and we get zero in the story arc. This story does do some interesting things with the Silence in finding a way to mute them to stop their psychic suggestion, but when Doom wishes the Doctor were hear to save her, we wish for it too. We do get a bit farther (maybe) on the evil Terri plotline. I hope this actually goes somewhere.
The last of the Big Finish quartet is The Crowd, where Doom meets the iconic pairing of the Eighth Doctor and Charley. Again, this raised questions about how much the different writers of Doom’s Day were communicating because Doom is a lot more casually amoral here while the Doctor utterly despises her. The setting in 1170 Canterbury is fun, and the idea of the Crowd, a mysterious group feeding off national tragedy is a good invention for a villain. Still, Doom repeatedly is fine killing tons of people as casual crossfire in her fight, and compared to how generally amiable past Doctors has been, Eight hates her guts. Also, we got no pay-off from the mysterious Terri hint by Destiny, though her and Doom’s relationship is stretched to its limit. While a fun enough listen, there’s only one story left and the idea of ‘why’ is still there. Doom wonders why the Doctor has led her on this day, and honestly, so do we.
The story ends with Out of Time, another short story and thankfully significantly more well-written than the opening chapter. Surprisingly, it’s a relatively satisfying ending: Doom’s dying because she was sent to assassinate her past self. The whole time the First Doctor has been waiting patiently in order to settle the mess, and it turns out the Terri hint was true: she scheduled the assassination of everyone else in the Order of Oberon (except Brian, surely!) after being tired of being disrespected. The Doctor has Doom go back in time and stop her from killing herself, and ‘death’ kills Terri instead.
Ultimately, Doom’s Day suffered from a critical lack of focus: it was often confusing what the plot line was supposed to be and especially the first half often had cheap throwaway stories. As well, the idea of making an assassin the main character was a weird choice for Doctor Who, and I was often confused on how much sympathy we were supposed to have for Doom. I would’ve tried to reveal the mystery about Doom sooner too. Still, being one of five people to follow this story through, I do have some attachment to Doom and would like to see her show up again. The story at least came out in order, but I still think this was just a weird framing narrative to ostensibly celebrate the 60th anniversary. Due to largely negative fan reception (mainly to the cringe fourth-wall breaking inter-story updates, I doubt many people actually read or listened) this might be the last multi-platform story. I hope not, as during the year-long layoff from Doctor Who this kept something in the conversation.
7/10 Ultimately, I can’t go higher than a seven, it was too uneven and often mediocre. The best stories were Dark Space and A Date With Destiny especially for leaning into the very stupid world of time-traveling assassins.
The Animated Specials are generally harmless fun, but don’t offer anything special.
The Review
Martha and her heart’s desire.
The Infinite Quest was initially aired as bunch of shorts on CBBC, and they’re stitched together here. It’s basically a quick animated version of The Key To Time with the Doctor and Martha being set up by Baltazar, a criminal to go on a fetch quest to find data chips to bring him to an ancient ship called the ‘Infinite’. In their adventures we see a planet run by ‘Oil Corp’ (very original), the best of the lot, a bug vs human war with a gun running frog ‘Mergrass’ voiced by Paul Clayton, which was a delight. Following that it was to Volag-Noc, the prison where Baltazar escaped from, then to the ruin of the Infinite itself, which lacked any power anymore to do what it wanted. There’s nothing objectionable, but the animation isn’t that great. At least we really have Tennant and Agyeman providing the voices, so that’s fun enough. It’s just a little piece of Doctor Who history.
A little green woman
Dreamland manages to have an even worse animation style, although by the end you’re used to it enough that you forget the flaws. In an obvious turn Doctor Who finally tackles the Roswell incident, and we get the Tenth Doctor in the deserts of New Mexico. It’s a suitably twisty plot that the classic series would have, and even manages to have some continuity with The Sarah Jane Adventures episode a year later. We meet the Viperox, as well as the unnamed classic Roswell alien design and in an all time surprise a straight-shooting US colonel turns good. Dreamland also has an incredibly rare Native American character and minor subplot which was nice to see. The plot is better than The Infinite Quest, but the animation is certainly a step down. Still, at only 46 minutes edited into one omnibus, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
It makes sense considering that these were never intended to be seen by many people, but they’re so disposable. I finally decided to review them by admitting they were shown on television and a streaming service and clearly not 4th wall breaking. I just wish there was more going on there.
7.75/10 Just when you think you’ve seen everything from Tennant…there’s more.
