211: Adrift

Written By: Chris Chibnall
Directed By: Mark Everest
Air Date: 19th March, 2008
Summary: Gwen just doesn't know when to take no for an answer, and the production team helpfully provide enough fodder for a thousand LJ icons.

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Recap

A kid walks home from football practice, in the dark, along an abandoned and apparently empty street. Because that's the crazy sort of thing you get up to when you're 15. Apparently, though, his mum is watching him from across the water, and she sends him a text saying he's late. Chill he says, via text. She smirks and stops watching.

Which is rather a bad thing, because the next thing you know, the wind's blowing, strange lights are shining, and the nausea cam is spinning dizzily above our young friend's head. The next thing you know, he's gone, with an eerie scream ringing around, and all that's left is his mobile dropping to the floor.

Yeah. That's bad.

**

Dumdumduhduhduh(dedadedadeda)
(x4)

**

It's PC Andy! And he's been all police-y and giving a summary of the disappearance of our young footballing friend (who goes by the name of Jonah Bevan in real life, apparently) to Gwen, who stands at the side of the barrage (which is what the bridge is, apparently). We learn that it's been seven months since the kid disappeared and Gwen, in an unrelated manner, looks decidedly sulky. She asks one or two idle questions and eventually, Andy asks,

“Look, sorry, is this beneath you now?” He sounds rather irritated.

“No,” she says, shaking her head, in that way women have perfected which means 'of course, yes, but I'm not going to say it am I?'.

“Also the attitude, you've got a face like a slapped arse.” Oh Andy. I suddenly love you intently.

Apparently Andy was invited to the wedding, and he never showed up. She wants to know where he was, which rather immediately ends fan speculation as to why Andy wasn't at the wedding (which was rather a surprisingly nice bit of continuity I thought). He claims the rota was changed and he had to work. She refutes that. She checked, and he had three days off.

Gwen, I'm surprised at you. You're not using Torchwood resources to hound your friends are you?

Andy didn't want to go, claims he thought Rhys had a problem with him. Not true. He has a problem with Rhys. Turns out that our Andy is holding something of a torch for Gwen, and he obviously did tell her, about three years ago. She thinks it's silly and he should get over it, although “it's not a bloody tap, I can't just switch it off”.

Anyway, he'd rather talk about the case. He's rather attached to it all, hates watching Nikki (Jonah's mum) die a little every time she hears there's no news. Gwen wants to know what she's got to do with it.

“Like you don't know,” Andy scoffs.

They go over to Andy's police car, where he hauls out a laptop and brings up the CCTV footage of the area. The camera takes pictures at six second intervals. There's shots of Jonah walking along. Then a shot with a bright light off camera, and then suddenly Jonah vanishes. It's the bright light that makes Andy suspicious. Gwen has no idea what happened. Andy thinks she's lying. He pulls up more footage from 45 minutes later.

“What's your mate Mulder doing there?” he asks, pointing at the image of Jack getting out of the SUV.

Gwen's now about as confused as Andy is.

**

It's all quiet in the Hub, and Toshiko is looking at dirty pictures of spectrium analyzer results. The slut. Gwen's hovering over her shoulder, looking at the incomprehensible peaks decorating Tosh's monitors. No Rift activity at that time or date at the barrage, Tosh tells her. When Gwen tries to ask more questions, Tosh proves she's awesome by anticipating all her requests for expanded searches. One suspects she gets asked about this sort of stuff a lot.

Well, if the technician is no help, time to go to the weirdo that runs this joint.

Jack's busily fiddling with his gun (not a euphemism, I swear) as Gwen quizzes him about going to the barrage that night. He has a good excuse for being there. There's a coffee place there he likes.

THE SLUT! Ianto will kill him for cheating on him with OUTSIDE COFFEE!!

She tells him a boy went missing in there, wonders if he was there because of the boy. Only if they'd detected Rift activity, Jack replies. Did they? Of course not. Can't help then, says Jack, practically bounding out of the door. Gotta go. Weevil hunting with Ianto.

Oh, is that what they're calling it now?

**

Andy and Gwen meet up in what can charitably be described as a dive of a cafe. They glare at the people who stumble in like they're about to leap on them and arrest them.

“So, you're covering it up then,” Andy says, when they finally get bored of staring at the strange drunk people.

Gwen is going with Jack's line that it's just a coincidence, and she can't help. Andy's unhappy that he's getting fobbed off by Torchwood, in spite of Gwen saying she'd tell him stuff, honest. (And if you believe that, I have a nice stretch of swampland in Florida to sell you.)

“You know what's happened to you, Gwen? You've got hard.”

Gwen actually looks faintly pleased by the idea. “Yeah? Well maybe I've had to.”

Please. She's about as hard as Andrex toilet tissue.

“You used to care. You used to be bothered about people. No matter who they were or what they did and now you talk about coincidence like people go missing all the time, like it's a fact of life. The old Gwen would've been up there to see Nikki Bevan in a flash.”

Gwen's looking increasingly uncomfortable the longer Andy speaks.

“But you're one of them now aren't you? Too busy to bother with one missing child. What is it, not major enough for you? Hmm? Not spooky enough? Sorry to bother you.” He picks up his bright yellow jacket and goes.

**

Apparently Andy got to her. The next shot is of Gwen ringing Nikki Bevan's doorbell. She's happy to let Gwen in, apparently Andy said that she might be coming round. Andy knows Gwen fairly well then, the sly devil. She brings Gwen into her living room, which is filled with VHS tapes. Apparently every time that Nikki sees a crowd scene on TV, she records it, and goes through it frame by frame, looking to see if Jonah's in the crowd anywhere.

