Four Of The Greatest Torchwood Audio Dramas with Pop Culture Podcaster Martyn Havell

0:00 hi this is Tim Foley and you're listening to the Sirens of audio [Music] [Applause] who's calling me for me from Wales hello Dwayne speaking Yep this is he oh Ash Derby g'day thanks for calling me back do you have any idea how hard it's been to track you down thank you so much I didn't even know the number I called was was going to get through to you yeah yeah I know so so how do you feel about uh coming onto the Sirens of audio to have a chat about some of your Torchwood scripts that not many people have heard from you about

0:48 Steve Steve Berry it's okay we'll clear it with him don't worry okay yeah I figured it was a pseudonym what what should I call you when we're off air oh okay um all right well let me shoot you through some Zoom details and we can um get this done eh all right we'll talk soon thanks Russ he said I could call him Russ [Music]

1:54 Ian g'day audio files this is the Sirens of audio the show that explores the universe of Doctor Who and the audio medium I'm Dwayne and I'm Philip get a Dwayne good day audio files g'day Philip how's things with you things are great thank you always you sure yeah I just had a great phone conversation with someone but that's for something in the future oh you tease I know Big T's I know all right it is uh my great pleasure to welcome to the show from well a variety of podcasts which we'll no doubt talk about but it's Martin Havel g'day good day how are you doing great welcome thanks for thanks for joining us this is this has been a long time coming so uh

2:39 so thank you for that I've been trying to wake down for about a year or so yeah even more than that and uh you're wanting to talk about Torchwood you're a bit of a fan of the Torchwood audio so it's uh it's a subject that we haven't dealt with too often Phillips I'm glad we've we've got someone here forcing us to do it definitely yeah we've only interviewed one total person oh we have two we have very good um what I'd like to know Martin is uh tell us about your um your podcast history because you've been around in podcasting for quite a while so uh so tell us about your shows you've got I think you've got four on the go at the moment four or five I I subscribed to one last night so this is

3:25 what I'm interested in but we'll keep going and see what happens well let's talk about the most recent one first then uh it's called bite me a buffy podcast and that's going to be hosted with Joe Ford who people might know from hamster World blunt pen knife Finnish big he's got he's got four other podcasts uh he's around if you've listened to a doctor who podcast you've heard of Joe Ford uh we're going to be every week talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer going through every episode and eventually we're gonna you know make our way onto Angel and the comics and the books and the whole expanded media uh episode one comes out on the 13th of September which I think by the time this comes out it will be out yeah I'm really looking forward to

4:10 getting into that we recorded the first episode a couple of days ago and went really well we're really happy with it excellent when you get to season four of Buffy is that when you're going to start are you gonna go backwards and forwards Buffy Angel weak about yeah yeah excellent I'm I'm a huge Buffy fan as well an angel yes I've never seen a single episode you've never oh you need to get on it I came into the back door so I'm a huge musical fan and a friend of mine brought the musical episode to me and said you have to watch this I've not seen an episode of buffer before then and I had assumed it was horror and I'd assumed it was scary and I watched the musical episode and I went I have got this show totally wrong and they went back and watched it from the beginning and I've

4:56 watched it about five times through now is so clever and so yeah brutally made and filmed and the direction and yeah I love the characters and if you watch it now you can see everything that RTD borrowed for Doctor Who and tortured oh that's for sure very thoughtfully actually very totally the whole house yeah season four yeah you got the Hub you got uh the hell mouth which is basically the rift in time and space uh they're heavily influenced Doctor Who in those early days yeah definitely so tell us about some of your others okay yeah I've got uh Martin and which is now an interview podcast that I do where I get people that I find interesting on them we just have a chat

5:42 that's coming back later on this month I've had to put it on a bit of a Hiatus because people are in Edinburgh or people just off with their kids because the summer holidays I've got running down corridors which I host with Chris Walker Thompson who some people might know as the Patrick trout and voice guy and our good friend Abby Louise we we go through Doctor Who uh that's coming back in a couple of weeks because Chris just had a baby so we put on hold for a bit to give him some time and then I got bad wolf again that's been on the break but that's coming back this month and that's just a film a TV review show that I do with my friend Jared and that's how I started podcasting we started bad wolf about 14 years ago now and it was originally mainly Doctor Who

6:27 wasn't it it was but then Jared fell out of love with Doctor Who pretty quickly so we decided to start covering other stuff he dipped out around the Capaldi era he dipped out okay and what about you where's your doctor who found him stem from you've been a who your classic Who fan or so I didn't discover Doctor Who until Eccleston in 2005 I was aware of it like when you grow up in the UK you just there's Doctor Who references in every other show um I knew what a tardis was I knew Tom Baker played the doctor I knew who's Sarah Jane Smith was I knew what Cyberman was stuff like that I'd just never seen it I I might have very fractured vague memories of McCoy

7:14 um I think I remember watching survival back in the day but I didn't really register what it was because when Doctor Who used to be I was watching The A-Team when I was like eight or nine um so yeah I got canceled in 18 1989 and I was about eight um so yeah it just wasn't in my wheelhouse and I remember watching that um began trailer he's back and it's about time that big Boombastic trailer I remember thinking I should watch that and I I just never did yeah so it's 2005. I ecclestone is probably my doctor because that's the one I I came in at but my favorite doctor is Sylvester McCoy I just love him yeah well The A Team really lasted so that was a wise choice you made um

7:59 [Laughter] it's classic but what was it about that first series that that really appealed to you what what was it that hooked you it was probably the Buffy influence to be honest yeah I was a massive fan of Buffy um and even angel and I just remember watching it thinking this feels like what I know this feels very familiar and eccleston's performance is so great and I I was on all the I'm a Sci-Fi fan so I wasn't on all the old sci-fi websites I was a big visitor to The sfx Forum so I was aware of what people were saying about Doctor Who and you know everyone forgets now but everybody was skeptical about Billy Piper coming in because we

