Absent Friends (unreleased audio story)

Absent Friends
Main character(s):	Jack, Ianto
Featuring:	Tenth Doctor
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	James Goss
Director:	Scott Handcock
Release details
Story number:	7.2
Release number:	50
Production code:	BFPTWCD50
Torchwood - Monthly Range
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You may be looking for the Doom Coalition audio story.

Absent Friends was the planned fiftieth story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range from Big Finish Productions. It was written by James Goss and had already been fully recorded, but was pulled before release following misconduct allegation on the set of Doctor Who. Along with the unbroadcast radio plays Journey into Time and City of the Saved, and the unreleased webcast 41.1978.A ^[+]Loading...["41.1978.A (unreleased webcast)"], this is one of only four performed DWU-related stories known to have been fully recorded, but cancelled before being officially broadcast or released in any form.

This release would have brought the Tenth Doctor into the Torchwood series directly, playing off the Torchwood Institute's original aim, to capture and contain the Doctor, as established in series 2 of Doctor Who. It would have seen the Doctor messing up, with Jack sort of taking the lead over him, rather than vice versa.

The cancelled story was originally slated for release in May 2021. On 14 May 2021, it was announced that Big Finish had removed Absent Friends from the release schedule of the Torchwood monthly range and had "no plans to publish this title at this time", and that "all bundle pre-orders for the Torchwood Monthly Range stories 49-54 or 49-60 will feature an alternative title in its place".

On 21 January 2022, it was announced that The Black Knight ^[+]Loading...["The Black Knight (audio story)"], featuring Samuel Barnett as Norton Folgate, would be replacing Absent Friends as number 50X in the range.

Publisher's summary

On a dark and stormy night in Cardiff, the city is in danger, and the Doctor's put himself in charge of Torchwood in order to save it. In a sealed recording studio, the voices of the dead have been playing for 17 years. Was it the project of a madman, or is this the site of something terrible? Torchwood has been hunting for the Doctor since 1879. And now they've found him. They may regret it.

Cast

• Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
• Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
• Tenth Doctor - David Tennant
• Mishka - Ayesha Antoine
• Devin - Colin McFarlane

Notes

Textless cover

• Had this story been released, it would have marked the first in-person appearance of the Doctor in an instalment of Torchwood.
• The publisher's summary for this story is only available in the news article announcing it, as its page on the Big Finish website has been removed.
• This story was announced on 1 January 2021, the same day Revolution of the Daleks aired, which saw the onscreen return of Jack Harkness. A video trailer was also promoted on their social media and uploaded to their YouTube channel that same day, and was included in the news article of the announcement. The video has been set to 'private' on Big Finish's YouTube channel and cannot be found in their uploads, but can still be viewed on the Internet Archive.
• The cover for this story was revealed on 25 January 2021, made by Lee Binding, who also posted the clean artwork to his Twitter. The cover would have been gold-embossed to celebrate being the fiftieth release in the Torchwood monthly range.
• On 10 February 2024, an eBay listing claiming to be a script of the story went for auction with a starting price of £500. The item was marked as unavailable less than twelve hours after it first appeared, with no indication if it was sold privately or if the seller had withdrawn the auction. The item listing included photos of 26 pages from the script, as well as the cover page, revealing roughly one-third of the story.