The Conspiracy (audio story)

 was the first story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range by Big Finish Productions. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured John Barrowman as Jack Harkness.

It was the first Big Finish audio made with the company's expanded license to feature elements from the new series.

Publisher's summary
Captain Jack Harkness has always had his suspicions about the Committee. And now Wilson is also talking about the Committee. Apparently the world really is under the control of alien lizards. That's what Wilson says. People have died, disasters have been staged, the suspicious have disappeared.

It's outrageous.

Only Jack knows that Wilson is right. The Committee has arrived.

Plot
George Wilson, a news reporter who resurfaced as a conspiracy theorist after refusing on air to read what he believed was propaganda, has come to Jack's attention with his speeches about the Committee's control over Earth. Jack attends his sold-out show in Cardiff as a member of the press thanks to the Torchwood-funded Plexus Magazine and arranges an interview with him through his daughter, Kate Wilson, after which he is followed by Sam Hallett, a conspiracy theorist who recognised him at the show. Gwen calls him about a Weevil situation before he can approach Sam, however.

Asked by Kate only to avoid the topics of alcoholism and divorce, Jack interviews Wilson and uses what he pretends is a dictaphone to scan the hotel room for alien life, which it detects no trace of. Wilson explains how the Committee caused World War II to create the atom bomb, that they plan to wipe out humanity with economic collapse and overpopulation and denies that he is suffering psychological damage from his time as a journalist. Afterwards, Sam confronts Jack with photographs of him at the site of strange phenomena and knowledge of Torchwood, but Jack threatens him into leaving him alone by claiming he could send him to a Siberian zinc mine.

Jack gets a call from Sam, who has been kidnapped and taken to the construction site of SkyPoint to lure Jack there. Sam falls or is pushed from a ledge just before the police arrive and Jack runs away, finding that Sam had uploaded an unconvincing video in which he claimed that he intended to commit suicide. Enraged, he breaks into Wilson's hotel room to force him to divulge the name of the contact who told him about the Committee, but Wilson admits that he and Kate made everything up after his autobiography failed to sell. However, Jack knows that the Committee is real and that many of the Wilsons' facts were correct.

Jack hacks into the hotel's CCTV to remove any evidence of his being there and notices Kate drop her façade of sympathy as Wilson told her about their meeting just before she calls him and invites him back. She clips his spinal cord with a bullet when he arrives, revealing that she is part of the Committee and that they have seen through his deception on Kepri 5 where he told them that Earth was barren. By feeding truths to Wilson, who adopted her, she has ensured that the public will not believe in the Committee when they make their move because of him being discredited.

Kate kills Wilson and then Jack, intending on making Torchwood look responsible for the deaths of both Sam and Wilson. Jack wakes up alone and escapes before the police can arrive, leaving Cardiff and recording a message for his team telling them that he is going to stop the Committee. They are everywhere on Earth and he is coming for them.

Cast

 * Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
 * Wilson - John Sessions
 * Kate - Sarah Ovens
 * Sam - Dan Bottomley

Worldbuilding

 * During his time as a news reporter, Wilson reported on the continued U.S. bombing of Iraq.
 * Plexus is a conspiracy theory magazine founded by Torchwood, established in Patchogue, New York, 1975. Some of the articles focus on Mayan calendars, the Chupacabra, the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and contrails.
 * Sam Hallett hosts the blog and YouTube channel The Eye of Providence. Buzzsaw59 and "Pikachu the Barbarian" follow him on Instagram.
 * Wilson tells people that Paul McCartney was replaced between 1967 and 1970 and that the Committee is made of aliens from Erebus who want the hydrogen-3 on the Moon. He also says John F. Kennedy was assassinated by aliens and mentions the Zapruder footage. Another theory suggests that World War II was engineered by the Committee.
 * Sam has various pictures of Jack, including one of Jack during a poltergeist sighting the previous June and one in Penarth in November during the mermaid sightings featuring a brunette.
 * Jack gets a call from Gwen Cooper about Weevils in a lingerie department.
 * George Wilson jokes about going on the TV series I'm a Celebrity.
 * Wilson has written a book entitled The Great Conspiracy.
 * Wilson compares the Committee to what Hannah Arendt said about Adolf Eichmann: "the banality of evil".
 * Wilson refers to Saint Eustace and William Burroughs's book The Naked Lunch.
 * Sam compares Torchwood to Project MKUltra and the Bilderberg Group.
 * SkyPoint is under construction, and will be the tallest building in Cardiff.
 * Wilson does not have any contacts at the CIA, MI6, the SVR, Mossad, ISI, or BND.
 * Wilson refers to the conflicts in Biafra in 1968 and Ethiopia in 1984, suggesting that the history of conflict repeats itself.
 * Kate suggested "Varangians", 9th century Russian Vikings, as an alien name, as she thought that it sounded like something from Star Trek.
 * Kepri 5 in the constellation of Fornax and planets in Cygnus A, Omega Centauri, and Andromeda all fell to the Committee. Jack recalls visiting Fornax as it was being infiltrated, but avoids saying how he got there. It could have been when he was a Time Agent or during his travels with the Ninth Doctor.
 * Kate compares Wilson to The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Continuity

 * Jack visits SkyPoint. (PROSE: SkyPoint)
 * The Zapruder footage depicts the assassination of the U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy; TV: Rose; AUDIO: 1963: The Space Race)
 * Jack became trapped in Omega Centauri after pursuing the Committee. (AUDIO: Forgotten Lives)
 * Kate was later considered a suspect in the murder of her father. (AUDIO: Uncanny Valley)
 * A week later, Gwen Cooper visits a conspiracy theorist possessed by the Committee. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)