Torchwood: Fall to Earth

The second story in the Torchwood audio series features, perhaps surprisingly, Ianto Jones. I have to start off by saying that Ianto is really my least favourite of the Torchwood regulars - not that he's unlikeable (as Owen tends to be), I just find him rather dull. As a result, I was surprised by just how much I liked this story. Perhaps that's partly due to what can be done when the focus of the story is on him alone, but it's also down the quality of the acting and some lovely touches in the script.

The story concerns Ianto being trapped alone on a spaceplane crashing out of the sky, his only contact with Earth a telemarketer in Turkey trying to sell him insurance. The first half is really a disaster story in space, not unlike the Airport movies of the '70s, but with a few added SF twists. Apart from the nice conceit that we're only hearing the phone conversation between Ianto and the call centre, the story is fairly unremarkable at this point - although the fact that Goss has ditched the narration used in the previous episode is an improvement.

But this is merely a necessary prelude to the final segment, which knocks it out of the park as the unstoppable plane heads towards a major population centre. This would not be so effective without the slow build up leading to it, and plays on the fact that Ianto and the telemarketing drone are just “little people” caught up in something much larger - this story would never work with any of the other Torchwood characters. It's a powerful emotional tale, full of little details about the characters' lives.

In short, this makes a stunning success out of the very reason that I'm normally not keen on its central character.