Torchwood: Aliens Among Us #3.4 - "Herald of the Dawn" by James Goss
Aliens Among Us was good. Like, really very good. A truly worthy continuation of Torchwood with a litany of new and interesting characters and a bunch of great stories in there. The overarching narrative wasn’t my favourite arc in the world and it could’ve been a lot tighter but overall, great set. And it all comes together in Herald of the Dawn, where Goss has to wrap up multiple pretty loose plot threads all in one go, did he succeed? Kind of.

The end of the world begins when a group of doggers are incinerated in an airport car park. With Red Doors and the Mayor’s office all clashing in a city rife with peculiar, religious preaching, Torchwood prepares for the arrival of a god.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I find Herald of the Dawn incredibly similar to The Pandorica Opens in the way that it just has a prevailing sense of dread to it, like the entire story is slowly ticking towards the end of the world. It basically consists of a series of subplots all happening the day before a God’s arrival on Earth, whatever this God happens to be. Whilst a lot of these little threads leave a lot to be desired, Tyler and Mr. Colchester’s is easily the best, with the two getting chases around the Torchwood Hub by a Sorvix assassin and Mr. Colchester gets absolutely f**ked up, to the point where he’s stopped breathing by the end of the audio. The whole end of this audio is fantastic actually. The rift has opened and God has come through to a series of proclamations about its coming as city hall blows up with Yvonne in it and Gwen leaves Torchwood. The Ng subplot also wraps up, which I’m very happy about since it had really overstayed its welcome but I’ll get into why I don’t think it was written particularly well in a minute. There’s just a lot of great imagery in Herald of the Dawn, from the old doggers going around shouting about how God is coming, to Orr transforming into its herald at the end, becoming what the title foreshadowed, it’s all great ideas.

Unfortunately, Herald of the Dawn was also doomed from the start. Individually, Aliens Among Us is full of great stories, but the series arc is terrible. The Sorvix plot is uninteresting, it can never land on a theme, plot threads go on for far too long, there’s no sense of cohesion between episodes and the conclusions seen here are just terrible. Firstly, the stuff with Ng could’ve been so much better. I said it before and I’ll say it again, the conclusion to this story thread should’ve taken the whole of Aliens Among Us 3 to finish up. Instead, we get people saying Gwen’s acting weird until the last five minutes where no character does anything, Gwen and Ng split apart on their own and Gwen decides to leave Torchwood literally one minute later. There’s also a sudden storyline where Yvonne and Ro-Jedda become friends I think, despite this being the first time the characters have interacted so there’s no set up and Ro-Jedda’s just a crap villain and a crappier character. Also, the whole “subplot” with Jack and Red Doors, commentary that was never really utilised, barely even feels like a thing, Red Doors never felt like a moving piece in this universe. The whole episode feels like a checklist of things that need to be resolved with some cool ideas in between.

In conclusion, Aliens Among Us is really good. It has multiple brilliant stories in there, including some absolute classics and it really deserves to be thought of as a highlight of Big Finish. The average score may be a little bolstered by the quality of the episodes when, in reality, I think the absolute mess of a through arc rates it a little lower than it got but it was still phenomenal and I am even more excited to get into Gods Among Us.

7/10

Pros:

+ Has a prevailing sense of doom to it that makes the whole audio incredibly tense

+ The stuff with Mr. Colchester, Tyler and the Assassin was great

+ All the insane doggers running around shouting that “God is coming” is a genuinely chilling image

+ Brilliant cliffhanger

Cons:

- Feels like a lot of plot threads were shoved into one story

- The relationship between Yvonne and Ro-Jedda feels very rushed

- The conclusion to the Not Gwen subplot felt really lacking

- Red Doors continues to feel incredibly underdeveloped

Torchwood: Aliens Among Us | Ranked
12. Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy by James Goss - 5/10
11. Escape Room by Helen Goldwyn - 5/10
10. Love Rat by Christopher Cooper - 6/10
9. Orr by Juno Dawson - 7/10
8. Herald of the Dawn by James Goss - 7/10
7. Changes Everything by James Goss - 8/10
6. Zero Hour by Jay Harley - 8/10
5. Superiority Complex by AK Benedict - 8/10
4. Tagged by Joseph Lidster - 9/10
3. The Empty Hand by Tim Foley - 9/10
2. A Kill to a View by Mac Rogers - 9/10
1. Poker Face by Tim Foley - 10/10

Overall - 7.6/10