Torchwood – The Monthly Adventures

#003. Forgotten Lives ~ 7/10

◆ An Introduction

Onto the third episode now, where I finally have an opportunity to discuss Gwen Cooper. I very briefly talked about her in my reviews of ‘Aliens Among Us’, but that whole series was dominated by the Ng Possession story arc.

Time for a reunion with Gwen and Rhys, at an isolated care home in North Wales…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

It has been four years since the Miracle, and Gwen and Rhys's lives have gone back to normal, very normal. They're raising their daughter (they've got pictures they'd be only too happy to show you), they're living in a nice house, and they're almost on top of the laundry.

Captain Jack Harkness has been missing from the world and their lives for a long time. But late one night the phone rings, and they're summoned to an isolated part of North Wales. The Bryn Offa Nursing Home contains a dark secret, an alien threat, and someone who really shouldn't be there.

Gwen and Rhys are about to discover that Torchwood stays with you for the rest of your life.

◆ Gwen Cooper

Eve Myles doesn’t really participate in the audio adventures nowadays, which is a damn shame. She was always an incredibly strong performer, as she proves in this episode.

Gwen believes that the care home could be a cover for alien experiments or a UNIT detention centre for the inconveniently temporally displaced. It’s clear that even mentioning Tosh and Ianto brings back a lot of sadness. Torchwood’s standard procedure for dealing with alien tech is to push every button and hope for the best! Gwen isn’t a monster, so she’ll make sure the staff at the care home are locked up with tea and biscuits.

◆ Rhys Williams

I never really paid Kai Owen much attention during the show’s original run, but that all changed when I listened to a little story called ‘Sonny’. I’ll get round to reviewing it eventually, but just know that it’s my favourite BigFinish release of all time. His performance here is great.

Rhys likes North Wales. He used to drive with his uncle round all the routes here as a kid: it’s what inspired him to go into haulage. He misses his vocation, but knows that he was too well-known to keep working at Harwood’s. Rhys is horrified when he discovers that his daughter has been effected by the mind swap, to the point where he’d quite happily beat the living daylights out of Jack!

◆ Story Recap

Gwen and Rhys have been laying low since the Miracle, but recently found themselves summoned to a remote nursing home in North Wales. They come across an old man with dementia, claiming to be none other than Cpt. Jack. But they have more concerning things to worry about, as Anwen appears to have had her mind swapped with another resident of the nursing home! It’s down to Mr. and Mrs. Williams to stop the Evolved experiments.

◆ Enemy of the Committee

I’ve previously mentioned that the Committee would become prominent antagonists throughout this range, but this episode introduces us to their main opposition: the Evolved.

These strange beings possess the natural ability to swap people’s minds, however, I don’t think this talent was properly utilised. The mind swapping technology used by the Evolved would actually make another appearance, and be used to great comedic effect, in ‘Another Man’s Shoes’.

◆ Sound Design

Gardner has done a decent job with ‘Forgotten Lives’, but the sound effects aren’t particularly note worthy.

◆ Music

BigFinish have a plethora of excellent composers to pick from, so it’s baffling that they keep letting Mowat recycle his music from the first Torchwood story.

I would absolutely love to hear someone else have a go; specifically, the composing duo of Richard Fox and Lauren Yason, who have created some of the most stunning scores for BigFinish.

◆ Conclusion

“A naughty man is trying to steal mummy’s car.”

An alien race – operating out of an isolated nursing home in North Wales – have been swapping people’s minds, including putting Jack into an elderly man’s body and Anwen’s mind into a batty old woman.

If you’ve heard one mind swapping adventure, then you’ve heard them all. This whole episode comes across as generic, and gets completely overshadowed by the hilarious ‘Another Man’s Shoes’. It was delightful to hear Eve Myles and Kai Owen back though, and they do get an exceptional script in about twenty releases time.