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.
Torchwood Among Us establishes what has been happening to our favorite Torchwood agents as they remain scattered, and gives us the Ng and Gwen showdown we’ve been waiting for.
The Review
Aliens Next Door is the first Torchwood release in four years, and what a long four years it has been. Thankfully, it’s come back swinging with a premiere that gives me high hopes for the future of the series. Jack is referred to as the elephant in the room, but Ng is right, Torchwood is so much more than him. The pairing of Ng and Orr is quite excellent, bouncing off each other extremely well and having differing strengths and weakness: Ng’s long experience and Orr’s naïveté. The plot is a winner too, as social manipulation is used to turn an estate against a harmless man, showing how quickly we can turn on our neighbors in rage. To see Ng and Orr briefly give in is harrowing. Still, the victim isn’t quite innocent, he helped develop this social engineering technology, giving a great added layer to the story .Melanie Kilburn gives a great performance as Betty Clerihew, the epitome of a town gossip. The threat is clear, and I can’t wait to see Torchwood respond. 9.5/10, a great first episode bringing the team back. At least this story seemed loonily be a year or so in-universe from last season.
Colin Alone is the story of Colin, struggling in the months since Colchester’s departure. There’s one glaring problem to this story, Colin is no longer played by Ramon Tikaram. For me he was a standout the past two seasons, and Joplin Sibtain does his best, but it isn’t the same. (Apparently Tikaram didn’t want to come back, which is a massive shame). Most of the story reminds me of Hostile Environment, in its repetitive stomach-churning structure. Colin’s put through interrogations about Colchester by a mysterious organization who do their best to sabotage his non-profit job, getting him fired while his apartment floods and his building manager refuses to help. It’s depressing, it’s a lot of the Colin recast, until the very end where Colchester shows up and takes out the villains. The uncomfortableness pushes it up to a 8 for me, but it wasn’t exactly fun to listen to. 8/10, the world and everybody collapses around Colin, and it’s a tough listen.
After 26 episodes, this is the reckoning between Gwen and Ng that we have been waiting for. Ng arrives in Iceland where Gwen and Rhys live in a lighthouse which is very Torchwood. The confrontation goes about as well as you’d expect, I’d forgotten with all heroism that Ng had killed Gwen’s mother in cold blood! There’s a lot of blood of Ng’s hands, and it turns out far more than we thought. We finally know what Ng is, an alien who made a deal with some powerful entity ‘the mist’ to give her immortality by stealing other people’s bodies. In exchange, it wants the souls of those she slips through, and now it’s here for Gwen. Even more horrifyingly, the first person Ng killed for immortality was her own child. What makes this story so perfect is we find out just how much being Gwen changed Ng, and how her humanity and motherhood have permanently altered her. For Gwen, by the end of the story, she decides to get back into the alien hunting game. With Eve Myles semi-retired focusing on her family, this could be the end for Gwen, but it’s a hopeful one. Oh, and it’s just fun hearing Kai Owen as Rhys again. 9.75/10, we finally get the reckoning for Ng we’ve been waiting for. Sidebar, it’s funny how Alexandria Riley’s voice has taken over my memory of what Gwen should sound like.
Tyler Steele is finally a hero. Moderation is such a perfect and disturbing look at modern day alt-right communities and journalism. Tyler is now working moderating the comments section at a major London newspaper, and a gay Muslim reporter named Petra is struggling to get her stories published. The new boss of the paper, Barry, played by Silas Carson to loathsome perfection is encouraging hate speech because it drives engagement. Tyler has to figure out a way to save Petra, which he barely does with some incredible tech skills. The attacks on Petra get more disturbing every day, especially because of how sickeningly it reflects our actual reality. The same week people are calling bomb threats on Targets having Pride merchandise, it’s a lot to take in. It ends on a perfect cliffhanger as we get a sense of the true villain of this season, and it is horrifically chilling. The joy for me is seeing how far Tyler has come to where he is putting his life on the line to save others. We could use some more of that. 10/10: a true Torchwood classic from James Goss.
Among Us 1 opens a new season of Torchwood perfectly timed with cutting social commentary and incredibly sci-fi drama. I know it’s blasphemous with Children of Earth existing, but this season could topple it.
9.313/10 Never has something in the Doctor Who world been such on the cutting edge as this boxset. A true tour de force.
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