The Sin Eaters

"It's important you focus on the evil you want to reject."

Writer: Brian Minchin

Format: Audio

Released: June 2009

Series: Torchwood BBC Audio 04

Featuring: Captain Jack, Gwen, Ianto

Synopsis

Alien larvae in a baptismal font mark the beginnings of a terrifying adventure. 

Searching for the source of a bizarre Rift reading, Gwen, Jack and Ianto find a corpse on the beach, his face covered in hundreds of tiny cuts. Watching from the shadows is a man in black...

The Reverend Hayward thinks he has found a way to take away people's sins. The trouble is, his special baptisms tend to take away their lives too. For the creatures he collects and puts in his church font are nightmarish parasites, feeding on their hosts' negative emotions before consuming. It is up to Torchwood to track them down and destroy them...

Verdict

The Sin Eaters was a good little audio to continue my way through the Torchwood Tales collection! I say little but this was far from that as it clocked in at well over two hours which I do maintain is probably a little bit long. The quality of the story has to be quite spectacular to keep the level of interest and attention required for a story like this over the duration. It's no qualm on Gareth David-Lloyd as his narration was mostly fine throughout, but I was just yearning for another voice to help him out! I do feel the story would have benefitted from a duet of sorts with either John Barrowman or Eve Myles present to fill in their parts and just give a different voice to some of the characters. In the Big Finish audios, I think David-Lloyd is tremendous but I don't think his impression of Captain Jack in particular was all that good. Considering the relationship Ianto has with Jack I just thought it would be a little better and more representative. I was impressed with Reverend Hayward as the villain for the story and I think his religious position makes him feel that little bit evil. I'm not sure if that's just my religious stance in being an atheist or what have you, but there is definitely something scary about a church and that was presented well here. There was definitely a chilly atmosphere in parts particularly centred around Hayward and his history with missing people and the swarm to come was very intriguing. The depth of the scale of missing people was somewhat disturbing dating back to the 1940s and seeing corpses protected for so long must be quite tough. I liked how Rhys featured heavily given the proximity of this story between Series 2 and 3, so he could team up with Gwen whilst Jack and Ianto were off together. That just felt right and logical. The references to Meat and even The Stolen Earth with memories of whales and Daleks was terrific. I thought the concept of an evil reverend in a more adult oriented series like Torchwood was great and there being a scientific process of extracting sins was very interesting. Ianto initially saw it as a big opportunity which was fun given what followed. He certainly wouldn't be having those feelings by the time things finished and Jack wanted to ensure Hayward's church was set into flames. The swarm itself of the larvae and what they turned into looked very Vespiform but I was definitely more interested in Hayward than what those things were that he was orchestrating life for. Gwen knew he wasn't someone innocent that had just been targeted or taken over by something alien. It was a willing choice and that disturbed her greatly. The Sea Queen was a very fun element in the story and the very idea of the Torchwood SUV turning into a boat was almost incredible! That was a fine use of the audio format as I'm not sure that would have been able to be pulled off on screen. It was very fun imagery. I thought the conclusion was pretty predictable and relatively straightforward in using light and heat against the winged creatures and the larvae, but it was certainly a way to tidy everything up and provide an emphatic resolution. Rhys using the events of the day to try and get Gwen to agree to an upsize in terms of home ownership was fun and I almost laughed at his suggestion that his wife would get a bonus for what she had gone through! That certainly wasn't going to happen. Overall, a very decent listen! 

Rating: 7/10