Review: Torchwood 1.12-13: Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Twelve - Captain Jack Harkness

Our long and bountiful quest has brought us to the Series Finale. Like the real-life broadcast, I'm reviewing these two episodes together, begining with the first half, Captain Jack Harkness. It has a few issues with pacing, but the episode pulls out the big guns and is mainly a character piece looking at the history of the show's main character, Jack Harkness. In some ways it was also an Owen vehicle, but all of the characters (bar Gwen, who's been through quite enough alreasy got a splattering of character development as we gear up for the final episode.
     When investigating an old dancehall, Jack and Tosh are swept up by the rift and end up in 1941 at a party to celebrate the soldiers going back to war. The Dancehall is run by a strange-looking man called Billis Manger, who appears to Gwen when she follows up their disappearance in 2006. Jack becomes friends with an American Captain called Captain Jack Harkness. He later reveals to Tosh that when he was in WWII the first time (as a time-travelling conman} he stole WWII Jack's name as an alias,
     Owen, who's still hung up on Dianne, uses their disappearance into the past as an excuse to open the rift, much to Ianto's chagrin. The two argue and fight. As Tosh attempts to send the equations for the Rift Machine through time (being hindered by Billis along the way}, Gwen and Owen search the Dancehall to find them as well as a piece of the rift machine that appears to be missing. Eventually they have a complete Rift Manipulator and nearly all of the equations, minus three important figures.

     In WWII, the two Jacks bond because TW!Jack knows that this is the last day of WWII!Jack's life. Despite all of the encoragement he gives to make sure that WWIIJack enjoys his last night with his girlfriend, it's revealed that she's simply a beard. When the rift opens and Jack and Tosh have to return to the future, they share a passionate kiss.
     Seeing as not much actually happens in CJH, its writing depends more on its ideas and its characters than anything else. Over all other things, the characters are real human beings and unlike in the first half of the series there aren't any particularly huge problems. The original Captain Jack, played by Hollywood bit-actor Matt Rippy, is a great character and is a great example of a gay man in the 1940's. Billis is an intriguing villain almost immediately, his anachronistic nature presented in an incredibly subtle way.
     On its own, CJH is a bit of a non-entity. It falls into that dangerous trap that a lot of penultimate episodes do in that it uses the finale as its climax, and thus the rest of the story suffers as a result. But regardless of that, CJH is an excellent character piece filled with passion and human drama as well as a sci-fi idea that the show doesn't often touch upon.

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Thirteen - End of Days

The End of Days, and the end of the series. It's been a turbulent ride, but this last half has been really good by my standards and the hopes for the finale are high. A good finale should not only be an imaginative and conclusive adventure, but also should be a summary of the series' themes and should leave us wanting more. Oh dear. Everytime I say things like this I'm horrifically disappointed.
     After Owen fucked up the rift, the world has turned upside down overnight. Aliens are floating over the Taj Mahal, a hospital in Cardiff has The Plague and there are Roman soldiers in London. The team (sans immortal Jack}all receive visions of their loved ones (Toshiko sees her mother; Ianto sees Lisa; Owen sees Dianne and then Gwen sees a vision of a dead Rhys, who then dies}. Eventually the teams' hangups overrule Jack and they open the rift, which sends everyone home and resets time but also releases a 10ft demon named Abbadon that kills everyone in his shadow.
     Taking it remarkably well, Jack goes up to the demon and uses his immortality to over-face him, killing both of them. Jack remains dead for days, but after a kiss from Gwen he returns to life and everyone is forgiven. He then wanders into Season 29 of Doctor Who.

Jack has gone!

     My main problem with End of Days is that it's so uneventful. It's really slow-paced and the time-reset element means that little has changed at the end of it. In fact, upon one's second rewatch Billis is absolutely right - bearing in mind that he knows that Jack is immortal, he's right in saying that opening the rift would solve all of their problems. There's no threat at all, because apart from Abbadon, which is easy to fix in this context, everything that went wrong because of the first opening was fixed. Why this works I don't know, and it'll probably never be explained. Abbadon and Billis Manger's scheme is just silly, and while I thought it was scary on my first viewing (as a ten-year-old}it just looks ridiculous now.
     And so, despite how great the episodes leading up to this were, I'm still disappointed with End of Days. It relied on the character drama that this half of the series had set up, but the follow-through wasn't done well and the whole thing collapsed. The villains, while creepy, are ineffective and the ending teasing the third series of its parent program felt like of a bit of a cop-out. Sorry, Torchwood.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.11: Combat

Janet the Weevil.

The first two series of Doctor Who featured more side-characters than ever before, really examining the companion's home life like the Classic Series never did. One of these side-characters was the companion's hen-pecked boyfriend, Mickey Smith, played by Noel Clarke. Clarke, prior to and the since the role, has always been known better as a writer, his most notable works including the gang-culture film Kidulthood and its sequel Adulthood. Here Clarke gets a go at writing for the Whoniverse, and the results are nothing less than astounding.
    Like the string of brilliant episodes we've had since the series turned over into its second half, the script relies very much on human emotions and beliefs to power the story instead of focussing soley on an alien concept. Combat is about escapism and the consequences of a nihilistic viewpoint - one that Torchwood holds dear to its heart. What makes it so powerful is that the characters, while obviously having an eccentric lifestyle, all have motives firmly identifiable to the average Joe - something that Clarke, having written "real life dramas" is no stranger to.
     Jack interupts one of Gwen's dates with Rhys, prompting an angry reaction from her long-suffering partner. They chase down a Weevil that's running loose on the streets of Cardiff, and are shocked when it's thrown into the back of a van by some masked men. They follow a trail back to a warehouse, where they find the Weevil-bitten body of a young man. Owen, who's been drowning his sorrows after Dianne's departure, reluctantly arrives into work to act undercover as Owen Harper, Jellied Eels Salesman, to find out about the main suspect behind the murder, Mark Lynch. Owen and Lynch discover they've much more in common than the former would like to admit, and Owen is sucked in by his distinctly nihilistic philosophy.