8:46 only knew her as a pop star in the UK and she was a pop star that was a washed up pop star that had married Chris Evans not that one and was known for just getting coked up and pissed in ibifa so I just remember that ferror and then when we saw her act I just remember just being Enchanted and I watched Rose at a family like Gathering and there were there must have been about 20 kids there and when Doctor Who came on they all sat on the floor to watch it and they were all silent uh they're all silent and they're all transfixed and as soon as I saw Rose I was like yeah I like this show and from day fourth is where my love for Doctor Who was seated awesome

9:31 well and it wasn't too long after the first series that Torchwood started to pop up in various uh Easter eggs throughout the series two and then it it ended up making an its its appearance during that season was it during that season or at the after season two that Torchwood started it's ultimate season two yeah yeah okay so you you're a fan of that straight away as well uh the the first series is a mixed bag but I thought there was enough potential there that it kept me coming back uh series two of tortroid is my favorite it's monster of the week I think it's very Standalone I think there I don't think there's a dark episode in series two at all uh series three is

10:20 critically the best and it you know it's tortured for people who don't like Torchwood uh but it's probably the best I I think you can break down that script and be like series three is the best but my favorite series two I think there's stuff to like in Miracle day I think Miracle day is a great five episode idea stretched to 10. yeah I struggled with uh with Miracle day probably for that reason what about you Philip were you instantly hooked on Torchwood the TV series uh I think I think I found the first episode of bit of a shock but I enjoyed it and the second episode I thought oh with the sex monster I really really wasn't sure and the Cyber woman episode as well so there was a lot of episodes in there I think it was about Chris tibble um which I really struggled with

11:07 but I loved the main characters I love Captain Jack I loved Gwen so I really got into the character as well I just didn't like it a lot of what they were doing because it felt like they were just trying to be adult and grown up by swearing a lot having lots of sex and lots of violence and I think by the second season they worked out you could be adult without doing that to access yeah so I I think they were just it was just too try hard the first season but there's some good episodes in there and they do establish the characters but they're not all likable though it's it's I mean the burn Gorman's character who is totally dislikable in the first season by the second season you actually do kind of accept him even though he's still a pratt um but yes but I mean yeah so second season I really enjoyed who's got a

11:54 reason to be a pratt by the end of the second series that's true and I and I I mean I hated the end of the second season I thought it was just awful what they did to to the characters and then well then what they went on to do with the Anton um children children attitude of Earth but that's the tune of Earth was just an amazing event and we sort of think I think we sort of in Australia we had spread out over a week whereas I think I'm pretty sure the Great British and they had it every night for five nights so it would have been a much more of an event TV then but that once again that alien I mean Russell T just made aliens that there weren't aliens of the week like top two which was they came to conquer Earth they had a bizarre purpose is

12:46 just two five six yeah five six eight whatever it is it was just terrifying its purpose was awful so yeah so I I did enjoy talking a lot um fruit Sergeant Adventures because I'm a softy but there's still a lot of talks with I appreciate and I do think the audio CDs have made the show even better yeah absolutely I think I think be finished has managed to capture things even better on the audios than than they do on the TV show it's interesting being a long-term Doctor Who fan having something set in that Doctor Who universe and then being hit with all the adult content shocked me as well it was it was um yeah you're right I was lucky it was it was very much a shock but there were a couple of episodes particularly in that first season that stood out I really like cyber woman I don't I know it's

13:32 universally panned but I I actually like it um for some it always stood out in my mind and I think the other standout for me was Countryside which didn't have any uh monsters oh no they have monsters but they're humans yes that is utterly terrifying that episode it's still yeah I think that from from the first series that would probably be my my standout episode with a magnificent performance from the actor who I can't remember but he was in Vengeance on varos cyber woman I think the core idea of that episode is really good and I think it's kind of in it's been a bit impeded by a lack of budget and stuff because basically so tortroid was announced in October 2000 and when was it 2005. they started

14:19 shooting in May 2006 and it broadcast in October 2006. so they had basically half the time and half the budget to make the same amount of episodes of Doctor Who and I know originally in cyber woman um there was yanto was going to be keeping Lisa in a different location and throughout the series we were going to see in Pocket bits of tech and stuff and that episode was going to come much later but then all that had to get cut so I think maybe that's why it falls a little bit flat but yeah the core idea of cyber woman is really good I want to Target novelization for tortured episodes and I think that one could work really well yeah it was the costume I just thought was just ridiculous it makes no sense it makes no sense because you've got you've got the

15:04 Cybermen that are on their back foot and they're they're just making loads of loads of Cybermen out of scrap but yeah they got the time to custom make this woman a cyber costume it doesn't make any sense 60 cyber woman yeah it didn't work but I think you're right I think the story is so good and had she been here our transformed yeah good point yeah okay so that's the TV series but before we talk about the stories that you've selected there is one thing I would like to do Philip do you know what that is well what do you want to do Dwayne before we go into the series I would like to jump down that rabbit hole let's go [Applause]

15:51 [Music] all right we're down the rabbit hole and since we're going to be talking about the audio series of Torchwood I want to ask you the question these audio releases particularly from Big finish because they're not the only audio series of Torchwood the big finish ones in particular are very cut down with cast there's usually one or two cast and the majority of them don't feature especially Captain Jack but and and maybe a little bit more often um Gwen Cooper so with the TV series being so focused on Captain Jack and Gwen um how would you convince a fan of the

16:38 TV series to delve into the big finish audio Adventures of Torchwood can we start with you Philip yeah thanks I'd like to give you two seconds to think she don't think it's hard to convince people because I think the strength of Torchwood was initially really was seen as a character it was a um group show um and so although Captain Jack led the team and it was well introduced to torture that Gwen was our point of view in um almost immediately um her name is first name tashiko and um okay the doctor Boone Gorman is is so those two are very much seen straight

