Torchwood: Night of the Fendahl

This is the first of a set of four stories in which various members of Torchwood face off against monsters from the regular Doctor Who series. Here, as is obvious from the title and cover, it's Gwen versus the Fendahl. There isn't much background on that given, so this probably won't make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen Image of the Fendahl. If you have... well, it had some good ideas, but it didn't work all that well for me.

The story concerns the making of a snuff movie at Fetch Priory based around the events of the original TV story some decades before. This means that all of the characters involved, apart from Gwen herself, are deeply unlikeable. That's fair enough, given that misogyny is a central theme of the story, but with Gwen acting strangely and only really coming to the fore in the closing segments, it makes it hard to really care what happens to anyone.

The result is a fairly traditional horror story where the makers of the horror movie are the victims of a real monster. The fact that the Fendahl doesn't directly speak doesn't help much on audio, and at times it's difficult to follow exactly what it's supposed to be doing. Certainly, they were going for a dark and unpleasant vibe here and I'd say that that worked, along with the message about the attitudes of the filmmakers towards women (mostly, although not entirely, shown through their actions rather than explicit dialogue) which partly subverts the genre. A lot may depend on whether you like the sort of supernatural horror film it's emulating - which, in fairness, is something that fits well with the Fendahl as a monster - but I didn't feel this was one of the stronger entries in the series.