Lynch talks to Owen.

     With the knowledge that they've obtained from the still-undercover Owen, Jack, Tosh and Ianto use their pet Weevil, Janet, as bait to track them down to where they're being kept. At home, Gwen is having real issues with her relationship. She drugs Rhys with Retcon and then reveals all about her affair with Owen, begging for forgiveness in a scene that eerily echoes what Suzie did to Max back in They Keep Killing Suzie. She returns to the Hub after he falls unconscious, and the scene where she cries over her transformation since joining Torchwood is excellently acted by Eve Myles (it had to be, considering it's one of the rare scenes in Torchwood without any dialogue whatsoever}. However, her presence at the Hub allows her to catch a postcode texted to the dead man, allowing the rest of the team (sans Owen, who's already there with Lynch} to find the Weevils.
     Owen discovers that Lynch has been running a sort of fight club - competitors pay £1000 to enter a cage with a Weevil, and the one who can stay in there the longest gets the full share of the cash. Now that Lynch knows that Owen is in Torchwood, he puts him in the cage as a means to get rid of him. To Lynch's surprise, Owen, having more reason to accept his nihilistic philosophies after the only woman he ever loved flew off into oblivion, is unafraid of the Weevil. As Owen is being mauled, the rest of the team (sans Gwen, who's still moping} barge in and stop everything. Now that he's no reason to live, Lynch faces a Weevil himself. Later, once Owen recovers, he hisses at the Weevils in the Hub's cells and they back away in fear.
     I've said before that I like Burn Gorman's portrayal of the very complex Owen Harper, and this episode allows him to show yet another side of the character. Here the emphasis is on the character's underlying rage with the world at large, something that previously has only manifested as a sardonic wit. Like his previous centric-story, Ghost Machine, Combat is also an important point for Gwen Cooper. Her character arc is very well realised, and the comparisons with Suzie as made in her episode come back to haunt us. It feels very much like a Greek tragedy; she has become what she had always opposed. For once, the rest of the cast had something to do as well. Ianto actually left the Hub for once, and Toshiko managed to show a shred of personality.

Gwen regrets her journey.

     When it comes down to it, I love Combat because it got it all right. Apart from one scene at the end that was a little silly in its execution, I can't name any particular faults with this episode that can't be aimed at the series itself. The sets are gorgeous and fit the tone episode perfectly. Most importantly though, the script portrays a human drama that let me empathise with both my favourite character and my least favourite, while extending on and codifying ideas from previous episodes. Combat is the perfect way to lead into the finale and one of the best character pieces in Series One.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.10: Out of Time

Fred, Dianne and Emma-Louise enter a supermarket.

As the finale to our story creeps up on us, Out of Time presents something of an enigma. Instead of one story, it instead splits into three stories looking at one member of the Torchwood team and a guest character (again leaving Tosh and Ianto in the lurch}. While this allows for some nice variation, it also means that some areas of the episodes are very different to the others in quite ominous ways. At times Out of Time is a drama, a tragedy and a comedy, and because the three stories are interspliced it has a jarring feel to it.
     Three people from the 1950s fly through the rift and are intercepted by Torchwood. Pilot Diane Holmes (Louise Delamare}, merchant Fred Ellis (Mark Lewis Jones} and Emma-Louise Cowell (a pre-Candleford Olivia Hallinin} are forced to adjust to the world of 2006 - they look for living relatives (and find none}, live in a hostel and are generally astounded by everyone around them.
       The weakest of the three subplots was the one that I suppose you could call a comedy - Emma Louise, as an 18-year-old used to living in a sexually repressed society, is taken in by Gwen when it transpires that her parents are long since dead. She adapts, talking to girls of her own age. Later, she goes out to night-clubs and Gwen has to give her the "talk" to reassure her about modern attitudes towards sexuality. Eventually she is forced to leave Cardiff for London, not only for a job but to make sure that Rhys doesn't become any more suspicious about Torchwood.

Fred's son has Alzheimers.

       Fred Ellis' storyline should have been the most poignant of the three, but it fell short of the mark because of his unsympathetic 50s steretype character. Desperate to find his son, Fred's repressive attitude singles him out from the other three almost immediately, and Jack was the one whom he felt the most in common. When the team finds his son, he discovers that he has Alzheimers and doesn't remember who Fred is. That night, he steals Ianto's car and, after Jack fails to convince him otherwise, he commits suicide by breathing in carbon monoxide.
       The main subplot was arguably the love affair between pilot Dianne and Owen. They begin flirting almost immediately, and then they have a close, sexual relationship. Owen finds himself buying her a dress and not being able to think of anything else. On their last night together he tells her how scared he is, because just after a week he finds that Dianne is the only woman he has ever loved. She eventually flies away, trying to find the rift once again and either return home or find somewhere new.
       One thing that made Fred and Dianne's stories gel was that Jack and Owen (respecively} have such great chemistry with them. It makes sense for Gwen, the most human of the team, to take in the girl most likely to adapt to the period,but here it really didn't work and for periods her side of the story felt more like Being Human-era cringe comedy. It was trying to be serious, with casual mentions of how her parents are dead and she loved them very much, but there's nothing to empathise with in her character at all. Fred's story is about watching the people you love die, and Dianne's is about not spending your life doing the same thing. Emma's "try new things Aesop" feels more like it should belong in a Sainsburies ad. than an episode of Torchwood.

"I'm scared." "I love you too."

