Best US Alternative Rock Album Produced Between 1990 And 1994. Prettiest Cast Member In Friday Night Lights. Most Powdery Wig In Britain 1752. These are hotly contested titles. Unlike the title of Best New US Show Of The Season 2007-8, which was more like the contest to win England Footballer Of The Year 2007 – all the potential contenders seemed to underperform deliberately, giving the impression it was an accolade no-one wanted to win.
Reaper takes it, although the victory owes more to what the show wasn’t than to what it was. It wasn’t high-gloss, soapy schlock about a bunch of hateful bastards; it wasn’t a rehash of tired sci-fi tropes aimed lazily at a supposedly easily-pleased audience; and it didn’t coast on a thin premise while besotted with its own insufferable quirkiness. It may not have been perfect, but Reaper remained reliably entertaining throughout its run, while demonstrating the importance of a solid concept and a strong cast.
One of the reasons I watched Reaper in the first place was its superficial similarity to one of the greatest TV shows of my lifetime, in which a seemingly ordinary young person reluctantly assumes responsibility for combating the threat of supernatural nasties. But Reaper is certainly not Buffy, and signalled this by having Kevin Smith direct its pilot. It’s as much about a bunch of guys hanging out talking shit as it is about evil hellspawn. Almost every episode sees Sam, Sock and Ben drinking pints at the bar, suggesting that for them beer is nearly as important as serving the Devil by trapping escaped souls and returning them to the underworld. And that is my kinda show.
This attitude underpins Reaper’s whole ethos. Sam may struggle with the burdens of his obligations to the Devil, but he still finds time to goof around at the Work Bench. Ben is thrust into life-endangering situations weekly, but he still loves to daydream about his perfect woman (who of course is independently wealthy, enjoys mixed martial arts and reads Sue Grafton novels). And Sock refuses to take anything seriously – work, the Devil, Sam’s romantic problems – unless it involves his mother. The show’s ambling, amiable spirit feeds into what Admiral Neck diagnosed back in November as Futurama Syndrome – the odd pacing that sees the main plot often wrapped up with ten or more minutes of episode still to unfold. While this was intially weird and unsettling, before long it came to feel familiar and natural, with the realisation that Sam’s adventures in recapturing souls aren’t what Reaper is about. Rather, it’s about Sam’s troubles in balancing his obligations, his responsibilities to friends, family, Andi and work – the problems we all go through when making the transition to adulthood. Their occasionally unearthly nature notwithstanding, Sam’s problems are instantly recognisable for all of us, as is the half-arsed way he goes about trying to solve them. Well, it’s about that and a bunch of guys hanging out talking shit.
Reaper’s main drawback was that for a long time it didn’t appear to be going anywhere: the guys just bumbled from week to week, being equally inept at bounty hunting, retail and affairs of the heart. This was an unusually long establishing period, and only when Sam stumbled (a) into another relationship that ignited Andi’s feelings for him and (b) on a demonkind plot against the Devil was any significant progress made. An ongoing problem – a surprising one, seeing as Reaper is one of the few shows on US TV created by women – is the female characters: Andi is little more than a vessel for Sam’s hopes and desires, only developing a personality in the final third of the season (and even then it’s mainly a ‘one of the guys’ personality); as for Josie, both her femaleness and her blackness feel tokenistic given that she appears only when soul-trapping brushes up against the law or when a Sock-related C-plot is needed; and when Ben finally gets to have a relationship it’s with the shrewish Sara, who manipulates him, steals all his money and leaves him in jail pining for the Grafton-reading fantasy girl Cassidy.
The way Sara was written wasn’t her only problem. I did a little cheer when I saw Lucy Davis’s name in the credits but sadly she was dreadful in the role, all eye-rolling and silly tics and incomprehensible muttering. For someone whose major career role has been on the radio, it’s astonishing how poor her diction is (see also Shaun Of The Dead, if for some reason you haven’t). Fortunately this was just about the only casting misstep Reaper made. The guest spots were a delight, from Melinda Clarke as the lonely mistress of the Devil to Jeff Kober as a hardworking neighbourhood demon, but the best was Ken Marino, essaying his usual easy charm as practical, sweet-natured ex-angel Tony.
But the near-perfect guest casting was no surprise considering the success of Reaper’s main cast. Rick Gonzalez might not be the finest actor on TV but his artless, affable presence is perfect for the sweet-natured Ben. Bret Harrison stands out from any number of blandly handsome puppyish actors not only for his physical comedy skillz – he can take a pummelling like a champ – but also for his hapless ability to inspire sympathy. But these two might have floundered without Tyler Labine, whose energy and gung-ho commitment give Reaper an anarchic edge. Despite his innate – and often hilarious – selfishness, it is Sock who usually provokes the team into action (Sam and Ben would surely remain hopelessly static without him), and Labine has the manic charisma to make this believable.
Labine may prove to be the breakout star of the show, but its ace in the hole is without question Ray Wise. My co-bloggers have already eulogised about his magnificent grin, but the key to the role is Wise’s astonishing ability to switch between avuncular and sinister in a microsecond. He also brings a subtle poignancy at times, inviting you to feel sympathy for the Devil’s inability to enjoy food or his isolation, before doing something gleefully horrible to remind you – hey! He’s the frickin’ Devil! Evidently Anthony Head auditioned for the part, but although he has a certain roguishness, I doubt even Giles could have managed Wise’s devastating combination of authority, playfulness and outright malice. Ah, fuck it – let’s face it, Head couldn’t have emulated this.
Like Friday Night Lights, Reaper has benefited from the lack of new dramas in season 2008-9 and been recommissioned (for 13 episodes at least), despite its mediocre ratings. Although it’s been enjoyable until now, it’ll be fascinating to see where it goes from here. Because while it’s a good show, I’m not convinced it can ever be great. Whether deliberately or not, it has virtually no emotional impact, and no evident ambition to make any; even the apparent death of Sam’s dad in the season finale didn’t quite disrupt the good-humoured atmosphere. I’m sure it can go on being an engaging, lovable show with charm to spare, which is far more than many manage. But if that’s the limit of its aspirations, that’s a shame – and it may not be enough to keep Reaper alive.
In previous posts on this thread, we may have given the impression that what had once been seemingly beyond salvaging had become a potentially interesting show. Titles such as "I Can't Believe It's Not Torchwood", "Martha Makes Everything Better", and "I May Not Like The Taste Of Humble Pie But I'll Happily Eat It" may have given the impression that what once had been the canker sore on the lip of British TV drama had become a soilbed from which challenging and intelligent sci-fi might one day spring.
We now realise that those flawed but interesting moments were an aberration, not a newly established status quo, and the usual standards of the show would be restored as soon as an opening was found. Future post titles such as "If In Doubt, Having A Character Wave A Gun About Will Fill A Minute Of Screentime", "Dear God, Will Someone Inject Some Dignity Into This Debacle?", and "Does Anyone On This Show Understand The Concept Of Plagiarism?" will hopefully restore normality to this blog. Thank you for your patience. (Again, apologies to Private Eye.)
