Torchwood: The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough

An unusually topical story, this one, and coincidentally almost as much now that the political phase of the COVID enquiry is underway as it would have been in 2021, when this was released. Suffice it to say that if anyone out there thinks that the UK government did a brilliant job during the pandemic and their actions were beyond reproach... well, they're probably not going to like this story very much. For the rest of us, it's a dark and scathing satire whose targets are obvious.

The story is bookended by the ostensible author acting as narrator, with the titular characters each being the subject of a segment in between. On the surface, it's a story about the lengths Torchwood (and Hartman in particular) will go to protect the UK from a deadly rapidly spreading alien threat, but we all know what that's a metaphor for. And the real subjects of the satire are the five people who stand in her way and the obvious lack of preparedness of the government, despite the fact that plans against the eventuality were supposedly in place.

It's worth noting that it's not just government politicians who come in for a bashing here, but their advisors, the Opposition, and the conspiracy theorists who thrived on uncertainty and fear to spread their own misinformation. Although, obviously, names and details have been changed, there are several direct parallels to the real events and personalities of the pandemic - it's clear, for example, exactly who the fifth person is supposed to be. How much of that will be apparent to those outside the UK who experienced the pandemic through their own country's lens I can't really say, but I suspect they will find at least some resonance with the overall theme.

This is science fiction as a dark satire on modern events, something that has a long tradition in the genre. And it works really well.