We don’t deserve Eve Myles - what a powerhouse performer. Love this one, so visual but perfect for audio. Love it!

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.

Torchwood Monthly Range #3 - "Forgotten Lives" by Emma Reeves

Miracle Day... happened. It came and went, everybody remembered very little of it and nobody was particularly fussed that it was over. There was one unifying want however, the want for a fifth season, especially with all the ends left loose following the final episode of Miracle Day. Forgotten Lives is the first story to continue the narrative from where it left off, and like Miracle Day, it is fine, just fine. Gwen and Rhys are back and as lovable as ever, Jack is an old man and the Committee are still there, as always, I suppose.

Five years after the Miracle, Gwen and Rhys' quiet life are disturbed by a phone call that brings them to Brynn Offa Residential Home, a quiet place in the North of Wales. But not all is right, something watches over the home and a resident just so happens to recognise Gwen and Rhys. A resident who identifies himself as Jack Harkness.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Whilst I'd hesitate to call Forgotten Lives anything particularly special, I will absolutely congratulate Emma Reeves for her characterisation of Gwen and Rhys; two of Torchwood's best characters are back in full force, with Myles and Owens slipping back into their roles effortlessly and immediately winning me over, in charm and emotion both; their barely contained anger against Jack is sublime. Outside of that, I do like the mystery this audio sets up, there are a number of burning questions you get through out that are fun to see unravel. The Evolved, our main antagonist this time around, are a serviceable villain with a really cool concept behind them, and I do like the philosophical questions they evoke.

My main problem with Forgotten Lives however, is that I just don't have anything to say about it. It's fine, it's a pretty good audio, but it's just fine. It's nothing special and it's especially hard to review since there are very few cut and dry pros and cons to pick out and talk about. It's paced well, everybody's well acted and written, there a some good ideas bouncing around, but it's all just a bit small scale. Even looking at other reviews online, you can see how little there is to talk about because every reviews (including this one) are incredibly short. Besides that, I will note that Phillip Bond playing Jack is... confusing. He get's none of Barrowman's mannerisms or quirks right and it actually surprised when it turned out he was in fact Jack.

This is one of my shortest reviews for something full length simply because Forgotten Lives hasn't got much to it. It's OK, no more, and there really isn't enough to talk about here in depth. It's solid, but really not that deep.

7/10

Pros:

+ Gwen and Rhys are wonderfully written and acted, with some great emotional backing

+ The mystery is nicely set up and revealed, constantly leaving you guessing

+ The Evolved are a pretty interesting alien race and a great antagonist

Cons:

- About as deep as a puddle, to the point of having nothing to talk about

- Phillip Bond's performance didn't go down well with me and it was hard to see him as Jack

Top 5 Best Torchwood Monthly Range Stories:
5.
4.
3. #1 - The Conspiracy by David Llewellyn
2. #3 - Forgotten Lives by Emma Reeves
1. #2 - Fall to Earth by James Goss

Top 5 Worst Torchwood Monthly Range Stories:
5.
4.
3.  #2 - Fall to Earth by James Goss
2.  #3 - Forgotten Lives by Emma Reeves
1. #1 - The Conspiracy by David Llewellyn