I'm in two minds about this. It was great seeing the show stretch a little during the Martha Trilogy, but it wasn't really enough for it to become "appointment TV" (oh how I hate that phrase), so I felt like the TV village idiot had been rehabilitated Flowers-For-Algernon-style, and I had no one to laugh at and throw rocks at anymore (though we do intend to start watching CSI: Miami again pretty soon). Last week's "terrestrial" episode, Something Borrowed, was a return to previous shoddy form, giving Meat a run for its money, and brazenly referring to its own unoriginality in its title. Well, I reckon Something Stolen and Ineptly Rehashed would be closer to the mark, but you get my point.
Any seriousness of purpose the show might have built up over the patchy but promising Martha Trilogy was stripped away, replaced with knuckle-chewingly inane comedy, staggering contrivance, a total dismissal of all logic, replacement of human motivation with plot-furthering stupidity, poorly executed Evil Dead homages, and inept action moments. I can't decide which is worse: Meat, this, or the season opener with James Marsters and his big fat paycheck.
What was so poor about it? Perhaps it was because it was a Gwen-centric episode. I'm really not crazy about the character at all, and couldn't give two shits for her relationship with Jack. I also find it odd that she is suddenly cast as the comedy relief in the show, being sidelined almost entirely during the ostensibly more dramatic episodes of the Martha Trilogy. Maybe it's a temporary thing, or just because this was the comedy episode of the season, but her line-readings and gestures were very very peculiar in this, as broad as you can possibly imagine.
Comedy episodes of most dramatic shows are to be avoided, unless of course the show has a strong comedic element already (Buffy, Angel, and Firefly did this better than most). Even a very dramatic show can pull it off. Lost did it with Expose and, arguably, Tricia Tanaka Is Dead, despite the oft-humourless tone of the show. By comparison, Torchwood is obviously under the impression that it's already very funny, but the odd comedic line is either childish, obvious, or poorly delivered, and sometimes all three at once, so imagine the pain caused by an episode that concentrates solely on this kind of broad silliness. I know appreciation of what is funny or not is subjective, but how anyone could find this ineptly staged juvenile nonsense a joy to watch is a mystery to me.
So, in a effort to ensure that the overall internet opinion about this show doesn't skew exclusively towards the positive, I present The Ten Worst Things About Something Borrowed, by Admiral Neck, aged 5 1/4. 10. The Pointless Editing In The First Scene.
After flashing back to Jack's bizarre reaction to Gwen's engagement from the season opener, we cut to a depressing Cardiff nightclub and two depressingly loud and obnoxious women in cowboy hats greeting Gwen with a depressing song about her having anal sex. Yay, hen nights! Is there anything more entertaining than drunk women talking about sex at the top of their lungs and then cackling? Still, I bet there's a stripper.
This then cuts to Gwen chasing a shapeshifting alien, which is exciting! And then back to the hen night, where a stripper arrives! And then back to the exciting chase! And then back to the hen night! And then... You get the picture.
Firstly, as Rhys points out later, Jack's an asshole for sending her out to kill aliens on the night before her wedding. Second, Gwen has friends? When did this happen? Third, while chasing the alien she gets bitten by it, which is the inciting incident. (I can imagine it was referred to as that during script meetings.) This fact is subtly revealed when one of Gwen's gobby friends asks her what the time is, and Gwen suddenly unveils the biggest pre-wedding bandage you've ever seen.
What's that on her arm, the viewer thinks. I wonder how she got that! Like this.
Look at the size of those space gnashers! Jack shows up to save Gwen (so he was obviously available for alien hunting, which once more begs the question as to why Gwen was getting into danger), and his reaction to this enormous wound is, "Owen should take a look at that." You think?
He obviously doesn't check it very closely, as she ends up getting pregnant from it. Stupid dead doctor. Anyway, though there are several things about this dire opening that annoyed me, it's the editing that irked me the most. Is it a suspense scene? No, because we keep seeing Gwen alive and relatively healthy during that scene. Is the storytelling device useful for teasing us with hints about Gwen's night and then paying it off with reveals? No, because we don't have to wait very long to find out. Is it used to generate the funny? Next question. Is it just another way of showing the contrast between Gwen's social life, which is the same as most lairy boozed-up people of her age, and her secret life chasing aliens and getting knocked up by them. Almost certainly, but we spent the entire first season doing this, and getting Rhys involved in Torchwood's affairs should have drawn a veil over that (geddit?). Instead, we're still banging away at that point. When I realised the show was slipping back into its bad habits I started to hear warning bells about the loss of momentum from the Martha Trilogy. Time elapsed: 3 minutes 15 seconds. 9. Alien Impregnation? Really?
For an start, it's a cliched idea. Even a show I loved, Angel, featured Cordelia getting knocked up twice by demons (okay, so the second time was a way to get around her real-life pregnancy, and it did bring about the excellent season four arc with Jasmine, but still). Even the relatively tame Star Trek: The Nextest Generation had Troy get pregnantised by a glowing light; a Hallmark Card way to have a character raped.
Just on a personal level, stories about women being impregnated by aliens don't really appeal to me much, mostly because it reduces the woman to a reproductive system that is vulnerable to invasion, and it's icky and tasteless and kind of insulting. Admittedly it can be done well (Alien 3 handled it with the appropriate seriousness), but most often it's done really really badly (I'm thinking Species II here; a despicable film, and poorly made to boot). I get the "appeal" of the concept, and my love of Cronenberg should give you an idea of my stance on body horror (short version; yay!), but done wrong these stories treat something very serious in an exploitative and distasteful way. It makes me feel very uncomfortable.
So imagine how I feel when it's played for laughs. For fuck's sake, Gwen has an alien egg in her belly! Only when the team realise childbirth involves her evisceration do they take it seriously. No amount of over-the-top pickle-chomping and high-larious wedding-day tantrum-throwing will disguise the fact that Gwen's body has been invaded.
She's gorging herself on phallic objects! My sides are splitting! Because I am the host for an alien foetus, obviously.
8. Gwen's Desperation About Getting Married Blinding Her To The Consequences Of Such A Decision.
So, Gwen is the host for the egg of a shapeshifting alien. It's the day of the wedding. Jack is concerned for her health, obviously, as he doesn't know what the alien gestation is like (useless former Time Agent!), and both he and Owen strongly suggest she postpone the wedding while they figure things out. But Gwen really wants to get married anyway. So they let her.
It's very generous of everyone to let Gwen do what she wants, and certainly it's a tradition that the wedding day, while special for everyone, is even more special for the bride, but there's a line to be drawn there. Right across her enormous pregnant belly. Why would anyone in the world think that this was a good idea? Jack and Owen and Rhys all know this is a bad idea, but she blunders on anyway, using yelling and weird acting tics do her arguing for her.
