Written By: Matt Jones
Directed By: Andy Goddard
Air Date: 20th February, 2008
Summary: Jack displays issues in letting people go, and Thing guest stars.
Coming soon!
It makes me angry, almost physically spitting angry, when people say that Torchwood is only ripping off Buffy/Angel in spite of the fact that it's really not (and I think it's pretty insulting to the proven writers on staff to say that they're only capable of garnering inspiration from Joss Whedon), so when Torchwood then turns around and pulls this sort of fantasy crap, I want to drive all the way to BBC Wales and bludgeon the production team with a stale baguette.
The 'fantasy' alerts went off right at the beginning with the cliched 'weird little girl' who goes and pulls out the cliched foreshadowing Tarot card of Death while ignoring the fact that Death in Tarot symbolises rebirth in favour of shortcutting information to the audience. It's made even worse by saying that Death “needs thirteen souls” without explaining why, or even making some strangled attempt at trying to shoehorn the episode into science fiction by claiming Death is some sort of alien. There's some muttering about energy, but that's about all there is to it.
I remember once reading a definition of the difference between fantasy and science fiction. Who wrote it and where I read it is lost to the vagaries of memory, but I remember that fantasy is tells you why things work, while science fiction tells you how. In this episode, we see why Death needs to kill (to come fully into the world) but we never figure out how this is supposed to work.
The way we keep getting these episodes popping up (see: Small Worlds, End of Days), it’s like Torchwood kinda wants to be a supernatural show, but then is reminded that it’s actually a scifi show about aliens and stuff, and a rift in time and space, so make with the technobabble.
Anyway. I should probably say something about the episode at some point. My heart did go out to Jack when he went and dug up the other alien glove, as all he wanted to do, really, was say goodbye to Owen, and give the others a chance to do the same. Given the way that Owen died the previous episode (a mere hour before his autopsy, apart from apparently having absolutely no idea how one conducts an autopsy – A SAW?? YOU START WITH A FREAKING SAW??? What are you going to do, HACK A LIMB OFF??! – Martha is apparently far too keen to cut up dead bodies), without saying a word as he died, you can’t blame him, in a way.
I think it demonstrates that he really does love these people. I’m not sure if a year ago he would have gone and taken the massive risk of retrieving the glove last year. Especially given what it did to Suzie (and how much did I love the fact that the mere sight of the glove is enough to freak Gwen out? we don’t ask for much… just a little continuity now and then), I would have thought his gut reaction would be to leave well enough alone. Besides, he’s surely seen many people die that he’d like to talk to, even after they found out the first glove could revive the dead. But they didn’t revive people in the archives. They revived strangers, who’d live their two extra minutes and then pass on.
The “thing” moving in the darkness, was it this so-called “Death” that Suzie was referring to when she said that? And it does bring up a rather interesting point. For all its existential pretensions, Torchwood does quite clearly believe in the idea of a soul. When you die, it all goes black, but you also go ‘somewhere’, and you’re aware, conscious. You can be rehoused in your body, rather than just your neurons being switched back on (given that Owen is biologically dead).
I did rather like the Jack POV moment, where the screen simply goes black as “Death” lunges for him, and the next thing we see is him waking up in the SUV. I remember thinking, “What the… oh. That must be how Jack experiences things.” I actually really liked that.
Unfortunately, that, and the moment where Ianto complains that he keeps getting redirected to Weight Watchers in his net searches (his Google Fu is not strong, clearly), and the absolutely priceless moment of Ianto appearing with a hockey stick to Jack’s ‘WTF?’ expression, are the few bright spots in the episode. I was annoyed enough by the fantasy pretensions that it coloured my viewing experience. Martha was also pretty much underused in the episode, and it seems rather pointless to keep her around except to be the substitute medic and to deliver lines about what’s happening to Owen which, to be honest, could have easily been given to Tosh.
I’m not saying it’s a bad episode. It’s good, for what it is, and enjoyable, but when taken against the overall theme of Torchwood it stands out as an oddity, fantasy instead of science fiction. I know that booksellers tend to club the two together on their shelves, but I’d like to think TV shows can keep their own genres straight. I’d even say that Sleepers has one over on this one, especially since I read James Moran’s blog, and he pointed out that Ianto’s clowning around with the chair was intended to be him reminding Jack of what he was going to be doing (I just wish it hadn’t come off as poorly as it did).
One of the scenes in this episode really stands out for me, and I want to give massive props to the lighting director and the director for it. In the cell, as Jack and Owen converse in the police cell, even though they’re in the same small room, they’re lit very differently. Owen is perpetually in shadow, and even sitting side-by-side with Jack, he’s hunched over, smaller. Jack, by contrast, it brightly lit, to the point where it practically creates a halo about him. He’s larger, full of life, while Owen stands, literally, in the shadows, the personification of death as Jack is the personification of life.
Quite apart from the staging, I loved that scene for its interactions between the two of them, something we so rarely see. We can see why Jack was so quick to forgive Owen for shooting him (I know if it had been me, I would have made Owen suffer a certain amount), and maybe why Owen shot him in the first place. Owen does seem to have strong feelings for Jack. Not, before you all jump to conclusions, romantic feelings, but strong feelings in general. Jack pushed Owen too far and Owen shot him. Owen was fairly quick to condemn Jack in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (“Jack’s not here. Fat lot of good Jack is.”) even as the others still seemed to remember him wistfully.
I think maybe Jack is someone Owen vaguely hopes to be like. Look at them on the surface. Jack flirts with pretty much anything that moves, which is what Owen does (he used to be far worse in series one, before he calmed down a bit), Owen wanted to be a leader in series one, like Jack was (and, faced with the prospect of losing Jack and Tosh to the past in “Captain Jack Harkness” referred to Jack as ‘my captain’), and his barbs towards Ianto about his relationship with Jack (which actually come in the episode AFTER this one, and I will talk about it more there) and being in competition with him strike me as being slightly resentful of Ianto’s newfound closeness with Jack. Jack going away for some indeterminate period of time made him maybe calm down, realising he didn’t have anyone with impossible standards to live up to, and maybe that’s why the team as a whole got along better. Without Jack’s overwhelming personality, they were able to establish their own identity within the group, without feeling the need to prove something to someone aloof who didn’t seem to really care about them all that much.
So, for showing me how clearly Jack loves his team, and that Gwen’s still not over what Suzie did to her, I’ll award points. I’ll take some of them away for Tosh’s forced ‘confession’ of love, which annoys me because, as I said, I kinda wish they’d become best friends rather than the writers trying to shoehorn them together into some sort of romantic relationship.
And it was nice to see that Thing hasn’t given up acting, seen as we haven’t seen him since the “Addams Family” films. And that he’s not been typecast. Good for him!
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