Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"It's all skilaboo...", 31 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Author Anita Sullivan, has written a quiet, thoughtful little play which is - let's be honest - probably not going to appeal to those TORCHWOOD fans who prefer the more action-heavy or horror-slanted episodes from the TV series. However, ASYLUM has much to recommend itself to a receptive listener, even if it is by no means a masterpiece.
The none-too-subtle theme of the play is an exploration of alienation and outsiders to society. Hardly an novel focus for sci-fi one might think, and ASYLUM is not going to win any awards for originality. But it's slick and mostly intelligently done with some fine production values.
All the performances are good with Eve Myles' Gwen Cooper and Tom Price as the hapless PC Andy getting the lion's share of the scenes featuring the regular characters. Personally, I find Myles the most likeable and engaging of all the TORCHWOOD cast. Her mixture of vulnerability and compassion comes across just as powerfully on audio as on screen. Special mention has to go to Erin Richards who plays Freda, the confused teenager who falls through the rift into present-day Cardiff. Her performance is beautifully-nuanced and always credible. It is to her credit that one cares about the fate of the character. In fact it is her internal monologues which form some of the play's most succesful moments helped by some excellent sound design and a good use of music.
The play feels like it falters a little towards the end. An opportunity for an interesting debate about the morality of the TORCHWOOD team is thrown away when Jack gives in to Gwen's insistence that Freda should not be retconned. One or two of the jokes fall a little flat, although Tom Price makes the most of the chances he's given to try to raise a smile.
TORCHWOOD, like DR WHO before it, seems to have the ability to adapt itself to a huge variety of narrative styles, and although ASYLUM isn't exactly its finest hour, it's nice that TORCHWOOD's format can stretch to accommodate such a sweet little character piece.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Perfectly fine, just nothing special, 23 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Firstly, there are no introductions in any way for the characters from the TV series, so unless you already know who they are and what their roles are, you might struggle. Luckily I'm a follower of the TV series, and so this wasn't a problem for me, but if you're buying this for yourself or someone else, then I think this is an important thing to consider.
As for the story itself, I didn't really find it particularly interesting or exciting. It was perfectly fine, but nothing that I'd really want to listen to more than once, and if I was less interested in Torchwood, I think I'd have found little merit in it at all. It was OK, just nothing special. It just about stands up as a companion piece to the TV series, clearly targeted at fans of the show, but it wouldn't really stand up on it's own merits.
Another issue I had is that I ripped this CD to iTunes as an audiobook so that I could listen to it on my iPod. However, the very short tracks on the CD, combined with the fact that the iPod does not play chapters/tracks from an audiobook continuously, meant that my listening experience was rather disjointed, as I kept having to reach for my ipod to find the next track. Personally I feel this is more a fault of the iPod software than the CD itself; however with iPods being so popular I would have thought that this limitation they have would be considered when making an audio CD of this nature.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An average Torchwood audio adventure, 22 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I enjoyed the previous Torchwood audio adventures but Torchwood Asylum did not quite make the grade. The main problem is the story is quite dull. Asylum is set between series 2 and Children Of Earth and concerns a girl called Freda who is arrested by P C Andy Davidson (Tom Price making a welcome return) for shoplifting. This girl is soaking wet, covered in mud and carrying a weapon that is like nothing he has seen before. So he contacts Torchwood for help. There are a few developments and a rather obvious twist but not alot else. The cast do a top notch job and it's nice to hear John Barrowman, Gareth David-Lloyd and Eve Myles giving excellent performances. What lets this cd down is that the actual story is very dull. However you have to take the rough with the smooth and I am sure the next Torchwood audio adventure will see a return to form - let's hope so.
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