17:25 away is as very strong characters yento took a lot longer to actually establish himself he was sort of on the periphery um and of course that first episode also had that amazing actress Indira Obama um and of course she was in all the advertising so yeah what they did with her that first episode was just unbelievable and it was a trick that once again Russell had taken from Buffy in terms of creating what you think is going to be main cast members and then you kill him off straight away um and she consumes on all the advertising and all the things because she was gonna be a main character so I think the show established itself straight away as an ensemble piece and so with a green orange Equity or not I don't think really mattered and I think everyone had their own fans so people had had their yanto fans people

18:10 at their Jack fans and I think for that reason it actually worked quite well that's you don't have to have Jackal Gwen I think it's a shame not to have them um and there's you know at the moment John Barrowman won't be coming back for the foreseeable future so we won't be getting any more tortured with him for if ever for simple future and of course yeah um Gwen played by eight miles Eve miles thank you my brain she's just getting bigger and bigger so she's probably less available than she is she's she's probably well she's from Boone Gorman he's busy too yeah she's probably Wells his you know most famous actress and she is amazing in everything that she does and he's always got so much work um too so all I see all of a really susceptible themselves really well I

18:57 mean they were so well cast that the I don't think it matters and then they've managed to introduce characters like Queen Victoria and who wasn't even in the original tournament she has a whole series of stories which just still all work but it comes down to what it always comes down to it all comes down to the writing if you are if you write a good story with good characterizations that is engaging um and now you set in the right world people are going to be engaged and the stories we're going to talk about today are so different and said that it's the totaled world and you are just get pulled into them all straight away and there's always enough the right amount of humor the right amount of fear and Terror it's just very clever and yeah always it's about the writing write something well and it will work you don't write it

19:42 well then you're really struggling how would you convince someone Martin for me I I agree with Philip entirely but I would say if you like early big finish when Doctor Who was being experimental and BBC didn't really care about the brand and they were able to take it in bold new directions that's kind of what the talk drud monthly range is now they will do stuff in the audios that the BBC would never let them do and Doctor Who I'm not even talking about the adult nature of it just just certain plot lines and storylines they wouldn't want anywhere near Doctor Who now and it's a great character piece yeah I always thought that tashiko was a little bit underserved in the TV series but

20:28 she's got a great set of audios and it's just a great expansion of these characters and it really reminds me of what what big finish used to do with Doctor Who and then I said it's it's sort of taking of the companion Chronicles range which is always very because it was very cheap because they only used one or two actors the writers had to be really experimental with what they did and yeah torture was doing exactly the same thing they're really growing up on the limb to try unusual and new things new styles of writing new storytelling techniques and it works what about you Dwayne how would you talk someone to listen to these well I agree I can't really add too much more to it than what you two have already said but I would say that even though the central characters in the TV series were

21:14 Gwen and uh Jack I think the audios have actually evolved and we the central character to me I don't know whenever I dip in because I I dip in and out but a central character for Torchwood now is yanto and we get to see how important he is in uh in that team he's he's he is like you've got the actual physical Hub but yanto seems to be the Hub of the team um and and that's how he seems to have been placed uh in the in the audio Series so for me it's yanto who's actually the star of uh of Torchwood now but not only that we've got you've mentioned queer Victoria you've got a Torchwood Soho then you've got the the brand new series of of Torchwood from like the Among Us team

22:00 um that they've that I've added characters to as well so there's a whole there's lots of new elements to to explore combine that with all those great stories that that keep getting pumped out I don't know how they can pump out so many great stories consistently over such a long period of time but I'm I'm really disappointed I say I dip in and out of Torchwood because I always give Doctor Who priority but when I do go into Torchwood I'm I'm really disappointed really hmm oh it's consistently good I think there's only one or two that I I actively dislike but yeah most of them I would say they're at least a seven out of ten inconsistency yeah absolutely so for anyone who wants to uh

22:46 to to test out big finish uh the Torchwood range would definitely be be one to have a look at so with that said let's crawl up out of the rabbit hole and well Martin let me ask you first before we get into the stories um what got you into regularly listening to Big finish in the first place I I don't know I think I just wanted more Doctor Who I've got a story action around 2003 I worked at Blockbuster Video with my friend Mark and he he was the only Doctor Who found I knew at that point he loved it and he used to give me a lift to work it took us an hour to get there it would take him about 10 minutes to get to me he used to listen to Big finish

23:31 and I used to I used to lie and say I didn't need a lift and get the train so that I didn't have to listen to these Doctor Who audios but bear in mind which is no context I had no context to what Doctor Who was at the time and I didn't know these were specific audio dramas I just thought he was listening to audio rips of episodes and he would always be 10 minutes in when he arrived to pick me up so I would I would never get the the start of an audio or the end of an audio because he would drop me off first so I I would just get really frustrated but yeah it was around 2007 I started listening to the poem again uh Sheridan Smith stuff and I got in that way and that that was my Gateway into big finish

24:16 very good now you've chosen uh some stories I I vetoed one of them you chose three of them and I threw one of of my of my favorites in there sorry sorry Philip we didn't ask you what did you veto uh I think that I think there was a selection of about five or six and I chose three and and put in one of mine okay I think I'm always more Curious I don't remember which one you've left out and why but that's okay [Laughter] it was oh yeah okay I'll have a look at his list later and tell you yeah I want to know I remember all right shall we do these in chronological order of release so if we start off with uh Torchwood dissected

25:02 I'll read a blurb for it it says Gwen Cooper turns up on Martha Jones's doorstep with a dead body in tow she needs to ask one final favor of her and to find out why they stopped being friends A lot happened to Torchwood since Martha left A lot's happened to Martha since she left Torchwood and there's something very odd about the dead body Gwen's brought with her tonight Gwen's going to be getting more answers than she's barking for Dr Martha Jones please don't use my full name makes me think there's trouble from Big finish Productions Torchwood dissected let's get on with this Caucasian mail late teens deceased and I

