The Dead Line (audio story)

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The Dead Line was an original BBC Radio 4 audio play. It was broadcast the week prior to series three of Torchwood. It was adapted by Phil Ford from his own unproduced TV story, Deadline.

Publisher summary

When a hospital is inundated with patients that have fallen into coma-like trances, Torchwood move in to investigate. They find that the trances were triggered by phone calls, all of which were made from a number that hadn't been active for over 30 years. Determined to find out who's been calling the unfortunate victims, Jack rings the mysterious number — two, zero, five, nine — nothing. It's a dead line. Until it calls Jack back, he answers — and falls into a deep trance. The team race against time to find the source of the "infection" and save the patients.

Plot

Bob Roberts and twenty other people enter a coma-like trance after answering answering their telephones and are taken to St Helen's Hospital. Jack, Gwen and Ianto deduce that there is something in the telephone network and Jack calls the number, a five digit one as would have been the norm in the 1970s, which turns out to be a dead line. When he answers an incoming call on a disconnected telephone, he too enters a trance and Gwen and Ianto invite Stella Courtney, a neuroscientist he dated in 1975, to St Helen's to examine him. Gwen warns Rhys against answering his telephone and visits him whilst Jack and Stella stay with Jack.

to be completed

Cast

References

  • Ellie Roberts is Bob and Jan's daughter.
  • Rhys says that Captain Jack is similar to Captain Scarlet in that they both cannot die.
  • The Cardiff Rift is capable of interfering with weather and causing freak meteorological events to occur that others do not foresee.
  • Stella says that Jack might start dancing, "and you were never John Travolta." "Hey! I was the Saturday Night Fever!"

Notes

  • This story's plotline is reminiscent of the plotline of Stephen King's novel Cell.

Download and CD release

  • The story is also available as a download from the AudioGo website.
  • 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.

Continuity

External links