     I have to commend the stunning performances from Delamere and Jones, whose portrayals only strengthened their storylines. I feel sorry and frustrated about Gwen in this episode - after such a great episode previously, this week we head towards the series finale as her relationship with Owen finally ends. She's left with Emma-Louise's storyline to work with, and that really isn't very interesting. At least the development for Owen and Jack was very well executed and actually had a bearing on the plot.
     So while Out Of Time's emotional triptych was a novel idea, it only two-thirds worked, and in a 45 minute episode that's still a lot of wrong. The episode simply tried to do too much with its premise, and instead of giving us a mature examination of life, love and death it fell back on the old comedy, "fish out of water" staples in places where such things weren't required. It's a great watch in the majority of places but it's a shame that the comedy is there in the first place.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.9: Random Shoes

The Dogon Sixth Eye

The second series of Doctor Who saw the advent of a type of episode called Doctor-lite (or Companion-Lite, if needs be}. A means of making production easier, Lite episodes featured very little screentime from the main cast while more emphasis was put on those left behind (be that The Doctor, his companion or a guest star}. The first one, Love and Monsters, didn't get off to a great start, but all of the Lite episodes after that are some of NuWho's classics. Random Shoes feels like an attempt at a Torchwood version of a Lite episode, and this produces some interesting results.
        The episode follows the ghost of a suspiciously not-Welsh man called Eugene Jones as he follows his idols, Torchwood, in their investigation into his own death. He starts with a flashback to a school maths competition, where he not only lost the respect of his classmates but also of his father (a bit of a cock then, really.}After this his science teacher showed him an alien eye that had fallen from the sky one day, andever since Eugene had been obsessed with aliens.That night his dad left. Again. A bit of a cock.
       As an adult he kept following Torchwood, but the only person who showed him any interest was Gwen. They kept ignoring him - until he died, that is. After they empty Eugene's house of alien artefacts, it becomes clear that Gwen is the only one that gives a damn about the case. She goes off on her own, visiting the cafe where Eugene frequented and returning his DVDs back to the shop. As Eugene follows Gwen, he appears to have some form of suggestion over her - telling her to "ring Gary" and such. She visits his place of work, a call centre. They meet Gary, who's shifty. She arranges a chat with one of his colleagues, Linda, who describes how Eugene claimed that he would raise enough money to send her to Australia by selling his alien eye. In the end the bidding came to £15005.05.

Gwen and Eugene on a journey.

       Eugene's Mum shows Gwen the video of the maths quiz with his Dad's commentary, explaining the eye. They find that Eugene wanted to go because he found his Dad was, instead of working in America, a cashier at a garage down the road. Gwen can now hear Eugene clearly. Back at the Hub, and Jack explains to Gwen that the eye is probably a Dogon Sixth Eye - a spare that allowed the five-eyed Dogons to look into their past. He gives her the weekend to get the eye, and so she goes with Eugene to a science fair that they were planning to visit. Gary, it turns out, inflated the price of the bids to help Eugene's confidence, but stopped when Eugene started to think it was the alien. Eventually, on the day he died, Eugene went to meet with the alien after getting an e-mail.
     Gwen can now feel Eugene to the touch, but can't see him. They trace his last destination to a Happy Cook (a parody of Little Chef, I imagine} on the A4. Eugene remembers that he met his mates in the café, who told him about their deception. They planned to take it off Eugene for 30 quid and then exploit the online interest for it. In the end, to save it, Eugene swallowed the eye. Escaping, he ran out into the road - leading to his death. Gwen rings Eugene's dad and the episode segues into his funeral. He realises his mistakes - and forgives his father. She retrieves the eye from the coroner, and outside his old house she bades him farewell. With everyone gathered together, they watch as a now physical Eugene saves Gwen from being killed. He appears and says godbye to everyone, before rising into the sky in a haze of white light.

Hi.

     While Marc Warren's narration in Doctor Who's Love And Monsters felt like an example of how not to make a Lite episode, the similar approach here actually worked because instead of being a silly, "let's chase an alien" plot, it worked as a real human drama about deception and its consequences. Paul Chequer's Eugene is as real and as quirky as the script demands and at the end he has a lot of chemistry with Gwen - a decent acheivement for someone he's only had 40 minutes of screentime with.
    It doesn't gel with the series' mentality at all, but this is still an outstanding piece of television in the regard that it manages to take a brand new character and make the audience emotionally connect with him. I even forgave his father - and a script that can make me forgive someone who left home because his son failed a maths test is a good one at any rate. I've been comparing it to Love and Monsters, and maybe I really shouldn't because the only person really missing for the majority of it is Jack, but if Torchwood was aiming for a more mature take on the Doctor Who universe, then this is the perfect example of when that premise is working perfectly.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.8: They Keep Killing Suzie

The undead Suzie Costello

The pilot's villain, Suzie Costello (Idira Varma), was very visible in publicity of the series before the show aired, mainly to preserve the pilot's surprise ending. What it did was create an intriguing character whose appearance felt a little wasted, and in this episode, heralding the start of the series' second half, the writers have given us an entirely new look at the character. Unlike the first half of this series, where great ideas and concepts were let down by poor execution, They Keep Killing Suzie is an excellent sci-fi crime drama with a terrible background. Seeing as there was really nothing new to this episode's roster of ideas, it had to rely on Suzie's gameplan - which, as is turned out, was messy and unbelievable.
      Torchwood investigate a spate of killings committed in their name, mainly with the company name written in the victims' blood. DNA tests reveal that the killer had Retcon, the team's go-to amnesia drug, in his system. Determined to discover who the killer is, Gwen suggests using the Ressurection Gauntlet from the pilot to interrogate the victims. She is the only one capable of using it, and thus finds out about a philosophy group called Pilgrim - a society absent from any records. One of the victims mentions that the killer is called Max, and that he was close to another woman - named Suzie.
     The team are skeptical but after searching through her belongings (kept in a Torchwood warehouse) they decide to ressurrect Suzie. As the Gauntlet alone won't work, they stab her corpse with the Life Knife, the weapon used by Suzie to test out the glove that has a connection to its function. It works but Suzie doesn't die as subjects of the Gauntlet usually do, and is thus interrogated by Jack. She reveals that Max is psychotic because she kept him as her companion and thus drugged him with Retcon every day for two years. Using Suzie's help the team bring Max in, and Owen finds that Max reacts to nothing except the word Torchwood, which sends him into a blinding rage for exactly ten seconds.

"Someone wants your attention."

