It Started With An Earthquake

Torchwood Children of Earth Day Five

God this episode was unremittingly grim from beginning to end but was fantastic all the same. The ending was unexpected but worked within the confines of the story itself and what Jack did in this story is probably no worse than what he had done before except for the fact that this time he had no real choice or the planet would have been destroyed, not that that would be any excuse if the person in question was a member of your own family, it also had to be someone like Jack to do it, as nobody else would have made the call that he did, and there was a moment where you thought that he might not. I know that I couldn’t have made that decision and I don’t have any children, so it would be a million times worse if you actually had children. Some parts of this episode were horrific such as the army taking screaming children away from screaming parents and the fact that John Frobisher was driven to kill his wife and children rather than have to give them up to the 456. In that moment he had no other choice as, at that time, there seemed to be no hope, and he just couldn’t live with the consequences of losing his children when he was originally promised that they would be excempt.

Peter Capaldi was excellent throughout this story as Frobisher and you really felt for him when he was told by the prime minister that he family had to sacrificed so that the government could look like victims. At the end of the day he was just a man doing his job, and the real nasty pieces of work were the ones who were coming up with ideas and then not taking the responsibily, so like the real government in fact. In fact all of the guest cast in this story gave sterling performances particularly Cush Jumbo as Lois Habiba – who really should join Torchwood if she gets a chance. That is one thing that I like about this new format is that there is a lot more characterisation given to the characters in the story than there is normally, the result being that Lois has a lot more character than Tosh ever had in 26 episodes of Torchwood, which is real shame if you ask me.

This is Torchwood at its best and if the series does carry on then I hope it is like this. A lot of people have taken the ending to mean that there is going to be more Torchwood, but I just don’t see it that way. The way I see it is that this allows Jack to appear in the final specials with the tenth Doctor and then gives him ample time to return to Cardiff afterwards. On the other hand if there was no more series then the ending would be considerd a nice, neat ending for the series, so it would work both ways. I would prefer it to come back, but in a similar format to this. Perhaps there could be two 5 or 6 part stories this time. That would do nicely.

Poor Ianto

Torchwood Children of Earth Day Four

Wow. Just wow. How are they going to get out of this?

And what can I say but: Ianto! Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

We know more about the events surrounding the original visit of the 456. You can see what that was easy to cover up but it would be virtually impossible to cover up something of the magnitude of 325 million children disappearing, that just aint ever going to be accepted. It was interesting to hear some of the ways the government were going to try and get away with such as getting rid of the 10% of schools that are failing according to the school league tables. Never have school league tables been used in such a macarbre way before and I am sure will never be again. Even the 456 got in on the argument by quoting the rates of infant mortality around the world as there way of rationalising their request.

If they do get another series there ain’t going to be many characters left is there? Perhaps Lois can join as a eplacement for Ianto, as she is looking to be a really interesting character if she makes it out of this story alive. The character played by Liz May Brice would be an interesting addition as well, but as she has spent the whole entire story trying to kill the Torchwood crew, I don’t think that she would be welcomed with open arms, do you? I was half expecting that Ravi to end up as part of the crew but the went and got killed at the end of episode one which put paid to that idea.

Looking forward to the finale tonight. It’s just a shame that it will all be over then and then we have the long wait to see if we get any more Torchwood or not.

The Kids. Where Are the Kids?

Torchwood Children of Earth Day Three

Day Three is where the shit hits the fan and the 456 finally arrive on the Earth and into the secret building that the government had built for them. We don’t get to see them but we do know that they live in atmosphere of poisonous gasses and also appear to have claw like appendages and they also speak very little and when they do it is in single sentences.

The big question, though, is what do they want with the children of the earth and why will only they do? It does seem like a very specific request and is not one that is going to go down well with anyone on the Earth. We also know that they visited the Earth in the mid 1960’s and took twelve children, which the British government seem to want to keep quiet about, and it also seems that it was Jack who gave the 456 the children. Now if only twelve were enough back in the sixties why would they want 10% of all children now. That’s a bit of big jump isn’t it?

