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.

Mary threatens to kill Tosh unless she gets her way. ("Greeks
Bearing Gifts") ©BBC

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.

January 30: "Countrycide" (TW) (Second Attempt)

All right.  For all the cheap shock value and dread that "Countrycide" gives us, there does seem to be a point at its heart: namely, that humans can be bigger monsters than actual monsters.  The problem with that point is that a) we don't really learn it until near the end, and b) it's not exactly the most original point ever -- Torchwood's parent show makes that point every three episodes or so, and they don't have to put it in a wannabe slasher movie to do so.

The Torchwood team approach a seemingly deserted village.
("Countrycide") ©BBC

Up to the point where we learn it's just (just) cannibals in rural Wales, rather than an alien threat, "Countrycide" (which is a rubbish title, by the way -- yes, puns and all that, but taken at face value, it means "killing the country") keeps trying to have it both ways: suggesting there's an alien presence/influence at work while trying to play out a slasher flick at the same time.  Now I'm not the biggest fan of slasher films, so I might not be the best person to judge, but it seems like this one pulls most of its punches.  We get some gore in the form of human carcasses, a bunch of blood and a few unidentifiable entrails, and some severed limbs.  And that's about it.  No on-screen killings (or even attempted ones -- unless you count the scared kid Kieran shooting Gwen in the stomach with a shotgun), no sense of people tempting fate or disregarding warnings, no examination of what made the villagers this way... it's like Chris Chibnall wants to ape the conventions of slasher films without putting any real reason into why.  Now, it's likely there are BBC guidelines for what can be shown on television, even post-watershed, that prevents the production team from going all out on this.  But then why bother?  If you can't go full out, and you don't have a deeper purpose behind your slasher episode than "Let's see if we can," what's the point?  It's like the thought of an alien presence is enough justification to go through the motions without putting in any deeper context, and we should applaud them for trying.

And while "Countrycide" does a decent job of building up tension and making the audience nervous (so at least director Andy Goddard is trying), it never follows through on any of its threats.  It doesn't even kill Kieran, who seemed for sure like he was there to be the token victim, to demonstrate just how dangerous the cannibals are.  It's the televisual equivalent of one of those haunted houses people put on in October: lots of stuff that might startle you or make you nervous, but nothing that will ultimately hurt you.  When you don't know that, on first viewing, that might be enough.  Every subsequent time it's frankly boring.

Then, as if to rub salt in the wound, we learn at the end that Gwen is cheating on Rhys with Owen (that's the same Owen who's back to prick mode in the first part of this episode and looks like he's on the verge of sexual assault in the forest scene, is it?) because "I can't share [these new things I'm experiencing] with anyone."  Ay yai yai.  What is wrong with these people?  (Oh, and as long as we're wondering about stupid things... why is it necessary for everyone in Torchwood to head out to rural Wales -- overnight, it turns out -- to investigate some disappearances?  What happens if something occurs back in Cardiff?  Why is Ianto out in the field at all, given he appears to be little more than a glorified page?)

I said at the beginning that there seems to be a point buried in "Countrycide".  But that's not strictly true.  It's more like an afterthought, a way to try and rationalize the last forty-five minutes.  And that's not enough to justify the meaningless episode we've been subjected to.  This almost works if you've never seen it before, or if it's been long enough that you've forgotten most of the details; then some of the surprises and the "is it aliens?" angle might actually keep you interested.  For everyone else it's a tedious slog through a story that has nothing to say and no clear point.  It's a hotly-contested title, but "Countrycide" might be the worst episode Torchwood has ever put out.

January 30: "Countrycide" (TW)

What the hell was the point of that?

January 29: "Small Worlds" (TW)

It's nice to finally get an episode that doesn't feel vaguely mean-spirited in some way.  One of the problems with Torchwood thus far is that it's a very negative show -- very dark and unhappy.  "Small Worlds" is still rather unhappy, but it stems more from the stories being told than because they're artificially trying to be "adult".

It's not perfect in this regard; we still get a paedophile following a young girl, and while we see him apparently attacked while in the process of luring in a young girl and later killed by these same somethings, it's hard to feel any real worry or regret about his death.  Still, at least he wasn't successful in his attempted kidnapping -- it's all too easy to envision a version of this story where that happens -- and so it's nice to see a bit of restraint.