25:49 need to know what killed him okay thank you could you pass the scissors I'll remove the clothes oh I never liked this bit what bit oh I don't know the beginning you don't have any of the answers or all you have is this the trauma up front you know I just want to know what happened to him kid who he was but we'll find the truth and find the truth tonight big finish we love stories all right so I'll just start off by saying that when I first listen to this I had my headphones on and in the first scenes I was checking

26:36 my headphones I thought there was something wrong with them and it didn't I didn't click with me until a little while later what was going on and I didn't have to panic about my headphones but um but Martin what is it you like about dissected of course this is the first time um we've got frema edgerman appearing as Martha for big finish let alone big finish Torchwood yeah I have always loved the character of Martha Jones and I feel like whether it is performance Freeman was still very new to acting at the time or whether it's just the way the character was written I never felt that Martha Jones reached her full potential on TV what I really like about a character is here we used to seeing more for be the glue so she's the glue of her family

27:22 she's the glue in the Tardis she's keeping everything together everyone you know she's making sure everyone's in line but in this one we get a Martha as kind of she's lost her which you know she's fallen out with uh what's his name Tom Milligan she's she's no longer engaged to him and her life is kind of falling apart and it's interesting to see that side of Martha yep actually for people who don't watch torture but they may not be aware of the fact that Martha actually went into Torchwood for three episodes and so in the second season um I'm still curious to know what the whole stories behind Martha but for whatever reason Russell didn't put her into season four of doctors if she Martha was in all of the third season

28:08 but he didn't do a deal with her in terms of she was going to get I think she got five episodes in Doctor Who and three in tortwood as sort of the payoff for being out of Doctor Who uh and so yeah so for three episodes she became a very major figure in well two two of the three she's a major figure one not quite so much it wasn't just that well but yeah so Martha was actually part of the crew and so a lot of this is actually going back and dealing with relationships Martha had started with Gwen while in Torchwood and this is one of those experimental stories too um that I think I think every story that we're that we're talking about tonight is is experimental is unless that's just Torchwood across the board but um like I said with with me

28:56 thinking my head headphones weren't working properly uh we we are looking at this whole story from the perspective of virtually a a corpse that starts off in a body bag so it's a fascinating way to start and interestingly written by Tim Tim Foley yeah this one's written by Tim Foley three out of the four stories that were that we're going to discuss all written by Tim Foley so we love his Doctor Who stuff but boy he's he's great in everything he does and uh I saw recently that Tim is stepping back from from Doctor Who and from Big finish uh very soon I don't know if that includes Torchwood but if it's all a big finish it will include Torchwood and he's going to be sorely missed I think as far as I'm concerned he's one of their best writers

29:42 oh absolutely it's a great loss it's a great loss I wish him well in his career because he's such a fantastic writer I'm going to support whatever he does next but yeah he's just consistently good across across the board I he might be my favorite tortured writer James gospel has come close to though oh oh James Goss David Llewellyn how could I say I've got a favorite kid no I don't have a favorite yeah I have a favorite kid some days it depends on the day Yeah well yeah I think I think it's it's brilliant as as Dwayne said the whole the whole story basically is taken from the point of view of the body and so even when they leave rooms it's done through tanoi radio that so still the body hearing live in another room but

30:28 just listing in through a radio um and it's I think it's all done in real time as well so I think the whole story is in real time so there's no breaks or anything that it's just the action going on for one one hour um wait yeah because yeah Freeman's supposed to be the master has been going off for her world party in half an hour's time and so the whole thing runs like that so it's it's clever until that way so with with only two cast members who's doing the who's doing the Eerie voices do you think sound designer so Pope Peter Doggett Peter Doggett management very often no Peter hasn't done a lot of stuff for big Finnish I don't think we look now oh it's 29

31:16 results down so uh he did the time lord Victoria's stuff for being finished he's done a lot of Torchwood and it's up to some of the time machine and Visually on the moon as well so he's done bits and pieces he's around but it's it's yeah I don't think we've ever particularly noted him in the past which is sad because he's actually done a really good job because the sound design work is he is hard work where is this set do you think um in the Torchwood Universe just after um just after series two because they do mention the death of yeah so it's yeah they're still getting over the death of um Owen and Chico and it's before um Martha's taken up with Mickey because Mickey's mentioned so she doesn't know Mickey by this stage so it probably is after Stone so to be after stolen Earth

32:03 as well um but it's before um the child one okay it's before children of Earth so let's appearance set in here's a question for you because this is not the first time frame adjamin has appeared in a Torchwood audio did you know that yeah she's uh she did one for BBC Radio yep 2008 there was one called lost souls and she's there and that is set around the same time so I was I was only listening to it today thinking I wonder I wonder if this if that was before or after because by this by the stage lost souls was was released um Martha's away again from Torchwood so um

32:48 she was away from Torchwood anyway in in series two wasn't she she left I mean if you want to fit lost souls into the times frame which I'm not sure you'd want to because it's not that good um but he would go through this will have to take place after lost souls because she is presumed dead at the end of this episode she's basically just becomes a quiet agent on the run with Mickey after this so she's not she's not longer working so this would be the last one before she disappears I'm curious why do you say it's it's no good lost souls yeah um I just found it dragged the story it has been a while to listen to us I'd like you need to listen to it again okay do I okay we're really enjoying it is that the Hadron collage yes on yes

33:37 that's the one yeah written by Joe Lester okay I'll listen to it again it has been a long time I'm biased though whenever I see Joe list his name I'm instantly thinking this is going to be great so I could be biased because of Tim it does a sound recording sound like it's just in a room though just with very few effects and very few little sound design it's very different uh to the kind of sound design we're getting big finish so it could have been recorded in the single room with all the players and I feel like the all the effects are happening practically at the time so you know the like the bicycle thing is actually really happening at on um I think you're being overly harsh because I thought the sound design was Sensational okay I will go back and listen again yeah I'll let you know what

