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beccaelizabethI have listened to 11 discs of story and only written up parts, so despite feeling like I need to pay more attention and apply more brain, I'll do a very brief summary of my reactions.
I listened to most of these while playing Sims and mostly learned that Sims requires enough concentration that the stories lose some impact.
Torchwood 21 We Always Get Out Alive Listened to this twice, noticed it was good Torchwood stuff even through the lack of concentrate, still didn't give it its due mind. Gwen and Rhys have important conversations about work life balance while gradually realising they have not in fact escaped from the aliens. Yet. It was good chewy people stuff, while they can't see much and keep hearing odd noises and forgetting about it. Good use of audio and characters.
Torchwood 22 Goodbye Piccadilly
This is a dark kind of funny about the grinding awful of homophobia in 50s Soho and how no matter how bad your day it can always get worse. Sgt Andy Davidson, nice polite community policing guy, is not really prepared for what policing then and there meant. Andy's role in stories is to be the perfectly sensible one who is so out of his element his sense is nonsense and he keeps getting further up the tree with tactics that would on any other day work. It's funny in its way, but also awful for him. Running around trying to stay ahead of crime and corruption with bonus added alien is very Torchwood. It works out okay in the end, ish, but you learn more about Norton Folgate without really learning what he's up to so there's a lot unresolved. Which is fun. I'd listen again.
Torchwood 23 Instant Karma
Messy deaths and hospitalisations. Also a dead dog. A guy gets the power to kill people with his mind, but only by leeching off a group giving him power. A woman in the group turns out to have more power, when she stops trying to please him and uses it. And Tosh was there. ... I think I need to relisten before I have an opinion, because surely Tosh did more than witness things?
Torchwood 24 Deadbeat Escape
TW: Suicide. A bunch of people are stuck in a hotel intended as a trap for Bilis Manger. He persuades the one we're listening to to kill himself, which releases Manger from the trap, but leaves everyone else stuck there eternally. So, that's nasty. Atmospherically written bit of horror where all the horror comes from the futility of everything being exactly the same. Loneliness and the sense of having failed a father who was probably mean in the first place. All very human stuff. And if I understood it right there was a way out right up until he killed himself, which would be appropriate.
I just looked Manger up on the tardis wiki and between the comics and the books and an audio I haven't listened to yet things with him get rather complicated. But I only remembered the TV episode while I was listening and it still worked. Here to fix the clock, got locked in, but there's always a way out... just this one was nasty.
I don't think I'll feel the need to listen to this again because it feels like not my genre, but it certainly did a thing it set out to do.
Torchwood: Believe
This one has the whole original Torchwood cast, Owen, Ianto, Jack, Gwen and Tosh.
It also needs a lot of content warnings, and I wrote a much longer thing before deciding it was too judgey without relistening to be sure of my quotes.
It is dark.
Warnings for suicide, right at the start with screaming, extreme self harm, as in amputations, medical horror, as in amputations people didn't ask for, botched surgery, injury to the eye, and brain, and implying terrible things with a bone saw. There's a bit where a guy is narrating which bits of Ianto he's going to chop off. He only puts a chip in him before Ianto wakes up in his room not knowing how he got there, but there's an uncomfortable tense bit where we the listeners don't know what state he's in or what has happened to him.
Also, separately, there's a sex scene that I wanted to call noncon but... Tosh made it clear she didn't want it but she did it anyway, and detangling how to warn that when she was sure later she could have walked away, that's... I don't know, it made me very uncomfortable. But then it's dubcon for the guy she's spy banging? I just... I don't know. I want to warn for the whole thing. I don't know which words to use. Sex, but with layered uncomfortable about whose idea it was and who is doing what to who why and how much danger there may or may not be. And then it ends with murder and that's dark in ways I don't have a tidy word for.
And while I'm doing warnings, the story ends with someone being dropped off for assessment at a mental health facility, specifically not having been retconned because nobody will believe her. Which is its own kind of horror story. I mean, deciding what she did was because of mental illness and calling her a danger to herself and others is... a Thing, but then leaving that decision in the hands of people who won't know that her experiences were literally real? That's a different Thing.
So that's just the warnings, and I'm not sure of my wording on them.