      Gwen bonds with Suzie when she realises that she is a near-perfect replacement for her role in the group. Just as the rest of the team discover the reason for Suzie's longevity - she is draining life off of Gwen - she takes Suzie to see her father in hospital. They chat on the way to the hospital, with Suzie calling immortal Jack a hypocrite and revealing that there is no afterlife. Back at the base, and the base has shut down completely - because, as the team works out, of a command Suzie installed when she was alive to shut down when a certain poem was read - a poem being recited by Max.
      Here is my point of contention with this story. Suzie was, before her death, both lonely and obsessed with the Ressurection Gauntlet. Her lust for life would be understandable after her death, but this contingency plan for immortality seems a little silly for someone without any intention of dying at all. How could she know that Gwen Cooper would join Torchwood? Or that the person who did join Torchwood in her absence would have the required empathy to operate the glove? Also, I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me that a weapons/computer specialist like Suzie wouldn't be able to brainwash someone so much that they execute instructions in specific periods of time.
       They call their Police Liason Detective Swanson, who told them about the murders, and after some ritual humiliation she relents and helps the team to escape. To this end they work out that the code to escape the base is the ISBN of the book of Emily Dickinson poems Suzie was using. At the hospital, Gwen starts to feel the full effects of Suzie's gunshot wound as Suzie becomes able to walk once more. They finally meet the two at a pier, where Suzie is now immortal - until, that is, Tosh destroys the Gauntlet, which severs the link and kills Suzie once and for all.

"You're getting shot in the head."

       They Keep Killing Suzie is the first episode of the series to actually fit the premise of a sci-fi crime drama. The murder investigation, while being a lot closer-to-earth, was actually a very interesting turn of events and Suzie's return was well handled. I've never really seen the character as a good villain because of the fact that she doesn't do anything obviously villanous in this episode other than smile evilly at things that she's done beforehand. Her ideology is supposed to be the most frightening thing about her, but I really don't see why, as a fear of death doesn't really shout "madwoman" from where I'm standing.
       As the beginning of the first series' second half, They Keep Killing Suzie sets us up for the much more mature stories that abound as we get closer to the series finale. Its direction and its more crime-oriented tone allowed a more potent emphasis on character that brought to life (both literally and metaphorically) an underused character. I want to hate it because of its reality-stretching premise, but I have to admire the skill in its construction and Indira Varma's excellent performance. Interesting stuff.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.7: Greeks Bearing Gifts

Tosh doesn't like the mind-reading Pendant.

This episode was written by a man who I've always relied upon to produce good television in a variety of forms. He is the main writer and conceiver of the excellent Being Human, as well as the writer of two very good episodes of the modern Doctor Who. Here, however, his style doesn't seem to translate, and the issues surrounding this mistranslation are hampered further by poor direction and Daniela Denby-Ashe's miscasting seals the terrible, terrible deal.
     Daniela Denby-Ashe (rightfully stereotyped as Janey from My Family - eleven years is too long)
plays Mary, a strange woman who, after appearing to be shot in 1812, appears at the site of a Torchwood investigation and starts to seduce Toshiko. To this end she presents Tosh with a pendant that gives her telepathy, much to her distress. Using this pendant Tosh hears about the rest of the team's thoughts - Gwen and Owen's affair, Ianto's self-pitying dark mumbles and the dead emptyness of Jack's mind that comes from immortality. She also, in between arguing and bonking Mary, discovers the depravity inherant in human nature and actually saves the lives of a family about to be murdered based on the killer's single-minded thoughts.
     Mary, however, reveals herself as an alien (from a race that Sarah Jane Adventures would later call the Arcateens). She wants to get the tech that the team recovered from the site. A shaken Tosh lets her right on into the Hub, where she's eventually tricked into using the item, a transporter, which teleports her into the centre of the sun.
    We waited seven episodes for this first Tosh-centric episode and it's such a shame that it wasn't given the justice it deserved. Aside from a plot that relies on one woman's idiocy, (Just TELL TORCHWOOD like you said you were going to! This is clearly causing you distress, and there is a clear and open option avaliable!) the episode is reserved not for the examination of Tosh but for the other characters. I mean, sure, she cries a lot, and has an irritating monologue at the beginning, but like a few other centric episodes (Cyberwoman comes to mind) this side of her character is never seen before or since. Whithouse's gift for witty dialogue made some of the mind-reading bearable but it often went too far, stretching to the point where everyone on the street was on some sort of register.

Mary reveals her true form.

     Also, I thought the point of a centric episode was to make it easier for the audience to empathise with the character in question. Here Tosh, who had previously been shown to be a shy but proud computer nerd, became a whimpering, anal slacker. Of course she is reacting to Gwen and Owen playing football in her area, which is understandable. The amount of sports this group plays near all of the alien artefacts, you'd think they thought it was a youth club. I really didn't like her personality here for a variety of reasons, and that's pretty much mission failure.
     But, hey! The concept of Mary and the pendant are what's really important here, at least as far as I can tell. Toby Whithouse does specialise in great fantasy concepts, and I think that here he focussed on that a little more than the overall characterisations. The idea of the Arcateens is great - a societal system run by telepaths where abstract concepts and ideas are their method of communication. What let it down by a massive margin was Danby-Ashe's performance. It isn't necessarily that she's a bad actress, it's just that she is fundamentally wrong for the part. This character is supposed to have seduced the normally heterosexual Toshiko into bonking her, and yet she appears less sincere than a Coallition politician. (Agenda, you say? What agenda?) In fact, the only reason she seems to be here is so that we can have a full compliment of bisexuals in the cast.
     I haven't really commented on direction in my previous reviews, mainly because it doesn't get in the way of things. Here the direction is filled with fast-forwards, which make the whole ordeal feel like they filmed a two-hour long episode and needed to fit it in. This potent epilepsy-hazard style is just really unpleasant to watch and adds next to nothing to the episode. Case in point: There's one scene after Tosh bonks Mary where she's sat in a bed looking mopey. That's alright. Then there's a whoosh and the camera zooms out incredibly quickly to reveal... more of the bed.