What's worse is we tried to give the show the benefit of the doubt, and entertained the idea that this could be explained away as possible brainwashing by the alien in her body, that in its culture the birth demands some kind of ceremony, and it was making Gwen desire a wedding so that it could be born properly. The alternative was that Gwen is a halfwit. Sadly, she really is. She's just a girl that wants her wedding day and won't even postpone for a couple of days to sort out the whole possibly-deadly-egg-in-the-belly thing. Even worse, later on Tosh tells her she made the right decision, which means the guys are pragmatic about the whole impregnation thing, but the women are all about the pretty dresses and the wonder of the wedding day princess thing. Those dames sure do love a good wedding!
Seems like the writer, Phil Ford (more on him later) was aware that he was making Gwen do stupid things, as Gwen suddenly realises (after telling her parents that she is pregnant and then realising they're excited about a grandchild that will never exist) that perhaps she is doing the wrong thing, but bringing attention to it doesn't get rid of the fact that the episode was written to show a wedding framed within the format of Torchwood, using the alien pregnancy as a heavy-handed way to metaphorically dramatise the effect of Gwen's wedding ceremony on our characters, and to get to that point it was necessary to remove all semblance of logical human behaviour from the show. It's contrivance, pure and simple, and is utterly unforgivable. By now I realised the show was back to its usual dreadful state, and the scene that convinced me, featuring Gwen's overjoyed parents and her sudden realisation that she's made a mistake, is only eleven minutes into the episode, and the worst is yet to come.
7. Comedy Relief!
Gwen and Rhys' friends are clumsily introduced (though I think I remember Rhys referring to Mervyn or Banana Boat in a previous episode. I should remember, as I usually hang on his every word), mostly to fill the cast out a bit, but also to provide laughs in this most amusing of comedy episodes.
All of them are lecherous jerks, which means they'll probably be joining the Torchwood team very soon. It was all very depressing for the actors, especially Jonathan Lewis Owen, who plays Banana Boat as a cross between Prince William, a Welsh chav, and a lobotomised sex-addict.
He had to bumble through some awful dialogue, which wasn't his fault, but I so dearly wanted him to die horribly. Sorry Jonathan Lewis Owen! I'm sure you're a lovely chap in real life. However, he kept chatting up Tosh (of all people), and even managed to molest her while trapped inside a web of bin bags weaved by the alien. Here are the bin bags...
...and here is Banana Boat's face as his genitals are crushed by Tosh in annoyance over his lechery and loudness.
Sadly, he was not to be killed in a terrible fashion. Instead it was the turn of Mervyn, the other lecherous wanker, who leered at the alien...
...and then got his genitals chomped off by her during what he thought was going to be a sexxy sex act.
So, men are mindless sex-obsessed beered-up pigs, and women want to get married despite alien inpregnation, the heartbreak of their parents, and terrible danger. They will also happily damage the gonads of any man in range. And gay men?
(Yes yes, this is all played for laughs, and if I was going to be really generous I would say it could be an un-PC spoof of the show's usual admirably PC stance, but I think they were just going for easy gags. Let's not go overestimating the intelligence of anyone involved in making Torchwood, okay?)
6. Tosh.
In Mad Men, Betty Draper memorably (and anvilliciously) asked a pertinent question about her husband; "Who is Don Draper?" (The answer to which is, "Don Draper is Dick Whitman!") Well, I ask, who is Tosh? And should I care? (The answer to which is, "no".) Early on in the episode she stalks Owen again, in an attempt to get him to attend the wedding. She keeps on that it isn't a date, but obviously she thinks it is, what with her continual simpering and annoying passive-aggressiveness.
Five minutes later, she's beating up Banana Boat and mouthing tough guy dialogue.
Oh my God! It's like McKee says! Reveal the true character through action and not dialogue! So she's a tough guy at heart, really. Except she's all jittery and sentimental when she's talking to Gwen about the wedding.
So what is Tosh? Whatever the scene needs at any given point. She's just a cipher, and as such means nothing. That's a criticism of Tosh and the lack of show bible that I've already gone on about in the past, and not a criticism of Naoki Mori. Rumour has it she's being written out at the end of the season. Hopefully in future she'll get a chance to bring to life a coherent character instead of this nebulous gap where a recognisable human should be.
5. What To Do With Dead Owen.
Having turned Owen into the only character other than Jack that's not just a boring human who's obsessed with sex, the show ran riot with the concept for two episodes (one of which was okay, the other was less so but still littered with interesting moments). Now? Well, it was a Gwen episode, so there wasn't really anything for him to do. Other than wear badges for no apparent reason.
I can understand it. I don't really have a problem with it, and the rumour about Tosh leaving extends to him too. A shame, as Burn Gorman has been growing on us, and we won't get to experience his gun machismo. It's often the episode highlight.
I really have to find a way to get his Countrycide effort on here. It was the funniest thing on TV in 2007 that didn't include Alec Baldwin or Tracy Morgan. 4. Worst. Shapechanging Carnivorous Alien Antagonist. Ever.
Annoying enough that Cap'n Jack's alien expertise is so incomplete that he doesn't immediately realise the nature of the creature they're up against despite having been alive for hundreds or dozens or however many years he's been around, thus putting Gwen and her family in danger (yet more obnoxious contrivance). It's up to Owen and his badges to figure out that it is a Nostrovite, which will kill Gwen to get hold of the egg.
Even worse was that the first shapeshifter they go up against is easily killed by a bullet and the second one becomes enraged with an alien babycraziness that makes it almost invincible, which is the sort of empty and contrived expositional nonsense used to justify plot developments that I often refer to as Reason X ("If we're going to save the President's daughter we have to disguise ourselves as nuns because [Reason X]!"). It's like a MacGuffin, but even more contrived.
Worst of all is just how crap the alien is, convenient invulnerability notwithstanding. It's killed one person and trapped two others in its non-biodegradable web, so does it change shape in order to ensure it will not be caught? Nope. It stands around with the same face, making no effort to find the woman carrying its child, and when confronted by human intervention in the shape of Tosh, it does this. Also, note that even though Jack and Tosh are equipped with normal guns, for some reason they sound like the old toy gun I had as a kid that had four different laser sound settings.
It then gives itself away by turning into someone at the wedding, i.e. Rhys' mother, played by Nerys Hughes, abandoning all her dignity to run around with fake gnashers and bad fingers. It would be a good ploy, to become someone that the host of its egg knows so it can get closer to her. Sadly, it doesn't go after Gwen, choosing instead to mingle and chat with Gwen's mother, though Jack and co. assume it would go after Gwen. Because that makes sense. Instead, it just sets up this case of mistaken identity, which might be the worst ninety seconds of TV this year.
"Come to Mama!" That, my friends, is Nostrovite for EPIC FAIL!
