THE TORCHWOOD ARCHIVE
Hub-y birthday
released OUT NOW! 120 minutes | Cd/download
Publisher Big Finish
The Who universe loves a birthday knees-up, but Big Finish’s celebration of 10 years of Torchwood takes a fresh approach to anniversary reunions, wisely leaving The Three Captain Jacks to slash fic writers.
Instead, The Torchwood Archive is a millennia-spanning anthology that transports us from the foo-fighting outfit’s early days under Queen Victoria to the distant future, where its history is preserved in a digital storage facility on a remote asteroid.
Recorded piecemeal over many months, it’s like a Torchwood Cassetteboy mash-up, featuring most of the key players from the past decade, including Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, Naoko Mori, Indira Varma and, of course, John Barrowman.
James Goss skillfully assembles all the jigsaw pieces into a coherent narrative that’s true to Torchwood’s batty blend of sci-fi and salty Welsh humour (one story involves a factory full of blow-up alien sex dolls – well of course). Despite much of the heavy lifting being done by new characters, it’s a fun ride that, by literally being all over the place, serves as a fitting tribute to the glorious, bewildering madness that is Torchwood. Paul Kirkley
Also out: four-disc release Torchwood: Outbreak, in which an alien virus gets loose on the streets of Cardiff.