The Torchwood Archive (audio story)

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You may wish to consult Torchwood Archive (disambiguation) for other, similarly-named pages.

The Torchwood Archive was a special release from Big Finish Productions celebrating the 10th anniversary of Torchwood. It explored the origins of the Committee and Object 1.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

"Welcome, visitor. The Torchwood Archive provides a complete history of our Institute from its distant beginnings to the present day. When we founded our great enterprise in the year of our Lord 1879, we decreed that there should be a record of this achievement, stored at the very furthest limits of the British Empire. By visiting you are spreading that legacy, perhaps out through the skies. For now, I shall bid you a good day and welcome you to the Torchwood Archive. Do, please look around."

The Torchwood Archive is a forgotten asteroid in the centre of a great war. Jeremiah is its first visitor in many centuries. He's come to learn something very important. And the ghosts of Torchwood are waiting for him.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]

Jeremiah Bash Henderson enters the Torchwood Archive and is greeted by a hologram of Queen Victoria, but he says that he has come to shut the Archive down. Holograms of Jack and Ianto appear, with the latter leading Jeremiah to the library. Andy takes over, telling him that it is a Classic Torchwood theme week and asking what he wants information on. Jeremiah asks for the records on Object 1.

The first recording is of Queen Victoria making a speech in 1899 saluting Torchwood. Andy then brings up a recording from a café in Penarth in 2009, in which he tells a date about how he was Torchwood's official liaison with South Wales Police. He then tells Jeremiah about the Committee and shows him a recording of Mr Colchester from 2017. Mr Colchester recounts how he followed up a lead on the Committee and found them at a care home, but Roy only told him that they wanted Earth to reach its full potential.

As "something straightforward", Andy produces a recording of Jack. Jack says that he was given Object 1 by Queen Victoria and was told to throw it into the Rift, but instead decided to keep it and stay in Cardiff. In 1914, he encountered the Weevils and threw Object 1 into the Rift, believing that it was responsible, and burnt the Weevils alive with a proton flamethrower.

Jumping ahead to 2004, Suzie Costello called Yvonne Hartman from a bus stop and told her how she found Object 1 in an Ovid factory in Aberfair, offering it to her. She did so under Jack's orders, wanting to get it out of Wales. Yvonne calls Suresh and tells him to continue leading Ovid on as part of their investigation into the Committee.

The next recording is of Eve Trent at Aberdeen Airport leaving a message for Torchwood, telling them of her work for the Committee and how she built bodies for them. She visited one of the Committee's bunkers for the people chosen to survive the Reset and realised that the Committee would seal them in there and leave them to die. She is then shot dead.

As an example of people not realising that they work for the Committee, Andy shows a recording of Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams. Rhys is called by Mandy from work, who tells him that Harwood's need to transport even more industrial refrigerators to Troed-y-Rhiw. The next is of Ivan Putin of the KVI, who is tasked by Maxim Ivanov with telling five of the richest men in Moscow that their girlfriends are members of the Committee and being manipulated into bidding for Galatine. He tells of how the KVI had dealings with the Committee.

Andy shows Jeremiah a recording of Toshiko Sato in a bar, having reverse-engineered Object 1 to bring good luck with a field inverter. She sends it into the Rift. Andy then shows a recording of Alex Hopkins on the day that he killed himself, meeting the little girl and being given Object 1. Andy asks Jeremiah why he is so interested in Object 1, prompting him to produce it from his pocket.

Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]

Andy is displeased with Jeremiah, who says that he has brought Object 1 to shut Torchwood down. He claims that he met with Jack at Space Station Cardiff before his wedding at the Great Cobalt Pyramid and was tasked by him with destroying the Torchwood Archive with Object 1 to keep it from falling into the hands of the Enemy, killing his possessed wife Delilah on the way after she was possessed.

To show Jeremiah that the system that the Archive was based on has always been erratic, Andy shows him a recording of Archie in Torchwood House, inspecting a "knowledge sponge" taken from a Senedial observation drone and processing Object 1. Andy then shows him the destruction of Torchwood Four due to a separate alien artefact.

Further recordings show Norton Folgate in 1953, tricking Madrake into swapping a Coberoid interface for Object 1 and handing it over to Mitford of the Committee, and Torchwood India in 1924 after Jack took their whole inventory bar Object 1, which they then sent. During the Battle of Canary Wharf, Ianto is given Object 1 by a dying Kieran Frost to give to Lisa Hallett.

Years later, he and Jack play with their dog, Untitled, watched by Roy. Gwen meets with Madeline and asks about the Committee. She believes that she has been possessed by the Committee in the past which caused her tumour. She collapses, having taken a number of pills.

Andy has disappeared, replaced with Rhys and Gwen. Both of them advise Jeremiah to take Object 1 and put it in the Archive. Jeremiah meets the Memory Core, which takes the form of Queen Victoria and plays him a recording of the real Queen relaying the story of the origins of the Committee and Object 1. She asks Jack to throw Object 1 into the Rift, thinking that that would be the end of it.

The Memory Core tells Jeremiah that Object 1 is a key to a pocket universe containing copies of the Committee. He places it in the Torchwood Archive, earning him the thanks of the Torchwood holograms, and leaves. The Memory Core, wanting to take the Committee's universe and leave N-Space to them, opens it whilst Jeremiah and Norton fly away. Jeremiah reveals that he had given the Memory Core a bomb disguised as Object 1 and that he and Norton would now open the real one to bring back the Committee.

In the 2000s, the Rift Manipulator goes wild and Object 1 returns. Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Tosh sigh.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • This story clarifies the dating system used in TV: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, which was set in 43K2.1. Years are read as "[century]K[decade].[year]" while centuries are read as "[millennium].[century]K" e.g. 19K7.9 corresponds to 1879, 21K0.7 corresponds to 2007 and 2.0K corresponds to the 20th century.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

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Weevil stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Weevil story" is one in which one living, authentic Weevil plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. Stories like Day One, End of Days, Sleeper, Fragments and The Pandorica Opens are also not included due to the Weevils' appearance being of no consequence to the plot of the story.
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