“It's the hope that's killing me,” she says.

She asks if Gwen thinks she's mad, to which Gwen returns that she'd make a great policewoman (I can sorta see it in the thoroughness, I suppose). She shows Gwen Jonah's old room, talks about how she sleeps there at night sometimes, breathing in his smell from the pillow, although even that's fading. She keeps his diary for him, imagines she's him and then writes about it. She wonders if she did something wrong, and drove Jonah away.

“All I've got is questions.”

On Gwen's way out of the door, Nikki gives her a flyer for a support group she wants to set up, for people who've had family go missing. She asks if Gwen will come, and Andy will be there as well. Gwen has to run for now though, as illustrated by the subsequent aerial shot of Cardiff. Zoom~

**

Casa del Rhys, and I've only just noticed that the lighting designer on Torchwood has a really big thing for fairy lights. You've got those red ones in the Hub, in Jonah's room there were these football ones, and in Rhys and Gwen's living room there are some draping down the wall, and decorating a small plant behind the TV.

Rhys looks up and makes an exsasperated gesture as Gwen appears, turning off the TV with a flick of the remote.

“Yes, yes, I know, I'm sorry, I'm late.” She doesn't sound very apologetic, but when has she ever.

Three hours, says Rhys. Work thing, sorry, ooh, is that wine? They were going to do something, apparently, and Gwen was going to cook. And that something was apparently a serious discussion.

“When are we going to have this talk?”

“Let's do it now!” Gwen says, with false cheer, having poured herself a large glass of wine. Her voice is pitched half an octave higher than usual. “Come on, now's good. I'm ready. Babies. Now.”

“Really?”

“You think I've changed?”

Rhys is a little thrown by the sudden shift. “Eh?”

“Since I joined Torchwood. Am I different?”

Rhys' confusion grows. “Why?”

“Something Andy said.” Gwen sits down. “Oh, let me just tell you this one thing, ok?” she sits down, in full gossip mode. “He still fancies me.”

Rhys bursts out laughing.

“Don't laugh, that's why he didn't come to the wedding.”

Rhys' face falls. “Bloody hell, poor sod.”

“Oi,” Gwen teases him that she's very sexy, and seems to have successfully changed the subject, and gotten Rhys' mind off the whole baby talk, although she does say they can go practice.

Scenes like the next one, set the next morning, where Gwen holds toast hostage until Rhys says he loves her, makes me just go 'aww' even though I know, in my heart of hearts, that Gwen really doesn't deserve such a sweet guy as Rhys.

Tosh calls, interrupting their messing around, saying she's dug up some new data. Can she come and have a look? Sure, says Gwen, and steals some of Rhys' toast on the way out.

**

Tosh wants to show Gwen more dirty pictures in graph form. She shows what they consider to be a 'normal' Rift spike, though it's followed by a “negative Rift spike”, a trough instead of a peak. She says they've always assumed the Rift is one way, but what if this indiactes that the Rift happily snatches stuff up too?

This is such a big concept I'm assuming that Torchwood has never to the knowledge of either Tosh or Gwen lost anything because of the Rift. Gwen asks if Tosh can keep this information between them (though why she's suddenly paranoid is beyond me).

**

Another aerial shot of Cardiff. And all I can think is: god, that's a lot of car parking space.

**

I'm amused that the flyer that Gwen's looking at lists the date of the meeting of Searchlight, the missing persons group of Nikki's, but cunningly obscures the month and the year, continuing the vague ambiguity Torchwood has towards its timescale. Andy's there, and is surprised to see that Gwen has turned up.

“Still the same old me,” Gwen retorts.

“Thank you,” Andy says.

“Yeah, well, I don't know why I bother. You're so rude,” Gwen says, pushing past him.

“How's Rhys?” Andy says, after her. “Other than hungry?”

Wow. He's almost as bitchy as Jack.

They go inside, and it's only Andy, Gwen and Nikki, who's getting increasingly disheartened at the fact that no one's shown up. Gwen and Andy take seats at the back of the assortment of chairs, but only moments after they do so, a couple shows up. Then a man in a sikh turban, then another couple, who take seats. More and more people show up, all at once, and Gwen and Andy stand, giving up their seats, and move to a point where they can see everyone. The church hall is filling up fast.

They're shocked. They had no idea there was this many people.

Incidentally, I love this musical cue. I hope they hurry up and release the soundtrack.

**

Gwen apparently fled the church hall, and Andy comes out to look for her, asking if she's ok. She's getting nervous. It's a bit much. How're they supposed to deal with all these people? They're not, Andy says. They're only working on Jonah's case.

Except, Gwen has a suspicion that they're all the same case. She realises if they find the pattern, they might find Jonah.

“You're brilliant,” she tells Andy, and then runs off.

Andy, naturally, doesn't have the first clue what she's talking about.

**

Tosh and Gwen are getting their investigative geek on. Gwen's pulling up all the files on missing persons. She wants Tosh to check to see if there was any suspicious Rift activity at the times they disappeared.

Tosh asks if they're going to tell Jack. When they're sure, Gwen say. If Tosh's right, she says, they can try to find the people taken, maybe stop it from happening. They go through files, and maps, and bits of paper, and Gwen takes over one of the rooms of the Hub, sticking files to the wall, that same eerie scream we heard in the opening audible when she pins up Jonah's file, marking dots on the map, and Tosh confirms whether or not there was a Rift spike associated with the missing persons.