Those "somethings", by the way, are Torchwood's take on the Cottingley fairies, a hoax from the early 20th century where two girls had claimed to have taken photos of fairies.  As Gwen points out, both women admitted that the photos were a hoax, but at the time they had taken hold of England's imagination -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just one of many convinced of their veracity.  (Houdini wasn't one of them, though -- Owen gets that wrong.)  But Jack says that's just a way to make people comfortable with their existence, and that they're actually evil "from the dawn of time" (just like Fenric, eh?).  He also makes an offhand reference to the Mara, which may or may not be the Mara from 20th-century Doctor Who.¹⁷⁸

Jack and Estelle. ("Small Worlds") ©BBC

This leads to probably the most interesting parts of the episode: its exploration of Captain Jack.  The stuff in 1909 Punjab is intriguing for the hints it gives us of other things Jack has done, but it's his relationship with Estelle that is the most touching.  The implication is that Jack has been on Earth for a long time, and it's sweet how he visits the girl he loved in the 1930s now, even if he tells her he's the son of the man she knew.  It shows us a tender side of Jack, one that's been largely missing from Torchwood, which seems to want him to be a brooding loner instead.  It's a good move, showing him vulnerable as he stays the same age while the rest of the universe moves on but still in love with the people he's known (and I have to say, it works a lot better for Jack, who had immortality thrust upon him, than it does for the Doctor, who's a member of a race of incredibly long-lived people), and it gives Estelle's death -- poor, sweet Estelle, who thought the fairies were benign creatures -- a greater impact.  This is in fact the most emotionally involving episode we've seen yet.  "Ghost Machine" and "Cyberwoman" both tried really hard to pull on our heartstrings, but both efforts felt too calculated, with not enough substance behind them.  "Small Worlds", on the other hand, does this quietly and sweetly with Jack's reactions to Estelle.

I also like the ending, which feels right even if it's a bit bleak (and, to jump ahead here, this isn't the first time Jack's had to sacrifice a child for the good of humanity; see Children of Earth).  The idea that fairies aren't good is hardly a new one -- that idea's as old as the idea of fairies itself -- but they do a decent job pulling it off here.  It doesn't always succeed -- there's a slight issue with making most of the targets of the fairies' wrath not nice people, which dulls their impact somewhat -- but "Small Worlds" is finally an episode of Torchwood you can watch without cringing.







¹⁷⁸ It's not clear if this is a reference to Doctor Who's Mara or the one from folklore.  Jack's description suggests the latter, but it's just about possible that author Peter J. Hammond (best known as the creator and main writer of Sapphire and Steel) is trying to tie them both together.  After all, he'd been tapped to write one of the segments of The Trial of a Time Lord (the third one -- his story was known as Paradise 5 but was rejected because Nathan-Turner disliked it), so it's conceivable that he'd done some research on the show and knew of the Mara.  Producer Chris Chibnall definitely would have known about the Mara, so this is likely an intentional decision to tie the two together, rather than a coincidence.

January 28: "Cyberwoman" (TW)

It's really hard to see what the point of this episode is.  I can see what director James Strong is going for -- he wants to make this a scary episode, with lots of handheld camera shots and dark shadows for Lisa the Cyberman to get lost in.  He even partially succeeds.  But what is Chris Chibnall trying to do with this script?

In some ways the script wants to be tense and claustrophobic and terrifying, and those are probably the moments where "Cyberwoman" comes the closest to succeeding.  The moments that pit Jack against Ianto work surprisingly well, even if Ianto's repeated accusations that Jack is a monster and "worse than anything locked up down there" ring rather hollow (they want it to be like Margaret's accusations against the Doctor in "Boom Town", but works even less well here because Jack's trying to stop a rampaging alien monster from destroying them the way Torchwood One was destroyed, so it's really hard to keep sympathizing with Ianto by the end).  The tension as they point guns at each other is very effective (even if it's hard not to see this as a success on Strong's part rather than Chibnall's).

