Exit Wounds

TARDIS Coordinates: April 4, 2008

“Exit Wounds” was the last “regular” episode of the series, though it gave no indication. It’s the last episode for Tosh and Owen, though their exit seems to be more along the lines of a mercy killing than a tragedy, given the unrestrained misery the writers and producers have put them through. The creators have tried to inject some better moments for the characters, but all that did was make us wistful for them when Torchwood was going through hell. We quietly wished every episode could be “Random Shoes” or “Something Borrowed” when they were giving us “To the Last Man” and “Dead Man Walking.” We knew they could be uplifting, exciting, and optimistic.

And it’s hardly the end of Torchwood by any stretch; “Children of Earth” and “Miracle Day” still lie in our uncertain future. In the original continuity I abandoned Torchwood after “Children of Earth,” giving “Miracle Day” a chance but watching no further after the first or second episode. The series gave no indication that it was going to be transformative.

And that’s strange, because with Doctor Who forming such a fierce and irrevocable aspect of my creative history, abandoning any aspect of it, no matter how dire, must have been difficult. I sat through fucking “Timelash;” I can sit through “Miracle Day.” One possible explanation is that with the bump to Starz, “Torchwood” finally drifted far enough from Doctor Who to be so separate as to no longer have any relation to its parent show – not something you want to see in a spinoff. Even “Frasier,” ten years later, was narratively recognizable as originating in the wood-paneled chambers of “Cheers.”

“Exit Wounds” was clearly conceived by someone who was still aware of Torchwood’s increasingly shaky associations. Depressing though it might be, that’s the gusto with which it approaches its events – there’s even a faint air of nonsense about it, even as Cardiff is falling apart and a John Hart held hostage struggles desperately to mediate the feud between Jack Harkness and his younger brother Gray, who blames him for his captivity and torture. It’s a troubling storyline: “Because of something that happened long before you were old enough to have any responsibility for the outcome, I hate you forever and will kill everyone you know, everything you love, and a few hundred other people.” Gray shows a level of maturity indicating that the last emotionally reasonable moment he had was on that damned beach. It’s a hard sell that I don’t really buy.

Tosh and Owen’s exits weren’t quite so contrived; it may be healthier to consider them unnecessary. Last episode, we saw their beginnings in Torchwood; this episode, we see their end, and they’ve had only a few scattered moments of joy and wonder in between – certainly nothing to justify their association with the organization. Tosh’s particularly gory exit was not required in any sense of the word; one wonders what attractive genius Asian technology experts ever did to Russell T. Davies to deserve the kind of life and death he granted upon this one. It must have been something exquisitely humiliating.

This was a harder hike than it looked; one will notice that these stories have hardly been viewed on a regular schedule. As of press time I’m not even sure when I’ll get ’round to the next bit, except that it had better be before the Tenth Doctor takes his bow, if this is going to make any sort of narrative sense.

Fragments

TARDIS Coordinates: March 21, 2008

Captain John Hart drops a building on Torchwood Three that doesn’t seem to actually do much damage to any of them. (Seriously, Owen should be a bag of marbles at this point.) Except Gwen, because She’s Special. Also, we’ve already seen her origin story, and it’s time for a tour of the past.

Here’s where we realize that Torchwood didn’t make these people into miserable bastards. They were miserable bastards long before then, all driven to circumstances that would have driven anyone a little crazy. Toshiko, whose mother was kidnapped so she could be forced to rebuild an alien gun, a deed that earned her months in solitary confinement. Owen, whose fiance’s early-onset Alzheimer’s turned out to be an alien invasion, whose wife was subsequently erased from history. Ianto, desperate to join Torchwood Three and hide his girlfriend in the basement. And good old Jack.

So every member of Torchwood except for Gwen was tortured into it. (And Gwen didn’t have the smoothest of job interviews either.) I suppose it would have sucked to show these people living their happy lives only to have Torchwood knock the rug out from under them. But it doesn’t demonstrate why in the world any of them would want to join. If I were them, I’d run as fast as I could in the other direction.

Tosh, especially; the same people who threw her into a hole and tortured her now want to hire her. Does anyone else get the feeling that the writers didn’t think this through? Owen: We know Torchwood can edit memories – not erase them, EDIT them. Why leave him hanging? It seemed as if their ordeals were contrived to move them into position rather than a series of events that they overcame to prove themselves worthy. No wonder the organization is such a mess.