34:23 I think when it's done again no it's okay if you don't like it it doesn't bother me I wouldn't have listened to it since was it 2008 so I've not listening to it for yeah 13 14 years so My Views may change there you go any final thoughts on on dissected what was the what do you think of the combination of putting her with with Gwen was that the right choice yeah I they had a bit of a a relationship in the in series two um for blossom in friendship I would say and you know we get the the feeling that sometime has passed since they last saw each other so there's another adventure that we haven't yet heard uh that speculates on what happened but yeah we we do get a reference to Mickey

35:09 uh you know what's interesting is um my fiance's never really seen Doctor Who so we are watching it and we got to series two and it's when Mickey goes off with Jake in Pete's world she was like oh are there any big finish audios featuring Mickey and Jake I'd really like to listen to those I said no And there probably won't be now probably probably not probably not and it's the only time she's ever expressed any interest in listening to Big finish maybe we can recast Mickey I I just think in terms of you put two very strong actresses together they are very powerful they're very different characters but they're both strong they stand up to each other and you have such a wide ranging conversation dealing with

35:55 issues of love and grief and professionalism and what does the future hold and dealing with if you've traveled to the doctor how to recover again so the breadth of conversation is just gigantic and then on on the side you've got a bit of an alien menace but yeah the the important things is the character not the alien menace in fact you keep forgetting that he's there I think oh that's right things are happening as well I I just wanted you know Scott Hancock in terms of this stage directing scuba diving just really holding the range together in a really brilliant way at the stage and he's going to hand over equally Britney to James Goss but this stage yeah Scott Hancock was just doing an amazing job absolutely all right let's move on to the second story this one this is the one I

36:40 inserted into into Martin's selections um it's uh tropical beach sounds and other relaxing seascapes volume 4 and the blurb reads you are listening to a self tape you're hearing a soothing voice you have always wanted to do something with your life haven't you oh how you've ached to be a better person well now this is your chance go on sit back close your eyes relax you're going to learn all about Captain Jack Harkness you're going to learn all about Torchwood you're going to change the world from Big finish Productions Torchwood life is stressful life is cruel sometimes life is exactly like being shot twice in the stomach while the love

37:26 of your life dies in a nuclear meltdown but enough of living like that let's make a change sit back relax close your eyes listen to the warm expensive tones of Sir Michael Palin as he takes you through tropical beach sounds and other relaxing seascapes volume 4. can you hear the waves Can You Feel the hot sand beneath your toes can you taste the blood of course you can good it's time to change the world it's time to become someone new

38:11 big finish we love stories even yours all right so this is one of those experimental stories that I absolutely adore there's there's quite a few in the in the Doctor Who range that I like natural history of fear is is one of those experimental Doctor Who stories that I love um and this this is one of those along those kind of lines where you sort of think how can they possibly do anything like this but you put Sir Michael Palin on the and combine him with Tim Foley oh my goodness we've got a recipe for something very very special there and I think we all uh enjoy this one you enjoyed this one too didn't you Martin I did yeah and it's completely different

38:57 to what I was expecting it to be and it just completely shatters expectations and like you said it's experimental and I love Michael Palin who can't like Michael Palin it's just such a great audio Phillip what do you what do you think of this one yeah no I love I mean yeah Sir Michael Palin I mean he's funny because he never uses the sir uh but they deliberately wanted to put it on the front cover because it made a point to the fact that Sir Michael Palin is listed above Torchwood as the star um I'm a huge fan my father got me into Monty Python when I was young and I went through school quoting Monty Python and doing multi-python skits of camps so Michael Pell has always been a hero of mine and so when I heard he was doing a Torchwood I couldn't I couldn't imagine

39:43 how it was going to work and then as soon as I put this on I just sort of went ah this is bliss and his voice and he's reading and yet he's actually such a good actor because he gets downright scary at times and just the way his storytelles is just beautiful so yeah I was I was blown away by this and yeah it just kept me enthralled the whole time at the time this came out I had been recently um hanging out with some woo-woo people uh I had done a sound healing which was very similar to the to Michael Palin's narration throughout this um so it was ringing very very true to to me I think Tim Foley had listened to a a self-help

40:31 tape they call it self-help tape but be more like self-guided meditation more than anything is what they probably refer to it these days but it's interesting that the cover the cover illustration actually comes out within the story and uh as you can see in the illustration on the cover Captain Jack is holding a cassette tape so this is Willows will spoil it so fast forward now if you don't want to hear it but there is an alien who has uh who has invaded a cassette tape and has been waiting to uh to be able to get out of that cassette tape and it was a long time throughout the story but I was just listening away and thinking oh this is this is interesting and towards the end I suddenly realized oh this is this is actually me it's actually me it was kind of Twisted with my brain and um

41:18 so I love that aspect of it um and it was a fascinating way to get all of those characters the whole Torchwood team is in the story with none of the cast actually credited so it works yeah just it's just brilliant absolutely brilliant so certainly if you know the Hubble you know the characters I I I I'm accusing of someone who doesn't know torture coming to listen to this how it would work for them but I think you'd probably pick up enough but it's it's interesting I don't think it would quite work that well and if you don't know the characters I think you'll struggle without knowing the characters because it assumptions are made and there's a lot of in-jokes made about the Hub about where they bury things and put things which if you don't if you don't know how how a lot of torture works I think it

42:03 would throw you slightly yeah but just just listen to Michael Palin he could read the phone book out listen to him yeah yeah me too and it was not it was only a couple of months after this came out that we actually had Tim on the on the podcast and um so it was nice to nice to talk to him about about this and he was very happy to be able to mess with my brain the way he did he seemed to enjoy that very much so if you if you get a chance go back and have a listen to that podcast with Tim uh and once again yeah I'm very I'm very sad that he's uh that he's moving on but not for him for me I will just shout out blame out to the music because

