Torchwood In The Shadows
Feb. 15th, 2024 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWritten by Joseph Lidster, whose work you may recall
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Joseph_Lidster
this one was very good indeed, if horror is what you're looking for.
I own this audio, I gave it a five star rating in 2009, and yet somehow I had forgotten the contents entirely
and it is a very intense one.
You know one entire entry ago I was all wishing for character stuff, insight into Jack, and more Ianto?
This delivers. Big time.
By sending Jack to hell.
And surprisingly for the Whoniverse it very deliberately leaves open the interpretation that it was actual literal hell.
Jack's hell starts out sort of small and simple, like the other two the story showed us, and while listening to that section I thought I'd want to write about how his hell involves being told about the dark by Suzie, or seeing Alex again, or the bit where everyone was better off without him except Ianto, who was in an abusive relationship with Jack's ex John Hart. That all seemed sufficiently clever.
Then Jack thought he'd rescued himself, very plausibly.
And then the real hell started.
Jack's real hell isn't things done to him, it's things Jack has 'done'. His hell is being a version of himself that tortures and kills. Which I very much buy as the thing that actually scares him.
And then he goes running to find Ianto, but he's still in hell however many times he wakes up, so hell Ianto is cheating on Jack and is only dating him to trick him and is still all angry about Lisa. And still the worst bit for Jack is what hell Jack does to Ianto about it.
And then back in the real world Ianto is the one staring into space getting his head around the mixture of 'eternal life' and 'sent to hell'. Because bad. Because the other people aged to death in a day, time sped up by decades in hours, so their bodies got sent back dead of old age, but Jack? Can never ever ever get out that way.
Jack's hell dwells on that theme at length too. Being the last man on earth after the monsters from his nightmares kill everyone else. Being alone in the dark because the power went out forever. Buried alive by being stuck in his own base. Just all the highlights of how being immortal could be made to be terrible.
And forgetting. Jack's hell involves him forgetting what Ianto looks like. Remembering he mattered but not able to remember him.
But actual real world Ianto is hearing the bad guy's explanation. Bad guy reckons god sent him the power to punish sinners. Ianto says god tells them to forgive. Bad guy is surprised he's a believer. Ianto says he dabbles.
And then Ianto goes and throws himself into hell after Jack, because if punishment sent Jack to hell, Ianto reckons forgiveness will save him.
And Tosh has an alternative sci fi paradigm retrieval running but the story rather comes down on the side of Ianto being actually right.
Ianto jumps into shadow hell on the faith hope love that forgiveness could save Jack.
And it works.
I am very much surprised I could have forgotten that bit because woah.
But also that's exactly the bit that could lose me in another mood, because it only works because this story is from the wrong genre, from the Torchwood team's point of view. Do the smart thing and wait five minutes to set up the science save point and... that's not a leap of faith any more so you fail the other genre but succeed at sci fi. It's a problem.
Still. Today I love it.
Spoilers above under the cut, in some detail because I'm sitting here with my eyes all big.
So yeah, I recommend this audiobook, and I recommend listening this one without spoilers, which I managed to do twice by forgetting about it for about fifteen years.
But it is A Lot.
Like, I'm glad I'm not planning to go to sleep for a few hours, A Lot.
The only bit that doesn't quite work now I've thought about it for five minutes is the framing story where Gwen is telling the middle story, because there's no way she could know some to most of it. But it does add something; another layer of things to worry about mostly.
Good writing.
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Joseph_Lidster
this one was very good indeed, if horror is what you're looking for.
I own this audio, I gave it a five star rating in 2009, and yet somehow I had forgotten the contents entirely
and it is a very intense one.
You know one entire entry ago I was all wishing for character stuff, insight into Jack, and more Ianto?
This delivers. Big time.
By sending Jack to hell.
And surprisingly for the Whoniverse it very deliberately leaves open the interpretation that it was actual literal hell.
Jack's hell starts out sort of small and simple, like the other two the story showed us, and while listening to that section I thought I'd want to write about how his hell involves being told about the dark by Suzie, or seeing Alex again, or the bit where everyone was better off without him except Ianto, who was in an abusive relationship with Jack's ex John Hart. That all seemed sufficiently clever.
Then Jack thought he'd rescued himself, very plausibly.
And then the real hell started.
Jack's real hell isn't things done to him, it's things Jack has 'done'. His hell is being a version of himself that tortures and kills. Which I very much buy as the thing that actually scares him.
And then he goes running to find Ianto, but he's still in hell however many times he wakes up, so hell Ianto is cheating on Jack and is only dating him to trick him and is still all angry about Lisa. And still the worst bit for Jack is what hell Jack does to Ianto about it.
And then back in the real world Ianto is the one staring into space getting his head around the mixture of 'eternal life' and 'sent to hell'. Because bad. Because the other people aged to death in a day, time sped up by decades in hours, so their bodies got sent back dead of old age, but Jack? Can never ever ever get out that way.
Jack's hell dwells on that theme at length too. Being the last man on earth after the monsters from his nightmares kill everyone else. Being alone in the dark because the power went out forever. Buried alive by being stuck in his own base. Just all the highlights of how being immortal could be made to be terrible.
And forgetting. Jack's hell involves him forgetting what Ianto looks like. Remembering he mattered but not able to remember him.
But actual real world Ianto is hearing the bad guy's explanation. Bad guy reckons god sent him the power to punish sinners. Ianto says god tells them to forgive. Bad guy is surprised he's a believer. Ianto says he dabbles.
And then Ianto goes and throws himself into hell after Jack, because if punishment sent Jack to hell, Ianto reckons forgiveness will save him.
And Tosh has an alternative sci fi paradigm retrieval running but the story rather comes down on the side of Ianto being actually right.
Ianto jumps into shadow hell on the faith hope love that forgiveness could save Jack.
And it works.
I am very much surprised I could have forgotten that bit because woah.
But also that's exactly the bit that could lose me in another mood, because it only works because this story is from the wrong genre, from the Torchwood team's point of view. Do the smart thing and wait five minutes to set up the science save point and... that's not a leap of faith any more so you fail the other genre but succeed at sci fi. It's a problem.
Still. Today I love it.
Spoilers above under the cut, in some detail because I'm sitting here with my eyes all big.
So yeah, I recommend this audiobook, and I recommend listening this one without spoilers, which I managed to do twice by forgetting about it for about fifteen years.
But it is A Lot.
Like, I'm glad I'm not planning to go to sleep for a few hours, A Lot.
The only bit that doesn't quite work now I've thought about it for five minutes is the framing story where Gwen is telling the middle story, because there's no way she could know some to most of it. But it does add something; another layer of things to worry about mostly.
Good writing.