Torchwood Magazine # 22

I don't know about you, but I for one am getting excited by the return of Torchwood this summer. Here's what's in issue # 22 of the (now-cancelled) magazine:

* A convention diary by Tom Price (PC Andy). Mildly amusing. I'm guessing that PC Andy will be one of the characters unfortunately stranded by the show's move to a predominantly U.S. setting.

* A fun little Torchwood "Choose Your Own Adventure" type story involving a deadly plant invading the Hub. Unusually for such things, I actually succeeded the first time through.

* An episode guide to the Torchwood radio dramas. Very thorough and interesting look at Lost Souls, Asylum, The Golden Age, and Deadline.

* A short story by James Goss titled "The Package". Aliens are planning to invade Earth (what's new?) and to stop it, Torchwood has to find a single parcel in a packed post office. Tongue-in-cheek, about average.

* The three winners of the "Take Over Torchwood" contest, in which magazine readers were invited to submit their own short story. They really are short--a page or two each. The line-up consists of "Ash to Ashes" (an ash monster attacks Cardiff; inspired by the "ashtastrophe" when that Icelandic volcano erupted a while back), "Rift-Raff" (a piece of alien tech catapults Gwen back and forth through time), and "Lockdown" (the SUV's lockdown systems are triggered with Gwen, Jack, and Ianto still inside). Overall, the stories are okay, but none of them are amazing--I think it was a mistake to have the "usual suspects" of authors who write the novels be the judges in the contest, as that ensures the winners will fit pretty closely to a certain set of preconceived notions of what a Torchwood story "looks like."

* The second half of "Shrouded", the comic strip written by Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto). Great artwork and an interesting story, with a nice twist at the end.

* "Rare Earth", a short story by Kate Orman. A solid tale about alien refugees being hunted down by Torchwood. Interesting present-to-past structure.