The Empire Man is a very intimate story, with Queen Victoria, the Prime Minister and Castringham huddled within the library sharing stories and spirits. It shows the individual thought processes as the Prime Minister desperately tries to understand why he has been asked here and how the stories he is being told can be assumed to be factual when so much contained within could be chalked up to coincidence and heightened emotions.

This style would not be out of place within The Companion Chronicles with three characters discussing the stories' events and the emotions evoked at the time as well as the reactions provoked in the present are interspersed with narrated recountings accentuated by Patience Tomlinson who plays a vital role as a distinct character in each. While this format does lend itself well to the inevitable intermingling of the three disparate tales, it does also mean that each of the stories is by necessity extremely short with little time to fully develop as much as Queen Victoria might hope in order to deliver the maximum impact. Unfortunately, given the brevity of the accounts rather than this being one cohesive tale being broken up by the Christmas Eve discussions, it is quite easy to understand why the Prime Minister is so reluctant to accept at face value what is being told no matter how engaging the Queen and Castringham may be. Regardless of his own related tale, he has not yet revealed. Inevitably, all three stories do not achieve the same level of engagement as the links to the same mysterious wooded region become known.

Despite no relevance to Torchwood as an organization, going as far as to have Queen Victoria explicitly tell Castringham not to mention anything to its members about these affairs, The Empire Man at times is evocative and atmospheric, but far too often it is rushed and imbalanced with even suitably strong performances and direction failing to elevate it into becoming the far more profound package it tries to be.

i knew it was the final queen victoria story that we've had, but the ending is very much written as a goodbye to the character (THANK GOD). i really, really enjoyed this. it was similar to reflect, but i felt it worked so much better here (the style of story telling). castringham was a great character, and i found his story in particular terrifying. this worked SO well as a horror story compared to reflect (i'm comparing a lot cause they are similar). i genuinely felt scared at moments. really great story!

There's certainly some entertaining aspects to The Empire Man, and definitely parts I like of this audio. Because we are essentially getting three different stories, it does wax and wane in quality a bit across the different parts of the story. I found, for example, Castingham a bit more engaging than the parts with the Prime Minister or the Queen. Still, it was entertaining enough. A fun combination of Christmas and horror, and a new potential direction for the Torchwood series I think offers a lot of potential. That side of this makes the story most interesting and I'm definitely interested in seeing more of this side of Torchwood, so I credit the audio with leaving me feeling that way, but it is an otherwise limited audio in terms of how much I enjoyed it, for sure. Not sure it is worth the listed price though. Definitely one of those audios one would want to get in a bundle or on sale, to be sure. Also, the effects and music sometimes were great in establishing the feel of the audio, but other times felt very over the top, to the point of nearly being distracting.