The Last Beacon

Torchwood – The Monthly Adventures

#020. The Last Beacon ~ 7/10

◆ An Introduction

My family have always went on walking holidays. Speaking as somebody who hates any kind of physical exertion, these trips always felt like purgatory! The only one I can genuinely say I enjoyed was Haverigg, because it coincided with my discovery of BigFinish. This meant I could lock myself in the attic conversion of the holiday home and binge listen to the Divergent Arc.

Exploring some desolate town in the middle of the Brecon Beacons definitely wouldn’t by my idea of fun, though alien badgers would certainly spice things up. But Owen would much rather be back in civilisation… not stuck with the office coffee maker and his breathless enthusiasm for the great outdoors!

◆ Publisher’s Summary

A signal in a Welsh mountain is calling an ancient battlefleet to Earth. Owen Harper and Ianto Jones head up into the Brecons to stop it.

The problem is – Ianto really loves camping.

◆ Owen Harper

Gareth David-Lloyd has spent years acting alongside his fellow Torchwood cast members, so you would expect him to have an excellent understanding of all their characters… and you’d be damn right. Sarcasm is written right through Owen like a stick of Blackpool rock, and this script captures that perfectly.

Burn Gorman clearly had a lot of fun performing this script. I also appreciate that he is one of very few actors that can convincingly play drunk, without sounding like he is suffering from a bout of psychosis.

Owen cannot understand why Ianto was allowed to co-ordinate this mission, because he outranks him. Taking in the surroundings, so far he has seen a fantastic selection of pubs, most of them boarded up; an array of kids smoking on benches; two Spar shops; a One Stop; nine pairs of pyjama bottoms; two terrified community support officers; and seven kebab shops, all called “Yummys”! It’s not like Owen to quit. Moan, yes, but Ianto has never seen him quit.

◆ Ianto Jones

I always find it fascinating when an actor is tasked with writing a story for their own character. It could make them insufferably narcissistic – especially if their character suddenly became god, or some such nonsense – but Gareth David-Lloyd is an incredible writer with a great understanding of Ianto’s personality and what makes him tick. The writing is frankly spectacular.

I’ve listened to a few scripts from Gareth David-Lloyd and noticed a common trend: they all tend to be comedies. This is clearly playing into one of his strengths, because he can be a really funny actor at times. Great performance.

He knows the Brecon Beacons quite well. His family, on his mum’s side, this is where they’re from. It was Ianto’s idea for him and Owen to pose as environmentally concerned geo-adventurers. Ianto has lived and worked in major cities with everything on his doorstep. The countryside can be a bit limiting, but as a kid it was something he looked forward to all week, and he never wanted to leave. Liked the sense of community, and you didn’t really get that in a big town. For a while after his nan died, he would still catch the bus at weekends, but could never bring himself to get off. Ride it all the way there, and ride it all the way back. Ianto thinks he was just spoiled with an awesome nanna: she could dull any pain with a word. She lost two brothers in a war, but he never once saw her sad. His crowbar is apparently nicknamed “Rob”.

◆ Story Recap

Torchwood have detected a strange signal coming from the Brecon Beacons and suspect it’s calling an invasion force to Earth. Owen and Ianto have been sent to investigate.

It soon transpires that the signal is being sent by a Taliskotian, who has been studying the differences between her species and humanity for the last two hundred years. Unfortunately, she is completely unaware that her species went extinct fifty years ago.

◆ The Odd Couple

I remember an episode of Osomatsu-San where four of the brothers went off to play pachinko, leaving Choromatsu and Ichimatsu behind. The two remaining brothers suddenly realised that they rarely get left alone together, and that is exactly what this release reminded me of.

It’s baffling that the dynamic of Owen and Ianto has barely been explored outside of this episode. They really are chalk and cheese, but that’s why they work so incredibly well together.

Speaking as someone who has never seen the appeal of the great outdoors, I found myself sympathising with Owen throughout the episode. Traipsing around the Brecon Beacons – with the risk of falling into sheep excrement – is clearly not his idea of fun. Neither is dressing up as some idiotic rambler. Owen is responsible for a lot of the dry humour in this story, with his cynicism and sarcasm being a brilliant addition.

Ianto is the complete opposite. He appears to have this breathless enthusiasm for the great outdoors, even commenting on how picturesque the Welsh countryside is. Geocaching is something he finds genuinely interesting. I looked it up on Google and found myself thinking “what a saddo!”

The dynamic between Owen and Ianto is one that needs to be utilised more often. There is so much potential in doing a series of comedy adventures with these two.

◆ Sound Design

The Brecon Beacons are beautifully brought to life in this episode. An isolated village surrounded by miles of rolling green hills, and it’s raining cats and dogs to remind you that this is Wales.

Fox and Yason do seem to get showered in praise every time I talk about their work, but they are just that good.

◆ Conclusion

“Ianto, you never told me there was a steam train!”

Torchwood stories are often depressing: best listened to with a bottle of something alcoholic to drown out the traumatic tales you were just exposed to. This is something totally different. Gareth David-Lloyd has been injecting that much needed comedic element into Torchwood for half a decade, and it all started with this episode.

The interactions between Owen and Ianto are the main reason to buy this release. Good grief, this pairing needs highlighted more often. The charming office tea boy with his love of camping, his sweet memories of his nan… and the sarcastic medic who would rather be anywhere else than the desolate countryside. Paula Abdul was correct: opposites do attract. Gorman and David-Lloyd bounce so well off of each other, and I will be really miffed if we don’t get another adventure with the two of them.

‘The Last Beacon’ will remind you why camping is an atrocious idea, whilst also batting some really fun comedic moments your way. Not all of the humour lands, and the plot could have been tighter, but this was still a damn good first script from David-Lloyd. He would go on to create one of my favourite Torchwood scripts only a year later, and ‘Retirement Plan’ still has me bent double with laughter whenever I listen to it.