February 5: "The Runaway Bride"

We interrupt our journey through the first series of Torchwood to bring you the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Runaway Bride"...¹⁸¹

If we go by the DVD, "The Runaway Bride" kicks off series 3 of the show.  But if we go by what we actually see, we're in a transitional state.  We don't get introduced to new companion Martha Jones at all.  Instead this episode picks up immediately where "Doomsday" left off, with Catherine Tate standing in the TARDIS wearing a wedding gown and yelling at the Doctor.  This meant a lot more to British audiences, who were more used to her hugely successful sketch show (hey, it's not every show that gets a word in the Oxford English Dictionary -- although Doctor Who is a show that can also make that claim) than overseas audiences.  Fair enough, it's a British show for British viewers; I'm just pointing out that the impact of this stunt casting is largely lost on those of us in the former colonies and beyond.

It's not an entirely successful opening to the show, though; after the initial shock value wears off, there's little to really keep you entertained.  "The Runaway Bride" really wants to be a screwball comedy, but in these initial TARDIS scenes Tennant and Tate exhibit little chemistry together.  That's partly because all Donna is doing is shouting unpleasantly, not listening to anything the Doctor is saying, and partly because we don't see any real interaction between the two: Donna is shouting and the Doctor is flying the TARDIS, and while they might be doing these actions at each other, it's more that each is going past the other.  This is also the first time that Murray Gold's music really gets in the way of the scene -- it's practically screaming at you to find this stuff funny, which makes you even less inclined to do so.

It gets a bit better when they're actually out on the streets of London -- there's a sense that they're actually listening to each other a bit more, and consequently the jokes land a little better.  I'm not too sure about that TARDIS/car chase down the motorway; I don't mind the idea, but there are some weird moments, like Donna asking the Doctor if Rose had trusted him -- that seems like a strange question to ask in the situation.  And the two kids in the car, shouting "Jump!" and cheering when Donna does, is really over-egging the pudding -- it's supposed to be triumphant but it feels crass instead.  (And the rest of the motorists -- including the parents of the kids screaming in the car -- seem awfully unconcerned about a police box flying down the road at high speed; almost as if they just filmed the drivers and then inserted the TARDIS afterwards...)

The Doctor and Donna watch the Earth form. ("The Runaway
Bride") ©BBC

Once the Doctor and Donna stop and have their conversation on the roof, that's when the two leads start to actually click; it's clear they've started paying attention to what the other is saying, and the result is noticeably better.  Of course, this is the scene that also introduces this episode's technobabble -- a type of subatomic particle that the Time Lords got rid of (what?) but nevertheless are contained inside Donna (WHAT?) and which caused Donna to be transported into the TARDIS in the first place (WHAT?).  Fine, we can just about accept this -- but when we later learn that you can extract Huon particles from water, you just have to shake your head in despair that they can't even keep their technobabble consistent.  Similarly, what possible reason does Lance have to sneak up on the Empress of the Racnoss?  Is he simply trying to be a jerk and give Donna false hope?

The Empress herself is hopelessly overacted by Sarah Parish -- I understand that it's hard to act through all that make-up, but she looks like she isn't taking any of this seriously.  And if she's not bothering, why should we?  The plan to drill into the center of the Earth and release her 4.5 billion-year-old babies with Huon particles is risible, as is the solution of draining the Thames into the hole.¹⁸²

I'm being hard on this story, but it's not completely without merit.  David Tennant is generally good in his scenes, and once Donna stops yelling, Catherine Tate isn't bad.  The scene at the non-wedding reception is rather charming (and I like the special song, "Love Don't Roam", as sung by Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy).  The whole production is nice and slick (even if they are reusing the robots from last year's special), and Euros Lyn does a good job with the direction.  If you were watching this on Christmas, full of turkey and wine, and just letting it flow past, you'd probably be reasonably entertained.

But if you're watching this as part of the ongoing Doctor Who narrative (which should be just about everyone after the initial broadcast), then its flaws are harder to overlook.  There's just too much technobabble and not enough time to make the relationship between the Doctor and Donna work.  There's also a sense that Doctor Who now knows it's a hit show and should thus do all the predictable, crowd-pleasing things that's expected of them.  The change can be summed up by the snow: last year it was a subversion of the cliché, being the Sycorax ship breaking up in the atmosphere; this time it's actually snow.  This isn't a step forward.







¹⁸¹ Owing to the fact that I'm trying to go as chronologically as possible (though it's gonna get tricky when we get to the Australian K-9 spinoff), and "Combat" was broadcast on 24 December 2006 -- aka the day before "The Runaway Bride".
¹⁸² Two points for old-school fans: when Torchwood (or whoever) dug into the center of the earth, did a bunch of them turn into Primords after touching a weird green slime?  And why didn't the Earth blow up anyway?  (And quickly pouring a lot of water into the center of the earth is a lot like Professor Zaroff's plan to blow up the world in The Underwater Menace -- so that's two ways the world should have been destroyed.)

February 4: "Combat" (TW)

"Combat" is a bit of an odd episode.  It doesn't actually do too much wrong, but let's face it -- the episode boils down to Alien Fight Club.  But if you can look past the derivative-yet-loony premise, there are some good moments in this.