Some indeterminate time later, Tosh comes into the room where Gwen's been working. The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with missing persons who vanished when the Rift hiccupped.

“Oh my god,” she murmurs, “There are really this many?”

“Now we tell Jack,” Gwen says.

**

Team Spanky are gathered in the boardroom, Tosh is doing her delivering handouts, while Gwen explains what's going on. People have been going missing, she says, and explains the connection with the Rift spikes. People are taken by the Rift.

“What happens to them?” Owen asks.

“Scattered through time and space, I guess,” Jack says.

“Cheery thought, thank you.”

Jack points to the paperwork. “This is good work.” Gwen smiles and bobs her head. “But I don't know what you want us to do.”

Gwen wants to try to prevent it. Jack asks Tosh, who says that no, they can't predict the Rift spikes (I'm guessing that the Rift predictor program from KKBB broke at some point), and they're gone in second. No idea how to fight them then, says Jack.

Gwen isn't happy with that. “We have a duty. These people are victims.”

Ianto looks uncomfortable, glancing at the tabletop.

Gwen says they'd do something if it was Weevils. Jack, entirely reasonably, points out they can catch and stop Weevils. They can't stop spikes they can't predict and are over too quickly for them to get to in time.

“Seriously, Gwen, practically. Tell me what we should do.”

Everyone looks at Gwen to see what she'll say next.

“We help those left behind,” Gwen says.

Jack drops his head in a 'god save from from bleeding hearts' gesture.

“Why not?” Gwen demands.

“Nothing to do with us. Move on.”

Gwen's been heartbroken by seeing these people who've lost loved ones. Too bad. They can't fix it, Jack insists.

“Jack's right,” Owen says, “They need counselling, support. That is not us.”

God no. These people are so fucked up they'd just make the problems worse, I'm certain.

“We can help them,” Gwen says, imploringly. “We don't have to be this hard,” Ooh, shades of what Andy said there, perhaps? “It's not a badge of honour-”

Unfortunately, Jack doesn't want to hear any more. He stands, stabs a finger in Gwen's direction. “Close this down.”

“Jack!” Gwen calls as he leaves.

Ianto gets to his feet hurriedly, saying, “I'll talk to him,” to Gwen, before hurrying after Jack, catching up to him before they're out of sight.

Gwen yells that they're just sweeping it under the carpet, forgetting about it. Unfortunately, Tosh and Owen agree with Jack, it seems.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” Owen says, holding up his broken hand, an eternal reminder of his permanent state of death. It has the air of something frequently thought of these days.

“Bollocks to serenity,” Gwen snaps, throwing herself into her chair.

“For a lovely girl you've got a very dirty mouth.” Pot, Kettle, Owen.

Owen's with Jack, and Tosh apologises, but she clearly agrees with him. They leave Gwen on her own in the boardroom, where she can see Jack saying something final to Ianto, punctuating it with a wave of a finger, before he too storms off. Ianto glances back to see Gwen sitting there, all alone.

**

It's a nice day in Wales, apparently. Gwen's sitting under a tree, and Rhys is unpacking a picnic, while trying to talk children to her. He's talking about some of the guys he knows, and their experiences, but Gwen clearly isn't listening.

“Will you just stop whittering,” Gwen snaps, after a while.

They're trying to have a talk, Rhys points out. Hardly whittering. Gwen doesn't see the point, it's a simple question. They can't have kids while she works for Torchwood. They don't do maternity leave. She can't just beg off saving the world to take little Rhys junior to playschool.

“Stop dancing around it,” she says, “It's a dead question.”

Rhys puts up with so much crap from this lady. You have to admire him. “Sometimes I fucking hate you,” he snaps. She's so caught up in Torchwood, like it's all there is. What's she fighting for? Gwen tries to interrupt but he shuts her up. What's the point of saving the world, if she's not saving it so that people can live?

“If you're starting to think that your shit is more important than real life then we're not going to last very long here, love.”

Oh Rhys. Leave her. You're too good for her.

She tries to apologise, “It's just this thing at work-” Rhys interrupts that he doesn't care. When they're together, it's them, not work. Problems at work stay at work.

**

I get the impression it's the nightshift in the Hub. The lights are low, and it's apparently empty when Gwen walks in, calling out for Jack. She sees a shadow moving around in the hothouse, and, assuming it's him, heads up there.

Well, she's half right.

She opens the doors to the hothouse, “Jack, I-”

The other half that's in there being Ianto. And neither of them seem to be wearing much of anything, in a rather, shall we say, compromising position, lip locked and Ianto with his hand down Jack's pants.

“Oh! God!” That was Gwen, by the way, though I wouldn't put the exclamation out of the realm of possibility for having being used by either of those two within the last ten minutes or so.

“Huh?” They suddenly realised she's there, and freeze, mid-clinch, to look at her.

“Sorry, I... Sorry.” Gwen leaves again, and halfway along the catwalk, she doubles over with laughter, but somehow manages to keep walking.

Ianto's clearly mortified, grabbing at his shirt and putting it on while he goes after Gwen, while Jack just starts laughing.

“Uh...” Ianto falters a bit as he leaves the hothouse, shrugging into his shirt, doing up the buttons, fastening his trousers.

“Ianto, I'm sorry, I didn't realise...”

Ianto looks horribly embarrassed, but not in the slightest ashamed. “Doesn't matter,” he says, shaking his head.

“And I wouldn't have come in if I'd known-”

Jack exits the hot house. He's donned his shirt and trousers in a concession to Gwen, perhaps, though he hasn't bothered to fasten either of them up. “Always room for one more. We could have used you an hour ago for naked hide and seek.”

