Torchwood For The Ears...

As a prelude to next week's epic five-day Torchwood: Children Of Earth on BBC1, Radio 4 has aired a series of three original Torchwood audio plays.

Running from Wednesday to today (Friday) in the "Afternoon Play" slot, with input from Russell T Davies, the trio of plays (Asylum, Golden Age and The Dead Line) covered the full spectrum of what Torchwood can offer from horror and personal drama through to full-scale, world-threatening adventure.

Asylum, by Anita Sullivan. This first tale was a relatively low-key story about a teenager arrested by Gwen's police friend Andy for shoplifting who turns out to be a refugee from the future who slipped back to present-day Cardiff through The Rift.

The girl, Freda (voiced by Erin Richards) is half-alien and is fleeing a grim future rife with anti-alien prejudice.

Sullivan's script emphasises the point that not everything that comes through The Rift is dangerous, but in doing so removes a lot of the action element from Torchwood and replaces it with introspective character material - which has always worked in both Torchwood and Doctor Who, but as a complement to the action stuff.

While it was interesting to hear the different reactions of the members of Torchwood, and PC Andy encountering his first alien, it would have been more exciting if this was threaded through a more action-driven story.

As strong a story as it was, Asylum failed to capitalise on the freedom that radio presents for science-fiction, that the only limitations on its effects budget is the imagination of the audience. It was therefore a shame to kick off this new series with an alien that looked human (which I know was the whole point of the prejudice angle) who came from a future Cardiff that we never got to experience.

Golden Age, by James Goss. Jack, Ianto and Gwen track an alien energy field, that is responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of people, to Delhi, India. Further investigation leads them to an old colonial gentleman's club that was once Torchwood India.

Jack is shocked to discover that not only is Torchwood India still operating - as he was responsible for shutting it down 80 years ago - but the staff don't appear to have aged one day... including his old flame, The Duchess (voiced by Jasmine Hyde).

In 1924 Jack was ordered by the Torchwood Institute to close the Delhi branch and confiscate all its alien artifacts "to prevent them from falling into the hands of the natives" when the British Empire inevitably fell. However, it turns out he didn't retrieve every item.

In contrast to Asylum, Golden Age is an epic "world-in-danger" story with a solid sci-fi core to its plot, but still with enough room to feed us interesting nuggets about the history of the Torchwood and develop the backstory between Jack and The Duchess. An excellent story with strong hints of Doctor Who potential in its colonial flavourings and "devious plot" at the heart of the mystery.

The Dead Line, by Phil Ford. 'Haunted' or 'cursed' phones have long been the subject of both urban myth and Asian horror films, but this is the first time this trope has been implemented in the Doctor Who universe (as far as I know).

A Cardiff hospital is overwhelmed with patients suddenly falling into a trance after answering their telephones and Team Torchwood is on the case.

Having discovered that all the victims have been using retro-phones from the 1970s and were all called by the same number, Captain Jack falls victim to the phenomenon as well when he calls the number. It turns out to be a dead line, but then it calls back! Jack answers... and collapses.

Gwen and Ianto turn to an old colleague of Jack's - from the 1970s - Stella (voiced by Dona Croll) a neuro-scientist who had some involvement with Torchwood back then.

While Inato sits watch over Jack's body in the hospital, Gwen and husband Rhys trace the number to an abandoned Cardiff & West building society office block and the mystery begins to unfold... as the number of coma-cases increases across the city.

The Dead Line was a genuinely creepy and tense play that rather cleverly left a lot of the mystery unresolved at the end of its 45 minutes. People are saved (as we knew would happen) but the ultimate cause of the strange occurrences is left, largely, as a great unknown for Torchwood to investigate later or not.

Although the action was left to Gwen and Rhys, Ianto's monologue to the unconscious Jack is the romantic heart of this powerful story.

* All these plays are available for the next few days on the BBC iPlayer and will soon be available for purchase on CD.