Owen in the cage with a Weevil. ("Combat") ©BBC

Although the episode starts with involving most of the team, this turns into Owen's episode.  He's still hurting from Diane's departure and is apparently "even more erratic than usual" as a result -- which translates to refusing to answer his phone and getting in fights in bars (though, to be fair, that guy was clearly asking for it).  However, he ends up being the person trying to infiltrate the Weevil-stealing operation and find out where the Weevils are being held.  What's interesting is how friendly Owen is with Mark Lynch (the guy helping run the fights).  Mark (played very well by Alex Hassell) is every inch the bored rich guy looking for thrills -- the way he fights in the bar and demands that the one guy get up is quite compelling to watch.  It's a world that Owen seems quite tempted by -- and, interestingly, one that Mark is willing to show him, even after Owen's cover is blown.  And it's interesting to see how much Owen seems to be drawn into this world -- even though he insists that this is wrong and needs to be stopped, he's seduced by the idea of "stripping things back to the core".  It's a neat idea well-realized, and it makes sense for Owen to be the one drawn in.

Where this episode doesn't succeed is with Gwen.  I'm not sure how they managed it, but they've transferred the label of "least likeable character" from Owen to Gwen.  She's pissy and self-absorbed when talking with Owen about their relationship, and the way she tells Rhys about her infidelity but then drugs him so he'll forget she told him is pure cowardice -- and the way in which she tries desperately to get Rhys to say he forgives her before he slips into unconsciousness is truly unpleasant.  One scene of her crying while feeling bad about the whole situation doesn't redeem her at all.

It's not a stand-out episode and unlikely to be fondly remembered, but given how easily this could have been yet another incredibly stupid episode, we should be thankful that things didn't spiral out of control.  Writer Noel Clarke (who you might remember as Mickey Smith) does a good job with keeping things realistic and more or less grounded.  If it weren't for the Gwen moments, this would be a much better episode; as it is it's merely OK.

So that's three reasonable episodes in a row; has Torchwood finally turned the corner?

February 3: "Out of Time" (TW)

Wow, another decent episode!  That's a Torchwood record!  Maybe they should be getting more women writing for the show -- they seem to be the ones writing the better installments.

Emma, Diane, and John find themselves in the 21st century. ("Out
of Time") ©BBC

The premise for "Out of Time" is very simple: what would happen if three people were suddenly transported fifty years forward in time?  It's not a new concept by any means (Captain America is only one of the more famous examples), but author Catherine Tregenna makes the most of it, by thoughtfully examining some of the effects this sudden wrench would have on those affected.  As such, this is more of a character study than an action tale, and it's all the better for it.

We're given three different people -- a headstrong, independent woman pilot, a successful businessman, and a young woman off to visit relatives -- and we're shown how they attempt to adjust to this new life.  John quickly makes friends with Captain Jack -- another man out of his own time, who also gets a chance to shine and become a more nuanced and interesting character in John's company -- but seems ultimately unable to cope; less with the changing times and more with the fact that everyone he knew and loved is gone -- except for his son, who has Alzheimer's and thus doesn't recognize his father or almost anything else around him.  He seemed like the most likely to survive, but he ends up being the one who commits suicide, as he has nothing to live for in the 21st century.  Emma, the young woman, seems to cope best -- she's surprisingly comfortable hanging out and fitting in with two modern young black women, and while she's a bit naïve, on account of being used to the 1950s, she adapts very well.  Meanwhile, Diane is less distressed by finding herself in a new time and more feeling a wanderlust, unwilling to be tied down to one place and time.

It's actually Diane who is in some ways the most interesting character here.  She's shown as incredibly independent, and her frustrations in being unable to fly without a current licence are palpable.  (Although, given that Torchwood faked up three passports for them, why couldn't they forge a flying licence for Diane?)  But the change she brings in Owen is the most surprising.  She somehow transforms Owen -- that's Owen, the womanizing bastard who's never less than an asshole in just about every scene he's in -- into a more complex and nuanced character.  It gets to the point where you genuinely feel for him at the end, and he ends up defined by his relationship with Diane, much how Diane isn't defined by her relationship with Owen.  It's really well done.

In all honesty, the only duff note in the whole piece is Rhys getting mad at Gwen for lying to him; this feels more like setting up events in the next couple episodes than a natural extension of what we see here.  It's not a flashy or thrilling episode, but "Out of Time" provides us three interesting contemplations on the question of what would happen to time-displaced people.

February 2: "Random Shoes" (TW)

And finally, just like that, the clouds open and we get an episode of Torchwood that's worthwhile.  In some ways it's like "Love & Monsters" from series 2 of Doctor Who¹⁸⁰, in that the majority of the episode is told from the perspective of an outsider -- in this case Eugene Jones.  The difference here is that the episode opens with Eugene dead, while his ghost (for lack of a better term) follows Gwen around, trying to piece together the circumstances of his death.