3. Jack And Gwen, Sitting In A Tree...
I used a hammer on my head to try to unremember the first season of Torchwood, so I might be wrong here, but did Jack and Gwen spend as much time drooling over each other as they do in the second season?
It seems to be the emotional core of the show, this love story between the human and the immortal ::coughCordyandAngelcough::, and it's worked in other shows, so why not here? Well, because they have no chemistry, and Jack's got a cavalier attitude to relationships anyway which undermines his sudden sadness here, and Gwen is now happily betraying her husband while pretending to be loyal which makes her seem less like a sympathetic and tortured heroine and more like a bit of a cow, and Jack is frigging immortal and should have higher standards. For God's sake, he was in love with the Doctor! He's the ideal man for him, because they are equally galactic. You're telling me Jack's been around the cosmos and he's getting depressed because a Suzi Quatro lookalike is getting married to this guy?
No accounting for taste, I guess. Still, that's a failure of the series in general, but in this episode she barely acknowledges her lovepain for Jack until defending her decision to get married with an egg in her belly, where she says something along the lines of, "I'm marrying Rhys because he will have me and no one else will. No one. Right? No one at all. Eh Jack? No one at all." Rhys is standing there the whole time and misses the coded signals and thinks she's saying nice things about him, which proves what a dope he is. Even stupider, this entire scene, where Gwen seems to forget that speech about loving Rhys with barely any prompting, which leads to this hair-eating insanity.
Best thing I can say about it is that it gives John Barrowman his best acting opportunities, as shown by his inner turmoil here.
One day you're going to be a big head in a jar, but it's a long time to be sulking over Gwen. Oh Captain Jack! When will you be fun again?
2. Cliche, Plagiarism, and Laziness.
I've already pointed out that alien impregnation has been done before, and alien shapechangers or chameleons are staples of sci-fi, so if you're willing to be generous to the show (and I know a lot of people are), you could say it's unfair to criticise the show for using these popular plots. Okay. I'll grudgingly give you that. But can I please rail against the wedding sequence in the middle of the episode, where Jack, Ianto and Owen race to the wedding to save Gwen from the Nostrovite and Jack bursts in two seconds after the vicar asks if anyone has any objection to the marriage going ahead? Can I? Please? Because that shit is just unacceptable.
If only there was a Wikipedia page listing all the times that plot development has been used, though I wonder if there is enough server space in the world. Pretty much every soap wedding features this moment, as well as every crappy romantic comedy made between 1980 and 1999, at the very least. It's like littering. Just because everyone does it every so often doesn't make it right. (For the record, I don't litter. Not even that one time when I hid the polybag down the side of a Tube seat. That was someone else entirely.)
Even worse than that, the show plagiarises itself! A few weeks back, in Reset, Owen has to use a nifty gadget called a Singularity Scalpel to burn away the insects infesting Martha's body, though he is not entirely sure how to use the machine. After a couple of near misses that blow up things around him, he succeeds in destroying the lifeform without blowing out her spine. This week, because his one hand is knackered (a consequence of his continuing status as a dead person), he can't operate the scalpel, and has to hand it over to Rhys. The set up is acceptable, and it's a nice reference to Owen's new shortcomings, so I have no trouble with that. What does annoy me is that this means Rhys has to go through exactly the same thing Owen did just three episodes previously, with the panic and near-misses. Does BBC Wales think we have amnesia?
Just to make things even more annoying, during the dance scene at the end, Jack cuts in on Gwen and Rhys' dance just so he can have a moment alone with her, which is yet another convention of this kind of plot, and then Ianto shows up to cut in as well, but he doesn't ask for Gwen's hand. He wants to dance with his boyfriend! It's not the most amazing moment ever, but it's easily the episode highlight, and a pleasing twist on that cliche.
So they can do it if they try. One of the best things about Buffy and Angel is that it would set up the potentially cliched plot early on, and then subvert it at least once if not more during the episode. It amazed me that they could keep doing that on a weekly basis. If the Torchwood showrunners are going to steal anything from Mutant Enemy, why can't they steal that philosophy? It would instantly improve the show 1000%. 2.5. Ripping Off The Evil Dead.
Connected to that complaint, another pop culture legend stolen by the show came toward the end, with Rhys preparing to attack the shapeshifter, disguised as his mother, with a chainsaw, prior to it being blown up by Jack and his big gun, leading to black blood goop flying everywhere. Sounds like The Evil Dead? Jack agrees.
It definitely seems that this episode was meant to be a homage to that hyper-real Sam Raimi style of horror comedy, as well as the big silly sci-fi B-movies I grew up with, and I'll bet Phil Ford is a fan of such and figured this was his chance to pay homage to that with over-the-top action, sex jokes, violence and exploding bodies. Of course, that's all well and good in practice, but 1) pointing it out in dialogue is a failure of nerve, and 2) the show might have the confidence to think it can pull something like this off, but it doesn't have the ability.
It's the kind of amateurish stuff teenagers dream of filming, and I know when I was young I imagined myself as a West Midlands Peter Jackson, making horror movies with lots of aliens exploding and men standing around posing with big guns, because that's what happened in all of my favourite films. There are so many of these plagiaristic films made on shoestring budgets littering the sci-fi/horror sections of HMV's DVD shelves that we really really don't need any more, especially if they have nothing new to offer. This certainly didn't. And that gun looks stupid. And even if it didn't look stupid, no one on this show looks cool with guns.
Torchwood showrunners, watch Planet Terror to see how it's done. I may have parted ways with Robert Rodriguez in recent years, but that was a massive return to form, and exactly the kind of crazy horror blow-out Torchwood thought it was for one whole week. The gulf in quality between the two is vast, and it's not a consequence of the BBC show having a smaller budget. It's the lack of imagination that dooms the show, not the lack of pounds.
1. The Retcon Finale.
At the end of the episode, much to Jack's displeasure, Gwen finally gets to have her happy moment with Rhys, alien egg disintegrated and everything back to a semblance of normality. The families watch with joyous faces as Gwen and Rhys share their vows, and Canyon and I assumed Jack had gone around to everyone with Retcon pills and erased their memories of the terrible day. BTW, I know the Retcon pills are a dreadful ripoff of the Neuraliser from Men In Black, but boldly calling them Retcon pills made me very happy as a comic nerd, reminding me of Dan Slott's boldly named Retroactive Cannon (AKA Ret-Can) from She-Hulk.
We then cut to everyone having the dance and meal afterwards, and everything seems hunkydory, until suddenly the assembled guests start falling asleep. Turns out Jack has administered the retcon pills after the wedding ceremony, and not before.
So what they're saying is that once the Nostrovite was defeated and Gwen returned to non-pregnant normality, the guests just accepted this turn of events, and went about celebrating the wedding. Even though they had been terrorised by a shapechanging alien threatening to kill the mother of the bride. Even though several of the guests had been running around with guns. Even though the best man's dismembered corpse was lying in pieces in a room upstairs!!!