Ianto gives Gwen a conspiratorial smile. “He cheats. He always cheats.”

How exactly does one cheat at naked hide and seek? By wearing clothes?

Anyway. To business. Gwen wants to make Jonah Bevan her own personal project. She'll work on it in her own time. No way, says Jack. Why not? Tosh and Ianto have their own projects (really? I'm guessing Tosh's is one of the various ones we've seen her working on, but what's Ianto's?), so why not her?

“Leave it alone,” Jack says.

“I can't,” Gwen snaps back.

Ianto's watching Gwen very carefully. After a moment of engaging in a staring contest with Gwen, Jack glances at Ianto. “Coming back in? Work to do.”

“Yep,” Ianto says, quickly. Jack's already walking back to the hothouse, and Ianto follows him. He pauses at the door. Inside, Jack's already got his shirt back off. “Uh, there's a package on your desk.”

Indeed there is. A simple plastic bag, folded over. Inside is what looks like a PDA. Gwen keeps glancing up towards the hothouse as she takes it out, no doubt trying to get a look at what's going on up there. Andy calls. He's got a cup of tea with her name on it.

So, she'll have to give up plans of voyeuristically watching the CCTV footage for the night, and go have tea with Andy. Pity.

**

Gwen's brought the PDA thing to the cafe, and protests that it's very hi-tech when Andy starts pawing at it, and takes it off him. He mocks her and reclaims it. It's a GPS. About as hi-tech as his mobile, in fact, it's probably less so.

Gwen struggles to look calm and collected in the face of such an obvious statement, as Andy turns it on and looks at it. It's pointing to an island in the middle of the Bristol channel, which is “just deserted scrubland” according to Andy, who sounds like he should be working for the tourist board if he knows so much about random islands in the middle of the sea.

Gwen looks preoccupied, and hands over her empty mug. “Couldn't get get us a refill could you?” she asks, and when Andy goes to spend more of his hard earned cash on tea, Gwen pulls out her phone and calls Ianto.

Ianto, in the Hub, is fully dressed, much to the distress of fangirls everywhere I'm sure, making coffee. Incidentally, I love the insane bubbling ringtone on his mobile.

“Hello,” he answers, cheerfully, still stirring the mugs in front of him.

“You left me that package didn't you?”

“Ianto!”

Jack's bellowing for Ianto's attentions, but apparently too tied up upstairs to come down and help. Ianto casts a glance up but doesn't look too hurried to answer the summons. “Don't know what you mean,” he says.

“Ianto, what's going on?” Gwen's squinting into the middle distance, as if she could stare Ianto down across a phone line.

Jack's still yelling, more frantically now (honestly, what state did that boy leave him in?), and Ianto just signs off with a “Night, Gwen,” ending the call even while Gwen is still talking to him, trying to get his attention.

Andy sits back down. He has Big Plans. He knows some people who own boats and first thing in the morning, they'll go charter one and head off to check out that island. Yeah, not gonna happen, Gwen says. Andy can get her the boat, and she'll tell him what she finds later on.

She's not getting this whole 'teamwork' vibe thing that Andy's trying to get going. He's still acting like they're partners in the police, still, while Gwen's just working on her own “private project”. Andy's a resource to her, these days.

“No boat trip, no boat,” Andy says, “I'm part of this.”

Gwen rolls her eyes. “Ok,” she relents, to which Andy gives a little 'yesss' of victory, even though Gwen tries to kill the mood by telling him to do what she says.

Yeah whatever. “I was gonna ask,” he says, “Promise me you won't laugh. Have you got any vacancies coming up? You know, with Torchwood? I was thinking, I'm great to work with, you could tip em the wink.”

At least that's what I think he says. The message is pretty clear though, but Gwen doesn't look sympathetic to Andy's ambitions. If anything, she looks annoyed, turning away from him and staring at the wall. Finally, she allows, “Maybe, yeah.”

She doesn't exactly look enthusiastic, though. Andy, from the way he shifts and looks at the table, is maybe picking that up just a tad.

**

Gwen comes home, and the place is dark, all the lights off. She takes a step into the house and immediately comes across a pillow and blanket left out in the hallway. She approaches the door, thinking about going in, then sighs, picks up the bedding, and strides out of shot.

Bad move. My parents always told me: never sleep in separate beds after a fight. It's setting too much of a precedent.

**

The next morning! Andy is in his civvies, negotiating with a boat skipper, as Gwen runs up. Fifty quid, he tells Gwen.

“That's a bit steep, init? Offer him thirty five.” Missing people, Rift activity, and lives on the line, but Gwen knows the value of money. But then, ever since Ianto had Words with her regarding using the Torchwood credit card for online poker, she's been trying to be good.

“Gwen, I don't wanna be funny, but if you want to haggle, go to Morrocco,” Andy says.

Gwen's annoyed, but relents, handing over the cash. She asks him to continue his unbroken streak of buying her tea (“You're kidding. You're not kidding. I don't know.”), and sends him off to the little shop just up the pier. As soon as he gets out of earshot, she approaches the skipper.

“Do this for me and I'll give you a hundred quid.”

Andy's just picking up the teas when he hears the sound of a motor. He turns in time to see the boat pulling away, Gwen buckling on her life jacket.

“Oi!” He runs down the pier after her. Aww, poor Andy.

“I'm sorry, Andy!” she calls out, throwing her arms wide in dramatic apology.

“Yeah right,” Andy yells back, still clutching the two cups of tea.

“I'm sorry!”