42:49 the music is very typical of the sort of relaxation yeah breathing tapes and unbelievably tacky at times but it is just what you need and so I think Blair's done an amazing job capturing the spirit of the music so well and then you do get that totally um backgroundy vibey stuff as well but a lot of the tacky stuff it makes me smile as I listen to it it's just so bad but it's good I agree I I just noticed the date of the recording is the 15th of January 2020 so they got that in just in time if it was a month or two later they may not have even been able to get him due to lockdowns and all that kind of thing for four times

43:37 before times I remember that all right let's move on to the next one unless we've got anything else to say about tropical beach sounds no it's a difficult one to talk about because I feel like people really need to experience it actually that's the right word it really is something you experience because it really it's not normal storytelling at all it is something that you do actually just put the headphones I actually I remember we have a lovely park we have a major a Motorway that runs near us and it's all Parkland beside it and I remember lying down in the grass and just having it on my headphones in the Sun and just listening to this and then they watch over me because I just thought uh this is just so good to listen to so I just I

44:24 remember exactly where I was listened to the majority of this CD you could actually use it as a relaxation okay but as long as you use the sleep function on your big finish app turn make sure it goes off after about 25 minutes because otherwise it might wake you up and you'll be a little bit disturbed freaked out that's for sure yeah all right let's move on to the next one and it is Torchwood monthly range number 44. which is I guess it's probably a play on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure the the title of this one recent yanto's excellent barbecue and here's the blurb Rhys is planning a Lads night in Barbie in the backyard few tins mates and bands but the only person who turns up is

45:09 yanto who hasn't been invited hell is other people especially when they've brought board games something goes wrong the two of them could be trapped together for eternity in a barbecue where the sausages never cook and worse the brewskis remain forever Out Of Reach it's just something so satisfying about fire didn't it I Feel Like a Stone Age man finish Productions Rhys and yanto's excellent barbecue [Music] still there this will be going in no time now oh you need to wait 20 to 30 minutes for it to reach the right temperature sure you don't want to be here fine thanks do you have a glass I can use though

45:55 doesn't have to be a wine glass oh well it doesn't have to be a wine Glasser yeah inside uh I'll go and grab you one hand with a Cutlery or anything cutlery it's a barbecue we're King we're gonna use up and paper plates uh they're in the bag I'll be right back like an ear glass and maybe a crystal decanter what's the matter if you got one big finish we love stories I'm really looking forward to this Lads Lads Lads okay Martin why was this one

46:40 on your list I think this is a great example of how men are together like we never want to talk about the serious stuff we just want to talk about our Hobbies or something like that we do we struggle to open up and here Reese is dealing with the death of a friend of his and I think this is just such a great exploration of male friendship and bonding okay yeah well your thoughts on that no it's it's yeah no it's interesting and it's also didn't compete this is dissected where you have Martha and Gwen who are just pouring out everything at each other and and they haven't communicated they haven't met up they knew they should have communicated when things had happened yeah you know frema

47:27 hasn't been there because she broke up and she was going through the breakup but Quinn doesn't know that um Gwen's experienced the death of friends the two though just blurt at everything it's a huge emotional fist where here you have two men who just do not know how to communicate that they had hardly anything to do with each other on the show and that that point is made explicit in this audio like in terms of why are you here and what's going on but you do have this situation of tortoise was a show about death like there's so much death in total all the time and generally speaking is not dealt with death has no consequences you someone dies you move on um the the death of the main tortured people has has a larger consequence something yeah two of them come back from the dead for goodness sake and so

48:14 death death is a major theme that always happens throughout total but in this situation you've actually got Rhys dealing with suicide and the death of a mate and that none of none of his friends none of his we could actually work out how to express it how to deal with it how to deal with mental health any of those issues and so it's only by being trapped in a bubble literally that suddenly you have to start working out how to actually deal with those situations so it's an enforced way of dealing with with emotion um done in a humorous way done in a backhanded way with a lot of black humor but it is an interesting exploration of mailholders and I said when you compare this to dissected and you get those two couples together you really do have a different way of relating in terms of how people relate

49:02 what do you think Dwayne well it's interesting if if there was one story that I had any because occasionally there's there's things that come out in torture that I have issues with for personal reasons and this might have been this might have been one of them because we we don't know that Rhys is dealing with the issue of his of his friend's suicide until towards the end and we've got yanto coming in saying things about and using the using the term toxic masculinity and I'm thinking there was nothing really toxic about what he was doing and then even in the extras James Goss is making fun of toxic masculinity I think he was doing it in a tongue-in-cheek way but um I I wasn't quite sure whether they were whether it was trying to attack it or

49:49 whether it was it was yanto's character going in assuming this was toxic masculinity and then realizing that it really wasn't towards the end of the story I wasn't quite sure where it was so I was yeah it I actually listened to this one twice because I wanted to I wanted to give it a good go and yeah it's there's a lot more to it than my initial reaction to it which was oh I don't like some of the elements of this um I because you know having many of us have been perhaps all three of us I don't know but we've but I know I certainly have been in a situation similar to to Rhys in this uh having having to deal with suicide and um

50:35 the top I couldn't really relate to the toxic masculinity thing because I've I've always been able to talk about it about things like that with my with my friends um so I didn't get that but Martin you're saying that's how guys are so maybe I'm the one that doesn't know what I'm talking about it might just be how we are in the UK they maybe we're a bit more preserved about talking about such rings yeah what I love about this also it deals with the awkwardness of having to deal with your partner's work colleagues but that's always an awkward encounter and I love that that just captures this and it's got Yusuf kirkor who is I think one of the best actors in the UK at the moment uh accents he can do them always

51:21 done a few big finish audios and he's just magnificent it I mean there's issues in terms of the way they want to deal with it is is come around and get drunk but it's not about it's it's a it's a failure to talk about what's going on which is part of the problem but you've got recently don't get at the pink Chase because men don't see zombies sit on pinches and so there's a sprinkled throughout is these expectations about how you are to behave we don't use Cutlery we don't eat salad so it is it is actually saying a lot about but what's wrong with that uh what's wrong if you don't want to sit on pink chairs what's wrong if you want to eat the meat straight out of you off your paper plate because a lot of it because I think it's about the terms of

