Torchwood review: An unusual and rather brilliant double act is formed in Sync
By James Aggas
What happens when you take two of the most untrustworthy and devious characters from both Doctor Who and Torchwood and put them together? A really fantastic double act with this month’s audio Sync.
Sync is a Torchwood audio that I’ve been looking forward to a lot. The character of Susie Costellos has always been an intriguing one, ever since she was first introduced in Everything Changes.
We saw a little of her history before that episode with Moving Target in 2016. It was an incredibly strong story, one that got us to explore the character of Susie in a very different way. Shockingly, we haven’t had another audio featuring Susie since then. Thankfully, this month’s latest audio changes that.
But it’s not just Susie who gets explored in this episode. We also have the return of Margaret Blaine, one of the Slitheen family first seen in the Doctor Who episodes Aliens of London/World War Three and Boom Town. This episode is firmly set between those two stories, with Blaine as the new Mayor of Cardiff.
A brilliant double act
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Pairing Susie with Margaret is an absolutely brilliant idea. It’s almost a dark version of what we had with Jack and Jo in last month’s The Green Life. They’re both incredibly devious in their own way, and both willing to do anything to survive. Susie is a little less openly villainous than Margaret at times, but that just makes her more interesting. Even when she aims to do good, she goes about it in a pretty ruthless way.
Lisa McMullin has kept the plot light enough so that it primarily focuses on these two being stuck together. Over the course of the episode, they go through some major ups and downs. Each of them is constantly trying to get the upper hand. Margaret is a born survivor, but has she met her match with Susie?
It’s wonderful to hear Indira Varma as Susie and Annette Badland as Margaret. Both of them sound exactly as they did over a decade ago, and capture their characters brilliantly. For both Doctor Who and Torchwood fans, this is quite a nostalgic team-up, one that’s easily worth a listen.
Next. New Tenth Doctor audio on vinyl out now!. dark
Who do you like more: Susie Costello or Margaret Blaine? Would you have liked to have seen either character explored more on-screen? What other devious characters are you a fan of in the Doctor Who universe? Let us know in the comments below.