Now having Jack be the person who gave them the children on the previous visit did shock me initially, but after some thought, Jack was working for Torchwood One back in those days, and so would have had to obey orders given by them no matter how right or wrong he thought that they were, or at least that is the line that I am taking at the moment.

After spending the whole of the second episode apart the Torchwood team come back together in this episode and find an old abandoned warehouse which they christen the hub 2 (is it just me, or does that sound like a coffee shop or a trendy bar?) and try to get back to as much of normality as they can when the government wants them dead and has sent a crack team of operatives to do the job for them, who we still don’t know the identity of.

It does strike me as odd that the government are keeping the two agencies who know the most about extra-terrestrials i.e. UNIT and Torchood at bay when they are aware that there is a seemingly malevolent alien presence about to visit the planet. It just doesn’t make sense at all.

All in all this is fantastic stuff from the Torchwood production crew and I can’t wait for the final two instalments.

It Never Rains

Torchwood Children of Earth: Day Two

In Day Two the mystery deepens as Gwen and Ianto are hunted down by this mysterious agency acting for the government. Who they are is not made clear in this episode either but they are certainly thorough and have a lot of technology that is comparable to Torchwood.

They surpass themselves in trying to kill Captain Jack first by blowing him up, and then by encasing him in concrete – but not even that could stop Captain Jack. He truly is invincible now given what happened to him in this episode and it is unlikely that he would ever die and stay dead.

Epic is one word that best describes this adventure and it is the biggest one for Torchwood to date. It is
nice to see them fighting a menace that just doesn’t stalk the streets of Cardiff and has a global significance, even though in true Doctor Who style, they are coming for the British for no particular reason other than that it’s a British television programme.

Rhys joined the story proper in this episode and he immediately becomes an integral part of the team especially as he is named in the credits at the start of the episode. I really like Rhys he thinks with his stomach first much like a lot of blokes do and he is the everyman character in the show now that Gwen was when she first joined i.e. a normal person thrown in the deep end into situations they would never normally find themselves in. It is not before time that Rhys became a more important character in the show after his couple of episodes in the limelight during the second series.

The direction is very epic and Euros Lynn in his Torchwood debut shows his directorial credentials as someone who should be directing movies as well as television. I say lets vote for him now to direct the final instalment of the Harry Potter franchise.

One thing that I do like about this Torchwood adventure is how much room the characters have to breathe and just have lots of little character moments that they simply didn’t have time to have during the first two seasons it is quite refreshing and is something only this new format would allow and, dare I say it, this kind of format really does suit the show. Perhaps if they did get another season they could do two six-part adventures rather than thirteen individual stories.

There are more questions asked in this episode such as what it is that the 456 (which is really crap name for an alien race) want and why are they returning to Earth? Why do they want Torchwood out of the way when they are known specialists in the field (even more so that UNIT who also seem to be involved)? What does John Frobisher really know and what is his part in proceedings? Is he just a middle man (which would be very typical of seventies Doctor Who) or is he even more important than that? All of these questions will hopefully be answered in the coming days, as it is only going to bug me until they are.

Child’s Play

Torchwood Children of Earth: Day One

There really isn’t much that I can really say about the first episode of Children of Earth because it is only the starting point for the whole adventure and is full of set up for the later episodes but it certainly does make for an interesting story.

We do however meet Jack’s daughter and grandson, and Ianto’s sister and husband who we had never even heard of before. There were rumours that Jack had been married in earlier episodes but this is the first time that they have been mentioned so that was quite a nice little extra in this episode. I guess it was a bit off though that they never felt the need to see them before in the show until they actually needed something from them, although that is probably just a comment on families in general, rather than them being neglectful of their own familes!

The best lines in the episode came in the exchange between Gwen and Rhys when she was driving into England, where he asks is she has any currency and she says that she has had her injections.

Children doing strange things is always quite spooky and when they all stopped it was a rather unnerving sight (I am sure that there are times though when all parents would want their children to stop for a few minutes though!) and I expect many more scenes of spooky kids in the remaining four episodes.

I must admit that I was surprised about the character of Rupesh getting killed in the first episode as it looked for all the world like he might be a regular character in the story but Torchwood does this to you and pulls the rug from underneath your feet. I admit to being a bit surprised when he turned out to be double crossing Jack.

