Torchwood: Fortitude

For no particularly clear reason, Queen Victoria takes a deposed Maharajah to a sea fort in the English Channel. Well, okay, so her reason for taking him there does become apparent by the end of the story, but why she's doing it herself, and in the way that she is, is much less so. Once there, things don't become any clearer, with the lone guardian of the sea fort being slightly mad and weird things happening just because they do. Nor is it easy to work out what's going on in some of the scenes, which lack some of the context that audios often provide for such purposes.

While it's somewhat confused and meandering, it's not entirely without merit, managing to scrape itself the three stars. There's some good material with the Maharajah, and a reflection on the actions of the British Empire in India and how it treated the locals, largely because they weren't white. The colonel at the sea fort also provides some good scenes, and the whole thing is atmospheric and creepy, which at least suits the Torchwood ethos. A decent character piece, perhaps, although not helped by the characters in question not being any of the regulars, but it's hard to make much sense of it.