Ianto looks at the partially-Cybernized Lisa. ("Cyberwoman") ©BBC

But there are some massively stupid things going on in "Cyberwoman".  The first one is the appearance of Lisa herself.  They bend over backwards to explain why her body is still there when we saw in "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" that all the Cybermen were taking was the brain (because they needed to move fast or something), just so they can present us with this bizarre sexualized creation.  It's not just the literal breastplate, or that fact that the Cybermen cut a groove on the butt plate to make it look like she has a butt.  It's not even the way the bellybutton is highlighted and exposed.  It's the fact that she's wearing Cyber-heels, for heaven's sake.  It's like a technofetishist's wet dream.  There's also no explanation as to why she wasn't sucked into the Void along with the rest of the Cybermen in "Doomsday", beyond a passing reference to using "Earth technology", which could mean anything.  (The associated website tried to explain this -- and it's not a good sign when you have to explain plot holes on your official website -- by arguing that the Cybermen started using our resources to convert people, and that only things that had originated in Pete's World were pulled into the Void.  Fair enough, but that doesn't explain why Lisa seems to be the only person made entirely with "our" Earth parts, or why there's only one Cyber-conversion unit made with our resources. -- or why they decided to start giving their fellow Cybermen defined breasts.)

There's also the stupidity of Ianto hiding this thing in Torchwood's basement -- it's understandable, entirely human stupidity, but it's still stupidity -- and the longer it goes on, as he refuses to see the evidence of his own eyes, the less we feel for him.  Owen snogging Gwen while in the mortuary cooler is in keeping with what we know about Owen.  What's not in keeping is Gwen deciding to kiss him back.  Lots of people stop and stare at Lisa even after being told to run and do things as quick as they can while others buy them time that they're currently wasting by stopping and staring.  And the fight between Lisa and the pterodactyl is also daft -- and it doesn't seem to have done a damn thing one way or the other.  And why do all the doors to the top-secret base obligingly open for Annie the pizza delivery girl?

Here's the thing: you can forgive stupid things if there's a good reason behind it, or if it adds to the drama in some meaningful way (such as the fifth Doctor not drinking the queen bat's milk right when he gets it, because his impending death overriding just about everything else is part of the reason the end of The Caves of Androzani works so well).  But there's no sign of that here.  There's no point to any of this.  At least Chibnall's last script ("Day One") had something to say about sexuality in Western culture (even if that something appeared to be little more than, "Hey, Western culture is sexualized!").  There's not even that here.  This looks like it was designed to have a sexy Cyberwoman scare everyone and nothing else.  There don't even seem to be any real consequences at the end of it, as we see Ianto back to work and cleaning things up.  It's unbelievably shallow, worryingly misogynist, and ultimately pointless.

January 27: "Ghost Machine" (TW)

Well, it's certainly better than the last episode...

So I understand that they're still finding their feet with these characters and this set-up, but the episodes seem to be all over the map stylistically.  "Everything Changes" was an attempt to create a secretive but fun organization, but show some of the consequences of that kind of life, while "Day One" just looked like a way to get some cheap thrills while pushing the boundaries of good taste.  "Ghost Machine", on the other hand, feels like it's somewhere between these two approaches.

Owen watches (via the quantum transducer) Ed Morgan prepare to
kill Lizzie Lewis back in 1963. ("Ghost Machine") ©BBC

One of the good things it does is it pulls Owen's character back from the being the right bastard he was in the first two episodes.  He's still kind of a prick here, going to a murderer's house and confronting him about it to "put the fear of God into him", but at least we can understand his reasoning behind it -- and making him so affected by the events of the past that he witnesses, it's not too hard to sympathize.  He's still something of an asshole, but at least he's not completely irredeemable.

It's still a story that requires its main characters to behave like idiots at times, though.  The scene with Gwen using the quantum transducer in her flat is bad enough (given what's happened with the device so far, why would she a) take it with her at all, and b) expect to experience anything but unhappy memories inside her flat?), but at least it doesn't adversely affect things.  Much worse is the resolution of the main storyline, which needs to have both Gwen use the completed device -- even though the only other person she knows who's done this saw his own death -- and to hold the knife pointing out once she takes it away from Owen.  That might be more forgivable if she wasn't a trained police officer; you'd think they'd cover what to do with weapons when you've taken them from people (such as "don't brandish them at people"), even if they don't train you how to use them.  But then the same thing happens earlier when she points a loaded gun at Jack's face (to his alarm), so maybe they don't train them for these sorts of situations.  It still seems contrived, though.  (And making Morgan walk straight into a knife pointed at him doesn't help; Tosh later says that he wanted to die, but that sure doesn't look like what's happening.)

