Torchwood 7.7 Among Us: Cuckoo

Written by Tim Foley.

Directed by Scott Handcock.

Cuckoo is the penultimate episode of Among Us 2 and has the return of Murray Melvin as Bilis Manger.

Sadly this is a posthumous release as Among Us 2 including Cuckoo was released on June 29 2023 over two months after Melvin had passed on April 14.

Ahead of listening to this episode I had read that it listed Ianto in it.

Did not give any thought about the possibility of Ianto being in the present day despite having died in Children of Earth but the possibility of him in a flashback did come to my mind.

As it turned out it was neither as it had Gareth-David Lloyd playing the hologram of Ianto instead.

This starts off with a group of urban explorers Vijay Meghani, Diana Lopez and Bryn Popkin going to and breaking into the abandoned Torchwood Hub.

In the lead-up to this break-in, I was taken aback when Roger Pugh was mentioned of having been the old boss to them. This is a callback to the character in More Than This.

With the way the conversation between these three characters was going I should not have been surprised that Cardiff Unknown and ScrapeJane gets brought up.

When they got into the Hub they found Bilis there and these three characters became doomed because of their encounter with Bilis in what is truly a horrifying experience for them.

Soon hologram Ianto turns up and recruits Vijay into Torchwood.

It also turned out that hologram Ianto is not like his human counterpart as he is just as ruthless as Bilis.

All this culminates in a conclusion that took a second listen of this episode for me to better understand.

Cuckoo plays out very well like a horror movie and it was patient wait to hear from Billis what the episode title means.

Definitely a brilliant way to sing Melvin's swansong as Bilis.

Enjoyable interviews afterwards which had Tim Foley jokingly receiving hate of bringing false hope to Ianto's return.

Prior to hologram Ianto, instead of real Ianto, in Cuckoo, Foley wrote Night Watch which gave indication of Ianto's return only for it to be Norton instead!

Melvin talked about having played villains in his career on stage and screen, the latter including first playing Billis in the first season.

Back in the season 1 finale End of Days, Bilis had stabbed Rhys but this interviews reveals that Melvin did not pretend to do that to Kai Owen.

Gareth David-Lloyd talked about playing hologram Ianto as well playing real Ianto in other Big Finish releases.

Vijay was played by Nathaniel Curtis and Curtis in this interview talked about playing this character.

Incidentally there is a similarly named Doctor Who audio story The Cuckoo which coincidentally came on December 7 2023, just over five months after Among Us 2 including the near Torchwood namesake was released.