Monday 20 November 2017

Reviews Torchwood - Aliens Among Us, Part 2 by Tony J Fyler


Tony’s getting a classic Torchwood vibe.

Aliens Among Us is the official fifth series of Torchwood, and in many ways it’s delivering a ‘Classic Torchwood’ vibe, albeit with a few new twists – the team are back in the Hub, dealing with an alien incursion-cum-migration into Cardiff and the complexities of giving a welcome to visitors from elsewhere in the galaxy while still maintaining the human world in its (at least perceived) ‘normality.’

The first story in this box set, Love Rat is absolutely classic Torchwood – almost to the point of being a re-tread of the Day One storyline. Buckle up, everybody, it’s alien sex-parasite time again. This time with added rat-glands. So…that’s special. Especially when you have Jack Harkness, Tyler ‘anybody’s for a cute smile’ Steele and Orr on the team. It’s fast-paced, fun and entertaining, without being overly demanding in terms of its social conscience, meaning it gets you into the set quickly, almost before you realise you’re in.

A Kill To A View, by Mac Rogers, is rather meatier fare and a parable of modern shallowness, the will to power, and the fight to be the king of any given swamp – it’s a pitched battle for the best apartment in a block, and death by dinner party, a kind of Come Die With Me, without the arch narration. That said, if it’s arch narration you’re looking for, A Kill To A View brings back Torchwood’s middle-manager of death, Bilis Manger (played as ever by Murray Melvin), organising the ascent of the most brutally bloody-minded ‘winners’ among the apartment block’s tenants. As with the on-screen Bilis Manger story, there’s a logic to why he’s doing what he’s doing, but compared to the action that it motivates, the logic falls away and cowers in the background, leaving A Kill To A View one to enjoy on its own terms. Those terms thankfully include a shining turn by Mr Colchester (Paul Clayton), as his husband (played by increasingly omnipresent member of the Big Finish Repertory Company Ramon Tikaram) is threatened by Manger’s schemes and the tenants from Hell.

Zero hour, by Janine H Jones, is a tale that gets its curiosity-hooks deep into the listener early. It develops a theme that’s been toyed with in Doctor Who and Sherlock – the people who move through our cities and lives without us ever really noticing them, and what they might actually be up to – but delivers on the strength of its core concept with a beautifully dark Torchwood touch as it takes Tyler Steele into a courier firm with several differences. ‘Deliverables’ is a firm with an alien touch, and it plots its workers’ movements down to the ever-productive second, with an app that drives their schedules – but where is it taking them, and why? There’s some deliciously geeky science at the heart of this story, but capped with the nihilistic doctrine that claims individual human lives don’t matter in the picture of the whole. While Love Rat is fun and easily digestible, and A Kill To A View has a touch of the sardonically satirical that makes it irresistible, it’s in Zero Hour that you’ll probably stick with Aliens Among Us Part 2 for the sheer power of the concepts and the storytelling – and it’s the episode of this box set that will stay with you longest and make you think hardest afterwards.

That said, The Empty Hand by Tim Foley punches at a heavyweight level too, especially in the era of ‘fake news,’ the ‘post-truth society’ and the delicate balance between believing victims who have the courage to speak up about abuse and the potential to direct an emotional public into a lynch mob. Sergeant Andy ‘Nice Guy’ Davidson has been accused of a race-hate killing. What’s more, there’s CCTV to prove he did it. But Andy has no memory of the action – with Cardiff balanced on a knife-edge of acceptance and hate between various groups, is it possible that Andy’s gone off the deep end of a nervous breakdown? Or is someone manipulating the public into a frenzy and using Andy as a trigger?
This is Torchwood, don’t forget – nothing’s ever entirely as certain or as straightforward as you might think, and The Empty Hand is a deeply effective and affecting piece of writing and performance, most particularly from Tom Price as Andy. Ultimately, the question remains – whoever’s right or wrong in a complex case, can anyone’s life ever be the same again after incendiary events tear lives apart?

The third box set is destined to round out Torchwood – Aliens Among Us. While the first set kicked us off with a degree or purpose and direction, the second box set is far more loosely connected, like the episodes of Series 1 or 2, rather than part of a bigger overall picture, as with Children of Earth or Miracle Day. There is a thread running through the episodes of the second box set, but it’s much more thinly woven than it was in set 1, leaving each of the episodes here to focus on the issues and situations with which they deal. As such, the second box set is a well-chosen collection of stories, rather than a layered arc that builds episode by episode. It’s new Torchwood, certainly, with a very early feel, updated for the post-Brexit world.

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