It is a whole lot of nasty. It's about the worst bits of being human, and how people distort themselves around this idea that there's something better out there, or in response to that belief.
I mean if this was a Doctor Who story and you found an alien in a cell and did the whole rescue and we come in peace and tried to make friends, it would often work. But this is Torchwood, so it is a weevil and eats them. So that's how far good intentions get you in this corner of the 'verse.
Things go very poorly.
And the individual stories dig right into character trauma, makes layers with their issues, though in some cases in ways the listener recognises and the characters don't know yet.
I just started being so critical of it I wanted to go back and get specific quotes and be really sure of my ground before reacting.
But it's asking some questions about how Torchwood fit in to their world, and there's definitely room to believe they're the bad guys.
So it's a very Torchwood story.
I just... I want to poke it again and unravel bits and examine them more closesly.
Wanting to listen again to be sure of your arguments when you pick a fight with it isn't exactly a recommendation. But it's doing Torchwood things in Torchwood ways with Torchwood characters. Just in those ways that make me remember I don't always like Torchwood.
So there's that.
I also listened to The Lives of Captain Jack.
I will definitely be doing that again.
It's... I was going to say it's much less dark than Torchwood, but it does start with a story where humans are treated as walking organ banks and someone gets their eyes removed. But in the far future where there's perfectly functional prostheses, so it's only a problem because theft and not replacing them immediately. And there's one where people get ate, but some of them escape. And... yeah, bad things happen. But the balance between horror and hope ends up on the side that has a functional if frustrating future, so that's a lot lighter in tone than some of the Torchwood.
... sometimes I sit down and actually think about the kind of plots that are perfectly normal in, for instance, Doctor Who, and I just... what are we like?
But, Lives of Captain Jack: recommended. Will listen again. Plenty of good bits, general arc towards hope and possibility.
... even if you do remember where in Jack's life these fit in, and how often things are not hopeful for him, it's like, look, there's some good bits too.
1 The Year After I Died
Right after Jack gets left behind by the Doctor, he doesn't know about his new party trick yet, and he's really, really insistent he is not a hero. But he saves the day anyway.
The one with the involuntary surgery and organ bank problem.
2 Wednesdays For Beginners
Jack and Jackie Tyler. The way Jackie copes with the extreme weirdness by just being extremely mundane at it is brilliant. Good story, good resolution.
3 One Enchanted Evening
That time the Doctor gave Jack a note, 'his name's Alonso Frame'.
Because obviously that wouldn't be as simple as the part where they start the story heading back to Alonso's room...
Made me ship Jack/Alonso. Except mostly Alonso/Anything Actually Working. Or Alonso/ A Nice Quiet Evening. Which come to think Jack obviously needs too, so they should just end up together having absolutely nothing plot like happen. Unfortunately they got plot. There was adventure and kissing and sad bits and maximum frustration and Jack having stuff happen to him that Jack can survive and... I'm going to listen to this again extra times, this was good.
It was also the one with a cannibal that ate its own species, offspring included, and is on the station to keep eating new and interesting people. This is not a fluffy story, especially if you think about where in Jack's life he is. Jack and Alonso are both convinced they're not heroes, but they have somewhat different reasons right then.
It's good use of character and I liked it.
4 Month 25
At the Time Agency under a new to us name. Javic Piotr Thane. The TARDIS wiki is ambiguous on if this is an alias or his original name. I vote alias. Sending a time agent out using his original name all over history would be wildly incompetent.
Way back when, Jack says in the Doctor Dances, he woke up and discovered the Time Agency had stolen two years of his memories.
This story is about that day.
And then it gets complicated.
I liked it, liked how it wove elements together from other audios. Also liked how older Jack reacted to young Jack. Like, he's hoping he's not like that any more, aaaaand.... he maybe might be. Relatable feels.
Also we're left ambiguous on the whole 'would he' issue on meeting himself. Which is funny.
Put together these stories fill in where it's logically implied story could be, and are plausible versions of a guy who has obviously changed kind of a lot over his lifetime... and also not very much. He's fun like this.
I enjoyed listening to this set.
Verdict: I like audio adventures a lot more when I'm not playing a game at the same time
Torchwood varies wildly in tone and possibly quality, which is very much a match for the TV series
and I'm going to keep buying these even if they're occasionally frustrating.