Mary stalks Tosh

     I wasn't looking forwards to reviewing this episode because unlike the other stories in this series that are wrong in certain areas and great in others, Greeks Bearing Gifts is more of a decent show that's been skewed into something ugly. With Toby Whithouse at the helm this episode had great potential but it didn't deliver, and that's a real blow for me.

Thanks.

(The next review will be more Torchwood, but this time Miracle Day's "Middle Man".)

Review: Torchwood 1.6: Countrycide

The team go camping.

Chris Chibnall is this series' main writer and so far has written every even-numbered episode. All of them share their ambition and all of them have decent sci-fi ideas at their core, but bad dialogue decisions and poor execution have meant that Countrycide is the only once that comes close to reaching its own image. His on-and-off authorship is a smart move on the part of the production team but it does mean that this episode skips over the events of Small Worlds and follows straight on from Cyberwoman. Not a good accolade early on. Countrycide by itself is probably one of the most gruesome episodes of this series, a horror appealing to dark fears about human nature.
      The team head to the middle of the Brecon Beacons, with only one town in a 30 mile radius. They're investigating a spate of 17 disappearances from this one spot, and the team are making sure that aliens aren't involved. They set up camp, and there's a lot of bantering about kissing, noticeably covering Gwen and Owen's snog and the death of Lisa. When Gwen discovers a corpse stripped of all meat and internal organs in the forest, the team is distracted long enough for the strange killers to escape with the SUV.
     Following the SUV's tracking signal, they arrive at the small village of Brynblaidd, where Tosh and Ianto investigate the SUV while Jack, Gwen and Owen look inside a pub. There's nothing there, and so they go next door, where a frightened young boy shoots Gwen, mistaking her for "them." Tosh and Ianto are kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon room with fridges full of human meat. As Owen treats Gwen, Jack finds another person who seems to know something.

Ianto finds some Human meat.

     A creepy old woman comes into Tosh and Ianto's room shaking, telling them that she needs to take them to "them". When they arrive at a butchers' kitchen full of human meat, the true enemies reveal themselves - the villagers of Brynblaidd have a "harvest" every ten years, where they kidnapp and canibalise anyone coming through the area. In a rescue attempt Gwen and Owen get captured as well, but Jack saves the day by storming the place and shooting the villagers in the foot. When Gwen, who's pretty freaked out by the whole caniballism thing, asks the leader of the village why they do this "Harvest," he says only that it makes him happy. At the end of the episode there's a Gwen monologue as it's revealed that she and Owen are bonking.
     While there's certainly something deeply unsettling over seeing (what appears to be) human meat and human carcasses, the mainly scary aspects of this episode were all in the subtext - firstly in the "unseen enemy" that stalked our characters and then in the savagery that Human beings could commit. With the number of atrocities commited in the last 100 years alone, it's not that difficult to image something like this happening and no-one batting an eyelid. For once Chibnall's imagery isn't too heavy handed, as with this level of idea he doesn't need that to get his point across.
     On the character side of things we finally got some development for Toshiko, ready for her Centric episode next time. She's been one of the most potentially interesting characters and yet we only know about her now. Strangely enough, her character is the oldest there, having starred in Doctor Who before Jack. (Eve Myles was in Doctor Who before her but that's hardly the point here.) Gwen and Owen got some lesser development as well, with Gwen getting more used to her new career and giving in to Owen's temptation.

Our enemy doesn't just look human...

     There were of course some of Chibnall's more problematic features. Dialogue like, "When was the last time you came so hard you forgot where you were?" doesn't exactly fill one with a sense of confidence about this episode's quality. The villians were certainly a comment on human nature but despite how horrific humans can be, their motivations felt a little empty. "It made me happy" was chilling but ultimately silly. Typical, then, of Chibnall's episodes.
    Most of all, I'm just disappointed by Countrycide. Like its author's previous stories for Torchwood, the story is based on a brilliant sci-fi idea but doesn't execute it with any of the necessary skill. This time came near to acheiving the blackened image of humanity that it's clearly trying to portray, and at times it is genuinely scary, but once one knows that humans are involved the only horror comes from one's own beliefs about morality and the potential of mankind for evil. So close, yet so far.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.5: Small Worlds

Jasmine laughs as the Fairies frighten her bullies.

Torchwood Series One is, over all other things, inconsistant in quality. After the silliness of Day One came the serious sci-fi of Ghost Machine, and now to follow the farce that was Cyberwoman we're given Small Worlds, a chilling episode that focuses on a mix of ancient myth and real adult fears about the world. It also deepened Jack's character some more, which is always welcome, yet again leaving Tosh in the lurk. What strikes one most about Small Worlds is its relative maturity and quality in comparison to the rest of the series so far, with Peter J Hammond's (who also wrote one of the best stories of the following series) script on shining form.
     The episode follows Jack's investigation into the Fairies - a group of timeless, time-travelling creatures with almost omnipotent powers. They disguise themselves as the fairies of legend and choose little girls to "take" and turn into them. The sightings are first made by Jack's now-aged wartime-girlfriend Estelle Cole, which frightens Jack who has experience with the Fairies from an incedent in 1909. Meanwhile, a peadophile stalks a little girl, Jasmine Pearce, and finds himself being chased by the fairies until they kill him in his sleep by suffocating him with rose petals.
     As the Fairies are invisible to any trackers, the team has to rely upon strange weather patterns. They investigate the death of the peadophile and Jack surmises that the Fairies are back and protecting their chosen one. Jasmine returns home to her worrying mother and her evil stepdad Roy, who makes fun of her for having few friends and always wandering into the forests behind the house. Estelle meanwhile gets a little too close, and the Fairies come and drown her with an incredibly localised storm. Jack mourns her, but moves on when Gwen returns home to discover the place trashed by the Fairies.

Estelle photos Fairies.

