Underground

"There's something inside him."

Writer: Chris Cornwell

Format: Audio

Released: September 2023

Series: Redacted 2.03

Featuring: Shawna, Abby, Cleo

Synopsis

To save Apex's life, Cleo must venture deep into the alien underground beneath London. But dark secrets are lurking down there. Meanwhile, Abby and Shawna are hunted in a library by a shape-shifting monster.

Verdict

Underground was a pretty average episode to continue my way through the second series of the Redacted podcast. There wasn’t exactly an awful lot wrong or bad about the story, but it just felt a bit bland and quite eventful until the end. A frying pan isn’t exactly a normal or even logical way out of a cliffhanger, but it is somewhat suited to Cleo when it comes to that kind of desperation. I must say, my thoughts throughout the episode were centred on how much I wasn’t enjoying Apex as a character and I just couldn’t buy into him alongside Cleo. I wasn’t much interested in his story and for him to have been such a focus of the first three episodes is a surprise and not quite up to the standard of the first series. Of course, that’s slightly harsh now that Abby, Shawna and Cleo are established characters as the mains, but I find myself wanting a reason to care. His injection of trionic radiation was good and the emergence of Honour Bray at the end was superb as she wouldn’t give him the cure serum. At least not yet. I don’t think Apex will die because she has a fascinating mission for him which was an intriguing cliffhanger. I’ve suspected Apex wasn’t all he seemed almost from the off, especially with how interested in the Doctor he was, but I wasn’t expecting the task to be centred on finding a TARDIS! That was very fun. It wasn’t solely related to finding the Doctor. But finding them was a sure fire way to obtaining a time machine. Honour knowing of Apex’s numerous ploys and hearing that he’d pretend to be a Time Agent or even a Time Lord to lure people in was terrific. At last something I could sink my teeth into regarding him. Cleo not understanding and being supportive of him was fun as she claimed if anything he was her piece on the side and not the other way around. Regardless, I’m still much more interested in Abby and Shawna’s hunt for Torchwood. They found a HQ site but it seemed to have been ravaged of any evidence that could be deemed useful. That’s a shame, but the alien threat continuation there was very well done. There was an emotional moment between the pair as it seemed that Shawna would die when she realised it wasn’t Abby holding her hand. That was chilling. The repeat of using a high pitched and loud noise was a little less exciting, and I did think their half of the episode was a little messy. More time would have been beneficial to expand on the threat as I think imitating Cleo was a strong move and definitely something to inject the fear factor. It was realistic whereas I thought the shift to Abby was not. She was literally on the phone with the real version so of course it was a fake! That seemed a little random to me and took me out of it. The truth coming out about moving to Glasgow and not being perfect was a nice moment to bring them even closer now in their relationship which was great after just being friends for so long. Overall, some good parts to move us forward but it was just a bit clunky whilst not being incredible. 

Rating: 6/10