Jamie Revell
This is a prequel to the second season TV story Adam, showing the memory-stealing alien's first encounter with the organisation and explaining how it ended up in the box that Jack recovers it from. In this respect, it's not a great mystery - we know roughly what's going to happen from the pre-title teaser, although the scale of it is much greater on this occasion, with the alien (played by the same actor as in the original) being far more successful. The strength, however, is in the characterisation and in the building dread of Adam being seemingly unstoppable.
It's set in the 1950s, and it's notable that the consequent lack of any of the regulars doesn't matter at all. Instead, our leads are Norton Fulgate, a familiar character on the audio series by this point, and his immediate superior Lizbeth Hayhoe, whom we've only seen briefly before. Here, she's very good (as one would expect from Dervla Kirwan), coming across as the stronger of the two even while the story explores her weaknesses and vulnerabilities alongside Norton's more obvious ones as a gay man in '50s London.
This is an ‘adult' story, with sexual encounters for Norton and references to various sexual positions in the dialogue. Plus, there is something undeniably disturbing about having memories stolen and the inability to remember for long that there's even anything there that you should recall. I might knock half a point off for retreading old ground, but no more, so w'ere still in five-star territory, in one of the more successful Torchwood audios not to feature the original team.
This is a prequel to the second season TV story Adam, showing the memory-stealing alien's first encounter with the organisation and explaining how it ended up in the box that Jack recovers it from. In this respect, it's not a great mystery - we know roughly what's going to happen from the pre-title teaser, although the scale of it is much greater on this occasion, with the alien (played by the same actor as in the original) being far more successful. The strength, however, is in the characterisation and in the building dread of Adam being seemingly unstoppable.
It's set in the 1950s, and it's notable that the consequent lack of any of the regulars doesn't matter at all. Instead, our leads are Norton Fulgate, a familiar character on the audio series by this point, and his immediate superior Lizbeth Hayhoe, whom we've only seen briefly before. Here, she's very good (as one would expect from Dervla Kirwan), coming across as the stronger of the two even while the story explores her weaknesses and vulnerabilities alongside Norton's more obvious ones as a gay man in '50s London.
This is an ‘adult' story, with sexual encounters for Norton and references to various sexual positions in the dialogue. Plus, there is something undeniably disturbing about having memories stolen and the inability to remember for long that there's even anything there that you should recall. I might knock half a point off for retreading old ground, but no more, so w'ere still in five-star territory, in one of the more successful Torchwood audios not to feature the original team.