Turns out that the whole mess is so that Captain John Hart can play stalker. I wish this guy would pick a side. Not that “James Marsters is in this bit” is a sentence that ever means “this show is about to get worse,” but I think the writers were a little lost with this one.

Adrift

TARDIS Coordinates: March 19, 2008

Another episode – dear god, yet another episode – where everything could have been solved if Jack had taken five minutes out to talk to Gwen about something important.

I hate leading with that. It’s a good episode. I’d go so far as to call it a great episode. But how many episodes could we have avoided the whole mess if Jack would just stop being so fucking cryptic about everything all the time – even things he didn’t need to be cryptic about? Giving Gwen the lowdown on the doings at Flat Holm and the fate of the missing person she’s pursuing would have short-circuited the investigation and left everyone happier.

And that’s the pain in the ass with this episode. Gwen unfolds this tragic mystery to provide closure to those who desperately need it and it’s literally all Jack’s fault. And while there may be things about his life where he needs to be cryptic, this is not one of them. Gwen is a duly-registered employee of Torchwood. There’s no paper she needs to sign, no secrecy she needs to be sworn to. There is nothing – nothing – in this entire story preventing Jack from just laying his cards on the table and letting Gwen do with that information as she will.

It’s such a huge flaw that it crowds out nearly everything else – the dedication and devotion that inform the better nature of Gwen’s character, the themes of loss and closure that surround any of those who have had a loved one disappear, even a fleeting look at those who return transformed. There were so many analogies to the story of missing person Jonah and his mother Nikki, so much that was relatable besides the otherworldly mechanic of his disappearance and return.

I want to talk about those, but I can’t, because the entire story is predicated on Jack being deliberately obtuse. The only way the story makes sense is for it to be some kind of cruel test for Gwen, as if she hasn’t been through enough shit already. The second series of Torchwood has been really, really good, for the most part. This episode is a heartbreaker in all the right ways. But I’m just about fed up to the nipples with one Captain Jack Fucking Harkness.

From Out of the Rain

TARDIS Coordinates: March 12, 2008

A popular form of entertainment is shown to be concealing a monster which steals the souls of its audience so that it can thrive.

This post-everything storyline is turning into the “base-under-siege” of the oughts, being one of the most common Doctor Who plots since long before “The Idiot’s Lantern.” This time they’re doing it with old traveling shows from the turn of the century. Captain Jack, who has done everything ever, used to travel with one show as “the man who couldn’t die,” which must have been a pretty gruesome act for the kiddies.

Legend spoke, as it always does, of a traveling show that came out of the rain and took you with it when it left, sort of like the circus running away to join you. The Night Travellers, for what it’s worth, actually look kind of weedy; I get that they have to be creepy, but my instinct upon seeing Julian Bleach gazing like a child molester out of the silent movie screen at the Electro is to run like a rabbit in the other direction. He seems more a character out of German Expressionism, sort of The Man who Laughs combined with Something Wicked This Way Comes. I get the whole “Gaze into the face of evil” thing, but he’s using a medium that, at its center, is seductive.

Possibly because the plot’s been done in this Universe before, or possibly because it really doesn’t take long to either set up the situation and reach a conclusion, the story spends a little more time with the villains than we’re used to. It doesn’t give them sympathy, but we do get insight, which is good; I’m a firm student of the school of thought that says that the bad guys need more than transparent motives, which explains why the Daleks and I never got along. Though, frankly, a Dalek probably wouldn’t get on with anyone.

The resolution is thin and the conclusion blunt, leading the eye back to Julian Bleach, pre-Davros, and what one supposes can hardly be called the “relationship” he has with his fellow Travellers. The whole story looks a little oversaturated, as if shot through an old film camera. This might have been a better episode if it weren’t made almost entirely up of elements from previous episodes. As it is, I remembered little of it on balance. Rewatching remains the salvation of the series.

Something Borrowed

TARDIS Coordinates: March 5, 2008

Word of God has it that the creators wanted to offset the utter bummer of the last few episodes by presenting something a little more openly comical. If that was the intention, it backfired a wee bit.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a funny episode. But it’s a funny episode after so many hard rides that Torchwood itself now has a reputation for being a hard ride, so no one really notices an open attempt to lighten the mood. There isn’t much in “Something Borrowed” that’s all that grim, but the perceptions inflate the bits that are, and disregard the bits that are actually telling you to enjoy what you’re watching. You spend so much time waiting for the monster to jump out at you that you don’t notice the friendly clown behind you.

