Torchwood: Oodunnit Review

Continuing Torchwood’s Ood Trilogy which saw the return of Ida Scott in last month’s Odyssey, Oodunnit sees the return of Zachary Cross Flane delving into a murder mystery taken straight from the pages of an Agatha Christie novel, for one of Big Finish’s puniest titles yet, but one that is surprisingly apt.

James Goss’ Oodunnit wastes no time in reintroducing us to Zachary and his investigatory assistant Chloe as the pair find themselves on the planet of Paraglas IV, a waste planet with a giant recycling plant to reuse the Earth Empire’s waste. As the title suggests, is a murder mystery set on a different planet, where an Ood worker has been murdered and the suspects include a group of other Ood, human workers, the head of the recycling company Lady Drogba and the Worker’s Union Leader Mr Brakow.

Shaun Parks steps back into the shoes of Zachary with ease, he had previously been in a Torchwood release which also introduces Chloe, but if this is the first time, like it was for me, hearing these two together then there is no need to go back and listen to their first story. Parks and Amanda Shodeko as Chloe share such a great rapport that it makes you wonder if she had been in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit all along. In their previous outing, they were working for Torchwood as bodyguards, here though they are playing detectives and it’s a role that both actors step up to with ease.

While the murder mystery elements remain at its core and if you are listening closely then it isn’t very hard to guess whodunit, Goss also plays around with some modern-day issues, looking at workers’ rights, unions and the threat to jobs with the ever-evolving use of technology. His script is particularly clever in its use of the Ood which are used here as a metaphor for racial issues, in particular looking at the American railroads and their use of overworked, underpaid Chinese workers to create them.

Of course, there isn’t too much time to explore these themes to any great extent but the fact that he tries to include them in the script shows how intelligent Torchwood can be when it’s not all about sex and violence.

Goss does give his central mystery time to be explored, looking at the murder through several different character perspectives and giving each enough time to be looked at to its fullest potential. The direction from Bethany Weimer helps make sure the story follows a very linear path despite all the different characters. It’s a shame then that the only real quibble here is how obvious the real killer'(s) are but it’s a fun story otherwise.

Clearly drawing upon the locked room murder mysteries of Agatha Christie, James Goss makes sure to set up the plot intricately from the beginning and on a re-listen one might be surprised to find that there are things here that you may miss the first time around.

Exploring other themes also helps the story and gives the characters the motives for what they have done but it also means the title does what it says and leaves us with a lot more. Not bad for a series that came from a television series intent on just delivering sex and violence every week!

You can pick up Torchwood: Oodunnit from Big Finish now on CD and digital.