Torchwood Soho: The Unbegotten

 

Torchwood Soho The Unbegotten by James Goss 

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm not in the least bit biased. I usually am not biased in these reviews, but when I am, I am certainly aware of it, and it's in the Torchwood Soho range that I am most certainly at my most. This is by far my favorite range that Big Finish are currently producing. So I may be biased, yes. But even if I wasn't, I still think you'd be hard pressed not to like The Unbegotten. 
I legitimately cannot lie when I say that Torchwood Soho is literally exactly what every range should be doing. It's brilliant, it's clever, and every episode is sharp and magnificent while also NEVER overstaying it's welcome with bloated runtimes like other ranges. It's been so long since I've done a good Six-Parter. They don't come up often, I'll be rather blunt, and when they do, with the overlong time span of certain episodes, it can be quite a drag to get through. I love The First Doctor Adventures The Outlaws for instance, but it's a good example of the recent classic who boxsets that have episode runtimes of forty minutes per part. While the Outlaws manages something like that by being utterly delightful, there are plenty of other ranges that don't. It's a case of Quantity over Quality in modern Big Finish, and I'm glad that at the very least, Soho remains on the quality side of things. 

Part One: A First Breath 

A First Breath is a really damn good opener for the set. It introduces the storyline with very little fanfare, and it honestly doesn't have much to it. There's something to be said though for part one of a serial, and how a deceptively difficult task it is - setting up everything and making people want to stay on and keep going with it while also being aware you have to do as little as possible. A First Breath gets away with a lot merely by letting Norton, Lizbeth and Andy do a lot of comfortable and lovely banter. The Unbegotten is oddly, probably the first time we've really seen the trio as a team efficiently working on a problem and not in a moment of complete and utter crisis. Or with Lizbeth and Andy just being puppeteered by Norton the entire time for that matter. It's a comfortable dynamic. The humor really helps it, and Torchwood setting up their organization inside a literal brothel is the most delightfully on the nose thing ever. For that matter, A First Breath really excels at atmosphere. There's a lot of slow creeping dread and good sound design - I do have to mention though, that the usual Soho background themes that are so enjoyably jazzy don't necessarily fit with the atmosphere of this set like they did with the first two. While I love the Torchwood range's music, it is quite clear that they don't usually compose anything new for each release, they just sort of, insert the music they have in. While there is a small amount of very nice new atmospheric material, there isn't enough for the entire three hours. For a set that seems to be more bothered with a weird Hinchcliffe era Torchwood portmanteau than the typical Soho experience, I found the jazzy music strange indeed, especially going onwards. It's still a fairly stunning episode though, complete with An absolutely stunning cliffhanger. Yeah, Norton just gets kidnapped by of all things, an Astronaut, which a level of bonkers that I wish the set would reach more often. 

Part Two: The Ghost Wall 

The Ghost Wall is easily the best episode in the set, which is wonderful, but it's also quite annoying that the set peaks at story two out of six and doesn't necessarily reach that high again. The Ghost Wall consists of two complimentary threads, Lizbeth and Andy investigating the brothel and interacting with the story's side characters, Helena and Brompton, a very nice creepy little weird couple, as well as Tilly, a weird sort of distant character really wonderfully brought to life by Norah Lopez Holden. That's thread one. Meanwhile, in thread two, Norton is being tortured with a corkscrew. 

Yeah, The Ghost Wall is one of those delightful "not fun" audios, where a character just goes through a not fun experience for your own sadistic entertainment and horror. Personally, The Ghost Wall is one of the hardest hitting of these thanks to the really good sound design and also just very offensive dialogue. I think this is the first Torchwood audio I've done that actually features slurs, and slurs that are treated as slurs. I don't like that, but my reviewer half does have to admit that it made it immensely uncomfortable, and that's actually the point. The Ghost Wall is so damn good that the rest of the set just struggles really hard in comparison - and unlike both Parasite and Ashenden's knockout episodes, it's not late in the game. The Dead Hand for example is expertly placed at Part Five as a "HOLY SHIT" episode to lead you into the finale. When making the set, I'm not sure they were aware how fricking good this one was.