Torchwood is a bit inconsistent. And the bits where it is consistent tend to be bleak. Having a story that’s inconsistently bleak breaks the pattern. When the gunshot finally comes, it’s a pie in the face.

To give “Something Borrowed” a fair shake, you have to isolate it. If you’re suggesting “Torchwood” to a friend, make this their entrance vector. Watch it on its own, without any other episodes.

After a rough day at work, Gwen wakes up pregnant. And I don’t mean she has morning sickness and goes to the OB/GYN, I mean she’s like nine months along. (You’d have thought she’d have noticed.) She’s been knocked up by the alien life form she was chasing the night before. Mommy’s coming, and she wants her widdle diddums. And she’s got nooooo problem ripping the surrogate apart to get it.

Taking all this into account, she insists on going through with the wedding.

…Wait a minute, she fucking what??

This…I get that they have to move forward with the story and the chainsaw and the other wacky hijinks, but what? This is a bad decision even for someone whose entire character is defined by bad decisions. I get that a wedding is a big deal and moving it day-of is no small feat, but she’s about to stand up in front of all her friends and family, for all intents and purposes fully along and ready to pop, and then come up with an explanation that doesn’t break the masquerade. She is practically inviting a violent, man-eating alien to come and rampage through her wedding. Her own health, her own life, is at tremendous risk. Her family, her friends, hell, even Rhys – this could go badly for all of them. She even needs to find a maternity wedding dress.

So it’s up to Torchwood to put on a show.

Ianto is off to pick up the dress while the rest of the Scoobies run point. Given that this is a shapeshifter who may be disguising himself as the star’s nearest and dearest, no one is above suspicion. Wacky hijinks, as they say, ensue.

If it weren’t for second viewings, I’d have broken off this project some time ago. It’s the occasional episode that uplifts the spirit that gets forgotten, given the dirge that most of Torchwood tends toward. You had standard sitcom elements – the in-laws despised each other, for instance – and moments of tighter timing, like Rhys with his chainsaw, but nobody in this show is, strictly speaking, a comic performer, and most attempts to get a laugh are down to script or situation.

I’ve been struggling with the perception that Torchwood isn’t as hard-edged as memory insists; the dominant opinion of Torchwood as a somewhat bleak and depressing future keeps overtaking far superior episodes like “Random Shoes” and “Meat,” and I don’t expect “Something Borrowed” to further the inoculation. Still, the series was way the hell overdue for a happy ending.

Dead Man Walking

TARDIS Coordinates: February 20, 2008

What would you do if you woke up dead?

There’s a line in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” where some of the superheroes are speculating on the nature of Thor’s hammer, and what sort of science is actually controlling who can pick it up. Iron Man couldn’t budge it; Captain America shifted it slightly, which unnerved Thor a bit; Stark points out that “if you put it on an elevator, elevator goes up; doesn’t mean the elevator’s worthy.”

It’s interesting watching them explore the physics of the hammer in a non-narrative sense, like asking why Clark Kent doesn’t just punch through the bottom of the crashing airplane. Logically, if he were applying all his force to the spot where his hands are, he’d just rip through the fuselage rather than support the entire superstructure.

Owen Harper is dead, killed by a bullet to the chest, because five guys with guns trained on the bad guy didn’t shoot first. (Watch the scene in “Reset” and tell me how contrived you think it is.) Unfortunately, Jack, being a prick, finds another Risen Mitten and rousts him again, ostensibly to get the codes to the morgue, though probably just because misery loves company.Doesn’t work quite the way he intended, though. Once up, Owen doesn’t go back down, even though he has no pulse, does not breathe (so how can he talk?), and all biological processes have stopped. His body is numb because his central nervous system doesn’t work, so he feels no pain. At the same time, nothing heals, so he’s fragile.

All right, fanboys and Internet forum critics; there’s your superpowers. Go.

Something brought Owen back, or at least is using him for a bridge between one world and the next; in a previous incursion, this creature was called “Death,” though stepping back a bit and seeing him in the context of other Torchwood monsters-of-the-week indicates that he’s pretty much just another in a long line of extradimensional uglies conceived and handled no more or less spectacularly than all the rest. Which is actually good; I like the idea of science bringing mythology down to size, or science fiction bringing fantasy to heel. I read an essay about “Ghostbusters” that indicated that the movie was more or less about science studying and classifying what we consider “paranormal,” about the good guys defeating the bad guys with research and physics instead of magic and superstition.

