Torchwood: God Among Us, Part 1

Although titled as if it were a new series, this collection carries on directly where Aliens Among Us left off. The length of it means that it is, in a sense, an imagined ‘sixth season' for the TV show, where its predecessor was the fifth, but it's more like the second half of a 24-episode season in which (as often in such shows) the original Big Bad turned out at the half-way mark to have been hiding a bigger one.

• Future Pain – The first episode sees the characters trying to come to terms with the fallout of the previous cliffhanger. The focus is largely on Colchester and his husband in a mostly sedate tale about love and loss, and different people's reactions to it. This alternates with a less successful and more traditional story about an alien leech monster which, even at this stage, is obviously a misdirection away from the real villain of the piece (whose brief appearance is, it has to be said, well-played). There's also a thread that's simply wrapping up the plotline of the previous ‘season', ending it all in a bit of an anti-climax, sweeping things clean for the new plotline. It's a necessary link between that season and this but, taken on its own, it's a bit of a muddle. 3 stars.

• The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood – From that, we move to something that's closer to a comedy in style. This is about an alt-right vlogger who believes that they have stumbled across the truth about Torchwood and wants to bring the organisation down by shining the light of publicity on it. The episode will likely not sit well with anyone who has sympathies with the alt-right viewpoint, since it so thoroughly denigrates its ostensible protagonist, a stereotyped loner with a persecution complex. Taken as a black comedy about a rather pathetic man completely out of his depth, though, it works well, especially when it slips into his fantasies about what Torchwood and its agents are really like. The connection with the larger plot arc is minor, but this works as a one-off change of pace. 4 stars.

• See No Evil – Another strong, although largely standalone story as Cardiff is mysteriously plunged into darkness. The story is stylistically dark as well as literally, with the disaster suddenly bringing out the worst in ordinary people and a number of gruesome deaths adding to the atmosphere. Obviously, it's the sort of story that works better on audio than it could on video (a sort of reverse of ‘Hush' from Buffy), although Big Finish have done similar things before, even if here, it's more exploring a pessimistic view of human nature than fear of an unseen menace (although there's that, too). Hartmann is at her cold and calculating best, while Jack shows his more positive and heroic side in a story that nicely contrasts the two. 4 stars.

• Night Watch – No sooner has one crisis ended than another starts as, this time, the city falls peacefully asleep. For differing reasons, the various main characters of the series manage to fight it off and there is, once again, a threat from a monster. But it's a non-physical threat that allows us to explore the characters' flaws and past traumas – one grieving for the death of a lover, another seeking refuge in drugs and meaningless sex (and no, that isn't Jack), and so on. This makes it a particularly effective story, despite the relative lack of action, and the fact that none of these internal problems are really resolved by the end. While there is a resolution to the episode's central plot, there is also a cliffhanger ending that leads into the next part of the series. 5 stars.