However, while "Ghost Machine" has its flaws, it's not nearly as unpleasant as "Day One" was.  Of course, it's no standout either; despite some good performances (particularly from Blake's 7's Gareth Thomas as the old Ed Morgan -- but if we're discussing characters, why is Captain Jack so angry for large parts of this?), this is an entirely forgettable and average episode.

January 26: "Day One" (TW)

Generally speaking, the first episode of a new show is there to set up the premise of the show and introduce the main characters.  The second episode is the first chance for a show to set out its stall and say, "This is what this show is going to be like."

So what kind of show does "Day One" suggest Torchwood is going to be like?  The answer, worryingly, seems to be, "Not a very good one."

Russell T Davies stated on Torchwood Declassified (the sister show to Torchwood in the same way that Doctor Who Confidential was to Doctor Who) that "when we're launching a new adult science fiction drama, it's kind of inevitable you're going to do the sex monster."  Setting aside the fact that that doesn't really seem to be true (to pick a couple shows at random, there's not really a sex monster in Star Trek (unless you want to count the Salt Vampire in "The Man Trap", but that's more about seduction) or at all in Babylon 5 -- but on the other hand, it comes up pretty early in The X-Files, which is what Torchwood looks like it wants to be like), it suggests that the definition of "adult" that Torchwood wants to be is closer to the pornographic side.  It's not an encouraging decision.

The (sigh) sex monster enters Carys Fletcher. ("Day One") ©BBC

But alas, you can't just wish this episode away.  "Day One" (and it's rather painful to write this bit) features the team dealing with a gaseous sex monster (entertainingly, the TARDIS wiki calls it "Sex Gas") that feeds off orgasmic energy -- specifically male orgasmic energy, as Gwen apparently is no use to it.  To this end we get a number of scenes of the possessed Carys absorbing men as they climax (plus one of a bouncer masturbating to a CCTV feed inside the women's lavatory), as well as a make-out scene between Gwen and Carys -- apparently because of the intense pheromones that the sex monster emits.  This also leads to the first indication that the members of Torchwood Three are all idiots.  So first they capture Carys, who's possessed by a gaseous alien -- and Torchwood know that, because they're the ones who accidentally released the alien in the first place, when Gwen tossed a "chisel" (that looked more like a spike) to Owen and missed -- and lock her in a cell in their base (which is disgustingly filthy, by the way -- doesn't Ianto ever go in there with a hose and some bleach?) with great big holes in the wall, perfect for gas to seep through.  (Not that the creature ever tries to escape that way.)  But anyway, Gwen goes in to talk to her and ends up making out with her -- something Owen notices on the CCTV and calls Jack and Tosh over to see.  Do they immediately realize that Gwen's in danger from a monster that kills people while having sex with them?  No, they all just stare appreciatively at the camera output for a while (even Tosh) before Jack decides to go stop it.  And then later the sex monster gets out because Owen went to talk to her alone and was seduced by it, leaving him naked and in handcuffs.  It's sort of hard to feel remotely bad about Owen, though, given that he spends the entire episode as an asshole and a scumbag and less likeable than anything we've seen in this show yet.  It's not remotely clear what they're trying to achieve with this character, but they're doing a superb job of pushing the audience away.

Good bits?  The way in which the main cast treats these events is surprisingly straight -- despite the premise, they manage to treat this as a serious threat, and Gwen excels by being concerned about the girl the gas has taken over.  The scene where they're eating Chinese food and discussing Jack's mysterious past is rather nice.  Meanwhile, Kai Owen as Gwen's boyfriend Rhys is just about the best thing in this, but John Barrowman still does a good job as Jack -- and his extreme paranoia over a severed hand in a jar is interesting.  There are also some nice directorial choices -- such as the scene illustrating all the sexually-charged advertising that Carys walks past, which works significantly better than it has any right to -- which make it at least interesting from a purely visual standpoint.

But ultimately "Day One" feels like a tawdry and tasteless attempt to show that Torchwood is different from its parent show: "Look how adult we are!" it seems to be yelling.  There are some good performances, but there's nothing really meaningful being expressed here -- no commentary on the nature of sexuality or anything like that; that advertising montage is the closest we get.  It really does look like they just said, "Hey, let's do an episode about a sex monster!  We'll work out why later," and they never really did.  Throw in some truly unlikeable moments (seriously, why does anyone in there tolerate Owen Harper?) and the result is an unpleasant mess.