Torchwood should so hire him and fire Gwen. Seriously. How can you not want to give him a hug right now?

**

The boat does the thing that all good boats do, i.e. Getting their passengers across water without drowning them, and eventually Gwen is dropped off on the island. Apparently she didn't pay for it to hang around with the meter running, and it sales away after dropping her on dry land. Gwen glances at the GPS, but it must not give her a lot of information, since she sticks it straight back in her pocket after she takes it out.

She walks up a wooden jetty onto, as Andy so astutely pointed out, deserted scrubland. Except there is a lighthouse nearby. It's as good a vantage point as any, so Gwen goes there, and it must not be locked since she enters without trouble and climbs the stairs all the way to the top. She can see all the way around from here, and not too far away, she can see what looks to be bunkers cut into the ground.

Then, as she looks down, two people in identical red clothing, covered by light jackets, appear walking down the path towards the bunkers. Between them is someone covered in a grey blanket. We can't see them at all.

But it's the last person, striding along behind them that Gwen's attention, and ours. We'd know that greatcoat anywhere.

Gwen runs down the stairs and out of the lighthouse, all the way down the path to the bunkers, and now Jack and the other three are gone, out of sight. Gwen picks a bunker, and proves that she's really investigating some sort of conspiracy by having, in X-Files tradition, a torch in her pocket. Presumably, the idea of looking for a lightswitch never occurred to her.

She walks down a tunnel until she finds what looks like a doorbell. She presses a button a couple of times and then an exasperated female voice comes over an intercom.

“Alright! Who are you?”

“Torchwood,” Gwen says, gambling on the fact that she's just seen Jack to mean that the name carries some weight, “Access code 474317432. I'm with Jack Harkness?”

The voice sounds suspicious. “He's supposed to warn us about visitors.”

“Law unto himself, isn't he?” Gwen tries a small laugh, but it comes across as hollow. Jack's been keeping secrets from her, big time, after all.

That's enough to convince the voice that she knows Jack. A door swings open, and a woman in pink surgical scrubs is standing on the other side. “And he knows we'll always forgive him,” she says, fond affection in her voice. This is Helen, the woman Gwen's just been speaking to.

Helen beckons Gwen inside, and although Gwen looks incredibly suspicious, she goes. Helen leads her into a hallway that's more than a little rundown and ill kept. There are pink doors with slates hanging from them, names chalked onto them. There's the sound of a tinny radio playing something old fashioned, and a woman coughing. In the background, we can see a similarly pink-garbed staff member pushing someone in a wheelchair.

Given the sheer amount of mildew, I'm going to say Hospital. Though I think in this place MRSA is the least of their worries. There's the sound of a scream that stops Gwen in her tracks. Helen turns to her as she glances through an open door to see several people sitting in day room, watching a TV that's kept protected behind a metal mesh. They must have been having trouble with people destroying it whenever X-Factor was on.

One woman has some scar tissue on her cheek, and when she noticed Gwen staring at her, she self-consciously pulls her hair over her face, gets up, and walks out of the room, past Gwen and Helen, into one of the side rooms.

“This your first time?” Helen asks kindly. Gwen nods, looking too stunned for words.

“We all find it difficult at first,” Helen sounds understanding before carrying on walking, “Are you looking for anyone in particular?”

“Yes,” Gwen says, hurrying after Helen, who might be a Doctor, but her attitude and what they seem to be doing here screams 'nurse' to me. They're looking after these people, but there's no sign of treatment. I'm confused why Nurses are wearing surgical scrubs, but then I'm not the costumer. “How many people are there here?”

“Didn't he tell you?” Helen asks, sounding almost a little suspicious herself.

Gwen hears crying. “What's that?” She stops at an open doorway, looks in to see a man sobbing, his head in his hands. “Is he ok?”

“We do our best to help him,” Helen says, resignedly.

Gwen's been looking at all the name plates, and the one she sees now, “Caroline”, makes her repeat the name to herself, as if it's familiar. “Sorry!” She says, loudly, catching up to Helen, “But why are they-?”

And then she remembers. All the names on the slates hanging from the doors, she's seen them on the missing persons notices she pinned up in the interrogation room, back at Torchwood. Gwen covers her mouth with her hands, shocked, as she realises that these people here were the ones who vanished after being taken by the Rift.

“Are you alright?” Helen asks, her question less kind than confused. Some strange woman turning up without warning, saying she's from Torchwood but acting like she has no knowledge of the place, and I'd say she was getting suspicious.

“Oh my god, they're here,” says Gwen, to a strange look from Helen. “What are you doing to them, what's going on here, tell me?”

“I'll take it from here, Helen.” That would be Jack's cue. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been following her down the hallways, waiting for her to twig. He looks at Gwen. “It was Ianto wasn't it?”

Well, we can assume that Ianto clearly already knew about this place, and with Jack's full knowledge apparently. Gwen demands to know what he's doing here, to these people. He steps towards her, insisting he can explain, but she tells him to stay away from her, yelling that these were the people taken by the Rift, demanding to know what he's done, why they're here...

And then she see a slate saying “Jonah's room”.

“He's here,” she says, softly, “He's been here all along.”

“It's not that simple,” Jack tells her.

“Open it,” she says.

“Gwen, before I-”

“Now!”

Jack clearly wants to do nothing of the sort, but, glaring at her the whole time, he moves over oto the door, pulls out a swipe card, and unlocks the door to Jonah's room. Gwen immediately enters, and Jack glances over to Helen, who's just staring at the situation with a “what the hell?” expression on her face.