To make things worse, Jack's use of the retcon pills robs everyone of their memories of the wedding. Perhaps there is a way for them to talk to the guests and make them think they saw it, as shown in Men In Black when J and K interrogate people post-neuralisation, but still, why not do it before the ceremony so that they can still have the full memory of the wedding and forget the gunfights and shootings and aliens and half-eaten best men for fuck's sake!?!?!? There is no reason other than monumental stupidity on the part of the writer, director and showrunner. How can this be considered logical or defensible? How is this not insulting the intelligence of the viewers? I call super-colossal-gigantic BULLSHIT on the whole thing.
The thing that makes me most angry, though, is that this was written by Phil Ford, who was pretty much solely responsible for the scripts on the recent excellent revamp of Captain Scarlet, which was the most interesting and intelligent early-teen-targeted show on TV until ITV predictably got cold feet and cancelled it. Those scripts were tight and serious and sometimes shocking. I thoroughly recommend it to everyone.
I'll grant that this episode was obviously conceived as a way to comment on real life using the trappings of sci-fi in the same way that Buffy and Angel used horror conventions to do the same thing, and as such Something Borrowed was chock-full of metaphors for marriage-as-horror-nightmare, but they were either crashingly obvious (mother-in-law jokes), half-baked (could the shapeshifter have represented the way your friends change their opinion of you once you get into a relationship? Or am I giving the show too much credit?), or severely malfunctioning (the impregnation could have represented the second thoughts she was having about marrying Rhys because of her love for Jack, but why dramatise that as subtext when it comes up as text over and over again towards the end of the episode?). That said, even if it did work, that contrivance at the end with the retcon pill kills the episode deader than dead. It's just unforgivable.
So, once more, any fans wandering in here will ask why I'm still watching. Well, the next episode, already screened on BBC Three, is written by P.J. Hammond, who I've gone on about before. The preview looked peculiar, which is what we want and what he does very very well (if you get a chance, watch his wholly original sci-fi/horror series Sapphire and Steel to see him at full quirky strength). I have high hopes for it. But the next three episodes? All written by Chris Chibnall? Let's just say I'm looking forward to them for different reasons. Look away if you don't want to see the spoilers from the BBC Press Office.
When a local teenager disappears, Gwen is drawn into an investigation that reveals a darker side of Torchwood, as Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies's award-winning drama continues. Hundreds of people have disappeared without trace, but Jack is obstructing attempts to find them. The answer seems to lie in the rift – literally – and as Gwen follows the trail, she makes a shocking discovery.
That sounds intriguing, I have to say, but Chibnall will find a way to screw it up. Making it another Gwen-centric episode is already a bad start. As for the next episode...
A booby-trapped building explodes and knocks the team unconscious, as Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies's award-winning drama continues. As each team member's life flashes before their eyes, viewers learn how each of them was recruited to Torchwood: Captain Jack was initiated into a shocked Victorian Torchwood in 1899; Toshiko went on a daring mission to trade alien technology for her mother's life; Ianto wooed Jack with coffee and a flair for alien-catching; and Owen had a medical revelation that changed how he saw the world.
...::coughOutofGasfromFireflycough:: Also, Ianto woos Jack with coffee? I can't wait for that! I wonder if he will mention his girlfriend Lisa, who got cybermanned in the first season. I seem to recall him mourning her for the majority of that season. If she doesn't get even namechecked, I will certainly poke fun of it here. Oh boy, a special treat for the finale!
Captain John Hart returns to have his revenge on Torchwood in the concluding episode of Doctor Who writer Russell Davies's award-winning drama. Taking Captain Jack prisoner, he sends him back in time for a long overdue reunion. Without their leader, Torchwood are faced with a city flooded with Weevils, on the brink of destruction. But who is Captain John really working for? Can anyone trust him? And how great a price must Torchwood pay to save the city?
Weevils everywhere! James Marsters! A great price to be paid that might feature the removal of two major characters if the rumours I heard are true! Don't forget, it's on tomorrow night and Good Friday. Set your PVRs, Torchwood fans!
I'll come right out and admit this to get it out of the way. I cannot stand Torchwood. It's silly to get actively annoyed by something as innocuous as a TV show, but I reserve the right to be pissed at a spin-off from a very good show that not only fails to live up to the standards of the original, but fails at being competent entertainment with such a capital FAIL that it insults its "parent" and makes the entire genre look like a muddy-faced schoolboy pooing his pants and laughing like a drunken donkey. It galls me that people consider this a great example of the genre and of British TV, that this is as good as it gets. It's an insult to anyone who tries to make anything of lasting value within the mostly ignored and derided sci-fi ghetto, and knowing that Russell T. Davies has said that it is Angel to Doctor Who's Buffy makes me even angrier. If Doctor Who is Buffy, Torchwood is Angel fanfic written by the 8 year old lovechild of Jilly Cooper and Harry Knowles. As I've said before in other venues, it's the Welsh CSI: Miami. And that's why my hatred is so tied up with my urge to never stop watching, even as it metaphorically shits where it eats.
It's bad. It's an insult to the genre. It's also unintentionally hilarious, and it could conceivably work if it is overhauled extensively. The first season was galactically dire, but coming from a background of such imagination and intelligence, it could surely absorb some of that quality. Knowing that shows have often improved in their second season gave me hope, as did the news that not only would James "Spike" Marsters be featured but also we would see the triumphant return of the magnificent, the wondrous, the astonishing MARTHA JONES! She's got class, she's got sass, she's got a lovely playfulness about her. So can this second season pull out of the nosedive that started very soon into the original?
In a word, don't bet on it. Scripted not by series creator Russell T. Davies but by showrunner Chris Chibnall, within five minutes of beginning it was evident that rumours of an improvement were way way off (I'm looking at you, resident Guardian Guide nerd Phelim O'Neill). Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman with lovable gusto on Doctor Who, and with tedious earnestness and random explosions of camp on Torchwood, is missing at the beginning of the series, which starts with a fish alien driving a sports car around Cardiff suburbs. In lukewarm pursuit are our witless sex-crazed adolescent heroes, Gwen, Tosh, Owen, and the risible Ianto, all bickering in an expositional stylee about the lack of Jack. Some of this is played for laughs, and it almost comes off for the first time, though there are some peculiar moments from Gwen, introduced in the first season as an audience surrogate taken from her boring life and thrust into a world of intergalactic absurdity. In this first scene Owen is all grumpy, tightly-wound machismo, and she tells a couple of jokes to keep the tone "light". Instead, because of a weird lighting choice, Gwen looks demonic.