I also wasn’t expecting them to put a bomb in Jack’s stomach. I mean they obviously put something inside him as you saw them close the cut they had made but I wasn’t expecting that either!

Things don’t look good at the end of this episode for any member of the Torchwood team especially Jack. I mean can he survive being ripped apart? I guess we will find out tomorrow. It is certainly going to be interesting finding out.

The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum

Torchwood: Asylum

In this play a young girl, Freda is arrested by PC Andy for shoplifting and it soon becomes apparent that everything is not as it seems. For one the girl seems to talk in some kind of wierd dialect even though she has a Cardiff accent and she also was carrying a strange device that was most definitely not from the present time and so PC Andy promptly called in his old chum Gwen Cooper and Torchwood who promptly tried to take over the entire investigate much to the annoyance of PC Andy who gave as good as he got in this episode. I am not sure whether or not Andy escaped the whole experience without being retconed as it was never stated in the episode whether he had or not, but with Jack around it is safe to say that he might well have been.

Asylum was a fairly good story and was most definitely a Gwen episode as she was the focal point of the episode along with the girl, Freda, and PC Andy. Jack and Ianto were barely present in the story with Ianto having even less to do than Jack! Andy is always fun when he appears and he even gets some of the best lines in this play as well as he did when he appeared in the televsion episodes and his reaction when he finds out that Freda is an alien is priceless!

I liked the idea of a number of aliens being sent to the Earth to blend seamlessly into society so that a few generations down the line they will even forget that they were aliens as if they were told that they were human why would they think otherwise, particularily if the only difference between them and humans was in the body chemistry itself as it is for this alien race. The safe house from Out of Time reappears in this episode and the episode itself is also mentioned.

Then there is the whole question about what to do with Frida when they find out that she is an alien? A lot of this is a bit similar to the second season episode Sleeper, with Jack being more than happy to lock her away for her own safety, and for the rest of the human race’s safety, and the other trying to persuade Jack that they will act a bit like social services with Gwen as her caseworker. Yeah, like that would work. But when she seems to be harmless and not hell bent on enslaving the human race then I guess that it wouldn’t make a lot of difference if they did just let her go.

I would have to say that the best performance in the episode was not from the Torchwood crew but from Erin Richards who played Freda who carried a lot of the episode herself much like Eugene did in the first season episode Random Shoes.

I would probably listen to this again, but perhaps not for a while.

And I Feel Fine

Torchwood: End of Days

End of Days was a great end for the first series of Torchwood, and they certainly did pull out all the stops for this final episode and, the result was a, thrilling conclusion to what I consider to be an exciting series.

I must admit that I didn’t feel absolutely anything when I heard the TARDIS at the end (which I will assume would be most Doctor Who fans favourite moment of the whole series), mainly because I am not the slightest bit interested in the Tenth Doctor. Part of me hopes that when Jack enters the TARDIS he has a barny with the Doctor asking where the Doctor went and why he is speaking in that crap Dick Van-Dyke style accent, and then slaps him round the face with the wet end of the Doctor’s severed hand (that bit won’t happen as he didn’t take the tank with the hand in to the TARDIS with him did he?)

It can only be the Doctor really as for some reason his hand glowed when we heard the dematerialisation sound and if that wasn’t a definitive clue as to who it was I don’t know what would be, but I think it would more interesting if it was the Master who’s TARDIS Jack ran to at the end of the episode. I know that that is not very likely, but that’s just me.

Following on from the end of the previous episode we get to see the full consequences of Owen’s meddling with the rift and boy does he start to panic when he discovers the full meaning of what has happened, but doesn’t regret it, which I suppose he wouldn’t when we was only doing it to get his missus back.

Again all of the characters had something to do in this episode and all of them (apart from Jack and Gwen) had a vision telling them that they had to open the rift in Owen’s case it was Diane again, with Ianto it was Lisa in her pre-cyberwoman persona and with Tosh it was her mother. This was a good idea as they all had to have a reason to try and make sure the rift was opened again and what better reason that to have someone who you care about, because otherwise you wouldn’t either have bothered.