     The next day Jasmine is bullied by two other girls and the Fairies intervene with a sudden storm. Torchwood arrive for the aftermath and find out about Jasmine, who's come home to her parents' five-year anniversary party. Roy, who's been a bit of a cock in boarding up the back fence and slapping Jasmine across the face, riles up the Fairies as the Torchwood team arrive. They kill him and open up a path back into the forest as Jasmine wanders off with Jack and Gwen following. Initially Jack is reluctant, but when the girl threatens to destroy the earth (as there are more Chosen Ones in the past) he is forced to let her become one of them.
    The episode's themes are particularly more adult than the previous episode as well as being perfectly executed. The theme of cherishing youth expanded not only over Jasmine's storyline but also in Estelle and Jack's relationship, with the episode eventually leaving the viewer to ask the question as to whether Jasmine, who is by this point a complete social outcast, is better for being with the Fairies, her only friends. Jack, in a way, must envy her new existence as his immortality leaves him alone for billions of years, destined to watch all of his friends (like Estelle) die around him.
     So steeped in mythology, metaphor and meaning this episode is that it's hard to view it when coming off the back of an episode like Cyberwoman. John Barrowman is certainly one of the key parts in this endeavour, his acting experience paying off as his silent gireving was much more poignant and meaningful than any of Ianto's sobbing. This episode's morose moments actually stemmed from real, "adult," fears - a double whammy of the fear of death and the fear of losing one's children - things much easier to empathise with than having one's girlfriend turn into a cybernetic killing machine. The only downpoint is the rather obvious CGI for the the Fairies, but that doesn't dampen their impact.   

The (obviously CGI) Fairies attack Roy.

    Really what Small Worlds does, in the wake of the previous episode, is give an example of how these things should be done. It's a shockwave of potent imagery and emotion, with excellent acting from the leads and a chilling portrayl of an outcast little girl. It's fundamentally well made, and that can't be said for a lot of episodes in this series. Small Worlds is simply a treat to behold, and stands as a key part of the series' development.

Thanks.

P.S. Ianto had three sentences in this one. And no sobbing whatsoever.

Review: Torchwood 1.4: Cyberwoman

Lisa Hallet: Cyberwoman! (Worst Superhero Ever...)

Aside from the pilot, the only other episode from the first series that I considered reviewing back then was this episode, Cyberwoman. Written by Chris Chibnall, who when it comes to sci-fi isn't a fan of mine, the episode's ridiculous premise and hammy acting make it painful to behold. It is, however, Ianto's only character piece until the end of Series Two and it starts off a few other storylines, most of them important to the rest of the series. Importantly, Cyberwoman comes straight off the back of Doctor Who's second series finale, and thus the audience expects a certain standard of episode. Ho, boy. This is going to be fun.
     While the team play basketball... for some reason, Ianto is left alone in the Hub. He orders the gang's pizzas and then greets a Japanese scientist called Tanazaki. They head down to the basement, where, he reveals, he has been keeping his partially-converted Cyberman girlfriend.
     Only four minutes in and so much stupid to cover. Firstly, the whole keeping it quiet business. This is Torchwood, a society that hordes alien weapons and has surveillance everywhere in Cardiff. If they can't tell that there's something big and lethal only a short way down a corridor of their base, then something seriously wrong is going on. Ianto couldn't cover it up; he's the bases' admin guy, sure, but even with the almighty powers of bureaucracy you couldn't hide the thing which caused the demise of the original society.
     Then there's the design of the "Cyberwoman". It's pure fanservice, blatant and unrepenting - big metal breasts and even heels for god's sake. It doesn't even make sense from a story perspective - the Cybermen from the modern series of Doctor Who take people's brains out and put them in suits, not cover them in randomly placed metalic segments with anatomically correct features! Even the excuse - that the Cybermen were running low on supplies - doesn't cut it beause surely moulding breast-cups would be more complicated than a basic suit.

Not a good look...

      Back to the story. Tanazaki is from a Cybernetics society, and has been brought in to try and "cure" the Cyberwoman, who's Ianto's girlfriend, Lisa. She's conscious and still "human" inside, for now. Tanazaki operates in the main area of the Hub, and gives her systems to allow her to breath by herself. The operation nearly fails, and the Torchwood team start to head back to the base. Lisa and Tanazaki are rushed downstairs and by the time they get back Ianto is totally nonchalent. Downstairs, Lisa's Cybernetic personality, which consists of a bad synthesiser and a massive chip on her shoulder, takes over... for some reason (you'll be reading that a lot) and she tries to convert Tanazaki. The team notice this immediately, as there's a massive power drain. Ianto blames it on a problem with the generator, and pops down to find the partially-converted (and dead) Tanazaki.

     Here we have the first of Ianto's grief moments, and while I don't think Gareth David-Lloyd is a bad actor overall, this story isn't evidence to contradict that. He simply can't do realistic grief, and his pained looks are often more hilarious than heinous. Here he completely freaks out, going from pained sobbing to random anger. Dude punched a Cyberman!
     Ianto, busy sobbing, doesn't notice when Lisa uses the Hub's power again to power herself. The team actually use their technology and, what do you know, discover an unknown-heat signature. One can only assume they've never used this technology before, seeing as Ianto's been in the group for the best part of a year. Gwen and Owen are sent down to investigate as the team gears up for an attack.

Still not a good look...

     Gwen and Owen go down and actually take a look.Tosh discovers that the CCTV from that room has been deleted... for the past year. Strange coincidence there. Gwen and Owen go in and discover the Cyber-conversion unit, which freaks Owen out considerably. They turn the machine off. He recalls them but they discover Lisa, which understandably sets the whole base on red alert. Jack gives orders to shut down everything in an emergency to make sure that Lisa doesn't escape.
     Owen incapacitated, Lisa attempts to convert Gwen. Jack's about to kill her when Ianto makes a dick-move and stops him from doing so. To turn the machine off they have to activate the lockdown mechanism. As they leave the basement, Jack gives a quick rundown on the Cybermen. When they get back to the main room Tosh reveals that total lockdown means that they can't gain access to the weapons room. Convenient, and, of course, totally non-intuitive. Jack gets ready to execute Ianto, who gives his reasoning as feeling unappreciative with his job and afraid of what Torchwood would do to Lisa. Jack reveals that this incident could start an entire Cyber Race again.
     Lisa pops up again and Ianto tries reasoning with her to attempt to save her humanity. Jack tries frightening her by showing her that she is not fully upgraded. She suggests transplanting her brain into Ianto's body and being converted again. When he rejects her, she knocks him unconscious (thank god) and the team do a "Code Nine" maneuver, which consists of running into a room. Tosh gets the job of unlocking the doors with an alien gizmo while Gwen and Owen are sent towards the medical area to get some weapons. So... no guns then? You can't use any of the many, many guns you had outside the weapons room earlier? Whatever.

