For a long time I’ve wanted to return to the world of Norton Folgate – 1950s Torchwood operative and tormentor of Sergeant Andy. I listened to their first audio outing together, Ghost Mission, many moons ago and only got around to listening to this because I had a road trip with my eldest and they are hugely into Torchwood at the moment and wanted to hear some of the 1950s set stuff.

Had I known ahead of time about the content of this audio I may not have chosen to listen to it trapped in a car with a 16 year old, but here we are and, overall, it was a fun if slightly sordid listen.

Norton has dragged poor Sergeant Andy to 1950s London in an attempt to avoid losing his job with Torchwood. He needs Andy to be his assessor and prove to Torchwood that he isn’t a double agent. What Andy doesn’t know is that Norton also plans on using Andy’s mind to trap and transport an alien intelligence. An alien artefact is being hunted by Fat Kim, a local gangster and the voice in Andy’s head is the key. It eventually turns out, in a rather neat twist, that the alien artefact is an alien war machine much like those from War of the Worlds. It is revealed that HG Wells helped cover up an alien invasion of Earth and this machine is left over from that event.

I think my issue with the story, though, was that this element only arrives in the last ten minutes or so meaning it’s all a bit rushed and just throws the HG Wells references at the listener without much time to explain or develop such an intriguing idea.

This slightly rushed ending is mainly due to the story actually being more concerned with putting Andy into increasingly embarrassing situations with Norton. He starts the story naked and chained to a bed and then meets a former lover of Norton. Soon, the pair of them are retrieving a spacial dislocator (a teleporter, basically) from a public toilet which is being used as a place for gay men to meet – which is then raided by police. Later, Norton and Andy meet a contact at a brothel. All of these scenes are played for the comedy of Andy’s awkwardness but actually, by the time the pair reached the brothel, the joke was becoming a bit tiresome.

On the flipside, it is interesting to have a story set itself in the hidden world of gay men in the 1950s and Norton’s confidence and amusement at Andy’s discomfort do make the scenes entertaining. It’s just that it’s the same joke in different locations.

The ‘villains’ of this piece, Fat Kim and Norton’s boss, the Vicar, are a lot of fun and it’s a bit of a shame both of them end up dead by story’s end because I could absolutely listen to further stories of Fat Kim’s gangland life and the Vicar’s leadership of Torchwood at this time.

Gay 1950s London wasn’t something I expected to see in this part of my marathon so it was an interesting addition to draw a contrast alongside the US 50s of Lux and the UK 50s of The Idiot’s Lantern and Delta and the Bannermen. The atmosphere of this story is a little disconcerting, which cleverly mirrors Andy’s almost constant state of disorientation throughout at being thrown into this utterly unfamiliar world to be used by Norton for his own ends. I almost, as a listener, feel similarly used which, I suppose, is sort of fitting for a Torchwood story – an organisation not known for their compassion or morality.