Torchwood: End Game from Big Finish Review

After quite a gap, we finally got another Toshiko audio in the Torchwood range. Out of all the characters in Torchwood, Toshiko has always been one of my favourites, she’s kind and sweet and is almost the most human of all the characters. And I can remember her character being killed off and watching with horror as my favourite character in the show died.

Luckily, Big Finish has worked their magic again and given this underdeveloped character a new lease of life and a deeper dive into Toshiko’s character is always appreciated.

End Game is a brilliant first outing for new debut writer Tom Black and the premise lends itself to Tosh very well and shows us how well she fits in with any team not just the Torchwood group. When she finds herself trapped in an end-of-world scenario alongside government ministers Frank Reece, Jasmine Jenning and Gerald Marsh, who we learn Tosh shares a history with, they are introduced to the programme in charge, a sinister AI, which may or may not be an alien intelligence.

I appreciated that Black didn’t waste time introducing these characters. Everyone is thrown into the mix together to sink or swim, and right off the bat, things don’t seem right as the character dynamics are revealed. Tosh always delightfully had the upper hand on her fellow crew despite being late, making a snarky comment about trains being late and then gradually dressing down the other characters on their actions and decisions.

One could look at this audio as a way of expressing the people’s disappointment in the various governments we’ve had over the last few years, with lines and comments about the state of the NHS, the train infrastructure and politicians who don’t do anything, but listening to the story it does a lot more than that, its about how no one person is more important than the other and that life-changing decisions shouldn’t be made as easily as the current governments around the world appear to make them.

And as the nature of the simulation grows more and more sinister, one is forced to wonder if this is how governments make their decisions, by choosing outcomes more beneficial to them and not the wider general public. Jasmine Jenning gets a nasty surprise when she discovers she isn’t as important as she thought, a realisation actor Jolade Obasola plays to perfection.

Also excellent is Greg Wise as Minister Frank Reece, who starts as a pompous and self-centred politician who quickly comes to realise his mistakes and breaks down before eventually doing the right thing at the end, Wise does a tremendous job here selling the desperation of the situation effortlessly.

Even the voice of the AI was very well done, and while it is a computer programme there were moments you could tell it was enjoying what it was doing and the pain it was inflicting even in fictional scenarios. But Black makes sure that man will always win with Toshiko who manages to use her humanity against the machine. There are some interesting comparisons between the machine and Toshiko as they both use people for the optimal outcome, something Naoko Mori handles brilliantly, but there is never any sense that she isn’t in control the whole time, which I liked. Toshiko knew right off the bat what and where this alien AI came from, she was just trying to show Gerald played with flirty but frightening brilliance by Ed White, the folly of his ways.

End Game successfully explores the battle between man and machine and human emotion against the cold logic of a computer. But this also allows the text to explore not only the fragility of human nature but how that can also be our strength and it all builds to a successful finale that is as moving as it is uplifting.

End Game is a brilliant debut from Tom Black who delivers a real blast of a story and a breath of fresh air amongst a range whose audios can sometimes be a little too dark and depressing for me. And seeing how well he handled Tosh’s character, I can’t wait to see and hear more when he takes on other characters from the Torchwood series.

You can purchase Torchwood: End Game from Big Finish now.