Pterodactyl versus Cyberwoman. Awesome.

     While Lisa whales on immortal Jack, shocking the rest of the team (who still don't know he's immortal), Gwen and Owen are forced to hide on top of one another in a morgue-chamber. As Jack gives Ianto the kiss of life, Owen starts off a subplot by snogging Gwen to shut her up. Unfortunately, in the classic cliche style, Gwen's phone goes off and, as they climb out, Owen stabs Lisa with a screwdriver. (A screwdriver... in a medical bay. Whatever.) She still survives and is only incapacitated by the well known classic... barbecue sauce? The sauce gives the team's pet pterodactyl a target, leading into the episode's only really "awesome" scene, in which a dinosaur attacks a cyborg.
     Anyway, the team all escape up through an emergency shaft and Lisa is left to be dino-dinner. Not content with having nearly cause a world-ending apocalypse, Ianto punches Jack in the face for killing his girlfriend. Not, of course, that he faces any reprecussions for this. At all. The power comes back on and Ianto rushes off to once again try and save his psychocyber girlfriend. Meanwhile, the pizza lady arrives and is intercepted by Lisa.
     Ianto threatens the team with a gun but predictably Jack just takes it off of him. He strikes Ianto a deal - he can go in and see Lisa, but only to make sure she's dead. Ianto sprouts some BS about Jack being the biggest monster of all but considering what a dick he's been, it doesn't really stick. He goes down to the basement and finds Lisa's dead body. He does some more sobbing, his most hilarious yet! To further the hilarity, it turns out that she's actually just transfered her brain to the body of the pizza girl, in a way that's completely impossible. Pizza!Lisa talks and Ianto sobs some more. They share a hug, but Ianto backs off when Pizza!Lisa starts talking about Cyberconversion. Unable to do the job himself, Jack shoots her from a distance. More sobbing ensues.

It's ok. This is the last one.

     The next morning, Ianto arrives for work. He has suffered absolutely no reprecussions for nearly causing Armeggeddon and instead gets some pitying stares. The final dialogue presents it as a tale of love and devotion, which if you ask me is a bit of a long-shot. What Cyberwoman is attempting to be and what it is are two very seperate things. It is enjoyable on a cerain level, but I really doubt that it's for the same reasons as the producers intended.
     This is supposed to be the first series' Ianto-centric episode, but rather than explore the character in any meaningful way it gives us an exaggerated and hilariously hammy personality that is never seen in the program again. Putting a Cyber(wo)man into the mix is an interesting concept and for the first ten minutes or so the execution was fine, but once the random new personality asserted itself, Lisa became a walking cliche and Ianto's character became less and less believeable. Love does strange shit to people, but still loving your girlfriend after she's become a murderous, emotionless cyborg that's tried to kill you twice? Please.

Bodyswap!

     Inevitably, with my history, I have to comment on Chibnall's script. I will give him this one not because it's particularly good, but because it doesn't contain many of his flaws - the obtrusive technobabble is noticeably absent here, and his character work is for once more than one-note. I admit that on a fundamental level the concept works - the idea of a Cybermen that's been left behind in our reality, still holding semblance of humanity, is a good one. Where the episode failed in that regard was in its execution and the number of glaring plot holes and unintentionally hilarious performances that execution delivered.
     So, to sum up. Cyberwoman has a great concept at its heart - a tie-in with its parent show that also explores the series' most one-note character up to that point. But in its execution in both artistic design and in the performance of the otherwise brilliant Gareth David-Lloyd, it becomes a work of unintentional comedy much better than any of the cheap sex gags the series throws up. It had so much potential to be a great piece of sci-fi, but I enjoy it as a piece of bad television just as much as I would otherwise. Also - pterodactyl vs cyberman! Awesome!

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.3:Ghost Machine

Owen, using the device, feels a woman's fear from 1963.

Straight after that silly premise, Ghost Machine presents something quite different. Helen Raynor, who's good at this sort of thing, gives us a character-driven thriller based on memories and the odd bit of foresight bias. It's a welcome change from the opener and, as the first two episodes were broadcast together, feels like a more adequate summary of what Torchwood can do. Strangely, despite all my reservations about this series of Torchwood, this episode is an immediate standout.
     The episode surrounds a strange alien artefact, retrieved by the team from a youth called Sean. The device, first used accidentally by Gwen, uses a "quantum transducer to transfer emotional energy" - it allows the user to witness events in the past and empathise with the people present. Gwen sees a little boy evacuated from London, who they find living happily; Owen uses the device and witnesses the rape and murder of a girl called Lizzie in the 1960s. This hits him hard, and he finds the killer, Edwin Morgan, the next day. Morgan has spent the last fourty years becoming claustrophobic and paranoid. Owen goes and scares Morgan, and on the way out he discovers (and chases) Sean.
     The team get to Sean, who reveals that the device came with a bunch of strange (aka alien) coins from a warehouse along with the device's twin. The second device interlinks with the first in a pair and, as Gwen finds out, the device allows the user to see the future instead of the past. Gwen sees her with a knife and bloodied hands, but Jack tells her not to worry about it. That night Gwen goes to reassure Sean, who'd also used the device and saw himself dead, but the two are met by Ed Morgan whom Sean had been blackmailing after witnessing the murder himself. Sean doesn't die but Ed does after he accidentally runs into Gwen's knife.
     This episode was principally an Owen-centric character piece. So far he's the character with most development (bar Jack, but he was on Doctor Who) and this episode shows us both a lighter and darker side to his personality, making him much less of the one-dimensional womaniser from the pilot. At the moment Gwen has moments running through all of the episodes, and her time with Rhys isn't irritating, but it's a shame that Ianto and Toshiko haven't been looked at yet. The concept of the episode itself was a fun piece of sci-fi that, at the time, the parent program wasn't using too much; ironic for a show about Time Travel.

