Torchwood: Cascade / Corpse Day / The Dollhouse Review
Gustaff Behr gives his verdict on the latest Torchwood audio adventures.
_Cascade_ CDRip.tor
As soon as I listened to the very “anti-piracy” trailer, I knew I was in for a treat. Sometimes you can just tell, and I’m elated to report that this month’s Big Finish instalment of Torchwood didn’t just satisfy my expectations, it exceeded them.
Doctor Who has always had a way of turning the mundane into scary and Cascade is no different. Toshiko Sato travels to London on her “day off” to meet up Max, a former college/friend who’s come across what looks to be a sentient torrent link. Sounds silly right? It should, but the end result is far more disturbing than you can imagine.
Big Finish has on occasion experimented with unusual story telling formats in the past, Live 34 being the most famous example, telling its entire story in news reel broadcasts over a period of 16 days. Cascade embarks on a similar journey and therein lays its greatest strength: The entire story plays out like a corrupted audio file. Dialogue, sound effects and even scenes within the story appear to glitch, stop and even some cases, repeat from time to time to various effect. This is especially unnerving and creates a constant atmosphere of uncertainty within the story as bits and pieces from other Torchwood titles seep in at random. Cascade in some instances also makes the listener question if what they are listening to is indeed the truth. Throwing the listener several of these curveballs I found to be a very creative way of increasing the tension since after a while, even I couldn’t speculate as to what was going to happen next.
Naoko Mori puts in a fantastic performance and this story is easily one of Toshiko’s best, if not her best. Joining her and giving an equally great performance is Robbie Jarvis, who plays Toshiko’s friend Stephen. Unlike most guest stars, I found myself enjoying every other character just as much. Rachel Handshaw’s Nikki will remind you of a certain professor from Series 9, but Big Finish learns from Doctor Who’s mistakes on television and course corrects like no other.
Comparisons between this title and Sleep No More are bound to be drawn since they do share ideas, but while the hook occurs in the last couple of minutes of the latter; Cascade lets you know right off the bat that things will only get worse if you continue. It’s a lot more effective. It does take away some of the sting of the big reveal, but it also raises your curiosity which is just as important in these kinds of titles.
There isn’t a lot more I can say about this story without spoiling it for you. Cascade is in my mind a masterpiece. It is brilliantly scripted, paced and acted from start to finish, making use of original and inventive ideas both big and small to give the listener a thrilling experience as we join Toshiko. I don’t normally score Torchwood titles in my reviews, but on this occasion, it would be a crime not to. Not only does this story come with my highest recommendation, but I also score it an easy 10/10.
Corpse Day
If you thought Countrycide was hardcore, you ain’t seen anything yet!
PC Andy Davison and Doctor Owen Harper share the privilege of headlining perhaps the darkest story Torchwood has ever told. Let’s just get that out of the way first. Corpse Day is extreme. If the mature and gory is why you love Torchwood, then this title is definitely for you. Big Finish probably just tipped over the usual bag of dark ideas Torchwood sticks its hand into on a weekly basis to decide which mature idea it will be presenting and just decided to do all of them at once. There! That’s my summation of Corpse Day. Thanks for reading!
Oh, so you want to know if Corpse Day worked? Well of course it works! It’s Torchwood! You want specifics?
Well, to begin with it feels as if Burn Gorman never left Torchwood. He slips into Owen Harper like an old boot and puts in one hell of a performance, rivalling his Series 2 three-part mini arc. It’s an excellent choice to use Series 2 Owen Harper. The character always felt more nuanced and real. Dare I say it… he felt more alive when he was dead. Corpse Day does wonders showcasing how dying affected Owen Harper, both physically, but more importantly on an emotional level. Some of his responses in Corpse Day feel so alien coming from Owen, until you remember which Owen Harper this is. Then it becomes beautifully poetic and tragic.
I’ve never been a fan of PC Andy and part of me still don’t get why he’s still kicking around, but I will admit that this story could never have functioned without him. Corpse Day = Owen + Andy.
This story also does perhaps too great a job showcasing just how dark and sick and violent the world of Torchwood is and it’s great to hear Andy Davison experience and reactions to these horrors as he takes on the role of the muscle to compensate for Owen’s… new found brittleness.
