Another Life (Torchwood)

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Another Life
Torchwood book

Release number	1
Featuring	Jack Harkness Gwen Cooper Owen Harper Toshiko Sato Ianto Jones
Writer	Peter Anghelides
Publisher	BBC Books
ISBN	ISBN 978-0-563-48653-8
Set between	Ghost Machine and Cyberwoman
No. of pages	253
Release date	4 January 2007
Followed by	Slow Decay

Another Life is a BBC Books original novel written by Peter Anghelides and based on the British science fiction television, Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood. It features all the regular cast of the show.

Like all Torchwood spin-off media, its canoncity in relation to the television series remains unclear.

1 Plot introduction
2 Plot summary
3 Continuity
4 Outside references
5 Publication
6 References

[edit] Plot introduction

Thick black clouds are blotting out the skies over Cardiff. As twenty-four inches of rain fall in twenty-four hours, the city centre's drainage system collapses. The capital's homeless are being murdered, their mutilated bodies left lying in the soaked streets around Blaidd Drwg nuclear facility.

Tracked down by Torchwood, the killer calmly drops eight storeys to his death. But the killings don't stop. Their investigations lead Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Toshiko Sato to a monster in a bathroom, a mystery at an army base and a hunt for stolen nuclear fuel rods. Meanwhile, Owen Harper goes missing from the Hub when a game in Second Reality leads him to an old girlfriend...

Something is coming, forcing its way through the Rift, straight into Cardiff Bay.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Sergeant Anthony Bee, a soldier driving a stolen Land Rover, has two rifles aimed at him, stopping him from driving through the exit barrier and out of the barracks. The two Privates, Foxton and Kandahal, tell him to step calmly out the vehicle, but he feels a hunger rising inside him again. He steps out of the vehicle, concealing a small handgun on his person as he gets up. Just as it looks like he is about to surrender, Bee shoots Kandahal twice in the head killing him instantly, before letting Foxton fire at him, welcoming death.

Jack and Gwen arrive in the Cardiff district of Splott, investigating the murder of a homeless teenager in a dirty alleyway. The back of the victim's head has apparently been bitten open by human teeth, leaving a pool of blood; Police Constable Jimmy Mitchell, first on the scene, having vomited on the corpse in disgust. Gwen points out that this murder displays the same cause of death as other recent murders in the area before Jack transmits pictures of the murder back to Toshiko at The Hub.

Using both the new and past evidence, Toshiko is able to cross-reference the data with the Police National Database to establish where the murderer currently is. Armed with this information, Jack and Gwen stake-out the Casa Celi, a local cafe, with the intent of catching Guy Wildman, the suspect and an employee at the Blaidd Drwg nuclear facility. When they finally see Wildman in the throng of rush-hour businessmen and school children, Jack and Gwen give chase, following him through Cardiff's streets and eventually into a building site. As Wildman is just about to enter the construction site, he retches and appears to throw up on the floor, but it is not vomit that comes out of his mouth, but a small green-grey bolus that pulsates on the ground in front of the stunned builders. As Jack passes it, he crushes it under his boots before resuming chase. Upon closer examination, it appears to be a grotesque starfish like creature with four legs which, after its encounter with Jack's boot, has started to secrete yellow-coloured bile.

Gwen calls Toshiko to tell her about their new situation and position which Toshiko says is odd as Wildman went home from work earlier, feeling unwell, his secretary driving home. Gwen asks Toshiko to send some police back-up to their location before hanging up.

When Gwen catches up with Jack and Guy, they are on the eighth floor of the unfinished building, Wildman stood precariously on the edge, with an eerie smile on his face, looking at Jack who has a gun pointed at him. Gwen notices that Guy's shirt has blood stains down it; she also notices he has no escape apart from retreating from the edge. Jack first tries confronting Guy and getting him to admit to the murders and as to why he did them, but when this doesn't work, Jack offers help and the custody of Torchwood. However, neither of these tactics work, as Guy just simply smiles, says "See you again," and calmly drops backwards over the edge of the building, eight storeys to his death.

Gwen gets down to ground level as fast as possible to be met by a police cordon and her old partner, Andy. She follows Andy down the road slightly, around the front of a bus that appears to have stalled in the centre of the road but which actually ran over Guy Wildman as he fell from the building, crushing his head. Owen and Toshiko are already on the scene, Owen investigating the body, Toshiko reassuring the driver of the bus, so Gwen kindly denies Andy's offer of radioing for a police forensics team. Toshiko reverses the bus away from Wildman so that they can see the whole gruesome scene, before asking whether it was a suicide or whether he was pushed, to which Gwen answers the former. According to Toshiko however, it looked as if he was panicking as he fell as opposed to calm demeanor Gwen saw. When they have finished at the crime scene, they take the corpse back to the Hub.