The modern Edwin Morgan.

     The only criticism that I can level at Ghost Machine is that the future aspect feels a little tacked on, popping up in the last ten minutes of the episode and yet providing a lot of the climax's drama. It would have been a bit better for the team to have the second device from the beginning and not realise what it was until the incident with Owen. What's there works well, and it's good compared to last week's basic runaround but it still needs a bit of tweaking.
     Ghost Machine is a standout episode of the early Series One that focuses on my favourite character while providing an excellent commentary on society via sci-fi technobabble. It may have some issues here or there but principally it's intriguing, poignant and notably tense in its climax, three things that this series needs to be able to deliver.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.2: Day One

Carys is possessed.

I reviewed Torchwood's pilot just under a year ago and decided that I would lay off Torchwood until I had new material to work with. My reviews of Miracle Day have brought me to a low ebb, and so I've decided that I'll revisit the first series via DVD and see if I can have any more fun here. Day One is The Second Episode and thus has to stand of representative of what the "average" episode of the show will be like. The episode does this, but the image we're given isn't all that attractive...
      Before I get to the plot, I have to talk about the elephant in the room. Day One is a perfect example of what is wrong with Torchwood Series One, in that it attempts to be more adult by throwing in plenty of over-eighteen sillyness and not by treating things more seriously. I'm not averse to the odd bit of childhood silliness, and indeed, my ten-year-old mind was intrigued by the series at the time, but there is a limit to what is acceptable before it becomes a parody. Torchwood crosses that limit. When I think of a more adult outing in the Whoniverse, I'm looking for high-concepts and serious drama - not sex monsters and masturbating security guards.
     A meteor falls while Gwen and boyfriend Rhys are on a night-out. Torchwood calls her in. They head to the meteor in their SUV, which is covered in Computers linked to the police. At the site she throws a tool to Owen that splits the asteroid open, releasing a purple cloud. The cloud  posesses a girl in an alleyway called Carys. She goes into a nightclub and has sex with a random punter, but upon orgasm he explodes into dust. Back at the Hub, and Gwen is chastised by the other members of her team. The team get the news about the death and head to the nightclub.
     After discovering the circumstances of the death they plan the coverup and then look for traces of the meteorite. More CCTV reveals Carys' possession. At home, we see that Carys doesn't remember. They track her down and stop her from killing a postman and take her back to the base. There she's locked up, and alternates between her personality and that of the entity. The entity explains to Gwen that it lives of "orgasmic energy" and needs it to survive. When the entity moves back, pheromones it's emitting mean that Gwen starts making out with Carys, until she claims that the entity needs a man.

Gwen talks with The Entity.

     The team eat Chinese and Gwen claims that the team should be running more than scientific tests. She creates a character profile of Carys. They examine the cell's air and discover the aphrodisiac pheromones, then finding Owen locked up her stead. Carys fights with Jack and then escapes after threatening to drop The Doctor's severed hand. Owen reveals the results of a practical test on a rat, showing the results of prolonged posession by the gas - the host explodes. Carys goes round to her ex-boyfriend's and kills him before heading to her workplace.
     Following from that lead, they trace her to her workplace, which is a Sperm Bank. With Carys cornered, she collapses. Jack "breathes" his excess life into her. Gwen prepares to let the gas posess her instead, but Jack captures it with a forcefield and it dies. Carys is retconned and returned home, as Gwen returns to a lasagne and her boyfriend.
     I'm speaking in hindsight, of course, and the things most noticeable to me are the characterisations in relation to the modern series. Gwen, being new, has a much more amiable personality - she cares for humanity and feels like an identifiable human figure instead of the shrill, ridiculous parody we see now. The characters in this series are really fun because they have a wide range of well-written characters that sometimes make the silly scenes worth it. Particularly strong for me at this stage is Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper, and it's a shame that I can't talk about his brilliant trilogy of episodes in Series Two.
     I think upon reflection that Day One was spoilt by its ridiculous premise and childish way of dealing with these things, but it does present a set of great characters and a lead pair, in Gwen and Jack, that are compelling to follow. I'm not saying that I haven't written this just to complain about Miracle Day, but I do think that one should look back on a series to test its quality. Torchwood is no exception.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood: Everything Changes

Series Two of Doctor Who was, in essence, a series-long viral marketing campaign for this spin-off. Torchwood follows the tale of a branch of the eponymous group, specifically the branch that clears Cardiff of the aliens scum that come through an inter-space-dimensional tear known as The Rift.
     Here, we have to set up the new series. Captain Jack, a minor companion in Series One of Doctor Who, is our only connection here, and so it's up to Eve Myles (who previously played her ancestor in Series One) to give us Gwen Cooper, policewoman.
      So, how does it do? Well, it throws us in at the deep end, woth Gwen discovering Torchwood using a "ressurection gauntlet" to discover information from a corpse. Torchwood is believed simply to be "special ops," but Gwen is suspicious. She is introduced by Jack into the world of Torchwood, with doctor Owen, techy Toshiko, handyman Ianto and weapons expert Suzie. After retconning her (erasing her memory), she ends up being confronted by Suzie, who has been killing people to test the gauntlet. She ends up shooting Jack, who turns out immortal and shoots her back.
     It's a little forced, to tell the truth. We're introduced to the concepts smoothly, but the storyline behind that isn't very gripping. It helped on the night to have the second episode played just after the first, but here I'm treating it as a standalone, and thus it has very little weight of its own. Regardless, it's a quite important episode, as we get thrown all of the basic background info.

Thanks.