One of the things that makes it hard to watch BBC sci-fi without cringing is the bizarre insistence on macho posing that runs through it all like gristle through a nice steak. This embarrassing fixation on the gun-fetishism that plagued James Cameron's Aliens is one of the many reasons I hated Red Dwarf (the main one being that it wasn't even slightly funny). Now, Aliens is one of my favourite movies, but the monster it created, this fanboy obsession with "cool" aggressive sci-fi, almost makes me hate it. Other genres manage to pull off the cool thing really well, usually by playing it much calmer, but British (and some US) sci-fi cannot get past the idea of the heroes being gun-toting badasses with legs akimbo, doing the two-handed gun grip and jumping out from behind walls, shouting "Freeze, motherfucker!" like kids playing cops and robbers. Sadly, it never looks right.
In the first season of Torchwood, they were particularly bad, but this time it seemed like the cast had been sent to gun training or something. Owen (played with his usual brand of oily sneering menace by Burn Gorman) leans out of the window of the Torchwoodmobile (complete with redundant flashing lights that the cameras can't pick up properly) and blasts the tyres out from under the fish alien's sports car. Except for a silly manoeuvre where he aims like a parody of a tough guy, he looks convincing as a dead-shot.
And then he ruins it by arrogantly blowing the "smoke" from his gun. Dick.
Still, despite his obnoxious display he does indeed get Mr. Fish to stop his car, in a suburban cul-de-sac, where he rushes out, breaks into a house, shoots some poor innocent bloke and takes a girl hostage. This is the modus operandi of Torchwood; make a bad situation infinitely worse and then when things have calmed down chalk it up as a victory. They rush into the room with all the grace and skill of the characters from the old Viz comic strip S.W.A.N.T. (Special Weapons and No Tactics), with Owen bellowing absurdly complicated instructions to the team. Tosh then scans Mr. Fish using a gizmo dotted with the same blue lights that looked so wrong on the Torchwoodmobile, sees he's on coke, and very seriously says, "This fish is wired!" An early contender for stupidest anti-comedy line of the year.
It's immediately superceded by the following expositional monologue from Mr. Fish, included in the show as Chris Chibnall obviously feels that getting the information out quickly and early is better than getting it out slowly and elegantly.
So, this is Team Torchwood, the teacher's pets. But teacher's gone, hasn't he, leaving the kiddie kids all alone. And look at you, trying so hard to be all grown up. The doctor, with his hands full of blood [cut to shot of Owen with his hands full of blood]. The carer, with her oh so beating heart. The technician, with her cold devices [cut to shot of Tosh holding a cold device]. Which leaves me with the office boy, promoted beyond his measure. All of you, lost without your master. All of you, pretending to be brave. All of you, so scared. [evil laugh] So, what about it, minion? Can you do it? How good are you? How sharp is your aim? What if you kill her? What if I kill her first? Can you shoot before I do? Can you? Dare you? Would you? Won't you?
That is apocalyptically bad writing, and even the best acting and directing couldn't salvage it. Just to make things worse, this show does not even feature competent acting or directing, and so it approaches toxic levels of wretchedness. I'm serious, it's this kind of inept and shitty sci-fi that dooms the entire genre. Thankfully Jack arrives (with no explanation of how he found them all) and shoots Mr. Fish (even though he is standing directly behind useless Ianto and therefore has no line of sight), before grinning his goddamn handsome face off. Wow, John Barrowman might not be the best actor on earth, but he has infinitely more charisma than the amateurish replicants around him. Look at him. You would, wouldn't you.
Back at Torchwood HQ (a waterlogged sewer complex with a couple of computers, a fancy door stolen from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and a pet pterodactyl) Gwen whines and moans at Jack for leaving them all, as if he's her property. Goddamn, get over yourself, woman. Which one is the boss here? Jack soppily admits he was in the wrong, and gets all gooey-eyed when he talks about finding the Doctor, as shown in the last three episodes of Doctor Who season three. Owen's line reading of, "Did he fix you?", is straight out of a Mills and Boon adaptation. To be honest, considering how obsessed Jack is with his dick, getting fixed might not have been that bad an idea. Here's Owen looking pompous and dreamy.
I really do not like Owen and his silly expressions, his seething "intensity" which comes across as dyspepsia, and his supposed animal magnetism. Definitely the Torchwood Gupta, despite stiff competition from Gwen. Anyway, while Jack's getting a hard time for leaving (::cough:: Angelseasontwo ::cough::), in a car park across town a burst of glowy light heralds the arrival of guest star James Marsters, fresh from a Buffy convention.
He arrives through the rift that sits under Cardiff (::cough:: Hellmouth ::cough::), and is an Adam-Ant-esque dandy. Actually, he looks like he's wearing a Harry Flashman fancy dress costume, but whatever the idea was, he looks dashing. As soon as he starts talking in his "English" accent, I was incredibly pleased. Spike had some bad moments, but overall I luffed him, especially towards the end of season 5 Angel, where his banter with the eponymous hero was at its best. Within two seconds of arriving he has thrown someone off the roof of the car park, and then gone to a nightclub to order various carousers around and then scare everyone off with his guns. His dialogue ("Go. Stay. Go. Go. Go. Go. Stay. Go. Go. Ooooh, stay stay stay! Go. Go. The rest of you, go.") leaves a lot to be desired, but who cares? It's James Marsters! The only actor on the show who knows how to hold a gun.
Meanwhile, our band of horseasses investigate the death of the car park guy, even though there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to be there, just as Jack's wriststrap goes off. A hologram of Marsters appears, asking Jack to come and find him, before signing off with, "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." You know what? I'm declaring a goddamn moratorium on the use of that phrase. It's. Not. Funny. Anymore. The only time I've seen it used well over the past year or so was when Carrie Fisher said, "Help me Liz Lemon, you're my only hope!" in 30 Rock, but that's because it was Carrie Fisher saying it. It's been used too goddamn often, and especially on Torchwood, it invites comparisons between the show and Star Wars that really aren't in their best interests.
Jack departs hurriedly, telling the team not to follow him, which they do immediately, all the time whining about what an asshole he is for leaving them behind (::cough cough cough:: Angelseasontwo ::cough cough cough::). While they piss and moan like a bunch of aggrieved kids, Jack arrives at the club and gets some full-on facetime with Marsters, kissing him with admirable gusto. And then they fight a lot. It's one of the few scenes in the show that has been choreographed and filmed with some effort, so kudos for that, I guess, but dear God, I declare another moratorium, this time on the use of Song Two by Blur, which woo-hoos in the background throughout. Has anyone involved in this show got any new ideas? At all? That shit was tired one summer after the song came out and it got used on Match of the Day 68 trillion times, so imagine how tired it must be now.
After kissing and fighting and pointing their guns at each other and making daft jokes about Jack working his way up the ranks and how grateful the ranks must have been (an allusion to sex, I'll wager, what with this being an adult show), they pretend to drink a lot of alcohol and bond over their past as time agents, a plot thread that I thought would have been explored in the previous season but was ignored in favour of gaseous sex aliens, ill-thought-out time travel plots, and Fight Club rip-offs, much to my disgust. After announcing his name is now Captain John Hart (adopting other identities appears to be de riguer for these chaps), Marsters/Hart reveals that the agency that runs the time agents (which, Canyon pointed out, is imaginatively called The Time Agency) has been shut down, meaning there are only seven time agents left altogether. I look forward to future appearances by Captain Judah Hogwonk, Captain Jeff Hepatitis, Captain Joe Hoho, Captain Jerry Heinousface, and Captain Jasper Humperdinck.
