Lost Souls (audio story)

Lost Souls
Main character(s):	Jack, Gwen, Ianto
Featuring:	Martha
Main enemy:	Neutron eaters, Oliver Harrington
Main setting:	Cardiff, 2000s; Large Hadron Collider, 10 September 2008
Key crew
Writer:	Joseph Lidster
Director:	Kate McAll
Release details
Premiere broadcast:	10 September 2008
Premiere network:	BBC Radio
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-4056-8944-1
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Lost Souls is an original BBC Radio 4 audio play written by Joseph Lidster. It aired on 10 September 2008 in the Afternoon Play slot as part of Radio 4's Big Bang Day. It celebrated the switching on of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, that day. Andrew Marr introduced the audio play live from CERN. An MP3 version of the audio play was made available for seven days after broadcast. It was released on CD on 18 September 2008.

Publisher's summary

When scientists start to disappear prior to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland, Dr Martha Jones of UNIT asks her friends at Torchwood 3, still grieving over the recent death of two colleagues, to investigate.

Plot

to be added

Cast

• Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
• Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
• Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
• Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman
• Julia Swales - Vineeta Rishi
• Professor Johnson - Lucy Montgomery
• Dr Harrington - Stephen Critchlow
• Leon Foiret - Mark Meadows
• Flight Attendant - Lucy Montgomery

References

• The Torchwood team are still grieving the deaths of their colleagues Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato.
• The team are heard in pursuit of recurring Torchwood monsters Weevils.
• An alien creature poses as the ghosts of Owen, Toshiko and Ianto's deceased girlfriend, Lisa Hallett.
• Martha wishes she had a sonic screwdriver when she tries to open a locked door.
• CERN is located at Geneva, the location of UNIT's world headquarters as established during the 1970s.
• Gwen mentions the Bahamas.
• Ianto and Gwen ride bikes to help them navigate the underground passages at CERN. Ianto is delighted to learn his bike has a bell and rings it.

Notes

• Lost Souls was broadcast on 10 September 2008. As later confirmed by TV: Extremis in the DWU, the Large Hadron Collider was first tested on 10 September 2008. This would place this story in a select class, which take place on the exact same date as they were first released. However, this creates a discrepancy in the overall timeline of the Russell T Davies, as it would ignore the extra year from Aliens of London, and simply assume that these stories are set in the same year that they were broadcast in. In fact, with the extra year in mind, Tosh and Ianti died in 2009, one year after the first testing of the Large Hadron Collider. Of course, Lost Souls is far from the only example of such a contradiction.

Continuity

• When greeting Martha, Jack welcomes her with the words "voice of a nightingale", the phrase he used on her arrival in TV: Reset and again when she telephoned him in TV: The Stolen Earth.
• Julia Swales was first seen working alongside Martha in TV: Smith and Jones.
• The Large Hadron Collider would later show up in TV: Extremis, as well as CERN itself. That story dates the first test of the LHC to 10 September 2008 specifically, coinciding with the real world date of that test, and, of course, the day on which this story was broadcast.
• Evidently this isn't the first time that CERN was involved with creating a black hole, as K9 Mark IV was tasked with fixing a black hole created by an earlier experiment in Switzerland. (TV: Invasion of the Bane)
• Liz Shaw joined CERN after leaving UNIT in the 1970s. (PROSE: Country of the Blind)

Download and CD release

Lost Souls was released by BBC Audio in both CD and MP3 download formats on 18 September 2008, only a week after broadcast (ISBN 978-1-4056-8944-1). Straight after initial broadcast, for one week only, internet users could download the radio serial free from the BBC website. The CD also includes the BBC Radio Wales feature Torchwood: All Access. Presented by Julian Carey and aired to coincide with the debut of Series 2, this is a 25-minute documentary on the Welsh aspects of the program, featuring interviews with Russell T Davies, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen and behind-the-scenes personnel. The mastering of the track contains an error that results in several minutes of discussion regarding the Hub set and its construction being repeated.

Lost Souls, Asylum, Golden Age and The Dead Line were released, both individually, and together as a four-disc collected box set, entitled The Radio Adventures.

External links

• Lost Souls at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• Torchwood: Lost Souls at BBC Radio 4's website
• Transcript of Lost Souls at Chrissie's Transcripts Site