52:09 the sort of ways that males are just expected to behave whether they want to behave that way or not and you know there's nothing wrong with sitting on pictures either that's been done some pictures so I think it is sort of saying that our society is riddled with cliches and ways of ways of behaving um and that's yeah is it is it just let's not try to deal with those issues in depth but it's enough there in terms of thinking in terms of you know am I you know do I struggle with I mean there's there's the thing about the Anto being gay or bisexual legacies in this and how does risk deal with that and how do his mates deal with that because it's once again certainly outside of what Reese's experiences in his comfort zone there is the issues in terms of Rhys dealing with a wife who is far more successful than him in terms of career

52:56 and she's busy and she's out and yet he's the one who's to stay home and keep her home so there are a lot of issues there that are good issues for males to think through and explore because I think what what a man looks like has changed considerably over the last 30 40 years but some men don't want to change don't want to see change ridicule men who have changed so I think it's trying to explore some of those issues they're not not in huge depth but there's stuff there that you could actually start really pulling out and trying to analyze and think well is this is a problem is the stiff upper lip that is is the British model a problem what do you think Martin do you think it explores those issues well enough absolutely absolutely and yeah it's just hinted at is stuff like

53:43 the pink chairs I mean I I would sit on a pink chair but I would look for another chair first so yeah I think it does it does explore those things incredibly well okay but I can't really add anything to what Philip said I'm afraid but does but does subtly I mean it's it's not hitting it it doesn't hit you over the head which is I'm glad about it it's not preaching a point it's not slamming over the head it's just a a bit of an examination of society and what do men do and how do men behave in those sort of groups and you're it's up to you to think about in terms of is this healthy or not and what is healthy and and so the conclusion of the Andes about the healthiest thing to do is we need to talk about what happened we need

54:29 to talk about our mates let's let's not just keep ignoring that but let's get together and have a real time in terms of let's talk through what happened because are we okay could could how he responded could it affect us and you know we do know that yeah suicide is still a major cause of death for men under I think 45s I think these are the major cause certainly for men under 30s it's a huge issue and Men struggle to ask other men how are you going and I noticed that last train because I know yeah we do ask each other um but a lot of men don't and very few of my friends would ever think about asking about another man's mental health and how they're going I think we're changing but I think we still got a long way to go and I think this helps to actually you know raise

55:15 the brace this um I think it was a good idea of Reese's though to have a barbecue have a few drinks and once the once the beers were flowing then the talk would have flowed after that's that's how I find guys are anyway but anyway yeah there you go very interesting story once again by Tim Foley so well done Tim okay let's move on to the last story from your selection and I'm very very glad you chose this one because it was definitely my favorite Torchwood story that the year it came of the year it came out uh although it came out same year as tropical beach sounds didn't it so they're probably equal first let's say and that is the Great sontaren War

56:00 and that was written by James Goss and I'll read the blurb the Great santaran War has raged across the cosmos for Millennia and finally it's coming to the Earth major Craig has been dispatched to carry out a strategic assessment of the planet he will learn about the dominant life form decide what the world has to offer and discover the ultimate value of the human race for Torchwood there is only one place to put him welcome to the mumbles Bay Caravan Park Jack wants you to fulfill your mission to find out about humanity and report back to this entirean Empire what could possibly go wrong from Big Finnish Productions Torchwood the Great santaran War let battle commence

56:53 I am the most intelligent creature on the mumbles bay Caravan Park let alone the planet Earth yeah crackers let us Advance on the other shower block and stain the Train's bed with the blood of our enemies he's coming down not understand stop hitting the checkouts I shall not scream you will never hear a song foreign you have a cat the internet is mostly about them therefore I have a quiet one for a search finally this is the Great santara big finish we love stories

57:46 okay Philip how did you feel when you first heard this story I think you know that already I think we have discussed this before because this is to come up one of our specials um I loved it I think this is just hilarious I think it's so cleverly written and I love Dan stuck his performance I think Dan is just the ultimate sontaren and one of the things that Dan became known for was having fun on set and so I think different show writers saw him muck up and saw him misbehave and I know they filmed things for Christmas specials and to put out on onto their Facebook page because Dan just would go off and do bizarre things and that became more and more written for him and so this is very much one of those shows James Goss is

58:32 the ultimate comedy writer usually very black comedy writer but in terms of being able to put bizarre situations and funny situations together and this this is the ultimate of two people that just shouldn't go together in a situation which is just utterly ridiculous the Caravan Park um you've got a cat that's a main character made you terrifying whatever his name is which is great um but Marshall cat Marshall cat is Field Marshal cats isn't it and then and then it has this totally different field of Direction because all the things we've listened to have all been directed by uh Scott but by this stage Scott's now gone off to work with uh Torchwood Doctor Who in Cardiff anyway but he's now working as a script editor for the

59:18 new Doctor Who and So Lisa Bowman has stepped in and you feel the change in Direction straight away it is I mean this is a five person car so this is a big cast for Torchwood so that in itself feels different but Lisa Bowman's brings a totally different feel to her Direction and so once again you have this this interplay of sound and song and Rhythm and pauses which other stories tend to drive most total stories just drive forward drive forwards and Scott is a director drives Pace all the time lease is all about stopping and breathing and those sort of pauses that happen and that Stillness and that really changes the whole feel of the feel of the story but yeah this is just brilliant Martin

1:00:06 yeah I agree I agree this I think Lisa Bauman is one of the strongest directors of big finish she's just Flawless consistently good this is my favorite santaren story on any medium I think Dan Starkey is brilliant he could play this role in his sleep now he's brilliant I love pairing him up with yanto I loved the interplay with the other characters at the Caravan Park especially with the the landlord character can't remember his name but I love all of that I love the he suddenly learns to become more human I love that he thinks the cat is trying to stop him learning about the world because it sits on the keyboard and just giving the sontara and a cat is just inherently funny to me

