This must have looked good on paper; a somewhat mysterious circus that steals people's "last breaths", which drains them of all the moisture in their bodies. Throw in some inexplicable stuff about surviving on old nitrate film stock and it seems like this should have come out OK.
But somewhere along the line something went askew, and the final result is missing something. To their credit, the main cast try to make this as believable as possible -- Ianto in particular seems extremely affected by all the events -- but it's just not enough. Not even Jack showing up in the old films really makes it work.
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The Ghostmaker and Pearl regard their silver flask. ("From Out
of the Rain") ©BBC |
Far and away the biggest problem is that no explanation whatsoever is given for these events. There's not even a semblance of a rationale provided. Okay fine, these Night Travelers can essentially steal people's souls (that's not how it's pitched, but that's basically what's happening) -- maybe that's what that silver flask does. But nothing remotely accounts for why these Travelers were able to escape from the film in the first place, and that's something of a problem. No rules are established; so when Jack decides that the way to stop them is to film them and overexpose the film, while there's a sort of logic at work it feels like they could have made just about anything up. The way the other Travelers emerge from the screen, meanwhile, feels totally random, as if it's time to introduce a new threat without really coming up with a reason why. (It also doesn't help that Julian Bleach, as the ringleader of the Night Travelers, seems to be trying to do his best Vincent Price imitation, which is a bit distracting.)
I don't know; this could have worked if they'd played up the mysterious angle more and given the Travelers some sort of fig leaf explanation as to why they were around. But as is, where we just learn bits and pieces from Jack with little context, it's hard to be invested in it. "From Out of the Rain" is thus unfortunately something of a disappointment.