This month via Big Finish we were treated to the return of the dynamic duo of Rhys Williams and Gwen Cooper in a new story set after Miracle Day!

The solicit from Big Finish:

“It has been four years since the Miracle, and Gwen and Rhys’s lives have gone back to normal, very normal. They’re raising their daughter (they’ve got pictures they’d be only too happy to show you), they’re living in a nice house, and they’re almost on top of the laundry.

Captain Jack Harkness has been missing from the world and their lives for a long time. But late one night the phone rings, and they’re summoned to an isolated part of North Wales. The Bryn Offa Nursing Home contains a dark secret, an alien threat, and someone who really shouldn’t be there.

Gwen and Rhys are about to discover that Torchwood stays with you for the rest of your life.”

This month’s installment of Torchwood takes us into uncharted territory by showing us what Gwen and Rhys have been up to since the last televised Torchwood story and it’s very nice to see that they are still out there ready to drop everything… AGAIN to save the world.

As you’d expect, you come for Torchwood and you stay for Gwen and Rhys. This was a good story, I found it really entertaining but… it ties into miracle day more than I expected it would. I know that some folks didn’t particularly love Miracle Day (and would just as soon stop with the 3 purely British Torchwood series) but Miracle Day is not my whole problem with this story. Miracle Day was a fairly intricate conspiracy style story and this current story is a conspiracy story and they sort of tried to tie this conspiracy into THAT conspiracy. Did that sentence confuse you? Because THAT is exactly the problem with this story. It’s a perfectly good story without the tie ins, but they made the tie ins, and once you do that you can’t pretend it didn’t happen. It’s like calling the Doctor half Human in the Doctor Who movie from the 90’s… you shouldn’t go there unless you have a really good reason. I’m hoping that they do have a really good reason and that it will come together in a cool payoff but for it’s part in this story it was kind of a strange and clunky addition.

Despite the double conspiracy set up it does have a main story that is mostly understandable and the plot is still fast paced and captivating much like the first two episodes of this series have been so I am still totally on board with this series (but they can’t ALL be 5 stars).

I loved hearing Gwen and Rhys again, the casting and the characters were all brilliantly acted, the sound and production were as good as ever,  I just wish their story didn’t get so convoluted when the first two installments were as brilliantly simple as they were. I’d likely listen to this again but it’s not quite up there with the first two stories and it has too many back-references to be totally standalone so I’m going to give this one a 3.5 out of 5 stars.