1:00:54 yeah I mean so much about yento does is funny without realizing he's being funny so it doesn't even appear to hear that handing over cat was a strange thing to do and because the Kelly's a bird at some stage two and since his whole you know how you know dominant species conversation happens yeah it is it finds the human everything and yet still has emotion and and story behind the the humor which is which is what James does so well was this your favorite Dwayne well I agree with everything you've said particularly the the humor it makes me laugh but when I was listening to it again for this it made me think about something very serious in that sontarens are the ultimate neuro

1:01:39 neurodivergent species they look at everything black and white and you can really get a good sense of neurodivergent people with some of the things that that um that Craig says throughout the play like okay so you've gotta you've got a bird um what's in the what's in the pet food it's chicken okay so the the bird must be food for the for the cat so he takes the bird and gives it to the cat and he just can't understand why you you wouldn't do that so this is the kind of thing that um and having an autistic a son with autism myself um I know that's how uh some people think and uh as funny as it is it also has a has a serious side because it helps us to understand

1:02:25 um how how some people think and uh that well that's that's the thing I got out of it on my on my most recent listen but yeah the humor Dan Starkey great combination of uh of Gareth David Lloyd and Dan Starkey together brilliant um yeah looking looking forward to for many more santarans to come and hit Dan starkey's worked with every he's worked with every doctor now as well hasn't he just about I think yeah yeah it's supposed to be if you bought a doctor and and now Lots yeah and yeah every daughter that's alive he's worked with yeah I think he's yeah the only the only new series doctor he wasn't with on TV was um Chris Eccleston wasn't it so yes Mr B has worked with him now but he was in ravages so yeah

1:03:11 yeah I think my favorite scene is when they're at the supermarket and he declares war on the self-service check out I think we've all been there I like the way that they reference the perception filter because obviously a santara I'm walking around is is going to raise a bit of a stir which when you look at paternostic gang stuff on the TV series you don't quite is he wearing a perception filter in that easy he usually just covers up somehow so you don't quite because manifestras people are accepting her too she she fails herself so she always goes that veiled um but people don't look at him strangely and do Panic about him but Victorian age having people who are unusual freakish yeah with freakish was

1:03:57 actually you know popular because you had the freak shows and things were you know people were disabled were you know part of the structure of entertainment back then so he I think if it's into those categories in the Crimson Aura novelization the doctor gives um faster and stracks a perception filter gotcha yeah yeah okay well at least it was covered somewhere otherwise I wouldn't have been able to sleep and uh being set in a caravan Park you know I'm a I'm a mad caravaner myself so I can I can relate to the things that go on in caravan Parks like it rains every day which is what happens every time you

1:04:43 go camping in a caravan Parks yeah I fully relate to that you are just a Sook when it comes to Camping Phillip I know that five star hotels I don't care if anything under a five-star hotel standard for me and I've I've had some very interesting experiences very similar to the to the Caravan Park landlord there too so I could relate to all that so all in all a sensational story yeah it's brilliant absolutely brilliant it wasn't long after that that we we that year I think that story might have been the last in about a series of about 10 Torchwood releases that we had James Goss James Goss James Goss writing everything that year and then and then it kind of stopped and we got all these

1:05:28 other writers uh the the year after so he slowed down a lot anyone know why I was pumping out so much at that time was it the lockdown because this would have been around covert time so there was a lot where they were remote recording so maybe it was just easier to have him do it that makes sense so this was recorded July 21 so yeah he would have been writing it during lockdown for sure if there's anyone most most of the pieces he actually are two-handers so this one actually stands out quite unusually because the cast of five is actually quite unusual um because yeah most the ones during that year were fairly small casts from Big finish Productions minor Rift Spike minor incursion let's

1:06:16 go home nothing came through something came through Torchwood SUV that misses a rapidly self-replicating terraforming system s transforming the atmosphere of the planet today The Valleys tomorrow Cardiff let's say the world and over inside maybe it's just curious let's try to get in yes normally armies unite to defeat me they fail tonight just the two of you stand against me what chance does your world

1:07:02 there's an alien invasion going on and we're stuck in a car no power no phone signals surrounded by poison gas and monsters how's that for a summary you left out the bit about a slowly suffocating in a gay poke mobile yeah yeah I did big finish for the love of stories we're gonna die no defenses no weapons no crisps I'm just curious if you guys have heard of the big Finnish Torchwood conspiracy theory and what's that tell us what it is so there's a writer called Ash Darby who is sometimes he's written well they've written stuff like tortured SUV I doesn't exist anywhere but on the big

1:07:48 finish website and Ash Darby is never interviewed on any of the extras on any of the releases people talk about Ash Darby but ashtab is nowhere to be found so people think that's a pseudonym for another writer at Big finish well there's there's a challenge for us Philip we need to find out the identity it could be like a who's who's the who was the one they used to use uh in the in round season 16 15 16 17 in the TV series who wrote The Invasion of Time Agnew David yeah that was another one that they used to use maybe it's a pseudonym that

1:08:34 several people use it could be the stories had to be Rewritten so much that it's completely unidental identifiable from what it was originally so they used that as like a placeholder name maybe that's my theory yeah that has happened that has happened in uh in big finish so fascinating you've got Philip Intrigue now yeah yeah you're on the case I've started the research already and I'm seeing a few things coming up well Martin I must say thank you very much for choosing those tortured stories and forcing us to go and listen to those um because it's it's a pleasure as always and it's been great to have you on so thank you

1:09:19 thank you for having me it's been great I'm a big fan of your podcast and I listen to every episode there were moments where I nearly forgot to speak because I thought I was just listening [Laughter] I find that really high praise coming from you so thank you thank you very much thank you for your work too you did some great stuff and I'm very excited for Buffy no it comes out if you need someone to come talk about the musical episode let me know oh absolutely absolutely we'll get you on there's lots of season six so feel free to bring me on earlier now before we

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