Army of One

"Wherever you'd been, we found a body murdered."

Writer: Ian Edginton

Format: Audio

Released: March 2012

Series: Torchwood BBC Audio 07

Featuring: Gwen, Rhys

Synopsis

Washington DC, post-Miracle. The city has been hit by a spate of very unusual serial killings. The victims are different ages and genders and the locations vary, but each body has one thing in common – it has been reduced to a dried-up, desiccated husk. 

Special Agent Lucas Avery has dealt with some tricky puzzles in his time, but this is stranger than anything he's ever encountered. His one lead is a pair of names: 'Gwen' and 'Rhys'...

For Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams, still recovering from the recent, traumatic events that shook the world, life is about to get difficult and dangerous again. For it's not just Homeland Security on their trail, but something else – something alien, terrifying and deadly...

Verdict

Army of One was a great Torchwood original audio to continue my way through the Torchwood Tales collection! I seem to remember purchasing this boxset from Big Finish in the midst of AudioGo going into administration and I'm sure it was a steal at a price of something like £4 which is incredible. The depth and number of stories here is fantastic and going post-Miracle Day here almost feels like uncharted territory! It is a massive shame that we have not had a fifth televised series of Torchwood because it was such a big event when Series 4 was airing. It didn't feel like it got its proper ending and whilst it is wonderful to have continued things for Big Finish, with this being released in 2012 it almost feels like this was just filling the gap before a fifth series. Rhys and Gwen are still in the United States which follows on nicely and that opens up a lot of doors compared to the relatively small city setting of Cardiff. The events and emotions of the Miracle are still being felt which is excellent as I really don't think the trauma of that has been explored fully with the lack of follow up. I'm extremely grateful to touch upon that here. Having Gwen and Rhys with Anwen provides a more stressful dynamic for them and the sequence where Gwen gets her car window blown out with her baby in the back was frightening! I've got a toddler and another baby on the way this Christmas so I can't imagine the fear Gwen would have been going through for her child. I liked how Americanised the story was at it gave Torchwood a very different feel and with Special Agent Lucas Avery, Kai Owen got to perform a pretty decent American accent! It felt bigger than the usual Torchwood stories which is a compliment and the descriptions of the deaths that were occurring were pretty graphic and downright horrifying. When anything is reduced to a husk it creates a disturbing image in my mind and I can't imagine actually seeing a brittle body up close in person. The comment of how a sneeze would even reduce a corpse to dust was quite something! I thought the Cuckoo was a decent villain and I liked the idea of it draining its victims dry. I wasn't entirely sure though about the lengthy flashback sequence to the first time Torchwood encountered it with the full team in action. I wasn't expecting cameos from the likes of Ianto, Owen and Tosh, as well as Captain Jack, but Owen nailed them all pretty well in narration! It was weird though to see it defeated in its core form halfway through the story to emphasise the return later on. It would have been better had the Cuckoo been an entirely different story previously, but I appreciated the intention and it did make the Cuckoo feel a bigger villain by the fact Torchwood had taken it on before. The way it had survived by fragments of its own self surviving in each of them was pretty good and original! I liked that and it was quite ingenious really. The emphatic way it was destroyed at the end with the skull cracking description was brutal and it was nice that Gwen was relieved almost instantly. She'd been suffering from headaches throughout and for weeks, but now the fragment was gone and she was fine. The humour of the Torchwood bank and Rhys fearing Gwen was pregnant really rounded out this episode. Some good comedy definitely helped with what was a really strong and powerful episode! I'd love more post-Miracle and hopefully they keep coming. A really great listen.

Rating: 8/10