Eventually the rest of the team arrive and pose with their guns (by this point almost every scene appears to feature some gun posing), and Jack explains at length who everyone is and what they do, and for five minutes we get a solid, unbreakable and tedious wall of exposition either about the team or Hart's reason for being in Cardiff, which seems to be something about radiation bombs hidden around Cardiff by a woman Hart knew who is now dead. There is also some horseplay about the size of their wriststraps, which I suspect might be a joke about the length and strength of their penises. Jack has spent the scene hinting that Hart is completely untrustworthy, but the thought of Earth getting destroyed by these bombs forces his hand, and offers to help Hart back at Torchwood HQ, located under the Millennium Centre. And yes, he pointlessly enters the complex using the superfluous paving stone lift. Though I'm no fan of the show, the effects work by The Mill is almost always exemplary, and something for everyone involved to be proud of. Here, though, is one of their rare missteps, a terribly shaky greenscreen shot. I know the budget of the show has been cut (this episode features a lot less flashy moments than last season), but still, it's a shame it looks so wrong.
Upon reaching the bottom, Jack asks Hart to hand over his guns, and after he hands over his large pistols and his sword, he asks him to hand over all of his other weapons, which Hart denies having (::cough:: everyTVshowandfilmevermade ::cough::). Gwen ruins his subterfuge with her blue-light scanner, revealing that, of course, he has a lot of guns, and a "laser knife", that looks like, well, a knife. Perhaps "Laser" is the brand name. Like Ginsu, only futuristical.
Gwen takes Jack to one side, because even if you thought she had already nagged at Jack a lot about him leaving, she hasn't even started yet, mister. She pointedly tells him that leaving them all behind was a dick move, and he swallows what must be a natural impulse to shout, "You're not the boss of me, you big-eyed control freak!" to explain that he really missed her and came back because hey, Cardiff? Place to be! Then he realises she is wearing a wedding ring, and when he points this out, Gwen looks astonished.
Turns out, in a weird passive/aggressive response to Jack's departure at the end of season one, she got engaged to drab boyfriend Rhys, and when imparting this information to her boss, Gwen looks startled.
Jack congratulates her with some kind of confusing sadness stone stuck in his throat, and asks if Rhys got down on one knee, and she says he tried, but his back gave out. Ha ha ha! Stupid Rhys! What a prosaic loser, unlike her sexy colleagues. While recounting this story, and commenting that no one else would have her, Gwen looks self-pitying.
Finally, they reconcile and hug, and Gwen looks pretty damn well orgasmic.
That's some range Eve Myles is showing there, not unlike the range exhibited by Sonya Walger. The worst thing about this scene is that some viewers will end up hoping these two get together. Why would Jack, who has had sex with the majority of the universe, be upset about not getting a chance with dreary old Gwen? It would boggle the mind, if I hadn't already come to the conclusion that it's just a load of contrivance to generate some emotional frisson in a show as shallow, juvenile, and exploitative as this one.
After the deeply touching moment, the team meets in a conference room to debate tactics, and Gwen suggests they split into teams to cover Cardiff more efficiently. She offers to go with Hart and begins flirting with him, setting Jack off on a new convulsion of snitty attitude, which Gwen subdues by explaining she is flirting with Hart to gain his trust and find out what he is really up to. Jack warns her not to kiss him, but this being Torchwood, that's how most of the characters communicate with each other, so it's silly advice.
Gwen and Hart travel to some loading area filled with shipping containers, and begin looking for the first radiation bomb. It's night-time, and as ever, the director has chosen to film things with as little light as possible. For the next three or four minutes of screentime either one or the other character is obscured by shadows. It's a baffling directorial decision. The screenshot below is not a fluke capture; that's what the scene looks like.
While randomly opening shipping containers, hiding in shadows, and talking about this mysterious dead woman with the bombs, Gwen's phone goes off. It's Rhys, with the great news that he has a new job as manager of something called Harwoods, which is probably to DIY what Torchwood is to gunplay and alien investigation. Canyon said she would rather hear more about the job interview than watch the rest of the show, and she has a good point, but sadly we have to stick with Gwen and her exciting glamorous life hanging out with nerd-fave actors and getting off with her scary looking colleagues.
This is obviously meant to play as a comment on how mundane Rhys' life is, but if the intention is to play up the contrast between them, it fails miserably, serving only to make poor cuckolded Rhys look like a pathetic, oblivious idiot. When she gets off the phone Hart has disappeared. What could he be doing? Where is he? Turns out he is still hanging around, but hey, another minute of screentime is filled up by Gwen flitting around with her gun drawn in a weak attempt to conjure up some suspense, so kudos for that.
Upon finding the correct container, Hart grabs Gwen and kisses her. The perpetually horny cad! Turns out he was actually poisoning her with paralysing lip gloss, which might account for his disappearance in the previous scene, but I'm not convinced. As Gwen slumps to the floor he gloats that she has two hours to live, and as he leaves the container he bleats on about Jack, saying, "He won't stay with you! He and I shared something." Considering he's just sentenced her to a horrible death, that's just unneccessary. He shuts the container door and throws her phone away, and as if the shitty lighting wasn't amateurish enough, the mic picks up the sound of it clanging against a container and then clattering across the floor as Hart ambles away. It's like something made by the Children's Film Foundation, only clumsier.
Across town, and Owen and Tosh are doing their stupid gun/flashlight thing in a warehouse somewhere. It's big and messy, prompting Owen to complain, "How are we gonna find anything in all of this tut?" What the hell is tut? Is it the Welsh version of tat? While wandering aimlessly around, Tosh whines about not being out on the town, and Owen admits he's given up his womanising ways, and says he looking for a good woman he has a lot in common with. Tosh's "subtle" reaction (i.e. eye-rolling and practically passing out) "hints" at her lust for his scrawny "body".
Despite the daunting task ahead of them, they find the bomb a couple of minutes later even though they only have tiny flashlights, and right on time the newly-revealed EvilHart appears and headbutts Tosh. Maybe a bonk on the head will cure her of her ill-advised crush on Owen, who probably has lots of space diseases what with his rampant and credibility-straining womanising. Owen gets his tough guy on and threatens to kill Hart if he hurts Tosh. This is so threatening that Hart shoots Owen, but before we can delight in the sight of him blown backwards as if hit by an exploding cannonball, we cut away. Tease!
