Department X (audio story)

Department X was the fifth release of the BBC Torchwood audio stories.

Publisher's summary
G.R. Owen is the last of Cardiff's old department stores. Times are hard and the ancient firm has gone into administration. But who are the Administrators? What goes on behind the shutters at night? And why are customers disappearing? Torchwood are already investigating.

G.R. Owen is the site of their oldest unsolved cases, and Jack is determined to solve it before the store closes forever — which is why Ianto is working undercover in gentlemen's fashions and Gwen is in handbags.

Are the new managers really aliens? What connection do they have to the mysterious G.R. Owen himself? And is Jack the only one looking for the Department of Curiosities, last seen in 1905?

Plot
Jack has Gwen and Ianto go undercover at G.R. Owen's, a department store which has been bought out by Firestone Finance, for reasons that he does not elucidate beyond saying that he has a history with the building and that it holds the key to an unsolved mystery. A week later, Mr Absalom and Miss Valentine of Firestone begin interviewing the employees and Jack looks around the building, confirming Ianto's report of human blood that somebody had attempted to clean up with bleach and falling to his death down a lift shaft. Gwen informs Jack, once he has returned to life, that Lily turned into a zombie after her interview and that Ianto is next.

Entranced by Miss Valentine, Ianto talks to her and Mr Absalom about how something is wrong with the building until the blood-soaked Jack interrupts, claiming to be from Health and Safety and in need of Ianto's assistance. Miss Valentine, however, has already discovered that they are Torchwood. Jack tells Ianto about the Department of Curiosities, part of the shop which vanished with G.R. Owen in 1910, making only occasional reappearances since, and which Torchwood have unsuccessfully attempted to investigate over the years. A low-level psychic field temporarily makes all of the staff stop and Ianto learns from the drunken manager Mr Pryce that there is something in the basement. He and Jack go to look into it, but light bulbs and electrical equipment spontaneously explode around Jack and he is crushed by a chandelier.

Gwen finds freezers in the basement, one of which contains a bloodless corpse with a missing leg, and is held at gunpoint by Miss Valentine, who reveals that she is telepathic and forces her to enter a freezer from which Jack manages to save her. Thanks to the Torchwood computer and Google, they learn that Firestone Finance is fictional and confront Miss Valentine; she tells them that she is looking for the Department of Curiosities and that Ianto is there, but they refuse to help her find it and Mr Absalom attacks them, killing Jack. Mr Absalom explains that he and Miss Valentine belong to Firestone, a group founded in 1930s London to make a profit from alien artefacts, and they pass through a dimension gate.

Jack and Gwen follow Mr Absalom and Miss Valentine into the Department of Curiosities where Ianto has met Gareth Robert Owen, a former associate of Torchwood and founder of the shop who made a deal with an alien parasite to protect one another. In truth, it is the alien that Torchwood and Firestone have been trying to recover. Gareth is shocked to learn that the alien has been being fed human customers by Mr Pryce and the employees and it moves into Mr Absalom. Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Miss Valentine and Gareth escape through the dimension gate, which Jack closes behind them to seal Mr Absalom and the parasite away.

On a Saturday, Gwen and Rhys go shopping and see Jack and Ianto standing outside of G. R. Owen's, now under Gareth's management once more and with its old staff being kept on.

Characters

 * Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Ianto Jones
 * Rhys Williams
 * Gloria
 * Richard Pryce
 * Mavis Williams
 * Martin Absalom
 * Miss Valentine
 * Mary Drinkwater
 * Lily
 * Ted
 * Gareth Robert Owen

Worldbuilding

 * Jack references the title of the long-running Britcom Are You Being Served?
 * Ianto mentions pop singer Lady Gaga's fashion sense.
 * Woolworths and Borders are mentioned as companies that have closed.
 * Pound Paradise was a shop which rose and fell in Cardiff.
 * Mary Drinkwater has worked in the kitchens for thirty-two years since leaving school.
 * Heavenly Bliss is a perfume.
 * Lily tells Gwen that Jack is a DILF.
 * Rhys mentions that there are always jobs going at Lidl.
 * Gwen guiltily found the suffocation of a blowfish, trying to rehydrate in a toilet bowl, quite funny. She told Rhys that she'd seen so much death, she felt somewhat accustomed to it.
 * Several boys from Barry died of priapism after finding a green creature which granted their every wish. Their penises grew to three foot.
 * Upon leaving the job, Mavis stole a stapler.
 * Phyllis is Gwen's miserable aunt.
 * Miss Valentine mimics the buzzer from Family Fortunes.
 * Firestone Finance has been using banking and administration to mask their true intentions since the 1930s, acquiring alien technology for their own enrichment.
 * Jack suggests that Firestone was founded by Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.
 * Firestone uses a Dimension Gate to enter the Department of Curiosities. Jack mentions that if the walls between the two dimensions weren't already so thin, it would normally have taken them hours.
 * Miss Valentine is a telepath.

Continuity

 * Sinister goings on in a department store also occurred in TV: Rose and TV: Closing Time.
 * Jack survives a barrage of bullets. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
 * Jack pretends to be dead on the floor and then opens an eye. (TV: Journey's End)
 * Gareth was once, like Jack, a freelance investigator for Torchwood. (TV: Fragments)
 * Gareth stole something from Torchwood before he left. Other members of Torchwood have also procured other objects. (TV: Everything Changes)