With Gwen it was the possibility that she might lose Rhys, even though she did often seem to be that concerned about him, I think that she really does love him but she wants to have her normal life with him, and the excitement of her life with her mates at Torchwood as well and it is patently obvious that she cannot really have both, and at times did chose the Torchwood crew over him.

It was certainly a shock to me when Billis actually did stab Rhys because you (well I did anyway) actually believe that Rhys was safe with being in the cells at Torchwood, and even when he did leave the cells, I still did think that he might have been able to escape, but of course the rather strange Billis actually did it the end.

Billis Manger was in this episode just as odd as he was in the previous episode and we still know no more about him that we did in the previous episode. He is certainly not human, or at least not a pure human and that was much is obvious with his ability to project himself into a police cell and then being able to disappear seemingly at will.

I have heard a theory that he might be a Timelord, which as they have now mentioned Gallifrey in Doctor Who, seems plausible and I for one never believed that there was no other Time Lords in exsistence. I am still not sure that Jack is pure human either, perhaps he might be a Time Lord as well. You never know, and I wouldn’t put it past RTD at all.

There were a load of interesting ideas in this episode and it is quite possible that some of them might have made interesting storylines in their own right, such as an outbreak of the plague in modern day Cardiff, which could possibly work in a Doctor Who setting if it were done right. If I had a main criticism of the episode it was that that could have been an episode in its own right, and who is to know that it might not be in the future.

One thing that made me laugh was the little piece of rolling news on the news reports that the Beatles were on the roof of Abbey Road studios. It was nice that other temporal refugees were mentioned such as the samurai running amok through the streets of Tokyo, but I wonder why Diana wasn’t thrown back, perhaps she never actually made it through the rift, and if she had of done, would she just have vanished at the end of the episode when the rift was sealed once more?

I thought that it was quite good to see the other crew members actually standing up to Jack for the first time, although I did think Owen shooting him was probably a little too far to go, but that allowed Jack to let everyone, apart from Gwen, to know a little bit more about him. I would assume that revelation will bring the characters a bit closer together in the second series (if Jack makes it past Doctor Who this coming season that is), because they all now know that Jack is virtually indestructible. That may well change the dynamic of the crew next series.

So we now come to the end of the first full series of the first spin off from Doctor Who, and I for one can say that, for me at least, the series has been everything that it could have been and was pretty much what I thought it would have been like. I can’t say that I had particular hopes for the series, because I didn’t, but I was more than happy with the finished results and look forward to the second series.

Originall posted on Jan 11, 2007

A Tale of Two Jacks

Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness

After her first superb episode of Torchwood, Out of Time, Catherine Tregenna did not disappoint with her second episode, Captain Jack Harkness, another beautifully written tale with great characterisation of the regulars and, like Sean Alexander said, plenty of heart.

As in Out of Time there wasn’t much in the way of plot, but again that didn’t really matter, as this episode served as the first part of the series finale with End of Days, and part of its job was to set up the final episode, which it did, even though nobody in the hub knew that at the end of this episode.

I am sure quite a few people felt quite short changed in this episode when by the end of the episode we still know little more about Jack than we did at the start of the episode apart from the fact Jack Harkness is not his real name, and we found out who the real Jack Harkness was.

To be honest this was not really a big surprise as in The Doctor Dances, the Doctor saw right through him and said that he wasn’t really a captain, so if you were an eagle eared viewer you would have remembered that (I didn’t until someone reminded me, it has to be said) so that revelation wouldn’t have been surprising to anyone who had seen Jack in Doctor Who.

Having said that, if you had just seen Torchwood then that might very well have been a surprising admission, because you cannot simply assume that everyone watching Torchwood would have seen Doctor Who because I am sure there are plenty of people watching it who are not Doctor Who fans.

It also has to be said that Jack seems very much at home in the 1940s and it was obvious that he wouldn’t really have been that bothered if they weren’t able to get back, but put that to the back of his mind because of Tosh, who certainly didn’t want to be stranded in war-torn Britain and I must admit that I wouldn’t fancy being a Japanese woman in war torn Britain either. That was very nice of Jack thinking of Tosh like that and was the same kind of compassion Jack has shown on a few occasions during Torchwood.

