Torchwood: Save Our Souls

 

All But One Of You Will Die...


 Save Our Souls by Scott Handcock

One of my favorite novels of all time is the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None, which is a masterclass in literature because of the atmosphere it evokes- it is exactly how you write tension, it is exactly how you write a murder mystery, and it is absolutely horrifying to boot. No adaptation, I feel, has come close to the original material in any way- there's the fairly good recent adaptation with Charles Dance and Burn Gorman, do go watch it, but even that made some choice additions and padded out certain sections that had no need to be there. There's a 1940s film and a play which both made the choice for the characters to live at the end- which is stupid, they all die, it's in the title. But my point is, even with a three hour runtime and a chance to develop all of the characters to their maximum potential, even the best adaptation fell short. 

Save Our Souls does And Then There Were None in forty-five minutes. It's not exactly the same, there's less cast, and it has it's sci-fi leaning too- but the concept is the same. People on an island. Alone. But this one has the addition of a voice telling them who will be the next to die. What works about Save Our Souls is how brilliantly it understands tension. From when our ominous voice first opens it's mouth to the very end- it is as tense as the novel it borrows so so very much from. But it has it's own things to say too about predeterminism- and Rowena Cooper knocks the whole thing out of the park. As someone who didn't give a flying poop about Queen Victoria getting Torchwood appearances (and was in fact annoyed that she had so many- why more than Suzie or Bilis?!) The reason why is she's absolutely damn phenomenal. Oh, yeah, we know quite a lot going into this one- we can definitely tell where it's going, but if a story like this sticks the landing, who the hell cares? This one is just so brilliant, I love every second of it, and especially Rowena Cooper- watch me order everything else she's done in a heartbeat after this! So yeah, definitely give it a listen, it's yet another ABSOLUTELY SUPERB knockout for this range, and probably one of the strongest ones I've heard yet. I haven't been so in love with a story in a millennium- 10/10


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