I'd rather have new stuff to argue with I guess...
But sometimes they are good.
I listened to most of these while playing Sims and mostly learned that Sims requires enough concentration that the stories lose some impact.
Torchwood 21 We Always Get Out Alive Listened to this twice, noticed it was good Torchwood stuff even through the lack of concentrate, still didn't give it its due mind. Gwen and Rhys have important conversations about work life balance while gradually realising they have not in fact escaped from the aliens. Yet. It was good chewy people stuff, while they can't see much and keep hearing odd noises and forgetting about it. Good use of audio and characters.
Torchwood 22 Goodbye Piccadilly
This is a dark kind of funny about the grinding awful of homophobia in 50s Soho and how no matter how bad your day it can always get worse. Sgt Andy Davidson, nice polite community policing guy, is not really prepared for what policing then and there meant. Andy's role in stories is to be the perfectly sensible one who is so out of his element his sense is nonsense and he keeps getting further up the tree with tactics that would on any other day work. It's funny in its way, but also awful for him. Running around trying to stay ahead of crime and corruption with bonus added alien is very Torchwood. It works out okay in the end, ish, but you learn more about Norton Folgate without really learning what he's up to so there's a lot unresolved. Which is fun. I'd listen again.
Torchwood 23 Instant Karma
Messy deaths and hospitalisations. Also a dead dog. A guy gets the power to kill people with his mind, but only by leeching off a group giving him power. A woman in the group turns out to have more power, when she stops trying to please him and uses it. And Tosh was there. ... I think I need to relisten before I have an opinion, because surely Tosh did more than witness things?
Torchwood 24 Deadbeat Escape
TW: Suicide. A bunch of people are stuck in a hotel intended as a trap for Bilis Manger. He persuades the one we're listening to to kill himself, which releases Manger from the trap, but leaves everyone else stuck there eternally. So, that's nasty. Atmospherically written bit of horror where all the horror comes from the futility of everything being exactly the same. Loneliness and the sense of having failed a father who was probably mean in the first place. All very human stuff. And if I understood it right there was a way out right up until he killed himself, which would be appropriate.
I just looked Manger up on the tardis wiki and between the comics and the books and an audio I haven't listened to yet things with him get rather complicated. But I only remembered the TV episode while I was listening and it still worked. Here to fix the clock, got locked in, but there's always a way out... just this one was nasty.
I don't think I'll feel the need to listen to this again because it feels like not my genre, but it certainly did a thing it set out to do.
Torchwood: Believe
This one has the whole original Torchwood cast, Owen, Ianto, Jack, Gwen and Tosh.
It also needs a lot of content warnings, and I wrote a much longer thing before deciding it was too judgey without relistening to be sure of my quotes.
It is dark.
Warnings for suicide, right at the start with screaming, extreme self harm, as in amputations, medical horror, as in amputations people didn't ask for, botched surgery, injury to the eye, and brain, and implying terrible things with a bone saw. There's a bit where a guy is narrating which bits of Ianto he's going to chop off. He only puts a chip in him before Ianto wakes up in his room not knowing how he got there, but there's an uncomfortable tense bit where we the listeners don't know what state he's in or what has happened to him.
Also, separately, there's a sex scene that I wanted to call noncon but... Tosh made it clear she didn't want it but she did it anyway, and detangling how to warn that when she was sure later she could have walked away, that's... I don't know, it made me very uncomfortable. But then it's dubcon for the guy she's spy banging? I just... I don't know. I want to warn for the whole thing. I don't know which words to use. Sex, but with layered uncomfortable about whose idea it was and who is doing what to who why and how much danger there may or may not be. And then it ends with murder and that's dark in ways I don't have a tidy word for.
And while I'm doing warnings, the story ends with someone being dropped off for assessment at a mental health facility, specifically not having been retconned because nobody will believe her. Which is its own kind of horror story. I mean, deciding what she did was because of mental illness and calling her a danger to herself and others is... a Thing, but then leaving that decision in the hands of people who won't know that her experiences were literally real? That's a different Thing.
So that's just the warnings, and I'm not sure of my wording on them.
It is a whole lot of nasty. It's about the worst bits of being human, and how people distort themselves around this idea that there's something better out there, or in response to that belief.
