TDP 1317: Torchwood 88 from @Bigfinish Widdershins by Guy Adams
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Scanning for audio. Screaming. Screaming.

Welcome to a Tin Dog Podcast. Yes, I know I was supposed to be playing catch-up and spending some quality time with, you know, some of the things that I haven't talked about, like River Song or any of the Fourth Doctor stuff. But you know what? It's Halloween. And Torchwood only just came out. Number 88, Widdershins, written by Guy Adams.

Okay, so I've recently set myself a little writing task to produce a Torchwood script. Nobody asked me to do this off my own bat and to be able to just to prove to myself that I could do it with a tiny, tiny cast, keep it as small as possible in order to, you know, maximize the cast. So what Guy Adams here has done is something even harder. It is a cast of three. Yep.

and it has none of the real TV Torchwood or even Big Finish Torchwood cast. These are all three characters who you have never met before. And what he's also done is managed to produce something that has got flashes of, well, children of the stone, flashes of fire in the sky, and a host of other things. But like most Doctor Who stories that have echoes of other stories,

what they end up being is their own thing. This is tremendously atmospheric. I know that I went on and on about the audio scape in the last release, but this one's got more of a podcasty feel to it, and you know that's going to appeal to me. And it's just fantastic.

I can't emphasize how good the Torchwood range is. It is absolutely the highlight of my monthly audio listenings. As soon as it comes out, everything gets knocked back a place on the to-be-listened-to pile, and I just instantly fire up the Torchwoods and have to do it. And I only finished listening to this today because it came out, I think, yesterday. And I just wanted to chat with you, my beloved and probably attractive listeners.

Because it just rocks. Look, let's do the synopsis like we always do and we'll go from there. This title is released in October 2024. Happy Halloween, everyone. It will be exclusively available from Big Finish website until the 31st of December and on general sale after this date. Okay, synopsis. One night long ago, Ian tried to raise the devil. He walked the wrong way round an ancient stone in the village graveyard. He didn't think anything would happen. Not really.

but something did something far worse than the devil came to town and now many years later ian's trying to work out what really happened that night did torchwood ruin his life okay that doesn't sum it all up but imagine that lovely little welsh village with a massive standing stone in the graveyard oh and for those listening widdershins is to walk counterclockwise around something

usually in the opposite direction to the movement of the sun and if you do it in a graveyard there are various myths you know the sort of thing that I love where you've got oh will it raise the devil will it raise the dead nobody's completely sure but something will happen and it's the sort of thing I absolutely fixated on I could relate to this central character and the central character is trying to recreate what happened years ago and he's got his parents involved and they're the ones helping to recreate stuff

while he does her an audio recording. It's brilliant. You can have John Barrowman, you can have Eve Miles, you can have Yanto in this, and everyone's doing a half-remembered impression of someone they never really met or can't really remember. It's just fantastic. Like I said earlier, there's a whole Fire in the Sky alien abduction thing going on, but it's the way everybody does it, and here's the real challenge, okay? When you've got an actor...

they have to reproduce a voice or an accent perfectly. But you've got an actor playing someone who can't do voices. And when ordinary people try and do voices, the accent wanders. Somebody doing Welsh can end up doing an Indian voice within seconds. And then somebody doing a Scottish accent can wander across the island and then back again and hang around with a Geordie accent for a couple of hours. So that's what we've got going on here. We've got a tremendously difficult performance that's done very well.

There is one moment in the extras when the guy playing the dad talks about how good it was doing the vicar's voice. And you know what? When you were listening to it, you could absolutely tell how much he was relishing those performances. That moment.

It is an absolute... Ooh, you know what? Here's a phrase you've not heard since the 90s. A tour de force. You used to see that written on all the books. You just don't hear it these days. But it is great. Guy Adams has produced a cracking piece of scripting in this one. It's tight. It's got a useful... No, a brilliant and elegant use of language and pacing. And you know what?

Again, I have to recommend this, because Torchwood produces tales of the unexpected almost every time. Is it an alien? Probably. And halfway through I was thinking, but did he imagine all of this or not? And yeah, I know it's a Torchwood story, but it works really well. And the description of a certain event, that's about as atmospheric as it gets. Some of the language used there will stick with you and will get into your head like a little worm and not leave you for days.

Painting pictures with words is definitely what Big Finish do well. And here's a great example. Listen to this now and happy Halloween. More of you shortly. As always, hey, this is what? Episode 1117 or something? So thanks for sticking with me. Until next time, be seeing you.

Can you please introduce yourselves? We've met. For the listener, obviously. I'm Ian's mother and I was there on the day that the aliens came. Thank you. Dad? I'm his dad and I think this is a terrible idea. From Big Finish Productions. Torchwood. Widdershins. Widdershins. To walk in an anti-clockwise direction. There are many myths surrounding the act of walking Widdershins in a graveyard.

And how am I going to resist that? Round and round that churchyard I go, walking widdershins, raising the devil step by step. I'd broken everything! I'd broken the world! The human skeleton performs six major functions. I'm sorry about this. I really am. Did you know that Landeth has a history of being visited by the devil?

Does he dance? Of course. The devil always dances, and he never dances alone. We're Torchwood. We deal with things like this. Big finish for the love of stories. The devil dances in Shandeth.

That was the Tin Dog Podcast. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Acast, Stitcher and wherever good podcasts are found. Get early access to content by subscribing to the Tin Dog Podcast YouTube channel. You can support the show at patreon.com slash tindog. Contact the show on Twitter at tindogpodcast or email tin-podcast.

hyphen dog at hotmail.co.uk All of the things discussed are the intellectual property of others. No infringement is intended. The Tindock Podcast is a founder member of the Doctor Who Podcast Alliance.