BFA Torchwood 93 & 94
May. 30th, 2025 03:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth93 Rictus
I wasn't entirely paying attention to this one because I started it, concluded the main characters were several kinds of awful and annoying, and went back to pulling numbers out of Pathfinder books to figure out the economic basis of studying wizardry given the local cost of living.
But it did keep bringing my attention back, and I absolutely did not see the ending coming.
Torchwood: implying terrible things about royalty since the very beginning.
I think it's probably a good story but I was having a not concentrating day because I listened to this second one first:
94 The Boy Who Never Laughed
Written by Joseph Lidster
This one is a very strong story.
Big Finish put trigger warnings at the beginning of it. Which is polite and helpful. But would be more helpful in writing before people buy it.
"Torchwood contains adult content and may not be suitable for younger listeners" is the usual bit.
"Trigger warning: this audio production contains references to substance addiction, sexual abuse, and drink spiking. Listener discretion is advised."
It is also a story with basically one character in it, so you know who all those trigger warnings apply to.
Tyler Steele is a character I have found difficult to like even while he is an interesting story engine. This one didn't exactly make him likeable, but it makes him entirely consistently understandable.
It also reminds me of the argument over Owen Harper in the first Torchwood episode, but without even the veneer of alien stuff. Tyler drugs a guy's drink for the same reasons Owen used the spray. And the story doesn't flinch from it this time. But we're very much getting Tyler's point of view. So it's messy.
Also depressing. I listened to the trigger warnings, I thought I was in a reasonable mental space to listen to a Torchwood story, but I went around afterwards with a set of feelings that reminded me of the time I picked up a plastic beer mug with dregs in people had been using for an ash tray and it turned out to have melted through and beer ash spewed out everywhere. It's sort of grotty. And there isn't much of a distancing or defamiliarising filter on it, it is just a story about ordinary bad things happening to Tyler when he was a kid.
And, also, about Tyler waking up to find apparently himself in the shower. But that got less weird and less the point as the story went along. So then it was just Tyler talking to himself about trigger warning things.
Very well done, but difficult.
The dtrength of the Torchwood range is you never know quite what you're going to get and it can play with format as it will as long as it fits on the disc. I think they used that well here.
I also think I need to go do something more sunshiney to bounce my mood away.
I wasn't entirely paying attention to this one because I started it, concluded the main characters were several kinds of awful and annoying, and went back to pulling numbers out of Pathfinder books to figure out the economic basis of studying wizardry given the local cost of living.
But it did keep bringing my attention back, and I absolutely did not see the ending coming.
Torchwood: implying terrible things about royalty since the very beginning.
I think it's probably a good story but I was having a not concentrating day because I listened to this second one first:
94 The Boy Who Never Laughed
Written by Joseph Lidster
This one is a very strong story.
Big Finish put trigger warnings at the beginning of it. Which is polite and helpful. But would be more helpful in writing before people buy it.
"Torchwood contains adult content and may not be suitable for younger listeners" is the usual bit.
"Trigger warning: this audio production contains references to substance addiction, sexual abuse, and drink spiking. Listener discretion is advised."
It is also a story with basically one character in it, so you know who all those trigger warnings apply to.
Tyler Steele is a character I have found difficult to like even while he is an interesting story engine. This one didn't exactly make him likeable, but it makes him entirely consistently understandable.
It also reminds me of the argument over Owen Harper in the first Torchwood episode, but without even the veneer of alien stuff. Tyler drugs a guy's drink for the same reasons Owen used the spray. And the story doesn't flinch from it this time. But we're very much getting Tyler's point of view. So it's messy.
Also depressing. I listened to the trigger warnings, I thought I was in a reasonable mental space to listen to a Torchwood story, but I went around afterwards with a set of feelings that reminded me of the time I picked up a plastic beer mug with dregs in people had been using for an ash tray and it turned out to have melted through and beer ash spewed out everywhere. It's sort of grotty. And there isn't much of a distancing or defamiliarising filter on it, it is just a story about ordinary bad things happening to Tyler when he was a kid.
And, also, about Tyler waking up to find apparently himself in the shower. But that got less weird and less the point as the story went along. So then it was just Tyler talking to himself about trigger warning things.
Very well done, but difficult.
The dtrength of the Torchwood range is you never know quite what you're going to get and it can play with format as it will as long as it fits on the disc. I think they used that well here.
I also think I need to go do something more sunshiney to bounce my mood away.