Torchwood: The Victorian Age

The second “season” of Torchwood audio plays kicks off with the series' first real dud. It's set in 1899, well outside the usual setting, and this really ought to be a good thing, stretching what the series can achieve beyond what the TV show could. And, to be fair, there are some nice touches with Torchwood's history and some good use of Victorian London as setting, from socialist firebrands at Speakers' Corner, to the early Underground.

The problem is simply the believability of the plot. This concerns Jack Harkness and Queen Victoria teaming up to chase an alien across the city, something that completely broke my suspension of disbelief. Assuming you can swallow the inherent ridiculousness of the whole thing, there are some rather good vignettes on the way, and some well-written reflections on age and mortality, and it's really only these that allow me to give this three stars rather than two. I'll add that the final resolution doesn't really make any sense, either, although it probably didn't help that I hadn't bought into the story by that point.

Is this episode going for comedy or pathos? Possibly, it's a bit of both, although, if so, the first part has certainly failed, and the attempts at it undercut, rather than enhance, the latter. Had this been a different character than Queen Victoria, I'd probably have loved this, and if the 79-year-old Empress of India traipsing around London armed with a laser gun and accompanied by only a single chaperone seems the kind of thing you might enjoy, there's a decent chance you will feel differently than I did. But, for me, this just felt too implausible to work.