Joseph Lidster

Torchwood: Lost Souls is the fourth Torchwood audio drama I've listened to, even though I've seen almost nothing of the TV show. I didn't know the two characters who died, but I could still feel sympathy for the cast.

I enjoyed the silliness of the pretending-to-be-the-ambassador-from-Cardiff scenes and it was nice to hear the voice of Dr. Martha Jones. As for the science of this episode being rubbish, I'm 61. I have spent decades being exposed to rubbish science in fiction. My brain survived show more watching the SilverHawks cartoon in the 1980s without being discombobulated. Compared to that, this episode's end didn't rate more than a tiny snort of disbelief.

By the way, what really happened to the Large Hadron Collider during initial testing in 2008 may have lacked the menace of the lost souls calling, but it was dramatic enough.

I liked the later audio dramas better, but this one didn't bore me. show less

I found the script and plot of The Reaping almost offensively bad. It is saved by the cast, particularly Nicola Bryant, who is given some of the worst material of her Who career to work with (and that's saying something) and mostly pulls it off. The story is that Peri discovers that her best friend's father (who is mysteriously only 40) was murdered a few months after she started travelling with the Doctor. They return to Baltimore to investigate, but it is all an absurdly complex plot by show more the dying Cyberleader. The Doctor delivers the Cyberleader to Mondas, leaving Peri's mother to take charge of a dangerous device, which in due course explodes killing her. Written at a time when New Who was exploring the impact of Rose's travels on her family left at home, this is an obvious attempt to reconstruct Peri's story in the same mode. It fails. show less

Not yet satisfied by her domination of audio dramas, novels, and collections of short stories, Bernice Summerfield now moves into a new format: the trilogy of novellas. A Life in Pieces is made up of three novellas that interlink to make a complete story.  Given the series's success with the interlinked short story format in Life During Wartime and A Life Worth Living, I was looking forward to this, but I actually ended up being somewhat disappointed.  Nothing is bad, but the book never show more forms a cohesive whole, either.  It doesn't have to, of course... but I think it might want to.

The first story is by Dave Stone, who I always remember as writing the weird stuff.  That's as true as ever here: Bernice and Jason go on vacation... only it turns out they're secretly on reality television?  There's not so much a plot here as a series of jokes, some of which are funny.  Not all of them, unfortunately, and maybe not even most of them, but there were a couple good ones, and one belter. (When Bernice figures out how to circumvent the reality TV cameras, if you're interested.) As a story, it's kinda there: it wants you to laugh, but you don't want to, so everyone is just standing around awkwardly most of the time.

The next is by Paul Sutton, one of my favorite Big Finish writers, as he's penned Arrangements for War, Thicker Than Water, and No More Lies.  His contribution here is very different from those big, emotional stories, but it's still very character-driven.  It follows Adrian Wall, Bev Tarrant, Irving Braxiatel, a couple cops, and a host of criminals on Earth as everyone tries to get their hands on the Purpura Pawn, a valuable artifact from an alien planet that's recently been stolen... by Jason Kane?  It's a dark, tangled story, but Sutton's knack for character strikes; it's perhaps the most insightful story about Adrian and Bev we've ever had, and there's other good stuff, too, especially with the cop character.  Dark and ominous; I'd call it noir if I knew enough about the genre to feel confident enough to make such an assessment.

Finally, there comes a story by Joseph Lidster about Jason's trial for stealing the Purpura Pawn.  It's the flipside of the events in Sutton's tale, told as a series of reconstructed documents a couple generations later. It's an interesting idea, and I like the narrator of the piece, a very likable and driven fellow who is completely and utterly wrong. The thing is, I think I'd prefer to get into Bernice and especially Jason's heads more than the format allows.  Intellectually admirable, and with some good stuff to say about how we try to uncover truth, but it left me kinda cold in the end.

The three stories are all decent at least, but the book feels lopsided. Stone's story is so goofy compared to the other two dark ones, and its tale is completely irrelevant to the later ones, making it feel like it doesn't even belong in the same book.  I like the idea of the book, and I liked the book itself more than I didn't, but I feel like it could have been done better. show less

Very good story! This was creepy as hell! They toyed with the idea of afterlife in the show and their version doesn't sit well with me. Nothingness is one thing, but being alone in darkness is something else entirely. Yikes!

But in this, not only did they mention afterlife, but hell. Clearly it was a man-made hell, but still...Spooky. And very much like I'd imagine hell to be.

The story was great, freightening even. The characters were spot-on; their interactions with one another as well as show more non-team members reminded me so much of the show.

Jack endured more torture, which I have come to expect from both Torchwood and especially Whoverse. But what made seeing him suffer bearable was the fact that Ianto was suffering right along with him. Suffering enough to risk everything to save him, or die with him. They didn't show enough of this side of their relationship on the show, but I always imagined it would be like this. One falling to pieces after losing the other.[spoilers if you haven't watched the whole show!]

We saw how Jack went to pieces after losing Ianto! He sacrificed his grandson and then left the planet entirely. Some like to say that Jack didn't care for Ianto as much as Ianto cared for him, but that's just not true. Jack loved him, and broke him when Ianto died. But I digress (as usual), this was a great story and Eve Myles read it beautifully. show less