While several million viewers chew their nails off over this turn of events, Jack and Ianto arrive at an office building to look for another bomb, where Jack gives an unconvincing soliloquy about the allure of office work (it's a place for disastrous office romances and photocopying your genitals, because, you know, adult), Ianto's grumpy responses clue Jack in on yet more sulking about his departure. Dude, you can never go home, especially if home is a wet sewer complex filled with ungrateful jerks. Jack dances around the fact that if he came back for a specific reason, it probably wasn't the pity-sex he was having with sad-sack Ianto, but when he pouts Jack tries to defuse the situation by asking Ianto for a date. He even manages to smile while doing it, knowing that it will probably end up being a disaster, with Ianto crying over his dead cyber-girlfriend Lisa from the first season. How do you like that office romance, you dashing fool?
They split up, with Jack heading to the roof, giving Hart the chance to lure Ianto over to the lifts, where he threatens him with a gun, repeatedly refers to him as "Eye candy", (which made both of us WTF for a few minutes), and brags about putting the rest of the team out of commission.
Ordering him to go and find them before they die, the lift doors shut, and a tannoy says, "Going down", to which Hart responds, apropos of nothing, "Going down, yes please." Again, I have a suspicion there is a double meaning here. Hart goes after Jack, who has just found the "bomb", which is by now, obviously not a bomb. Hart says Jack should be in space among the stars, which is a heinous diss against the glories of Cardiff. But no, Jack is not to be swayed, and slags off Hart for getting old and not growing up. Then he childishly throws the canister / bomb / MacGuffin off the roof, and mid-gloat gets pushed off himself.
Hopefully the drop gives Jack time to rue his decision to help Hart, who has been blatantly evil from the moment he appeared onscreen. Jokes about attending murder rehab might have been a clue. Perhaps this is Chibnall and co.'s way of making the Torchwoodiverse seem dangerous and morally grey and filled with threatening yet seductive characters, but actually it just makes our protagonists look like slack-jawed halfwits.
Speaking of which, Ianto finds Tosh patching Owen up with some bandages, and even though he's obviously lost a lot of blood and might be suffering a grievous internal injury, they rush out to find Gwen. In the meantime, Hart gets all maudlin over Jack's death, probably not helped by the very extensive groin thrust adopted by Jack's corpse.
Thankfully Chibnall resists the temptation to have Hart make some lewd comment about this, which means we actually get about four minutes of screentime without a double entendre or feeble come-on. Back in Containerville the Three Stooges are looking for Gwen, which involves lots of dull running around and improbable detective work involving the blue-light doohickey used throughout the show, before they locate her dying body. At this point, with probably milliseconds left to live, Gwen looks stiff. And badly lit.
As she still has a pulse but can't move, they figure she has been poisoned, but without any other information about what has happened to her, they promptly swab her lips and test it for toxins. How did they know she was poisoned like that? Hart never mentioned it. It could have been a needle, or a gas, or a deadly suppository, but no, they go straight to the lips. It could very well be the shoddiest plotting I've ever seen in a modern TV show that isn't Chuck or CSI: Miami. To make things even more improbable, they have the exact antidote. Pretty smart stuff, considering how dense they appear from Gwen's point of view.
Hart goes back to Torchwood HQ, and ransacks the corpse of Mr. Fish, who has another part of the MacGuffin in his pocket. So the pre-credits "action" scene was connected to the rest of the show after all! Before he can put all the pieces back together our heroes appear and cock their plastic guns threateningly. Again, where the hell is the sound department? Oddly worried that one of the water pistols will go off and get his nice tunic wet, Hart musters one last gloat over Jack's death, only to go limp-faced with shock as Jack walks in, unharmed, and cocks his leg up for a big fart. At least, that's what it looks like.
Turns out, under cross-examination, Hart killed the woman who owned the MacGuffin (which he thinks is a space diamond of some worth), because he is a low down dirty son of a bitch, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched any fiction within the last 150 years. Under the supervision of the team, he puts the pieces together and a hologram of the dead woman appears. I can't help but imagine someone had to forcibly stop Chibnall from making the hologram say, "Help me Obi Wan you're my only hope!".
Turns out she's a smart cookie, and the MacGuffin is actually a bomb that is attracted to the DNA of the person who killed her. Of course, how it has access to this DNA in the first place is not explained, but we were more annoyed by the stretching out of an episode that really should have been done and dusted by now. The bomb zips across the room and sticks to Hart's chest, not unlike the Scarab machine in Guillermo Del Toro's creepy vampire film Cronos.
Space crime never pays, you dandy! When the team appear uninterested in helping him and instead intend to throw him back into the rift, he grabs Gwen and handcuffs himself to her. I love the sci-fi touch that the cuffs are made of "hypersteel", but this is undercut by the annoyance caused by Tosh's declaration that the rift has a crack in it. A rift is a crack. How can a crack have a crack in it? Does Chibnall understand English?
Owen comes up with a great plan to save Gwen. While the others drive Gwen and Hart him to the (crack in the) rift in their SUV, Jack and Owen get blood samples of the entire team (lucky they had them just lying around) and make a blood cocktail using a centrifuge prop so cheap that they have to swish it around by hand. Editing tries to obscure this cheapness, but it's obvious it's just being pushed.
Even though the SUV leaves minutes before them, Jack and Owen still catch up as they use Mr. Fish's sports car. Is it jet-powered? With just seconds to go before the bomb explodes, Jack injects him in the heart with the blood cocktail, which confuses the bomb. How? Does it alter his DNA? If that's the case, then blood transfusions should lead to the recipient's hair and eyes changing colour. Or it's just terrible terrible science from someone who seems to have only had a primary school education followed by years of watching and absorbing bad TV. Despite making a nonsense of the rules just laid down a couple of minutes before, this ridiculous plan works, making the bomb fall off. Jack heroically flings it into the rift, creating a big explosion effect.
For no narrative reason, this sends them back in time to the moment when Hart arrived. As the science of the rift (and the crack in the rift) has never been clearly explained, this is potentially possible with a bit of exposition, but what's the point of it? And was the only narrative reason for the blood injection so Hart could make a comment about a part of them being in him? Hopefully this leads to something later on in the series, because otherwise it's unforgivably silly. No matter. For his terrible skullduggery, he gets a smack in the chops from Gwen. She looks pissed.
Finally he leaves, with much glowy effects, but not before kissing on Jack with some verve, making more comments about wriststrap size (Jack's reaction really strengthens my "penis metaphor" theory) and offhandedly mentioning that he has found someone called Grey, which triggers an explosion of facial acting and heavy breathing from Jack, which suggests that maybe this is big news for him. Luckily, the team are too stupid to notice this, and the fifteen hour long episode finally ends. But! First we get a preview of the rest of the season. Explosions, gun posing, Alan Dale as what seems to be an evil scientist, more James Marsters, yet more jokes about having sex with each other, and OH YEAH! MARTHA JONES! Coming to bring some class to the proceedings, unless she has her post-Who awesomeness polluted by the transfer to this risible show.
So, in conclusion, not the worst episode yet. Almost an improvement, in fact.
