Torchwood: The Lost Files
Jul. 18th, 2011 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcStill haven't seen Miracle Day; thought I should write these up first, without being influenced by it. For those who haven't heard of these, they're three radio dramas that were broadcast on Radio 4 last week in the Afternoon Play slot. Two of them are still available on Listen Again if you hurry.
I believe the technical term, or at least the TV Tropes term, is "Interquel". This is set before Children Of Earth, since that ended with Torchwood completely disbanded, and presumably Miracle Day is set to pick up from there. So Ianto's still alive, Jack's still around, and Tosh and Owen's deaths are recent memory.
"The Devil & Miss Carew" was good solid Torchwood: Something Weird is happening in Cardiff, and certain amount of contrived coincidence (since it's not Rift-related) gets Torchwood involved. In this case it's Rhys's uncle, who was at the nursing home the monster is based at, but turned down his offer of eternal youth. A good episode, with some nice characterisation (Miss Carew's insistence that she's not being mindcontrolled, followed by her total confusion as to what she's been doing at the end), and an affably sinister villain. Martin Jarvis as an evil Shipping Forecast. How Radio 4 can you get?
Best line: faced with an immobile door, Jack wishes he'd nicked the sonic screwdriver when he had the chance!
"Submission" was okay. For all that RTD made much of this being the first official UNIT/Torchwood co-mission (Martha was seconded to Torchwood, which is different), all they really did was provide the sub. There wasn't even a UNIT soldier with a speaking part! The villain was suitably creepy, especially the "Actually it has a valid desire with a horrible price" element. The revelation that actually, no it didn't amped up the creepiness, but at the cost of the moral ambiguity. The ending seemed a bit rushed, but then I heard it two days after the rest of the episode, because the hospital moved me to another bed five minutes before it finished. And "Sam" going on about how Jack will see Ianto die seemed to be laying the foreshadowing on with a trowel. Which brings me to...
"The House of the Dead". Okay, they totally got me. And they got me by making it too obvious: the first scene, where in the midst of a seance, Ianto's saying "Jack? Where are you, Jack?" had me thinking "Right, so it's supposed to sound like this is after Ianto's dead, and then it'll turn out he isn't." And by ten minutes into the episode, I'd practically forgotten how the opening scene had gone. Jack and Ianto were on a mission together, and Ianto was on the comline to Gwen, who was stuck in traffic. It couldn't possibly be set after Ianto's death.
So we get a very atmospheric tale of "ghosts" created from people's timelines by a creature from the Rift, and a pub full of spiritualists and people who see a seance as a bit of fun ready to help her. Ianto confronts his Dad, and Gwen becomes worried that Jack's determination to stop this has got him acting oddly. As she points this out, Ianto starts to agree.
And even when it turns out that it's not Gwen, it's the Rift monster manipulating Ianto, I still didn't twig. But if there's no Gwen, there's no firm reason this is set prior to Children of Earth, and if the Rift creature only has power over the dead, how is she communicating with Ianto...? Excellently done.
I believe the technical term, or at least the TV Tropes term, is "Interquel". This is set before Children Of Earth, since that ended with Torchwood completely disbanded, and presumably Miracle Day is set to pick up from there. So Ianto's still alive, Jack's still around, and Tosh and Owen's deaths are recent memory.
"The Devil & Miss Carew" was good solid Torchwood: Something Weird is happening in Cardiff, and certain amount of contrived coincidence (since it's not Rift-related) gets Torchwood involved. In this case it's Rhys's uncle, who was at the nursing home the monster is based at, but turned down his offer of eternal youth. A good episode, with some nice characterisation (Miss Carew's insistence that she's not being mindcontrolled, followed by her total confusion as to what she's been doing at the end), and an affably sinister villain. Martin Jarvis as an evil Shipping Forecast. How Radio 4 can you get?
Best line: faced with an immobile door, Jack wishes he'd nicked the sonic screwdriver when he had the chance!
"Submission" was okay. For all that RTD made much of this being the first official UNIT/Torchwood co-mission (Martha was seconded to Torchwood, which is different), all they really did was provide the sub. There wasn't even a UNIT soldier with a speaking part! The villain was suitably creepy, especially the "Actually it has a valid desire with a horrible price" element. The revelation that actually, no it didn't amped up the creepiness, but at the cost of the moral ambiguity. The ending seemed a bit rushed, but then I heard it two days after the rest of the episode, because the hospital moved me to another bed five minutes before it finished. And "Sam" going on about how Jack will see Ianto die seemed to be laying the foreshadowing on with a trowel. Which brings me to...
"The House of the Dead". Okay, they totally got me. And they got me by making it too obvious: the first scene, where in the midst of a seance, Ianto's saying "Jack? Where are you, Jack?" had me thinking "Right, so it's supposed to sound like this is after Ianto's dead, and then it'll turn out he isn't." And by ten minutes into the episode, I'd practically forgotten how the opening scene had gone. Jack and Ianto were on a mission together, and Ianto was on the comline to Gwen, who was stuck in traffic. It couldn't possibly be set after Ianto's death.
So we get a very atmospheric tale of "ghosts" created from people's timelines by a creature from the Rift, and a pub full of spiritualists and people who see a seance as a bit of fun ready to help her. Ianto confronts his Dad, and Gwen becomes worried that Jack's determination to stop this has got him acting oddly. As she points this out, Ianto starts to agree.
And even when it turns out that it's not Gwen, it's the Rift monster manipulating Ianto, I still didn't twig. But if there's no Gwen, there's no firm reason this is set prior to Children of Earth, and if the Rift creature only has power over the dead, how is she communicating with Ianto...? Excellently done.
