Torchwood: Believe

Torchwood decides to investigate a religious cult that believes humanity's future lies in the stars, and that the government is hiding the existence of aliens from the public. Neither of which, in the Torchwood universe, they're actually wrong about...

But they are up to some decidedly unsavoury practices in the process leading the team to try to find a way to stop them. The story is not fully linear, jumping about between the different characters as they explore different ways of getting information on the cult and, at times, returning to prior events to see them from a different perspective. This does mean that some characters are left out of the story for extended periods. Sometimes, that's noticeable, but funnily enough, it's Jack's absence for almost two-thirds of the story that's least so. For most of this 3-hour tale, it's the other characters who take the fore, and that works particularly well here.

This is, it should be pointed out, a dark story. There's body horror, at least two gruesome deaths, a running gag about alien porn, and a sordid sex scene that's really uncomfortable to listen to. The latter, fortunately, is portrayed as resulting in some obvious emotional trauma, but... well, trigger-warning and all that. The climax of the story is more traditionally action-based, but leads to some of the best parts as the survivors come to terms with what it means to believe deeply in something when those around you don't even care whether you're right or not.

4.5 stars, I think, but I can see why some would find it problematic. Owen, for instance, is well written and portrayed but also comes out of it really, really badly - and not everyone's going to like that.