Torchwood’s 2025 run of audio adventures at Big Finish began with three releases touching different ground and exploring three different eras of the institute’s history.

The third to be released but the first to feature in this review is Rictus, which acts as a tie-in to Big Finish’s new Zygon Century series which launched at the start of 2025.

At the heart of this story is Princess Beatrice, which thankfully is a take on Queen Victoria’s daughter and not one of the many other members of European royalty since then that have had the same name (although a story featuring the Dutch queen who abdicated to fight aliens would be cool). She is written as restless, intelligent, and quite youthful, except since Rictus takes place six months on from the passing of Queen Victoria, it means that Beatrice is actually 44 years old.

But perhaps spending four decades in the shadow of her mother is what has made her a restless sort, and the half year of national mourning was possibly even more tiring. Because she wants her inheritance, and that includes the Torchwood Institute.

Cue an era-appropriate rendition of the titles.

Beatrice – or Bea as she prefers to be called – is more street savvy than stuffy, but is pushy and out of her depth as she enthuses about bagging an alien upon hearing there is suspicion about how a worker on the London Underground went missing.

After some reckless behaviour, which may make you warm to or tire of her manner, she joins Torchwood employee Anson in the tunnels to investigate what’s happened and also to offload her envy of lives that aren’t her own. There’s a big problem here, and we see it in the media today, which is that it’s generally difficult to feel sorry for someone born into and raised through the privilege of being a royal.

That becomes even more evident when Zygon politics is introduced to the story to raise the stakes, as her upbringing moves her to strategic positions which Torchwood would not usually consider. But what this story acts as is a transition, setting up for her to be a recurring character (particularly with her insistence about working for Torchwood) and for the 20th century to be when everything changes (at least in the institute).

Sid Sagar is excellent as Anson, quietly going along with Bea and preventing her from causing too much chaos before the script makes his character more significant towards the end.

While sex is not a part of this story in the usual Torchwood way, particularly with the Zygons present and their unique method of ensuring future generations come to be, it doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the incestous nature of royal bloodlines and the title of the story itself is more referential than you’d think.

The ending is strong, and there’s even an epilogue which opens more story-telling opportunities.

To compare this to what Doctor Who did with its Series 9 two-parter, The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion would be unfair, but it does delve into what is required for humans and Zygons to have unity when sharing a home world. Something which Big Finish’s Zygon Century range goes even deeper into.

The preceding Torchwood release was Inseparable, which stars Torchwood One operatives Yvonne Hartman and Tommy Pierce. If you find Zygon reproduction icky, what happens in this is even ickier.

Going undercover at a couples’ retreat, which is quite a comedic set-up that lends itself to lots of immersive sex noises for the listener, the pair soon find themselves in a far darker situation.

The first inkling that their stay likely comes with some risks is that the person who runs the retreat, Gloria, knows of Torchwood. She is played by Jaye Griffiths, better known as Eighth Doctor companion Lady Audacity Montague, modern-day UNIT operative Jac (killed off in the aforementioned The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion), and Time War disrupter Hieronyma Friend.

Griffiths’ calm tone, in which she sounds mostly unbothered even when talking with a strong level of seriousness, makes Gloria unnerving very quickly even though everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. At least the visitors having loud (and quite funny) sex.

There’s a suggestion that sex itself is supposed to be the scary part, at least for Tommy due to trauma about keeping his career — and treatment in the workplace under the ever unforgiving Yvonne — secret from his wife Sandra. While Yvonne sees that human connection as a weakness, she’s actually the weak link in this Torchwood dynamic, and aside from Tommy, there are other characters such as Ania Marson’s Victoria (who is clearly having a whale of a time in the sound booth) that show that contrast.

The sound design works very well in this story, which is essentially body horror based around human connections. What if making love made you inseparable…?

(For those who haven’t yet learned the birds and the bees, I’d very much recommend The Sins of Captain John boxset for the educational and comedic story, Peach Blossom Heights.)

Genitalia also appears in Ianto’s Inferno, the first Torchwood release of 2025, but only as graffiti and a means to take a p*ss in a story set entirely in a multi-storey car park — that goes on FOREVER! (The car park, that is; not the story)

Ianto, seemingly early in his Torchwood Three tenure, meets up with Anthony (James Glyn) and Dean (Robert Vernon) who have organised to give him a bit of alien gear they acquired from an old man they were mowing lawns for in return for an item from Torchwood’s Restricted Items Archive.

It starts off conversationally as if they were in a pub, with some banter and gentle prodding of each other, but hidden motives and suspicions then sends the trio into a nightmare situation.

The Penrose Stairs (the best visual representation of an infinitely continuing environment) and Doctor Who planet Logopolis provide the inspiration of endlessness for Ianto’s Inferno, so to transfer such a visual phenomenon into an audio drama is a risky move.

Some sound effects do sell the dimensions of the car park repeating themselves or having no fixed ending (surround sound is recommended here), but mostly, the story hangs on Ianto’s prediction that the only escape is death and his calmness while the two men he’s just met descend into madness.

Their characterisation, and some of the features of the car park, makes this a believable snapshot of Britain in the 2000s and also very conceivably an episode that would appear in Torchwood’s first (or maybe even second) television series.

Dark truths are revealed as the main characters get more desperate, and while we know Ianto will get out alive, it’s left until very late to see if Anthony and Dean will get the same fate. Running, running, running — around an infinite car park…

Ianto’s Inferno, Inseparable, and Rictus are available now from Big Finish.