Esther and Cody are on the run from their care home. Cody’s clinging onto his favourite podcast for dear life. Esther is driving her and her brother forward into the world in the vague hope that eventually they might find somewhere they can fit in. It isn’t looking good. Until they find a rusted-out SUV in a junkyard. The onboard AI (Gareth David-Lloyd) needs their help, psychotic junk dealer Jed (Kirris Rivieré) wants them dead. They just want to go home.

This is the last Torchwood audio release for a while and it’s brilliant. I’ve always been very fond of this series and its willingness to break the format but this last (for now, hopefully) story is something very different even in a series defined by its indefinability.

Let’s start with Kirris Rivieré’s Jed. For most of the story he’s a borderline ogre, a hulking figure with a booming voice and a tremendous fondness and ability for violence. For him, the SUV is a prize to be won, the crown jewel of a collection and one he’s killed for before the opening credits even start. But as the story goes on we see a different side of him, a nihilism that’s born from undiagnosed, unacknowledged PTSD. Further to that, he presents as a tragic figure, broken by the very knowledge that drove Torchwood. The 21st century is where it all happens, and Jed wasn’t ready. Monstrous, but tragic too.

That complexity extends to Esther and Cody. Devi Wykes’ Cody is a chirpy ball of denial, a sweet young man who’s terrified of everything but hides inside his fandom of The Gatekeepers, a suspiciously familiar sounding show about a group of government agents guarding a portal…

But he’s also, as his sister reminds us a lot, a massive wanker. Cody’s issues, touched on as Asperger’s related, are never explored in detail because no one’s ever cared to. He’s just the weird kid who can only relate to the world through his show. Constantly on the edge of overstimulation, constantly making himself fine even as that bends him into a different even more awkward shape. It’s a great performance, hateful in spots but always with deep compassion and awareness, even when that awareness is of absence. Cody knows he’s fine but also knows he isn’t fine. He just can’t quite face it.

Esther, played with glorious Welsh venom and humour by Carlie Enoch, doesn’t have that luxury. She’s the designated adult in the SUV and she hates it and hides that. Badly. She travels in the opposite direction to Cody, broken but not showing it where he’s endlessly, painfully honest. One of the standout moments here is the single beat of peace she allows herself, breaking down after tearing Cody a new one at last and letting herself be a kid. It’s just a moment. But it’s hers.

Writer Gareth David-Lloyd closes the cast out as the SUV. A digital ghost of Ianto, put there by Tosh and unaware of so many of the events that have changed the team forever. David-Lloyd has a great line in deadpan humour and that’s focused here through the lens of the AI. But he’s also a generous performer and writer, taking a conscious step back to let the others take the spotlight. Director Lisa Bowerman spreads that spotlight wide too, and this feels like one of the Torchwood One ensemble pieces with its snappy dialogue, witty direction and equal cast.

The point here isn’t the plot. The point is the episode, like the SUV, is a vehicle for us to take one last ride to Cardiff in. The journey from the broken care home the kids escaped to their uncertain but hopeful ending on the Cardiff docks is a journey up through hope and back across recovery. They aren’t magically fixed. But they aren’t broken any more and the armour of the SUV, of the show, of the idea of Torchwood has delivered them from danger one more time. It’s a subtle, moving exploration of fandom as a survival tool and positive force as well as an admission of the passage of linear time and how it changes our perception of art. Torchwood isn’t five lairy space coppers in a truck anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. But that doesn’t mean this era didn’t have worth, and it doesn’t mean the organisation, the characters and the show don’t deserve to be lauded for the work they did and, hopefully, continue to do.

Verdict: A deceptively simple story about three very complicated people and a very complicated car. A love letter to an imperfect future and an imperfect show whose flaws were its weapons and the foundation of its community. A salute to a fandom that has outlasted their show twice over. One last ride. How very Torchwood. How perfect. Thanks, folks. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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