TWM NO 85 Art Decadence Due July 24 Spoilers even in Trailer

Well that is certainly a surprise. Quite intrigued to how this one will go.

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www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/torchwood-art-decadence-2986

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mark687

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Confirmation 11th July release date.

Whenever someone says “Don’t look behind you,” what’s the first thing we do? Look behind us. So, what could be more terrifying than a Doctor Who monster that exists entirely on that premise – “Don’t think of the Mara!” Our very acknowledgement of the creature, even in ‘the dark places of the inside’, helps usher it into physical being.

Peter Davison’s two Chris Bailey-penned stories had a huge effect on me as a kid. Overwhelmed with flu when Kinda was transmitted, my delirium made the snake-like being even more real and horrifying; unlike others, I thought the resultant emergence at the end of the tale was quite good (let’s have Peter Howell’s soundtrack released soon, shall we?)! Marc Platt, a genius if ever there was one, wrote Cradle of the Snake for BF, in which the serpent returned; sadly (for me), it focussed on the more playful side of the manifestation and not the outright horror.

Now it’s back, in Torchwood.

I was a bit wary of the accents at the beginning of this one. Not every performer can resist turning an upper-class accent into a comedy inflection: it gets perilously close here. ‘Big Finish: for the love of stories, ducky…’ doesn’t bode well (as always, delete the ident) at the start. The initial lightweight tone is as unpromising as it is OTT and the heart sinks.

Then there are the casual drunken whispers of misdemeanours at the vampiric Serpentine Club (Serpentine, you say?), of people coming back from there ‘changed.’ And the mood shifts. The tally-ho relationship between the all-male cast suddenly takes on a sinister turn, but it’s rather more serious than authoritarian figures abusing their power. When not playing Wooster-styled ‘silly arses’, the acting is terrific - Simon Kane’s character Forster reminds me a little of Craig Parkinson’s wonderfully creepy character in Flux.

The ending is effective; the concept of the Mara is not easily confined to one disc. I’d welcome a Mara boxset actually, and I wouldn’t be averse to Ash Derby writing it. After all, as this story shows ... there's more than one of these parasites.

What starts as an “Torchwood does Jeeves & Wooster” dovetails into an excellent take on the Mara. When it was recently described as “God of Beasts” I was a little bemused by what that meant (aside from it being a big snake) but this story actually clicked that into place for me. It’s trying to make everyone else into beasts without any level of filter, and then rule that as their god. Unleashing that idea into the already repressed world of 1920s works really well.

I liked how we actually get the Mara walking about and talking for quite a while, more so than TV really. We can see what impact its having and what it’s trying to achieve by sowing chaos. It gives Forster what he really wants deep down by evicting Jack, and then rubs his face in the consequences of that. It fights off aliens brutally for Torchwood, just to defend its own territory. It’s insidious and is sowing seeds of chaos, but is not planting a single master plan to wipe out everyone in a one big bang.

The ending is very neat and so very Torchwood. All in all; a very good story.

Yet another strong entry for the Torchwood Monthly Range! I loved the hard pivot from comedy to thriller partway through. I admit, I have begun to expect the kind of dark twist at the end from Torchwood stories, especially from the other eras in the monthly range. Thankfully, they pull it off 90% of the time (this episode included).