Torchwood – The Monthly Adventures

#051. The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough ~ 9/10

◆ An Introduction

The Tories couldn’t organise a bun fight in a bakery let alone run the flaming country, which is why we currently have someone in power who is rampantly transphobic and has no idea how the working classes live. The party is hopefully crumbling from the inside out now – and if you needed any evidence of that, the past four Prime Ministers have all resigned. A lettuce even lasted longer than Truss did – which gives me hope for the future.

I can’t even feign surprise at how awful their leadership has been over the past few years. Anybody remember the Partygate scandal? When Boris Johnson and his cabinet drank suitcases of wine and danced the night away at Downing Street, whilst the rest of the country was enduring a lockdown due to the Coronavirus? If you needed reminding, Channel 4 have created a factual drama series based on the events. The sad thing is that I’m not even joking about that.

Their handling of a global pandemic was abysmal. Can you imagine what it would be like if they had to deal with a spaceship crashing on top of Middlesbrough?

◆ Publisher’s Summary

When a spaceship crashes on Middlesbrough it’s very sad, of course. But we at Torchwood have long had a plan to contain such a disaster.

Only, nothing is happening. And the disaster is spreading. So, I set out to find out what’s going on. What has happened to The Icarus Protocol? Who launched a Moonstrike Missile? And why will no-one admit that there's a cloud of deadly particles sweeping across the United Kingdom?

My name is Yvonne Hartman. Don't come between me and my country.

◆ DISCLAIMER

It was only after pre-ordering ‘I Hate Mondays’ that I was made aware of the Islamophobic and transphobic rhetoric that Tracy-Ann Oberman continues to share on social media.

For this reason, I will not be purchasing any further releases featuring Oberman. I refuse to support someone with such despicable views.

I previously covered her two ‘Monthly Adventures’ for TimeScales, so will be porting those reviews over to this site: both of them will carry this disclaimer. They were both written prior to November 2023. Please remember not to take any of my comments in this review about Oberman’s performance – positive or negative – as condoning her frankly awful views.

◆ “Alternate” Yvonne Hartman

Ruthless, classy, and more than ready to get her hands dirty when things go wrong – and an exploding spaceship leaking photonic clouds all over Middlesbrough is about as wrong as it gets – Yvonne is definitely someone you want on your side during a crisis. She is perfectly written throughout this episode.

‘The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough’ features one of my favourite performances from Tracy-Ann Oberman, but that’s to be expected when she co-wrote the material.

Yvonne finds chamomile tea very soothing on the vocal chords when she’s shouting. She classified the Icarus Protocol. Torchwood put together a cross-party, pan-departmental rapid response plan, in case an extra terrestrial object fell anywhere within the Empire. She sat in every committee, she ate every biscuit, and she drank every cup of tea, and they got it done. Yvonne is horrified to discover that the Defence Secretary has used the money allocated towards the Icarus Protocol to construct a new bypass in his constituency! She doesn’t make threats. Yvonne needs competent people dealing with the Middlesbrough Incident. People who care. People who will admit when they’re wrong. Yvonne informs the Prime Minister that she stopped the spread of misinformation, put some really smart people in charge. And there is a wonderful new Leader of the Opposition who will challenge the government every step of the way.

◆ Story Recap

A spaceship has crashed in Middlesbrough. The engines are leaking atoms and creating a deadly photonic cloud that can tear people to shreds. The British government already have a protocol in place for exactly this sort of emergency, so why hasn’t it been activated?

Upon interrogating the Defence Secretary, Yvonne Hartman discovers that he has blown the budget for the Icarus Protocol on constructing a new bypass in his constituency. This action has left Middlesbrough completely defenceless to the oncoming catastrophe.

Elsewhere, the government’s crisis response commander is encouraging people to join a new app which can track exposure to the photon cloud. The software is unreliable and the government have already spent billions on it. Money which could have been used to set up a cordon around Middlesbrough.

Realising that the British government are about as useful as a chocolate teapot, Yvonne begins systematically eliminating those who are preventing any direct action being taken in Middlesbrough.

◆ 2020: The Year Of Tragedies

I spent a couple of days in London this year for my birthday, looking at all the famous places and monuments. I remember seeing the National Covid Memorial Wall and just feeling intensely sad. The Wall stretches for five hundred metres alongside the Thames, directly opposite the Houses of Parliament. There are more than two hundred and twenty thousand individually hand-painted red hearts, each representing a person who died in this country with Covid-19 as a direct cause of death.

It can only be described as a harrowing site: a reminder of the people we lost during the most tragic event of the twenty-first century. I’m going to leave a link to the official webpage in case anyone wants to know more.

https://www.nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/

Government incompetence is the reason why the death toll in this country was able to pass one hundred thousand, and that fact should never be forgotten. This script will help ensure that we don’t, because it features many clear references and allusions to the government’s abysmal handling of the crisis and its delayed initial response.

The majority of characters in this story are satire of public figures and their response to the pandemic. Lancelyn Green is an outspoken journalist who spends more time spreading disinformation than he does reporting on actual news, much like Piers Morgan or anyone employed by GB News. Mo Simister is supposed to be the government’s crisis response commander, but is more concerned with marketing a new app that tracks exposure to the photon cloud… an app which is unreliable and simply does not work. She’s clearly analogous to Dido Harding. It was actually quite frightening how realistic some of these satirical depictions were.

◆ Conclusion

“Saturdays aren’t just for brunch, they’re for overthrowing the Illuminati without fear!”

A spaceship has crashed in Middlesbrough. The engines are leaking atoms and creating a deadly photonic cloud that can tear people to shreds. The British government already have a protocol in place for exactly this sort of emergency, so why hasn’t it been activated? Yvonne Hartman decides to take matters into her own hands…

‘The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough’ is an obvious allegory for the British government’s ineptitude during the global pandemic, when politicians were far too concerned with looking their best for television appearances or pouring billions of tax payer money into a track and trace app that doesn’t work properly. The characters are all satirical takes on politicians who failed the country during the pandemic; Dominic Cummings, Dido Harding and Matt Hancock to name a few.

The greatest strength of this episode has got to be Yvonne herself. She gives the politicians every opportunity to reinstate the Icarus Protocol and take some direct action, but they all ignore her and simply carry on letting the people of Middlesbrough get torn to shreds by the photonic cloud! The only way to save the nation is for her to systematically eliminate the five people who are causing the most problems. Ruthless and determined. Now that’s Yvonne Hartman.

An excellent commentary on the government’s incompetence over the past few years, and yet another tour de force for both Tracy-Ann Oberman and Tim Foley. This is one release I can highly recommend.