One of the reasons that I really enjoyed the episode was because it features Tosh in quite a major way because she is one of my favourite characters from Torchwood, and if it were a toss up between Gwen and Tosh, I would pick Tosh, if you catch my drift. It was very touching I thought when Gwen read the note that Tosh had written the other half of the equation on, saying simply that she loved her family and obviously thought that she wasn’t going to make it. Poor Tosh!

Ianto got to do what a lot of people would like to do and shoot Owen. I actually don’t mind Owen that much, certainly he can be a bit of a knob and he does have a very strange looking face, but I can see why he would go to all that trouble to open the rift, as he was sure that it would bring Diane back to him. I know that I would have done the same thing if that had been me, so I can’t really argue with what he did. It would have been a very stupid thing to do, but hey you do stupid things when you are in love, which Owen certainly is.

Ianto bought up Lisa again, as he is wont to do, and they both got into a scrap about whose bird was better. Of course if Ianto had decided to bring Lisa back when she was in her Cyberwoman persona then that would have been a bad thing, but if she was bought back in her original state then that wouldn’t have been so bad, well apart from the fact that opening the rift could cause a major catastrophe. Ianto obviously wasn’t as blinded by love as Owen was at that moment as he was able to see what a bad idea it would be, unlike Owen who just basically wanted a shag.

Billis Manger was a bit of an odd character wasn’t he? He did seem a little out of place even in the 1940s but it wasn’t until he was seen in the modern day by Gwen looking not a day older (and dressed in exactly the same way) that you knew he certainly wasn’t what he seemed at all. That certainly seemed to be something that would be followed up in the final episode especially after he had part of the rift machinery in his office (as well as a folder labelled Torchwood).

I did wonder why, if the building was in disrepair and was about to be pulled down that Manger’s office seemed no different to how it did in the 1940’s. I thought that the direction was quite effective when you saw Jack and Tosh walking down the corridors and then Gwen walking down the same corridors some 60 odd years later, and also when Jack and Tosh just walked straight into a 1940’s dance. One minute they were in an abandoned building and the next minute they were in a bustling place full of people enjoying a night off. That was a nice shot I thought.

The real Captain Jack was an interesting character, well played by Matt Rippey, a lot like the Jack we knew from Doctor Who, and it turned out he was more like Jack than we thought, so you can see why Jack would have taken his identity rather than somebody else’s. Perhaps he was the only American around at that time.

I don’t think we will ever find out the complete truth about Jack in Torchwood, but that does make his character a lot more interesting, simply because we just don’t know who he really is, well it does to me anyway.

I thought this episode was very good and moving and would love to see Catherine Tregenna pen an episode of Doctor Who, as I am sure she would turn out an interesting episode, quite different from anything we have seen before. With Helen Raynor becoming the first female to write for the new series this coming season perhaps she will be in for a shout in series four. We can but hope.

Originally posted on Jan 05, 2007

W(eevi)’ll Meet Again

Torchwood: Combat

I have been looking forward to this episode of Torchwood for a long time, mainly because it was written by Mickey, himself, Noel Clarke, and I was interested in what he could come up with the show, and didn’t he do well. He actually managed to do what no other writer has done this year and manage to integrate all of the main characters into the plot and that included Tosh and Ianto doing something interesting. He deserves something for that alone really and it was nice to see them all working as a team.

I won’t even try and say that the plot was up to much, because it wasn’t. What the episode was though was a great piece of writing and also saw some strong characterisation of the regular characters, which I have always considered to be a strong point in Torchwood.

In this episode Gwen finally decided that the thing with Owen had to stop, although how long it had been going on for is up for debate as for the last couple of episodes they have seemed like they hate each other, although that might just be an act for the rest of the crew, however in this episode I think it had finally come to a head and that is why she decided to tell Rhys all about it.

Eve Myles was good in this episode as she finally admitted to Rhys that she was shagging someone else. Of course she then went and drugged him so he would not remember what she had said to him, which probably says more about her than her just breaking down and spilling her guts.