The Doctor once said that life is just nature’s way of keeping meat fresh; in that context, one can wonder whether Owen could rightly be classified as alive or not. The processes that keep his body alive are no longer functioning, but something is certainly keeping his meat fresh, and his mind is still functioning. Granted, dying probably sucked, and his overall frailty is probably no picnic – give him a hundred years and he’ll be a mass of scars and metal plates – but he’s still around to deal with the implications of who and what he is and what it means.

Viewers take note, as well – Martha Jones has been in two episodes of Torchwood so far, and has been a victim in both of them. This bodes not well, Maybe she should quit while she’s ahead. Or while she still has a head.

Reset

TARDIS Coordinates: February 13, 2008

This is the second time I’ve done this. I’ve postponed watching Torchwood for too long, and now I need Jack to show up on schedule for his guest appearance on Doctor Who. Unfortunately, rather than watch the episodes in a timely manner, I’ve put off doing my homework until there’s no choice but to archive-binge the remainder of the season. So, I sit down and watch the remaining episodes in bundles.

There’s a reason I watch Doctor Who one story per week. Gulping down entire seasons of anything usually leaves me feeling a little flat; I’ve absorbed so much information that they start showing up in my dreams, usually in a nasty mood. I watched an entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a weekend and hardly remember anything except the sense of a wasted weekend and poorly-managed time. It gets even creepier when you’re watching Walter White or Ned Stark and that sense of brainwashing sets in; you don’t want a pissed-off Don Draper following you around while you’re trying to do the washing up.

I actually don’t remember whether Martha Jones showed up in Torchwood before or after the airing of “The Sontaran Stratagem.” I think it’s a bit before, though it’s probably academic; not much hash is made out of the events of “The Poison Sky” in “Reset.” Of course, if you’re going to do this crossover stuff, you need a pretty good reason. Otherwise, it looks like you’re just trying to goose ratings a bit.

Does Martha have a good reason for being in Torchwood? The rationale is that she and UNIT are studying the same thing – the effect of an alien parasite on a bunch of medical test subjects. Of course, this being Torchwood, it’s not enough that the miracle cure proposed by the medical tests has a bad side effect; no, it has to include an alien chestburster.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice to see her again, it’s nice to be reminded that, at its core, “Torchwood” takes place in the same universe as Doctor Who, and it’s nice to have a Doctor Who character providing something of an anchor for Torchwood, which frequently gets lost in its own crazy.

It’s all right to have a TV series and its spinoff be oppositional in nature; “Cheers” was about a bunch of working-class misfits visiting a Boston pub every night, while “Frasier” was about a pair of effete, sophisticated brothers trying to find love in 1990s Seattle, but they didn’t want for thematic continuity – one actively courted the other’s audience even as it maintained its own identity, and it did so without cheap tricks like magical crossovers. “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Lou Grant” couldn’t have been more different, and even they shared a certain number of themes and viewpoints.

But then you see Martha Jones strapped to an operating table with Frankenstein about to do horrible things to her, and you start to wonder: is she just here to be a victim? Shouldn’t she be there to demonstrate the character growth or provide the vital information that only traveling with the Doctor could have given her insight into? Is she going to be just another employee of Torchwood who gets her life fucked up by it? Holy crap, I don’t want to see that.

I don’t want to be too hard on “Reset,” because it does deliver. For part of the episode, it looks like we’re actually in a position to take a break from the brutality of the overall series and just remember the show’s roots. Then they inflict the pain of being in Torchwood on the last person we want to see it happen to.

Donna Noble would have kicked everyone in Torchwood three times around Roald Dahl Plass if she’d been invited along.

Adam

TARDIS Coordinates: February 13, 2008

You know, I actually kind of like Torchwood better like this.

Torchwood has entered the Matrix, apparently, and nothing is the way it was in the last episode. Owen has become a nerdy introvert in frame glasses. Gwen Cooper can’t remember her own fiance, or that they’ve lived together for years. Tosh has been dating for over a year, and is terribly happy in her relationship. And, apparently, wearing a push-up bra. Ianto is suddenly having memories of being a serial killer, haunted by the gruesome corpses of the girls he’s murdered. In the center of it all is poor Adam, the heart and soul of the series, trying to be reassuring and comforting, even as Captain Jack starts suffering terrible visions of the past, and the day his brother disappeared.