Gwen enters a room that if we were to call it “dank” would be to be too kind to it. Inside is man, breathing heavily, awkwardly. She calls into the room as she enters, saying she's looking for Jonah. The man inside asks why.

“Am I in the right room?” she asks, after a minute.

The man turns around, and stands up. “Yes. I'm Jonah.” It's hard to understand. This man is fully grown, bald, with heavy scarring all over his skin.

Gwen's briefly lost for words, before she says that she's looking for a fifteen year old boy who went missing from the barrage. Yes, the man says. That's him. Who is she? Gwen Cooper (so, apparently, she's not going by 'Williams' even after marrying Rhys) with Torchwood. What happened?

He tells her how, walking home, there was a light and then he woke up on a burning planet. He was pulled out of the fire and taken to a building where they tried to heal his burns. And then he realised that the building was a rescue ship, one of the last ships evacuating a burning planet, leaving a burning solar system behind. Incidentally, if this is Earth, then it puts a whole new spin on that Doctor Who episode, if there were still people on the planet when it was destroyed. There's no indication that it was Earth, though, so he could have been flung any time, any where.

“I am so sorry for what's happened to you,” Gwen says, tears running down her face.

“Can I trust you to tell the truth?” Jonah asks.

Gwen had backed off when Jonah stood up, but now she reaches out and takes his scarred hands. Of course, she says, and he asks if he's really home. Yes, she says, he is. He thanks her, and she explains why she's there. His mother's still looking for him. It's only been seven months since he left, so she's still alive. It gives Jonah such happiness, it seems. He tried to get home, but couldn't. He wants to see her, wants Gwen to bring her.

“Is that what you want?” Gwen asks.

Jonah smiles.

**

Gwen's sitting on some very picturesque cliffs when Jack appears, sitting down next to her to look out at the sea. He tells her that when he took over Torchwood, there were two like Jonah locked in the cells. He set up the facility on the island to take care of them, told the staff they were experiments gone wrong, so they'd be looked after. There are seventeen, and in the last year, the Rift's been throwing more back at them, like it's trying to correct its mistakes.

Still, seventeen out of all those dozens of people on the walls that Gwen found?

Gwen says, sounding pained, “You can't keep them here, they have families who deserve to know.”

“Gwen, they're sick. In ways you could never imagine. We can't fix them. We just care for them.”

Gwen tells him about Jonah asking to see his mum. Jack says no, instantly. Gwen pushes, saying she has a right to know.

“No way,” Jack says, firmer.

“She said that not knowing is the worst part.”

“How are you going to tell her that her child has ages forty years in the last seven months, that he's scarred, that he cannot look after himself.”

Gwen's not interested in hearing this. “We don't have the right to hide it from her,” she says, in a lecturing tone.

Jack appeals to her sense of discretion. Bad move. I don't think she has any. “If you tell her, you have to tell her about the Rift, and Torchwood.”

“Then I will.”

“What if she doesn't believe you?”

“I have to try. We owe her the truth.”

It's not Torchwood's fault that the Rift took Jonah, so I don't see how they 'owe' her anything. In fact, Torchwood, or rather Jack, is trying to fix the problem not of their making. If they could have been sent off to a normal hospital, one rather suspects they wouldn't have been kept in the vaults under the Hub.

“Jack, if you'd lost someone, wouldn't you want to know?”

Jack, who had previously been leaning into her, beseeching, abruptly turns all the way away from her, literally giving her the cold shoulder. He stares out to sea.

Gwen tries to broach the distance that he's suddenly put between them. She puts her hand over Jack's. “Let me try,” she says. “Please.”

Jack doesn't look at her.

**

Back in Cardiff, Nikki is staring out of the window at the barrage. Gwen's in her living room behind her. She excitedly tells Gwen about her plans for the next meeting of their support group, asking if she'll come. This is the moment where I'd have second thoughts. Nikki's clearly starting to reach outside of herself, giving herself a purpose. Gwen's about to give her what she wanted, but it'll mean that Nikki will have to walk into that support group, knowing the truth and never being able to tell anyone.

Fortunately, for Gwen, she's convinced she knows what the right thing to do is.

“I found Jonah,” she admits, when Nikki realises she's not there for small talk.

Nikki calmly asks if he's dead, having steeled herself long ago for exactly that news.

Gwen shakes her head.

“Is he hurt?” Nikki's voice shakes as she asks.

They're looking after him, Gwen says, and Nikki demands to see him. She suddenly starts crying. Yes, Gwen says. But there's some things she needs to explain first.

**

Andy's at the police station when his phone rings, and if he ever wants to get into Torchwood, he's going to need a cooler ringtone than that. He looked annoyed when he looks at the display and sees who's calling him. He answers anyway.

“Andy, I know you hate me right now,” Gwen says.

“I am hanging up,” Andy tells her.

“Nono, please don't. It's about Nikki. I found Jonah.”

“Where?” Andy asks, anxiously.

“I can't tell you that,” Gwen says.

The anger that had gone away for a second returns in full force. Gwen seems to forget that Andy's been looking for Jonah as long as Nikki has, has sat with her and talked to her, and given her far more support than warrants given that he was just an officer assigned to the scene. “Oh, here we go again. Piss off why don't you?”

“I've got Nikki with me,” Gwen forges ahead regardless of how cross Andy sounds, “I've told her about Torchwood and about what we do.” That's more than she's ever told Andy, that's for sure. “I need you to confirm to her that I'm not mad or dangerous or a liar.”