I mean if this was a Doctor Who story and you found an alien in a cell and did the whole rescue and we come in peace and tried to make friends, it would often work. But this is Torchwood, so it is a weevil and eats them. So that's how far good intentions get you in this corner of the 'verse.
Things go very poorly.
And the individual stories dig right into character trauma, makes layers with their issues, though in some cases in ways the listener recognises and the characters don't know yet.
I just started being so critical of it I wanted to go back and get specific quotes and be really sure of my ground before reacting.
But it's asking some questions about how Torchwood fit in to their world, and there's definitely room to believe they're the bad guys.
So it's a very Torchwood story.
I just... I want to poke it again and unravel bits and examine them more closesly.
Wanting to listen again to be sure of your arguments when you pick a fight with it isn't exactly a recommendation. But it's doing Torchwood things in Torchwood ways with Torchwood characters. Just in those ways that make me remember I don't always like Torchwood.
So there's that.
I also listened to The Lives of Captain Jack.
I will definitely be doing that again.
It's... I was going to say it's much less dark than Torchwood, but it does start with a story where humans are treated as walking organ banks and someone gets their eyes removed. But in the far future where there's perfectly functional prostheses, so it's only a problem because theft and not replacing them immediately. And there's one where people get ate, but some of them escape. And... yeah, bad things happen. But the balance between horror and hope ends up on the side that has a functional if frustrating future, so that's a lot lighter in tone than some of the Torchwood.
... sometimes I sit down and actually think about the kind of plots that are perfectly normal in, for instance, Doctor Who, and I just... what are we like?
But, Lives of Captain Jack: recommended. Will listen again. Plenty of good bits, general arc towards hope and possibility.
... even if you do remember where in Jack's life these fit in, and how often things are not hopeful for him, it's like, look, there's some good bits too.
1 The Year After I Died
Right after Jack gets left behind by the Doctor, he doesn't know about his new party trick yet, and he's really, really insistent he is not a hero. But he saves the day anyway.
The one with the involuntary surgery and organ bank problem.
2 Wednesdays For Beginners
Jack and Jackie Tyler. The way Jackie copes with the extreme weirdness by just being extremely mundane at it is brilliant. Good story, good resolution.
3 One Enchanted Evening
That time the Doctor gave Jack a note, 'his name's Alonso Frame'.
Because obviously that wouldn't be as simple as the part where they start the story heading back to Alonso's room...
Made me ship Jack/Alonso. Except mostly Alonso/Anything Actually Working. Or Alonso/ A Nice Quiet Evening. Which come to think Jack obviously needs too, so they should just end up together having absolutely nothing plot like happen. Unfortunately they got plot. There was adventure and kissing and sad bits and maximum frustration and Jack having stuff happen to him that Jack can survive and... I'm going to listen to this again extra times, this was good.
It was also the one with a cannibal that ate its own species, offspring included, and is on the station to keep eating new and interesting people. This is not a fluffy story, especially if you think about where in Jack's life he is. Jack and Alonso are both convinced they're not heroes, but they have somewhat different reasons right then.
It's good use of character and I liked it.
4 Month 25
At the Time Agency under a new to us name. Javic Piotr Thane. The TARDIS wiki is ambiguous on if this is an alias or his original name. I vote alias. Sending a time agent out using his original name all over history would be wildly incompetent.
Way back when, Jack says in the Doctor Dances, he woke up and discovered the Time Agency had stolen two years of his memories.
This story is about that day.
And then it gets complicated.
I liked it, liked how it wove elements together from other audios. Also liked how older Jack reacted to young Jack. Like, he's hoping he's not like that any more, aaaaand.... he maybe might be. Relatable feels.
Also we're left ambiguous on the whole 'would he' issue on meeting himself. Which is funny.
Put together these stories fill in where it's logically implied story could be, and are plausible versions of a guy who has obviously changed kind of a lot over his lifetime... and also not very much. He's fun like this.
I enjoyed listening to this set.
Verdict: I like audio adventures a lot more when I'm not playing a game at the same time
Torchwood varies wildly in tone and possibly quality, which is very much a match for the TV series
and I'm going to keep buying these even if they're occasionally frustrating.
I'd rather have new stuff to argue with I guess...
But sometimes they are good.