Here we see Owen really, really pissed off (he is certainly missing Diana more than he is letting on), and the final scenes with Owen and the Weevil ask more questions that it answers. He obviously has some hold over the Weevils and certainly when he pulled that (not very scary) face the Weevil was petrified. I remember reading in the Radio Times that Owen does have something going with the weevils and that he was only member of the crew who really understands them and has been training them, probably secretly for a long time.

Certainly it was nice to see the Weevils again because ever since episode two I don’t think we have seen much of them and they did seem to make a big thing of talking about them in the first episode. Perhaps something big will happen in the finale involving the Weevils.

Captain Jack let another human die in this episode as well, but as he wanted it too happen, and as he was the one who started all of the fights in the first place, then he probably deserved it, unlike the poor blokes early on in the episode, but you could also argue that Jack nowadays just isn’t bothered about that sort of thing, and is no longer the Jack people knew in the first series of Doctor Who. Then again if being killed off then bought back to life isn’t going to mess with your mind then I don’t know what would.

It was interesting that Gwen didn’t actually know about Owen and Diana but Tosh did know. That probably made Tosh feel a little better as I don’t think she really trust’s Gwen that much anymore, especially after she found that her and Owen had something going on, and she would probably have considered that some sort of small victory for her. I don’t think that she probably trusts Jack at the moment after he let the Weevil be kidnapped, but I think that in this case that was the only way that Jack could have found out why the Weevils were being kidnapped in the first place, as they didn’t even know where Owen was at that point in time, although when Gwen received the text message on of the dead guy’s phone they would have find out anyway, so you can see both Tosh and Jack’s point of view.

Certainly Tosh has the more human view of it all, because after what Jack has experienced since meeting the Doctor, I am not sure that he is entirely human anymore. That is just what I think at the moment and I could well be proved right but I always thought that there was more to Jack than meets the eye since the last few episodes of series one of Doctor Who.

It certainly does seem now that Torchwood is playing like the first series of new Doctor Who did, and that if it did not get a second series then it would just play as a 13 part, self contained, serial, I am not sure if the confirmation of a second series will make the ending different than if it had been just intended for a single series, which I am sure a lot of people would have preferred.

I have always thought that Torchwood was getting better and better with each episode and now I am convinced that they are building up to something major in the last few episodes, because this episode was a lot like Boom Town, with its rather talky character based action before the action packed finale, and certainly judging by the trailer for the finale of Torchwood they are pulling out all the stops for these two episodes, making sure that if it didn’t get beyond a second series it would have at least gone out with a bang.

We will have to see what happens on that score till New Years Day but Noel Clarke has certainly turned out a very interesting episode of Torchwood which bowled along at quite a pace despite the fact that very little actually happened.

After the previous episode with its feminine touches this episode was unashamedly masculine and I think that Noel Clarke might have seen Fight Club one too many times and this version of fight club is up there with the robot fight club from series two of Spaced. I certainly would mind seeing a Noel Clarke penned episode of series four of Doctor Who if it gets that far.

Originally posted on Dec 29, 2006

In The Mood

Torchwood: Out of Time

Another week, another great episode of Torchwood. No, scratch that, make that a fantastic episode of Torchwood.

If there is one word to describe the episode it is emotional. There may not have been a great deal happening in the episode as far as plot goes, but that really didn’t matter as we got an episode packed with emotions and the nice, simple story of three people trying to find their way in what was, to them, an alien world. It has to be said that my girlfriend really enjoyed this episode and said that it was her favourite episode of the series so far, by a country mile. And, after reading some of the live journal communities, of which I am a member, this episode seems to have been very popular with the female viewer, more than the male viewer. I am not sure if that does have anything to do with the fact that there is no aliens or anything like in the episode or not.

If you don’t like dialogue-heavy, emotional scenes then you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this episode, but I thought it was perfectly pitched, and there were some great characterisation in this episode.

We learned quite a bit about Captain Jack in this episode about how he too is a man out of his time and how he obviously isn’t all that happy about the situation. If any of the main characters could identify with the three people who were stranded in our time then it is certainly Jack. We also saw Owen, for the first time, affected by his lifestyle of leaping into bed with lots of different women, all though quite how he does it is anyone’s guess as he is hardly a good looking bloke is he? I think he is just a jammy bastard really.