“You. Used. Me. Gwen.” Andy's rather right to be angry, but she clearly doesn't care.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

“That's how you see me, isn't it? Occasionally useful. Worth stringing along in case I can ever help you. You'd never recommend for me to join Torchwood, would you?”

“No,” Gwen says flatly, crushing Andy's hopes under her bootheel once and for all.

“Thank you,” Andy says, presumably for the fact that it's the first time she's actually been honest with him during this whole investigation.

Gwen tells him she wants to take Nikki to see Jonah, but he needs to reassure her that Gwen's not crazy.

“We can fix this, Andy, we can make this right.”

After a moment, Andy tells her to put her on.

**

If I were Andy, I would have told Nikki that Gwen is a grade-A nutcase and that she should run away as fast as possible, but Andy would like to see them reunited as well. I wonder what he'd have said, though, if he knew the truth about Jonah's situation. Whatever he said was convincing enough, though, as we next see Nikki on the boat with Gwen, a smile on her face, heading towards the island.

Oh dear, I just got a flashback to that film with Ewan MacGregor and Scarlett Johanssen in it.

Fortunately for us, there are no Hollywood beauties lying in wait, only Helen, her staff and patients. Helen leads Gwen and Nikki through the hospital to Jonah's room, where she unlocks the door. Gwen tries to remind Nikki that she won't recognise Jonah, but she's insistent that she doesn't care. She just wants to see him.

They let her in.

Jonah stands up and turns around, and Nikki shrieks, “Stay away!”, in horror, demanding to know what the hell they're playing at, as Jonah apologises tearfully. That's not her son, what are they playing at?

“I promise you, this is Jonah,” Gwen says.

“THAT is not my son!”

Jonah looks heartbroken.

Nikki tells Gwen to get her out, altohugh Gwen tries to get her to calm down and see sense, she won't do anything of the sort.

“Have you fixed my wardrobe door?” Jonah asks, suddenly. “We bought it flat pack. Made it together.” Nikki's stopped struggling, yelling, and is just looking horrified, her back to Jonah, not looking at him. “Bottom left hinge keeps coming loose. You said you'd sort it.”

“No,” Nikki says.

“Every evening you'd buy a bottle of beer. You'd let me sneak one sip, just the one. Don't want to get a habit.”

“Make him stop,” Nikki says, she's trying to run out of the door, but Gwen holds her in place.

“You set two alarms because you always sleep through the first. Talk about the day when you earn decent money and can afford yourself some decent make up. Buy me a double bed. Don't understand why I need it.”

“SHUT UP!” Nikki screams, to his face.

“Let me ask you why you haven't married. You'd never be lonely, cause I always got you.”

Nikki finally stops trying to flee.

“It's me, mum,” Jonah says, crying, “It's me.”

Nikki finally seems to see that, and past the strange look of her son. He says he's been so lost. Walked for years, trying to get home, he's sorry, he says, for being late that night. Nikki reaches out, touching the scars on his face, then Jonah pulls her into a hug she happily returns. She recognises him now, even if his body's changed.

“The sights I've seen, mam,” he says. “It'll take time-”

“It'll be okay,” Nikki says, and, behind her, Helen quietly enters the room.

“You have to leave Jonah now,” she says, cautiously.

Nikki doesn't understand why, even though Helen insists it's for her own benefit, Nikki says she'll take him home. They can't allow that, but Nikki says she'll just tell people he's her dad or something. She can take care of her own child.

“We can't allow that,” Helen says.

“He's my son!” Nikki declares, a turn around from a few minutes ago. “I say what's allowed!”

Jonah is breathing harder now, more pained sounding. “It's started again,” he says.

Nikki wants to know what's happening.

“He's starting the downswing.” Helen hurries to his side, putting her arm around his shoulders.

“What's a downswing?” Gwen wants to know.

“You've seen him in the good phase,” Helen tell her, her voice compassionate, but pained. “It gets briefer every day. It really might be best if you leave.”

“Helen,” Jonah chokes out.

“It's alright sweetheart, I'm here.”

“Make it stop.”

“I wish I could.” She looks up at Nikki. “Please,” she begs, “It would be better if you didn't stay.”

“I'm not leaving,” Nikki says.

Helen gets up. “Then you should move away!” She urges Gwen and Nikki back, neither of whom understand why.

And then Jonah opens his mouth, and starts to scream. He doesn't pause for breath, he just starts screaming. It echoes and resonates in an altogether in-Human fashion. The women cry out in pain and clap their hands over their ears, Nikki and Helen staggering out of the door.

Gwen is slower to follow, staring as she is at Jonah, rocking back and forth, screaming. We hear her voiceover.

I'd never heard a sound like it. This primal howl. The scream lasts twenty hours every day.

Back on the boat away from the island, Nikki looks devastated. Gwen looks haunted.

Before the Rift returned him, Jonah had looked into the heart of a dark star. What he'd seen had driven him mad.

**

The caption says: One Week Later.

I'm not sure why it's a week later, given what comes next, but it's a week later, so it is.

Gwen enters Nikki's home. She's telling her that the staff say she can visit whenever she likes. When he's in a good phase, anyway.

Nikki looks at her, dully. “Promise me you won't do this to anyone else. Before I had the memory. Whenever I thought of him I'd see him laughing with his mates, playing football, scoffing his breakfast. Now I just hear that terrible noise.”

Gwen looks like she's been punched in the stomach. She fought Jack and Torchwood tooth and nail to make sure that Nikki knew about Jonah. They both told her it's what they wanted. “I thought you wanted to know what happened to him.”

“I did,” Nikki says, “I was wrong.”

