Audio: Torchwood: The Hope
Sep. 4th, 2019 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThis is less disturbing than Corpse Day.
Andy and Owen working together again. And discovering the kind of humans that make you wish it was aliens. But it's still slightly less disturbing than that.
... Torchwood is really, seriously, dark.
Owen and Andy were brilliant in this, and it was a great story for Owen. You think of Andy as hopeful and Owen as cynical but they aren't that simple here. Owen actually gets to do medical treatment, but on the most hated woman in Britain. Andy tries to calm down a riot, but being Andy at it is notably ineffectual. And then they end up in Snowdonia surrounded by bog and with the weather rolling in.
I love that horror element where help is within walking distance but you still can't find it. There's crowds and shouting and then there's fog and nothing's clear anymore. And it's great on audio because you're in roughly the same position as the characters, just trying to hear something.
How the story unfolds is brilliant and tense and human. The Torchwood bits sneak up around the edges.
I don't want to spoiler it but Andy vs a zombie senior officer is horrifying followed by darkly hilarious. Just the progression from 'my head hurts' to really grotesque squelch noise to ... all of that, it hit so many emotional notes in a row. Bit of a new side to Andy. Torchwood is not kind to him.
And then just when you think The Hope is solely the worst thing it could be called, there's Owen. Who wasn't eating, and only pretending to drink, but now...
Owen gets a tight rollercoaster right when you thunk the horror's done all it can.
It's brilliant.
And dark.
And a whole class on how the emotional impact of the story depends on when you start and end it. If we'd got the same events as described here but presented in flashback or as story present day, this would arguably be darker than Corpse Day. As it is the things that stay hinted at and the narrative distance give some breathing room so it's only manageable horror. And if we'd stayed with Owen longer at the end we'd end on a whole different note. As it is we get, well, Hope, right when we're not expecting any.
This is an excellent audio and I'll be listening to it again later
... but only in daytime and when feeling fairly resilient.
Trigger warnings for child murder, child abuse, possibly sexual abuse, digging up corpses, and corpses getting up and trying to kill people. Including dead children. So. Definitely horror.
Andy and Owen working together again. And discovering the kind of humans that make you wish it was aliens. But it's still slightly less disturbing than that.
... Torchwood is really, seriously, dark.
Owen and Andy were brilliant in this, and it was a great story for Owen. You think of Andy as hopeful and Owen as cynical but they aren't that simple here. Owen actually gets to do medical treatment, but on the most hated woman in Britain. Andy tries to calm down a riot, but being Andy at it is notably ineffectual. And then they end up in Snowdonia surrounded by bog and with the weather rolling in.
I love that horror element where help is within walking distance but you still can't find it. There's crowds and shouting and then there's fog and nothing's clear anymore. And it's great on audio because you're in roughly the same position as the characters, just trying to hear something.
How the story unfolds is brilliant and tense and human. The Torchwood bits sneak up around the edges.
I don't want to spoiler it but Andy vs a zombie senior officer is horrifying followed by darkly hilarious. Just the progression from 'my head hurts' to really grotesque squelch noise to ... all of that, it hit so many emotional notes in a row. Bit of a new side to Andy. Torchwood is not kind to him.
And then just when you think The Hope is solely the worst thing it could be called, there's Owen. Who wasn't eating, and only pretending to drink, but now...
Owen gets a tight rollercoaster right when you thunk the horror's done all it can.
It's brilliant.
And dark.
And a whole class on how the emotional impact of the story depends on when you start and end it. If we'd got the same events as described here but presented in flashback or as story present day, this would arguably be darker than Corpse Day. As it is the things that stay hinted at and the narrative distance give some breathing room so it's only manageable horror. And if we'd stayed with Owen longer at the end we'd end on a whole different note. As it is we get, well, Hope, right when we're not expecting any.
This is an excellent audio and I'll be listening to it again later
... but only in daytime and when feeling fairly resilient.
Trigger warnings for child murder, child abuse, possibly sexual abuse, digging up corpses, and corpses getting up and trying to kill people. Including dead children. So. Definitely horror.