It's not an overly saccharine story: Eugene's life isn't shown to be anything special.  In fact, he appears to have wasted most of it, waiting for an alien that never arrived.  His friends don't seem terribly close with him (in fact, the owner of the video store, Josh, is something of an asshole when it comes to Eugene -- but then it's not immediately clear if he's actually Eugene's friend, or just Gary's), and no one beyond his mother and Linda at the call center seems to really miss him that much.  In other hands this could be really depressing and sad -- but because Eugene's narrating it for us, and because he seems accepting of it all (even if he's not thrilled by it), it's OK.

Eugene saves Gwen's life. ("Random Shoes") ©BBC

The fact that Eugene doesn't remember what happened until Gwen finds out about it is a nice touch -- that means there's no excessive foreshadowing or brooding about what's coming; instead, Eugene is just as curious as the rest of us to learn what happened.  This gives the episode a fresh quality, as we all learn together.  And it certainly helps that Eugene, despite being something of a loser (as he himself admits), is so likeable.  You just wish that he'd been happier while he was alive, instead of constantly waiting -- either for an alien or for his father, who his mother said was working in America but had actually simply left and was working as a clerk nearby.  But Eugene's death does seem to have caused one good thing: his father has come back.  It may not be permanent and it may not be "happily ever after", but as the handshake at the end between Eugene's father and younger brother shows, it might still be the start of something.

And that's the point, ultimately, of "Random Shoes".  It's not necessarily that you made a huge impact while you were alive, but even the small effects you have on others, both while you're here and after, can lead to different things.  It's a bittersweet episode, but a lovely one -- it's not cynical or stupid.  Jacquetta May is probably better known as an actress than a writer, but if she writes other things as lovely and honest as this then she's got a good career to fall back on.  It's a shame they didn't bring her back to write for the show again, because this is easily the best episode we've gotten yet, and possibly the best episode of the entire series.







¹⁸⁰ For the same reason, it turns out -- this, like "Love & Monsters", is a "double-banked" episode, where filming occurs on this at the same time as another episode.  That's why this episode focuses primarily on Gwen and a new character.

February 1: "They Keep Killing Suzie" (TW)

I'm not even sure what to make of this episode.  It's incredibly dumb, but there doesn't even seem to have been any sort of point to it.  The best guess I have is that someone said, "Hey, let's bring Indira Varma back!  We don't need a good reason!"

Gwen and Jack bring Suzie back to life. ("They Keep Killing
Suzie") ©BBC

I mean, it's sort of nice to see her back, but they've bent over backwards to do so in such a way that it's very hard to believe this is how these characters normally act.  Why else is Gwen suddenly advocating using that resurrection glove that drove Suzie mad?  And why is Jack okay with this?  This leads to a plot entirely driven by technobabble, where the authors, Paul Tomalin & Daniel McCulloch (and incidentally, where did these writers come from?  This is one of only four author credits for Tomalin, and the only one for McCulloch.  Apparently they were a "gift" from Davies' friend Paul Abbott...), simply invent a new bit of technobabble to get from moment to moment.  Suzie won't come back to life with the glove?  That's okay, stab her with the knife she was killing people with because it's made of the same material -- that'll work!  (You know, just like how you can use a kitchen magnet as a speaker.)  Need the rest of the Torchwood crew out of the way for a bit?  Just have some sort of lockdown!  Need them out of it?  Have Tosh suddenly start babbling about ISBN numbers.  Oh wait, we cut all the power (except for all the lights and things, but never mind) -- so just say that the membrane on the keyboard might recognize the code (!) and we'll be good to go!  Oh, and we need to have some sort of connection between Suzie and Gwen, so let's make one up, such that Suzie is slowly leeching life energy from Gwen (and, for some reason, transferring her wounds) -- but make it so that it instantly snaps back when Tosh destroys the glove.

The net effect of all this is to try to suggest that all of these events are part of some elaborate plan Suzie put into action back when she was still (properly) alive, but even when you set aside the huge number of unlikely decisions that would have to coincide for this plan to work, the ultimate point appears to be...what?  A way to kill her father?  The whole thing is built up like some sort of master plan, complete with locking down Torchwood and drugging some guy for two years just so he'll go mad and put this plan into action, but it's never clear what the payoff is supposed to be.  It doesn't look like she wants to achieve anything she couldn't have done while she was alive.  (They could have gotten around this by suggesting that she wanted to see what there was after death, but they don't.)

But all of the gaping logical problems might have been acceptable if there'd been a point to it all, some statement Tomalin & McCulloch were trying to make, or some idea they wanted to explore.  But there isn't -- at least not in the episode as broadcast; it's possible there was a point to it all that was edited out at some stage, but that's not what we get.  Instead we get a series of increasingly unlikely coincidences, and for what?  To show that Suzie was dangerous all along?  To show that Gwen is easily manipulated?  Or is the entire episode just to set up the idea that there's "something moving in the dark" that's coming for Jack?  It's hard to tell what they were going for, and thus even harder to tell why they bothered.

(Oh, and apparently Ianto and Jack are shagging now?  Ianto recovered pretty quickly from "There isn't an inch of me that doesn't hurt" last episode, didn't he?)

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.