The Torchwood Archive

[matthewsee]

Part 1:

The Torchwood Archive marked Big Finish's tenth anniversary celebration of Torchwood.

Written by James Goss and released on October 21 2016, just one day before the aninversary date on October 22.

The Torchwood Archive was first mentioned in Doctor Who: The Satan Pit as Zachary Cross Flane (Shaun Parkes) stating that he was the representative of it.

I wonder if considerations was made on having Zachary in The Tochwood Archive story and for whatever the reason Parkes wasn't available.

The Torchwood Archive story has a framing setting and like The Satan Pit it is set in the far future and introduces new character Jeremiah Bash Henderson who looks into the Torchwood Archive and talks to holographic versions of familiar Torchwood characters mostly to PC Andy.

The story cuts to and fro between the framing device in the far future and to more contemporary times with individual events of characters, mostly familiar ones, which relates to the overall story at hand.

The Torchwood Archive marked the first appearance by Paul Clayton as Mr Colchester in a brief appearance but would make a fully fledged appearance in Aliens Among Us & then God Among Us.

For the first time Orr gets mentioned (by Colchester) and like Colchester would become a fully fledged character in Aliens Among Us & God Among Us.

Quite impressive that Big Finish got Julian Lewis Jones to reprise Alex Hopkins.

Jones had previously played Hopkins, the head of Torchwood Three in a flashback in Fragments where he killed his team before killing himself, a suicide that was witnessed by Jack who then succeeded him as head of Torchwood Three.

In The Torchwood Archive, it expands on Hopkins' reasons for the said killings due to a Redlist (as opposed to a blacklist) and expressing his feelings on running Torchwood Cardiff in what is basically a thankless job.

The Hopkins segment was certainly very haunting.

Another segment worth mentioning is with Suzie as Jack says that he thought of her as a daddy's girl and Suzie would kill her father in They Keep Killing Suzie.

The Committee comes up as pertinent in the narrative but what really stands out in all this is the so-called Bad Penny.

All this leading to the stunning revelation by Jeremiah in the cliffhanger.

[matthewsee]

Part 2:
Quite unsettled by the early bits of Part 2 but it becomes intriguing from when Archie from Torchwood Two.
Archie was first mentioned (but not by name) in the series opener Everything Changes by Jack as he explained to Gwen about the branches of Torchwood with Two being run by a strange man.
Archie had turned up before on Big Finish in The Victorian Age.
Nice that Torchwood Two finally got addressed here.
In Everything Changes, Jack also mentioned Torchwood Four in that it disappeared.
I was waiting for the TV series to have an episode about Four but nothing came of it.
Four is only briefly touched upon in The Torchwood Archive in that the Red Key was responsible but not in any great detail.
Still would like a proper story about Four but to this day Big Finish has still not come around to it.
It also touched upon Torchwood India and the Duchess both which/whom was in the BBC Radio play Golden Age thereby Big Finish establishing a continuity between it and that BBC Radio play.
Amusing when Queen Victoria says that she can't point Papua New Guinea on the map and she owns it. This got my attention as I lived in PNG a long time ago.
Quite a couple of surprises that came at the end with the overall theme that Torchwood never ends.

The Torchwood Archive could easily be the finale for Torchwood but alas it continues for Big Finish.