The waitress voiced by now Georgia Tennant, and the Native American by a Canadian who conceivably could be?
Starting with seemingly disconnected stories, Torchwood: Among Us gradually builds together an incredible narrative taking on seemingly every ill of modern society. What a treat.
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories
Moderation: 10/10
How I Conquered the World: 10/10
Doomscroll: 10/10
Misty Eyes: 9.75/10
Cuckoo: 9.75/10
The Apocalypse Starts at 6PM: 9.75/10
Aliens Next Door: 9.5/10
Pariahs: 9/10
Propaganda: 8.75/10
At Her Majesty’s Pleasure: 8.25/10
Colin Alone: 8/10
Heistland: 8/10
Among Us faced a daunting task, recorded over a once in a century pandemic and dealing with the blacklisting of Torchwood‘s central figure. With James Goss and the Big Finish team at the helm, I needn’t have worried. The lack of Jack and general departure from Cardiff makes for a very different season tonally than the previous two, so it feels like another soft reboot. Still, every character gets their time from Ng in Misty Eyes, Orr in Propaganda, Colchester in Pariahs, Yvonne in At Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and Tyler in Moderation. Each boxset also had an experimental story from Colin’s life falling apart in Colin Alone, Billis smothering Torchwood’s next team in the crib in Cuckoo, and the fantastic story of an algorithm’s descent into madness in How I Conquered the World. Goss described this season as being about the dangers of being too online, and from social media fueled conspiracies to fears about just where does all that DNA of ours go, the prescience of this season is truly incredible. Long live Torchwood!
9.23/10 Finishing only .02 off ofDoctor Who Series 9 for the finest season of Who-content ever seems correct. It’s incredible to say but Children of Earth may have been bested.
Torchwood has never felt more biting or more current as the Among Us boxset reaches a properly shocking conclusion.
The Review
How I Conquered the World is a story I wish we’d gotten in the previous two boxsets (especially with the idea of the Committee still confusing): at last, everything is explained. It takes place as the horrific childish voice we’d been hearing turns out to be ‘Friend’, the sentient algorithm behind the social media platform HelloFriend. It’s a both funny and scary distillation of society and how algorithms begin to spread hatred: it just wants to make everybody happy, including the bigots, and it turns out the only thing that makes them happy is bigotry. It also gives us a rough outline of Torchwood’s activities throughout the series, including some long-overdue justice paid to the horror of Miracle Day. In a way, Friend has been operating in the shadows since the new series began, and its true level of manipulation is left open to interpretation. From AI voices describing sex to a man yelling to the restore the Synderverse, Who-related media has never been more online. For a niche series such as this, it’s as biting satire as we can imagine. 10/10, as unique a story as can be dreamed and an explanation of where we all went wrong. How can Torchwood running out of a temp agency save us now?
The timeliness of this Torchwood season continues to impressive with a story all about the hell that is being a social media influencer. The story was teasingly marketed as Colchester meets influencers and promised a lot of fireworks as the surly Colchester dealt with them. Despite that, Colchester grows to love the influencer he’s assigned to protect, but not as much as Tyler. That’s right, this is actually a Tyler story, and for some reason I find Tyler stories to be my favorite. He falls in love with Chris, an influencer, and in the end Chris dies too, because Tyler can’t save him and gets snarky with him because he can’t help himself. There are no winners in this story, just depressed people looking at people much prettier than them and knowing they’re depressed too. Welcome to modern society. 10/10, is this going to be one of the best Big Finish boxsets of all time?
I thought this story would be a sexy beach heist involving cryptocurrency, and instead it’s sort of a comedy about Iceland? Torchwood go to Carcassonne France to stop Friend auctioning its super weapon, and at the same time Rhys is calling in has finally joined the mysterious Kristen in Iceland. The parts I really liked were Tyler’s despondency and Orr truly feeling his grief, which of course in Torchwood fashion means they hook up. The Icelandic stuff was less interesting, I think partially because Kristen just didn’t connect with me much as a character. She’s kind of a smart old Icelandic grandmother I guess, I’m not sure. It was fun to see Rhys still involved, but her part of it fell flat. On top of it, the dramatic conclusion is really just a chat between Yvonne and Friend, but Yvonne does get to claim she knows what Friend will do next. Does she? Only one way to find out. 8/10, I guess there’s no real angle to crypto other than it being stupid but this lacked the bite
Instead of a conventional big guns blazing finale like the previous two seasons, James Goss gives us something exciting and unexpected. The main character of The Apocalypse Starts at 6 PM is Janet, a normal light entertainment tv host. It turns out that they’re the last people everyone in the country can trust. In a critical denouement mentioning a surprising character, Yvonne explains that Torchwood saved humanity the only way they know how: by making them all stupid and scared. It’s a fun thrill ride as Janet has the worst day of her life, and we get a showdown between Yvonne and Friend taking place on a tv show sofa. It’s truly Torchwood in all the best ways, a bit subversive, exciting, and constantly surprising. The biggest surprise: Friend isn’t quite done yet. Series 8 can’t get here soon enough. 9.75/10: This boxset sticks the landing as Torchwood shows it’s still got tricks up it’s sleeve.