Back at the Hub, Toshiko studies the pattern of Wildman's murders while Owen performs an autopsy on the body in preparation for a report to Jack. During the report, Toshiko confirms that the victims are not linked in any way, but notes that they are all in distinct areas, some near Blaidd Drwg nuclear facility, some near an army training camp and a solitary case near the Wetlands Nature Reserve. Owen, next to report, indicated that he hadn't done any preliminary knife work yet, but had noted that he expected to find bone fragments of Wildman's victims in his stomach, and possibly another victim Toshiko hadn't included on her charts yet as the blood Gwen had seen on Guy's shirt earlier had been the spinal fluid of a victim earlier that day. In lieu of this, Toshiko puts out a trace on the police frequency from her PDA, searching for the new victim. Moments later it comes up with a search result, Guy Wildman's car, with a body inside it. When this result is through, Jack slides a piece of paper across the table to Toshiko, asking her to run the phrase through her search engine. With that, Jack and Gwen leave to attain the corpse before the police do.

Jack and Gwen arrive in Butetown to find the car of Guy Wildman, and the police already there. They pass through the cordon and go up to the car where the scene of crime officer, a young Brummie Gwen doesn't recognise, tells them that they forced the back door of the car open in the vain hope the body of the woman in the driver's seat was still alive, but when they found she, they left her there waiting for the photographers. Jack tells the officer that they will take over from then on. The back of the woman's head has been bitten similar in fashion to the other victims. According to an ID card in her purse on the back seat, she is Jennifer Fallon, employee of Blaidd Drwg, and Guy Wildman's secretary. Gwen calls Toshiko to tell her the news.

When they are finished looking at the corpse, Jack notices something on the bottom of his shoe, and assuming he has trodden in dog faeces, takes off his boot to take a look. On the bottom of his shoe is a large, irregular shaped hole in the sole. Gwen comes to the conclusion that whatever it was that Jack trod on earlier had digested the sole of his shoe and then stopped when it got to the sponge lining.

Jack tells Gwen to go home for the night and that he will finish up on the crime scene, taking the corpse back to the Hub. Gwen complies before phoning Rhys, telling him she is going to be late.

Glendower Broadsword is sitting in the Lunatic Fringe, a hairdressing salon, drinking a Piña Colada served to him by Penny Pasteur, a dwarf in a pink bikini. Outside the shop, knights are heading to the stables to saddle up their horses and gallop away. On the floor is the beheaded corpse of the Norse demi-god Kvasir.

Toshiko looks over Owen's shoulder and laughs at the name he has chosen for his avatar in the MMOG Second Reality. Owen, scowling, asks Toshiko about the enhancements she is making to the game, apparently for Owen's sole benefit. She tells him they are ready but that he must first log out of the game because the game in this state should be run within Torchwood's firewall. She passes Owen a pair of data-gloves and a virtual reality helmet. When Owen re-enters the game, the scene is much the same as he left it, but in almost photo-realistic graphics. After Owen has looked around the Lunatic Fringe, Penny Pasteur spins around and assumes the form of Toshiko in a sensible trouser suit. Toshiko emphasizes her warnings to Owen about only using this technology within the confines of the Hub and only on the Torchwood server. She then plants the idea into Owen's mind about the people behind their in-game avatars, claiming that Penny Pasteur is probably a hairy fifty year old in reality. Regardless, she lets Owen explore the world in peace.

When Owen is done, he goes to visit Toshiko in the Recreation Room where he is shocked to see that he is still wearing Glendower's costume and that Toshiko is wearing her trouser suit. She tells Owen that she has got the Hub's hologram projectors working. In the corner, playing pinball, are two characters from the game that Owen recognises. Toshiko tells Owen that this technology could be excellent for training programs for the team. Owen, however, has bigger ideas for the software, claiming the game could be used to scout for potential Torchwood members, but Toshiko adamantly disallows Owen from making this version public.

However, after Toshiko leaves the Hub for the night, Owen connects to the Second Reality servers using the VR headset, and begins playing. Whilst playing, he purchases a pair of sunglasses for his avatar to wear that, when equipped, would allow him to see the real name of other avatars in the game. When tested on Penny Pasteur, Toshiko was proved right, and the avatar was indeed a mask for a man. After abandoning "Penny", Owen comes across a character called Egg Magnet who, when he examines her with the sunglasses, turns out to be an ex-girlfriend of Owen's called Megan Tegg (an anagram of Egg Magnet) whom he left in London over six years ago. Her IP address reveals her to be connecting from a location Cardiff, however before he can confront her about this, she has to logout before her shift starts.

The next morning, the team hold a boardroom meeting to discuss the case. Owen, having used several scanners including the Bekaran deep-tissue scanner and having done a preliminary autopsy, establishes that Guy Wildman is certainly human, but that the living thing he threw up from his stomach was certainly of alien origin, as was the device inserted into his spine. Toshiko takes the item and places it into a box attached to her laptop for analysing. She then tells the team that she examined the security reports for the Blaidd Drwg facility and noticed that a number of experimental nuclear power packs had gone missing.

