Golden Age (audio story)

Golden Age was a radio play based on Torchwood. It was broadcast the week before the Children of Earth mini-series premiered.

Publisher summary
On the trail of a dangerous energy field, the members of Torchwood are led to Delhi. There they witness the simultaneous disappearance of hundreds of people, and Jack discovers that the field centres on an old colonial mansion — Torchwood India. Jack is shocked to find that Torchwood India is still going strong — he shut it down himself over 80 years ago. He's even more surprised to find that its members, including his old flame the Duchess, haven't aged a day. What is the secret of their eternal youth, and how is it linked to the deadly energy field? The team must find out — and they haven't a moment to lose, for all the time the field is expanding...

Plot
Jack, Gwen and Ianto follow energy spikes to Delhi and attempt to evacuate the area around a factory, but an energy field marks people nearby with an ion signature and makes them disappear. Jack is surprised to see the Royal Connaught Hotel, the base of Torchwood India, still standing and enters with Gwen and Ianto, introducing them to Eleanor, Duchess of Melrose, his former lover and leader of the Indian branch. Nobody at Torchwood India has aged since Jack closed them down in 1924, which the Duchess claims is due to residual radiation from the alien artefacts once stored there, but Jack is sceptical.

Gwen and Ianto are shown around by Mr Gissing and are chloroformed by Mr Das after learning that Mr Mahajan, the latest in his family to assist Torchwood India from outside the hotel, has purchased a transmitter from Silicon Valley. The Duchess kept a time store from being confiscated and has been using it to keep Torchwood India alive and unchanged for eighty years, but they are unable to leave the hotel and she tells Jack that she intends to spread the energy field around the Earth to restore 1924. The store requires an increasing amount of energy, however, so she has been killing thousands of citizens of Delhi in a process which Gwen and Ianto are subjected to.

The Duchess throws Jack and Mr Mahajan, whom she believes has no place in her Golden Age, to the energy wave, which has begun absorbing Gwen and Ianto's potential energy. Jack gets Mr Mahajan to send a signal to the transmitter from his mobile phone, shutting it down and leaving the time store with nothing to feed on but Torchwood India itself. The Duchess refuses to join the new world and remains inside with the rest of Torchwood India, bidding Jack farewell before he evacuates with Gwen, Ianto and Mr Mahajan. The Royal Connaught Hotel disappears and Jack, Gwen and Ianto return to Cardiff.

Cast

 * Jack - John Barrowman
 * Gwen - Eve Myles
 * Ianto - Gareth David-Lloyd
 * The Duchess - Jasmine Hyde
 * Mr Das - Amerjit Dew
 * Mahajan - Ravin J Ganatra
 * Gissing - Richard Mitchley

Worldbuilding

 * Mr Mahajan's son is called Alvin.

Download and CD release

 * The story, released on CD on 22 September 2009, was also made available for download from the AudioGo website.
 * Lost Souls, Asylum, Golden Age and The Dead Line were released, both individually, and together as a four-disc collected box set, entitled The Radio Adventures.

Continuity

 * The Duchess refers to Torchwood India collecting "the Yeti spheres of the Himalayas." (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
 * The Duchess refers to the partition of India in 1947. This period is explored in TV: Demons of the Punjab and PROSE: Ghosts of India.
 * The Duchess states "the 20th century was when everything changed," a take on Jack's opening narration, "the 21st century is when everything changes," only considering the past instead of the present and future. Similarly, Alex Hopkins told Jack the 21st century is the moment everything changes. (TV: Fragments)
 * Winston Churchill is mentioned as partly to blame for the fall of India's golden age by the Duchess, which leads her to target him as a threat to eliminate when she pushes the world back through time. Churchill would later appear and prove his dubious nature in TV: Victory of the Daleks.