What do you mean, who’s Adam? He’s been there all along. He’s even in the credits, for heaven’s sake.

Adam can exist only in the memories and perceptions of other people. At some point in the past few days, he’s inserted himself into Torchwood, a trusted, loyal, reliable, long-term member of the team. Trouble is, he sucks it. He might have had better luck inserting himself into, say, a family, or another workplace, but everything is so relentlessly catalogued and recorded around Torchwood that it was pretty much only a matter of time. The Torchwood team do not take kindly to having their minds fucked, and head for the Retcon to wipe out the last couple of days.

I see that TV Tropes shares my opinion that “Adam” is a swipe at fan-fiction writers; the new author inserts himself into the text and starts having the characters act the way he wants them to act, even if it’s a wee bit off-model for them. Unfortunately, as his plan falls apart, he props up ever more devious manipulations until even the characters are exchanging glances and going “What the hell.”

He seems more complicated than merely malevolent, and his abject terror at “not existing” makes me wonder where he is when he spends his time in storage. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to hurt anyone until he gets desperate.

Wiping out their memories of the last two days, however, is essentially wiping out their memories for the past three years, and some of those memories are a bit hard to shed. Tosh takes it hardest, still convinced her love is real, though Adam essentially took the phrase “mind rape” to a whole other level with her. So despite Adam’s initial presence, he might actually be one of the worst aliens they’ve ever encountered, because he invades on such a personal, private level. His last ditch effort to survive involves inserting himself into a restored memory of Jack’s, something he’d buried years ago – wiping out Adam will mean wiping the memory. It’s one of the most difficult moral choices Jack has made so far.

Frankly, it’s nice to see Jack Sue actually showing a touch of vulnerability and facing a real choice. I know Russell T. has a boner for him, but there has to be some weakness in that steel spine and iron will of his; some uncertainty, some..well, depth.

And remember, kids, the magic arc word is “Gray.”

Meat

TARDIS Coordinates: February 6, 2008

It’s not lost on me that “Meat” must have been a hell of a challenge for the actors. Not only are they sharing screen time with a big thrashing wet piece of CGI, it’s arguably the first story in which they’re called upon to show any sympathy for the alien monster. They have to move you to empathize for its plight, they have to make the idea of fighting for it credible, and they have to elicit a sense of tragedy once it’s gone. And they have to do this while being part of Torchwood.

I rag on Torchwood for treating all aliens like hostile invaders, but it’s never specifically formed part of the identity of the series. That having been said, however, and unfortunately, the way we’re meant to gather sympathy for the alien in this episode is done in a transparently simplistic manner – Jack has sympathy, and so therefore ergo ipso facto we have sympathy. Finally offered a chance to stomp the humans and free the alien, instead of the other way around, we’re not given that journey, that discovery, that moment of understanding. We’re just along for the ride.

This doesn’t mean that “Meat” doesn’t elicit strong emotions. It does. It just does so somewhat cheaply, via Jack’s extensive unseen experience. We the audience are given no first-hand realization that the infant space-whale in the story isn’t just some dumb unfeeling space brute.

Maybe that’s being a bit too rough on the series; I don’t know. And I know for goddamn sure that I’m glad that the story would take this kind of a turn. It’s a vast improvement over “Let’s kill the alien and steal its shit,” which seems to be Torchwood Three’s usual MO. Maybe “Meat” might have made a better two-parter, a heel-face turn for the Torchwood team, one that expands their horizons and gives these humble humans a rare glimpse into the fascinating potential of an infinite Universe. At least “indiscriminate slaughter” is something only the bad guys are doing.

With that in mind, considering “’twas a brave man that first ate an oyster,” to paraphrase Swift, what in the world gave the antagonists of this episode the idea that the best thing to do with an alien washed ashore in Cardiff was to whack chunks off it and GRILL it? How did they know it was food? That it was good? That it didn’t contain proteins toxic to humans? That it wasn’t full of bacteria that would plague its consumers? That it could be so easily mistaken for steak? Big boneless cubes of cow, showing up in a processing plant outside Cardiff, and nobody notices? Someone had to be the first to taste it.

I’d like to say that the superior part of the story is the fact that Rhys is finally, finally let into the Masquerade, which is a relief; it’s just not practical to keep key characters in the dark about the nature of the Universe they’re in. Rhys has an intriguing transformation from homebody Muggle to action hero. Unfortunately, Rhys seems to be more furious with Gwen’s dishonesty than the fact that there are fucking aliens running around Cardiff. Seriously, he’s just discovered what his wife does for a living and this is what he focuses on?