The episode belonged really to the three guest stars: Mark Lewis Jones, Louise Delamere and Olivia Hallinan and all three of them gave excellent performances. Lewis Jones’ John Ellis’s part of the episode could probably have been one of the most emotional character arcs I have witnessed on television for a long time and if you didn’t get a lump in your throat when he broke down at the sight of his only son vegetating in a care home, unaware of anything or anyone around him then I don’t know. Perhaps it hit home to me a bit more because I recently lost my Nan and even though she was not in the kind of state that John Ellis’s son was in, I know how I would have felt if that had been me.

Olivia Hallinan gave a believable performance of a young girl from the 1950’s and it is her who was probably the only one of the three ‘temporal immigrants’ who would be able to lead a full life in a time fifty years from what she knows. The scene’s where Gwen was telling her about sex was extremely funny and was the kind of talk you could imagine an older sister giving to a younger sibling (not that I would know but is sounds like it would be) and her shock at finding out that Gwen and Rhys are living together despite the fact that they are not married was quite typical of what a well bought up 1950’s girl would think like, as was when she was getting off with a bloke in a club and just assumed that all he wanted was a kiss and a cuddle. Yeah, right, and the rest.

Louise Delamere’s Diana Holmes, was another strong female character much like Delamere’s character in The Chatterly Affair, and both of them were women who were very sexually liberated for their times. I think she must have the monopoly on that type of role, and you have to admit, she does it so well. There was certainly more than a hint of Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson in her character, which I am pretty sure, was deliberate. I loved the way that she wrapped Owen around her little finger, and really got to him, actually admitting that their little affair was more than just casual sex, which is what most of Owen’s sexual encounters up to that point had been, even with Gwen I would say. Perhaps that is not how Gwen would view it, but from Owen’s point of view I would say that it definitely was just casual. We will have to wait and see on that point because it seems that Gwen spills the beans to Rhys in next week’s episode.

My girlfriend also thought that Diana knew more than she was letting on about the rift and thought that perhaps she had come through the rift before. After all she did get back into her plane at the end and did fly back the way she had come, so maybe she was trying to make her way back to her own time or maybe she just wanted to start again somewhere else. Whatever she was planning on doing she was certainly a very confident woman who would probably be able to cope with anything she came up against.

Certainly it was the John Ellis character that bought out the emotion in the episode with the whole finding his son thing and then him trying to kill himself at the end of the episode. I knew that that scene would not have been that popular with some of the viewers and the whole idea of letting someone end their own life is not considered to be a popular one, and I am sure that if I was ever in that situation I would probably have a different opinion to how I did during the episode. In this case John wanted to end it, had nobody else to miss him, would have done it anyway even if Jack had tried to stop him, so what choice did Jack really have? And Jack did the noble thing and helped him to do it in a dignified way. It was simply the right thing for Jack to do.

I must admit I did find the line where Owen was telling Diane how he felt about her how he just thinks about what she is wearing etc and then kills the romance stone dead by mentioning how her face looks when she comes. Well who said romance is dead? That certainly did raise a giggle. Given Owen’s usual demeanour with woman, he can be a charmer when he wants to be as the scene where he takes Diana dancing (even though it was on top of a multi-storey car park in Cardiff) shows.

Catherine Tregenna certainly has a handle on the characters in the show and she makes a good job of a script where very little happens and the brilliant thing about it is that you don’t really miss the fact that there isn’t a lot going on, as you are drawn into the dilemma’s of the characters and what might become of them. That is the mark of a good writer making things interesting even if nothing actually does happen. Certainly I didn’t miss the fact that there was no alien involvement. I mean who is to say that you have to have alien involvement in every episode? In this case the episode worked better because it was just about people rather than about aliens and I am certainly looking forward to Tregenna’s next episode of Torchwood in a couple of weeks.

Still, it could have been a lot worse, the person in the plane landing in 21st century Cardiff could have been Glenn Miller. What a thought!

Originally posted on Dec 21, 2006