Queen Victoria is stranded on a sea fort with Maharaja Duleep Singh… and something else…

One of the strengths of the early TV seasons of Torchwood was its use of flashbacks, particularly given the length of time Jack Harkness has been around (given he’s killed and then revived regularly, can you really say it’s how long he’s been alive?). That’s given the Big Finish production team free rein to set stories across many decades, and here we go back to the organisation’s early days, and its founder, Queen Victoria. As the fascinating CD extras demonstrate, much of the background that James Goss draws on for this story was real, not least one of the more humiliating incidents that Maharaja Duleep Singh recounts from his youth.

The concept of “duty” and the level to which Torchwood operatives will subsume their lives to it has been central ever since we first met Cyber-Yvonne back in Series 2 of Doctor Who, and that’s a key element in Goss’ script. There’s also a very effective use of sound – both in-universe and in Lee Adams’ sound design – that makes this very unsettling (listening to it while driving through the effects of Storm Brenda helped as well!). Fans of MR James’ stories may well find they’re drawn into this – the horrors may be alien but they’re of the same insidious nature, setting people against each other.

Director Lisa Bowerman brings together a terrific cast – Rowena Cooper reprises her role as Queen Victoria, bringing out the, shall we say, less pleasant sides of the character with relish. Paul Bazeley and David Sterne bring their A game to the play as the Maharaja and the Colonel.

Verdict: If MR James wrote Torchwood… Claustrophobic, insidious and unsettling. Recommended. 10/10

Paul Simpson

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