That implies to me that either he’s a master at denial strategy, or maybe this relationship isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve seen intimations that maybe these two aren’t meant for each other – they have all the chemistry of a glass of water, for instance – but to be more focused on the reveal that Fiancee told a little white fibby than the fact that she has personally saved your ass, her ass, and the ass of every human being on the planet multiple times – well, during the argument, it was painfully clear that they were having two different conversations. I mean, what would you do if you suddenly discovered that your Dad was Batman? Would your primary reaction really be to be pissed at him for lying to you?

Once Gwen manages to get Rhys focused on the narrative, she takes him to the Hub to meet the boys; the second act forms a sort of test to prove whether or not Rhys is “Torchwood-worthy.” And I don’t mean can he hold his own in a fight or keep his leg while the world goes mad. I mean, can he banter? He can banter. Good. Does he have the appropriate expression of awe and wonder upon seeing the Hub? Check. When he joins the operation, will it be in a narratively integral scene? Yo. Okay, he passes; he’s in.

It’s a staple of Doctor Who to help people who believe themselves ordinary find the extraordinary in themselves by seeking it out in the Universe, but Torchwood is a more alkali soil, and thus far Rhys hasn’t been a good fit for the show in general, much less at the center of the narrative. Yes, this one-off was, for the most part, a hell of a lot of fun, but if we’re going to have sympathy for the poor sap and all he’s been through, and transform his character into something that can thrive in that soil, we’ve got a ways to go.

To the Last Man

TARDIS Coordinates: January 30, 2008

Ah, crap, we’re going to be tormenting Tosh again.

I wonder what this sense is among the writers that the protagonists of Torchwood haven’t gone through sufficient shit in their time, that every episode they produce has to be a personal challenge to someone, and that every time they put a character through the wringer for the third or fourth time, they act like it’s some original device of narrative and these characters have never known suffering and hardship before. After a while, it loses it’s emotional zing.

Okay. Let’s set aside torturing Tosh again and focus on the rest of the episode. We have a man named Tommy Brockless, a soldier from World War I, kept in a freezer by Torchwood and rousted once a year for a medical exam, since apparently at some point in the future he’s going to be important, and Tosh has a bit of a thing for him – oh, crap, we’re doing that “Star-crossed lovers out of time forced to be apart, causing one of the protagonists to suffer” plot we did with Owen last season, aren’t we?

Okay. Set aside both Tosh undergoing forced character growth and the time-crossed lovers stories. Torchwood is investigating the hospital where Brockless was – wait a minute, we’re back in another hospital? This show spends more time in hospitals than a neurosurgeon.

Okay. So it’s a hospital. Has to take place somewhere, right? So I guess we’re just going to have to sit around and wait for the brutally hostile alien to show up and dismember someone.

No?

You sure?

Okay. Whew. Dodged a bullet there. I was starting to think that this whole episode was made up of bits from previous episodes. I mean, we’re only, what, fifteen, sixteen episodes in; isn’t it a bit early to call any episode “cliche?”

Right. So Torchwood took Tommy Brockless from a hospital in 1918, and now it’s 90 years later. He and Tosh have fallen in love, though, technically, they’ve only known each other four days. They have a fairly pleasant date, while Torchwood investigates Tommy’s reason for being here. Tommy has to be sent back to 1918 through the rift to prevent local time from collapsing again, even though just a few days after being sent to the front, he’s going to be executed for cowardice OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. It’s like “Captain Jack Harkness” in reverse.

This isn’t a bad episode on its own, but it’s not on its own. Helen Raynor wrote it, and she certainly must be aware that Torchwood covered anti-war stories, time-crossed lovers, and stories set in hospitals, so couldn’t she at least have put a new spin on them? Yes, the tension of the scenes with the ghosts are almost as good as they were in her earlier “Ghost Machine,” and it’s good that she’s still willing to do that “Two characters in different parts of the timeline have an unsettling interaction” thing that’s apparently working so well for her that she would make it the central source of tension in both stories, but I’d like to think that we’ve put season one behind us, and the show has regenerated into a more mature, original narrative. I mean, at this point, we’ve seen “The Sontaran Stratagem,” we’ve seen “Daleks in Manhattan,” we know what she’s got.