Sonny
I should begin by saying that Sonny is miles better, miles, than the first Rhys and Brenda Monthly Range episode, which almost made me hope the duo would never return. Sonny on the other hand, is very very very good. It begins with one inexorable notion, and leads you slowly to another. Discussion of Sonny however, is one of those rare few audios which I believe actually does befit a spoiler warning, so I'll leave a paragraph break here before I get to the juicy stuff. It's hard to explain why it does, it just simply does, because it's central concept takes so many turns that even describing the plot will sort of spoil it quite a bit. I will say before you stop, that Sonny has heart to it, a real sincerity. It's worth experiencing. It just fumbles the ending a bit. Anyway, here we go.
Spoilers, sweetie.
Sonny is a story about well, the unlikely world where good artificial intelligence awakes. What happens then, and how does humanity treat it? It's a cynical idea, a very Torchwood idea that we would be brutal and cruel to the first real sentient artificial lifeforms, that we would belittle them as unable to feel anything as they are "just robots." For the majority of the story, I feel Sonny does everything absolutely perfectly in that regard. The problem unfortunately, leads us to another question.
Can an Ending Ruin A Story?? I'm inclined to believe it can. Sonny removes a lot of the punch it has to it, it has a cop-out ending that does sort of spit on a bit of the themes of the tale. Torchwood isn't usually one to shy away from an unhappy ending, which is why it surprised me all the more that our robotic little friends get to live happily ever after, because when the story's thesis is that we aren't ready for them, this as a story doesn't really ring true. I almost feel like I'd like to edit off, just chop off the last five minutes of the whole thing and end it there, end it with a perfect gorgeous moment that says that even some problems Torchwood can't really fix. Plus, the way Sonny ends, I find it difficult to believe that there wouldn't be further reprecussions to the Torchwood canon. Usually I say screw the canon if the ending's good enough, I'm no friend to canon as any reader of my works will know. Unfortunately, for once, canon is in the right - for a story that is ostensibly about prejudice, it feels unnatural to give a happily ever after.
If you must have an optimistic ending, perhaps a bittersweet one, that we will be ready someday, but we aren't yet. Even that would be more in line with how the themes of the story work. We have to fight prejudice in our lives every day, and well, there isn't a happily ever after in that regard. Like I said, it's surprising that Torchwood did this ending, because well, I really did like Sonny. It's rare I have next to no notes on the majority of a work, because well, yeah, Sonny works. It has a heart to it - enough of a heart for the titular character's death scene to be one of the most tearjerking on audio. Frustratedly though, It goes back on that. It's rare I review a property that's so perfect and shoots itself in the foot so much - in five minutes, Sonny loses four points. That's just another sad but true fact we'll have to live with. 6/10
Comments
Post a Comment