Suddenly, Ianto comes into the board room wearing protective clothing and brandishing a Geiger counter, claiming that one of the corpses in the mortuary was highly radioactive, confirming that the missing power packs were not just a coincidence. When Ianto tests the team, Owen gives high readings, him having been conducting the autopsy on the corpse. Jack provides Owen with a Decontamination sponge to soak up the radiation, before arming both Gwen and himself with Geiger counters and heading for Wildman's flat.

A woman is inside Guy Wildman's flat. She knew Wildman well as she and her lover, Sergeant Tony Bee, had gone on several sub aqua trips with him. She knows everything about both the flat and the neighbours. She had already been home to change clothes and clean the traces of blood and bone from her face.

Due to empty roads because of the adverse weather, it is not long before Jack and Gwen arrive at Wildman's apartment building. They park in the next road so as not to draw attention to them. Gwen tells Jack not to use ID to force entry because the tenants generally distrust the police, so Gwen devises another form of entry. She tells Jack she'll be back in two minutes; when she returns, she is carrying 4 full Tesco bags. They then press the button for the flat underneath Wildman's, claiming to be from Tesco Direct and that the bell was broken for Wildman's flat. After the phone has been disconnected, they hear a short buzz and the door opens in front of them.

When they reach Wildman's flat, the door is already open, and when Jack bursts in with his revolver, a woman inside screams. She begs with him to lower his weapon. Jack tells Gwen to cover him while he searches the other rooms in the house with his Geiger counter. The walls of the room are covered in photographs of tropical fish. Gwen tells the woman that they are special ops, before asking her name, to which she replies "Betty Jenkins," a neighbour. She then tells Gwen that she believes Guy to be on holiday in Egypt and that she is watering his plants whilst he's away.

A search for the missing fuel rods leads Gwen and Jack into a monster in the bath. T he huge starfish like monster wraps its tentacles around Jack's arm, pulling him nearer to its raging mouth. After much struggle, Gwen destroys the creature by throwing an electric fire into the bath water with the creature. Jack, now free, suddenly yells in pain and throws off his shirt and greatcoat and runs to the sink. After the stinging wears away, he inspects the wound on his arm to discover that the starfish creature had been digesting it, his shirt and coat as well.

[edit] Continuity

The novel makes references to other non-documented cases Torchwood have handled in the recent past, including a Cyclops in Pontprennau and a robot captured in Pontypridd.
Jack makes reference to UNIT during his visit to Caregan Barracks, claiming the military are very quick to involve them when anything supernatural is concerned.
In the novel, reference is made to the pistol training given to Gwen by Jack from the episode Ghost Machine.
The book features many instances where Ianto goes down to the basement, claiming he is doing filing. He is however, clearly tending to Lisa, his girlfriend, a reference to the plot of Cyberwoman, the episode which this novel precedes. Also, when Owen says he met someone online interested in cybersex, Ianto acts suddenly panicked.
Owen makes reference to Jack's constant flirting with Ianto, further elaborated on in the episodes They Keep Killing Suzie and End of Days.
This is one of three Torchwood stories to include cannibalism as the enemy's killing method of choice. One of the other stories is the novel Slow Decay by Andy Lane. The other story is the episode Countrycide where the inhabitants of a small village in the Brecon Beacons partake in a ritualistic killing and eating of humans. However, unlike the two novels, there is no supernatural reason for their actions.
Jack requests Toshiko to carry out a search for any patients in hospitals over the past three years who had a binary vascular system. This is a reference to the Doctor's alien organ system, and to Jack's ongoing search for the Doctor after they were separated. The Doctor had been noticed previously in hospital as having two hearts in Spearhead from Space and various other adventures. In the trailer for the 2007 series of Doctor Who, the first episode, Smith and Jones, appears to show the Doctor in a hospital bed.

[edit] Outside references

The game Owen plays, Second Reality, is startlingly similar to real world MMOG, Second Life, a game in which users generate their own content to share with the rest of the user base.
The song Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol is mentioned as playing from a tram in the game, Second Reality.
When asked whether his parents read a lot of Tolkien in relation to his in-game costume and character name, Owen responds that he always wanted to visit New Zealand (where The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was filmed), but only got as far as dressing how he did, "a hobbit he found hard to break."
In the Hub's Recreation Room, there is an Asteroids cabinet made by Atari along with several other retro arcade machines, a Bat out of Hell-themed pinball machine, and a game called Zombie Death that bears many similarities to the House of the Dead arcade series made by Sega.

[edit] Publication

The first edition of the novel was dedicated to Anne Summerfield whereas subsequent copies are dedicated to Craig Hinton, a Doctor Who spin-off writer who died on December 3, 2006.
Whilst the official release date for the three novels is 4 January 2007, many shops were selling the books up to a whole week early in December 2006.
An audio book version of the novel is to be released on CD in April 2007. It is to be narrated by John Barrowman and published by BBC Audiobooks.^[1]
According to Peter Anghelides, the novel order is as follows, Another Life, Slow Decay then Border Princes^[2], however the linking picture across the spines of the books seem to contradict this order.