An Hour of Who a Day: 01/31/15

January 31: "Greeks Bearing Gifts" (TW)

Finally, an episode that isn't embarrassingly stupid. That's not to say that there aren't stupid moments (as well as some excruciating ones), but as a whole "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is less offensively idiotic than most of what we've seen before on Torchwood.

In fact, the main plot of this episode is really rather good. Having given all of the other characters a spotlight episode, it's finally Tosh's turn -- and the show decides to tear her down. To be fair, this is so that she can be in a vulnerable state and ready for Mary to take advantage of, but it still has the unhappy side-effect of making Tosh seem like an outsider on the team -- and the fact that Owen and Gwen have started shagging and are bad at hiding it certainly doesn't help, since it seems that Tosh has a crush on Owen for some unfathomable reason.

So while the decisions that Tosh makes regarding Mary and her pendant are rather stupid, they're all too easy to sympathize with. We don't shake our heads at Tosh, wondering what in the world she's thinking; no, writer Toby Whithouse (who, you may remember, wrote "School Reunion" for Doctor Who) gives us a clear path to see, one that it's not too hard to see ourselves walking down. All right, maybe without the lesbian kiss and implied sex, but that looks more like an effort to keep up Torchwood's "adult" reputation than a logical conclusion of what we're presented.

In fact, that tendency toward "adult" content (rather than actual adult -- as in "grown-up" -- content) hurts things somewhat, because without that aspect "Greeks Bearing Gifts" actually has one of the most grown-up storylines the show has yet provided: what would it be like to eavesdrop on other people's thoughts, and would that be far worse than reading someone's diary? What would it be like to hear the thoughts people don't even want to admit to themselves? It's an interesting idea that they have some fun exploring -- notably with Tosh stopping the ex-husband who's going to kill his family; the pendant can lead to positive results as well as negative. There's also a welcome discussion about Torchwood's rather xenophobic tendencies: "You'll examine me, assess whether or not I'm useful, whether I'm a danger, then lock me in a cell," Mary tells Tosh after revealing she's an alien. "You're not interested in understanding alien cultures. It's just as well you haven't got the technology to reach other planets yet. Yours is a culture of invasion." Both questions are ultimately sidestepped, as Mary is revealed to have been killing people for 196 years (according to Tosh's analysis at the beginning¹⁷⁹), but as the first question isn't one that there's an easy answer to, its unresolved nature is okay -- and the fact that Tosh and Jack discuss it a bit afterwards also helps. (And they can't really explore the second question without fundamentally changing the nature of the show -- something that it looks like they're unwilling to do.)

Really, the main problem with "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is the relationship between Gwen and Owen. Owen seems about as much of an ass as ever, but Gwen is now heading in his direction as well. The teasing of Owen feels like it's overdone, and while it's admittedly her thoughts that we're privy to (with the catty thought about jeans in boots -- was that true in the UK? Because it was the exact opposite in the US...), they don't do her any favors. And her attempted justification to Tosh at the end is lousy as well. "This should be my wake up call," she tells Tosh. "I should stop, but I won't. What does that say about me?" "That you're a bad person," my wife and I simultaneously yelled at the screen. So much for the audience having any sympathy for Gwen. I guess that leaves Tosh and maybe Captain Jack.

So other than the ongoing train wreck that's most of the main characters (but Owen and Gwen in particular), "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is a decent episode. Somewhat miraculously, Tosh's character comes out of this unscathed (in the audience's eyes, if not necessarily in her own) -- that alone is cause for celebration. Now that they've finished examining each character, maybe they can get on with telling more interesting stories -- and in that respect, "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is certainly a large step in the right direction.

¹⁷⁹ Our first major dating conflict: series 1 of Torchwood is supposed to occur in 2007 or so, but Tosh's inexact dating of the soldier's body places this episode in 2009 or so. We're forced to conclude, based on all the surrounding evidence (much of which we haven't seen yet, so you'll have to take it on faith for now), that Tosh is even less exact than she thought.