Part Three: The Taken

The pacing sort of grinds to a halt in The Taken, which is surprising, considering the other two Soho sets are really well paced, and each episode really felt like it had it's own identity despite being clearly part of the whole. The Taken doesn't really have it's own identity. It's sort of just, keeping going with where the characters were at at the end of The Ghost Wall. I don't necessarily have an issue with any of these character beats, though. Lizbeth gets her own mini-romance with Mia, a barmaid, and Andy worries about dead people. Meanwhile, Norton tries to apologize to Lyme, but keeps getting distracted with all of the shit going on in a way that oddly felt relatable. I don't like Norton's characterization in this set as much as set two however. The fact that he doesn't have a plan is supposed to be this set's big twist, but the characters are so confident he does have one that it's really really easy to see it coming that the truth is that when the characters are this confident, you can really see where the story is going by trying to lead you in the opposite direction so hard. The Taken certainly exists, I'll give it that, and it doesn't really have it's own identity, it just feels like more of what Part One was doing. And here's the problem. The Fourth Part doesn't really have it's own identity either. 

Part Four: Afterwards They Came

There's good tension in Afterwards They Came that comes from establishing a bit of the backstory that led us to this point and that Armitage intends to missile strike the entirety of Mandeville Walk. Plus there's Doctor Salt's revelations, which I found actually surprising and interesting, and at the very least, Afterwards They Came does have plot events in it. It doesn't manage to distinguish itself though. That's not a complaint I would make if this was a Classic Who boxset, but Soho usually, at least before this set, did a REALLY good job at making each episode self contained but evolving. Each episode covered one beat. Meet Mr Lyme is Gideon's backstory. The Liberty of Norton Folgate is an action climax. The National Health is a medical horror piece. The Hour of The Hollow Men is a dystopia. The Unbegotten's episodes don't really seperate from each other, with the exceptions of The Ghost Wall and Confessions. Every beat of the plot keeps evolving nicely, to be sure, but I enjoyed when Soho felt very different and wild, experimental with it's very unique format, and not like Classic Who meets Torchwood, with the same location all six episodes, and honestly, a good deal of padding. 

Part Five: Confessions

Confessions has this nice extended psychic flashback related to Tilly and what's happened to her. It also has Norton literally sitting on the side villain of the set's lap and acting stupidly horny. This does beg the question, when did Norton become Captain Jack?? It has to be asked. I'm usually fine with a character who likes getting around, but when they can't focus on anything else and it becomes their one personality trait, it gets annoying, and I found Norton's relationship tease with a man who literally tortured him unbelievable and a stupid plot thread. Character wise, it forwards his arc nicely, but on the other hand it does annoy me. Oh yeah, what's this episode about again? Oh yeah, the cool flashback. I got caught up about a tiny five minute scene. But a lot of good happens in this episode, and the exposition dump is actually shocking and not what I expected. There's this horrific moment where the background sex noises switch and you realize you haven't been listening to background sex noises at all. The sound designers should be proud of that. The story boldly goes in an completely unanticipated direction. Worthy of credit. 

Part Six: Mandeville Walks 

Mandeville Walks ends this set quite well, all things considered. Norton demonstrates the character growth he should, (even though him allying with Armitage even briefly strained credulity and I knew where this was going,) and the finale does actually manage to be emotionally effective. The Man Who Wasn't, or Mandeville Walk, or whatever you want to call him is very well performed and the fact that he's not actually as bad as he seems, while surprising, given the performance being peak "evil," is actually set up fairly well on the page, and having the character of Armitage actually be the final threat as he serves as a temptation for Norton's character arc does indeed make sense. The story has this magical moment where Norton convinces Andy and Lizbeth he knows exactly what's going on and sends them off to help and feel useful in the moment before their swiftly retconned deaths. It's absolutely stunning. Things may tie up a smidge too neatly considering The Man Who Wasn't did literally kill dozens of knocking shop visitors. I'm not sure how well Mandeville Walks serves as a conclusion, but as a possible end to Norton's character arc for the past three boxsets, it's pretty stellar.

Overall, The Unbegotten is quite a good release. I do not however, think it is incredible or anything, and It doesn't meet the incredibly fucking high standards set by Parasite or Ashenden. Whereas those felt like ginormous miniseries events, The Unbegotten almost feels like just another story. The focus is once again quite different. It's very very similar to a Fourth Doctor Six-Parter like The Ghosts of Gralstead, with an incorporeal abomination that feeds on outsiders to grow into a physical form, an idea straight out of the Hinchcliffe years. But the Torchwood tone of sex, torture and despair does make it have it's own energy, and Lizbeth Hayhoe is still the only good character ever written in the history of humanity, all hail. I feel this is a downgrade from what we've previously had, and it's very clearly all one story with a consistent tone across all six episodes, which you may like either more or less depending on your takes. I'll still take more Torchwood Soho no matter the form - and I promise that's not bias.

8/10 based on the whole piece.