And that, I think, was what Jack was trying to tell Gwen all along.

“It was better when I didn't know,” Nikki continues, “Before you, I had hope.”

Gwen opened Pandora's Box, but unlike Pandora, forgot to shut the lid in time to keep hope trapped. She leaves, without saying anything.

**

In the Hub, Gwen starts ripping down all the missing persons leaflets, while, in her flat, Nikki starts taking all her tapes of crowd scenes, throwing them into a big plastic bag.

She packs away Jonah's diary, tidies up his room, stuffing bedding into bags and boxes, cleaning away his things. She takes one of his jumpers out of the wardrobe, clutches it tightly, sniffing it, then sits on the bed, sobbing her heart out.

Gwen files away the missing persons reports into a cabinet in the Hub labelled simply 'Missing'. Jack watches her from the shadows, and says nothing.

**

Rhys comes home to find Gwen in a nice dress, lighting candles. He looks rather shocked. Pleasantly so. “Apology, is it?”

Gwen's voice is very quiet, almost subdued. “Tonight we talk about what you want. Kids. The future. Anything you want.”

Rhys is far more perceptive than she's ever given him credit for. “You alright?”

She can't hold up to his concern, and she starts crying. He hugs her, tells her to tell him what's wrong. And, unlike this time last year, she can. She has someone to talk to. So she does.

“There's this woman, Nikki. She had a son. Jonah. He went missing seven months ago.”

I'm very disheartened. I had a lovely thorough review all written out, and somewhere between my work computer, my desktop, my laptop and my two USB keys, I seem to have accidentally deleted the file. So, instead of three pages of musings, you're getting what I can throw together at 7am after having just completed a 12 hour nightshift.

You can thank me later.

Heidegger was the one who posited that our Humanity cannot survive encounter with the alien. In reaching outside our own world, he saw us as becoming less than Human. Admittedly, the guy was a Nazi, so I'm loathe to lend anything he says credence, but he may have a point. Unlike Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc., which are essentially Humanist science fiction, Torchwood has played with the idea that you cannot touch the Rift, touch that which comes from outside Earth, and retain your Humanity, your sanity.

Jonah was driven mad. Suzie was driven to murder. The entire team were driven to mutiny against Jack after the Rift showed them a fraction of the horrors it was capable of delivering upon them. A theme of series one of Torchwood was the fact that the very nature of the work is so alien that without some sort of external touchstone, everyone's liable to go mad in their own small way.

I think Gwen never really learnt that lesson. She may have commanded Torchwood while Jack was gone, but she never really dug into it the way he did, never knew all the little details. Ianto knew them. I wonder if one of returnees had shown up while Gwen was in charge, he would have actually told her, or whether he would have just quietly dealt with it.

Gwen still believes in what's right, and what's right is that Mother and Son both want to see each other, and even though things have changed, the right thing to do is reunite them. Jack tries to explain to Gwen why it won't work, but I think he's desperate to preserve her innocence. She still thinks of the Rift as something wonderful (to recall her words to Rhys in 'Meat') and she's still inclined to think the best of everything. Jack desperately wants to believe in that. I think that's why he tries to put her off the hunt so much, without giving any clues.

Ianto has a different tactic. He knows that Gwen isn't going to let this go. So he gives her all the information she needs to find out about Flat Holm island and what's going on there. He clearly goes behind Jack's back to do it (and, sincerely, I love the fact that he did that, showing that he still has the spine that let him hide a Cyberman in the cellars for months). He wanted her to find out. He knew what she'd find, and he knew what the likely result would be. I don't doubt for a second that he knew about Jonah, knew what would be the result of Gwen's explorations on the island, and knew exactly what it would do to her opinion of Torchwood.

The question I suppose is: was it cruelty to be kind, or simple cruelty?

Speaking of Ianto (and Jack), I think they're trying to kill us with the fanservice here. Though, to be honest, the argument outside the briefing room (where Jack was clearly listening to Ianto, even if he did disagree in the end), said more than a thousand sex scenes could have. The fact that he knew about Flat Holm indicates that Ianto knows where all the bodies are buried in Torchwood, and I mean that in a figurative and a literal sense.

Gwen gets slightly broken in all this. She genuinely thought she was doing the right thing, but in the end, she just wound up causing more heartbreak. It should have been the right thing? So what went wrong.

Simply, Jack had already done the right thing. He found these people in the depths of the Torchwood vaults, and sent them to a place where they'd be cared for, with people who would treat them with dignity and not just lock them in a padded room and keep them out of their skulls on drugs. Admittedly, I'll never complain about the NHS after seeing how much Jack clearly isn't forking out for the decorating, but that doesn't detract from the fact that he saw these people needed helping, knew that they couldn't be given back to their families, and tried to make the best of an appalling situation.

That rocks Gwen's world. She assumes that horrible things are being done, because these people are locked up, away from family who love them, and that's wrong. Gwen hasn't formed the ability to step back and look at the bigger picture, or she might have seen that Nikki needed that hope. In time, she would have learned to let go, perhaps, moved on. It's only been seven months from losing her child, of course she'd sound desperate to see him again.

That's not Gwen. Gwen's a believer in right and wrong. It's not nearly so clear cut. And she's bullheaded in her beliefs, and her stubborn 'ignore what others are telling me' attitude is putting her new relationship with Rhys in jeopardy. She won't listen to her husband. She's in love with Torchwood, with the idea she has of Torchwood, so when it turns out to not be the thing she'd built it up in her head, she breaks down and tells Rhys everything.

And hopefully, it's not all too late.