Among Us 3 takes on the Internet, and makes it completely not cliche.
9.438/10 I know where I am, and I know what I’ll do next: keep giving James Goss my money.
Torchwood Among Us2 rounds out the list of updates on the Torchwood team, and sets the scale for what should be a heck of a finale.
The Review
Propaganda seemed to get off to a slow start, but it was actually building toward one heck of a denouement. It starts with Orr traveling to essentially the Ukrainian War, and her plane gets shot down. It turns out Orr is very hard to kill, and she heads to Voloshnik, a town afflicted by a mysterious disease. With her companion Tania, they find a city of dust and one Englishman and what Orr discovers as “the greatest advert in history’. The idea of destroying a whole city just to help form a narrative, it’s terrifying, especially that the person unwittingly helping create it ran a Russian troll farm. The themes of this season, misinformation, manipulation, it continues to take central space. 8.75/10, it was fun to see Orr actually get to be the headliner for a story. Maybe regret listening to this on a plane though…
It took until halfway through the season to unleash Yvonne back on Torchwood, and it is always a pleasure to hear Tracy-Ann Olberman again as she takes center stage in At Her Majesty’s Pleasure. This time she successfully executes a year+ long plan in order to leverage Andy’s feelings about her in order to escape prison. Poor Andy is once again not in charge of his own story, getting duped and pushed around by Yvonne. Yvonne gets a worthy adversary in Charlotte, the prison warden, as Torchwood seemingly has no shortage of ruthless women around. It’s a good story, but never reached the great heights the societal examination stories this season have. I just hope something will go well for Andy one of these days. 8.25/10, the problem with this story is you just always knew Yvonne would get out.
There’s always a worry with these type of episodes that it feel like a waste of time, after all, none of the Torchwood crew is here. Still, it’s a fantastic story anchored by Nathaniel Curtis as Vijay, a supposed urban explorer who goes with two of his friends into the ruins of the Hub. There he finds Bilis Manger, in the last role of the sadly departed Murray Melvin, and a hologram in the frankly unrecognizable voice of Ianto. His transformation into becoming a member of Torchwood, trying to sacrifice himself for the greater good, is an amazing journey. There’s also one of the most sickening deaths ever as the famous Torchwood lift meets a locked door and crushes a guy to death. As Bilis said, this story was about the spirit of Torchwood, and how they somehow persevere despite immense costs. 9.75/10, a rewarding story with some great performances, and it does give us some hints toward the overall arc too. What are shard drives I wonder?
Everything finally comes together in Pariahs, and as you’d hope, it’s a disquieting reflection of a society that doesn’t feel far away. Yvonne, Ng, and Tyler are running an inquiry into Floboss, a data company. Colchester is trying to get the PM’s top assistant and Floboss exec Graeme there. Graeme is a piece of work, a ‘friend’ of Colchester’s from the Falklands who is contemptuous of everyone that’s not him. Finally, Orr is recovering the whistleblower, a man named Kyle who sits in exile in Eastern Europe. After seven episodes divided, the Torchwood team is united again, and it’s an absolute treat. The revelation of a bioweapon that can genetically target certain people or ethnic groups is devastatingly scary, as is the remorseless entity who kills everyone but Torchwood with devastating efficacy. I don’t know how Torchwood can stop it, but I know they’ll be in the winning room. 9.5/10: James Goss’ influence is all over this season, and very much for the better. What a smart writer.
Among Us 2 says once and for all that this brand new Torchwood team, all who haven’t been on screen (except Yvonne sort of) can stand on their own with Jack. This deadly social satire promises the threat will continue to ramp up. I can’t wait to see what happens.
9.063/10 The terror of this season is deep-set, and it feels like Torchwood has never been more up against it. Can’t wait for the finish.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 