The “villain” for this story is a real piece of work. And I mean that by ‘piece of work’ standards. You’d have to go to the far ends of Land of Fiction to find someone more disturbed, more disgusting, more hated than what Corpse Day gives us here. For once it doesn’t matter how deep Big Finish bothers to dive into their motivations. It doesn’t. Ever heard someone say “some people just deserve to die”? If you’ve ever argued against this, listen to Corpse Day.
Who’d think that with so much mature content slapped on a title like Corpse Day, there wouldn’t be any room for humour, but you’d be wrong. More perverse than this is the fact that these moments of morbid, black humour actually work in this story’s favour. They don’t take over the narrative but they may dupe you into thinking this title is a comedic buddy cop episode of Torchwood. The humour, much like the rest of the story is dark and may even make you feel guilty for laughing, but they work in Corpse Day and they work because it’s Owen and Andy at the centre of it.
Kudos to James Goss for a positively grisly instalment of Torchwood; one which is sure to haunt the Halls of Brutality and Gore years to come.
The Dollhouse
Oh dear, we are in trouble now.
As much as I sing Big Finish’s praise (because let’s be honest they deserve it), I’m not above admitting when I believe they’ve dropped the ball or taken a misstep. However, I don’t think they’ve ever wandered so far off the beaten track than this title folks.
The Dollhouse feels like a desperate attempt to expand Big Finish’s Torchwood range where none is needed. The story features no recognizable cast from the series to ease fans into this experimental title, instead introducing a new host of American Torchwood agents operating in Los Angeles. Now while secret government agencies operating on foreign soil is something that is common place, whether it’s truth in television or life imitating art, I find myself wondering for most of the story why an organization which seeks to make Great Britain the most powerful/independent country in the world would open a Torchwood branch in a rival nation, not for the purpose of helping to destabilize it so that Britain can reign supreme, but to help defend it against alien incursions. The Dollhouse doesn’t even attempt to explain this or why this story plays out like a cheap Charlie’s Angels rip-off.
The Dollhouse, above everything else, is camp. It doesn’t try to hide it; instead it embraces it and rolls with it. And while camp has always been part of Torchwood’s charm, it’s mostly because it’s usually buried underneath the various adult undertones it chooses to explore on a weekly basis. The Dollhouse likewise explores ideas that wouldn’t normally be explored on an episode of Doctor Who, but chooses to make the camp aspect the foreground while burying the adult undertones underneath it. Depending on which aspect of the show you enjoy more, this title may end up being at the top of your “to get” list…or nowhere on it.
If there’s one thing that instantly puts me off a story, it’s a bad or unconvincing accent. And The Dollhouse features some very camp and cheesy 70s American accents by nearly every character which puts even more emphasis on the question of why this story is even set in America. Seriously why? If you’re a lover of 1970s camp, this title will definitely put a smile on your face.
As for the characters, we’re introduced to our Charlie’s Angels: Marlow Sweet (Laila Pyne), Charley Du Bujeau (Kelly-Anne Lyons) and Gabi Martinez (Ajjaz Awad). Since we, the audience, don’t even know the first thing about these characters, it’s important to explore these characters and make us care about them. Unfortunately, due to the pacing of the story, which imitates a Hollywood action film in being brisk and blowy-uppy, we never learn anything worthwhile about any of these characters.
The narrative itself is paper thin, making use of a done to death American plot which fits the American Torchwood like a glove, but has the regrettable side-effect of making The Dollhouse feel like a typical ‘case of the week’ police procedural.
While I can appreciate what Big Finish tried to do here by creating more characters to tell more stories with, a part of me does have to wonder ‘why even bother?’ Torchwood: Aliens Among Us is scheduled to introduce a brand new modern Torchwood team and with the release of Corpse Day which features Burn Gorman, the chances of Big Finish doing full cast audio dramas with the Old Torchwood team is looking less like a possibility and more like a probability. Give it time. Not only that, but we also have the adventures of Torchwood One and the monthly ‘day in the life’ titles featuring characters we know and love, plus The Lives of Captain Jack which allows for crossovers with other characters within the Big Finish world. With all of these titles it does feel like there is no need for any more Torchwood, especially agents operating in America.
