Torchwood Series 2 Episode 13 - Exit Wounds

It was a decent enough ending to the series but, as always, it didn’t stop me having a few gripes with the story! This final episode sees the long-awaited introduction of Jack brother, Gray.

It seems however that Gray hasn’t forgiven his brother for losing his grip, during the flashbacks in ‘Adam’. In these, Jack and Gray’s home world was under attack from an ‘unknown alien race’ and as they where running away, Jack lost Gray’s grip and apparently, Gray spent most of his life imprisoned. Now, Gray has set a number of ‘traps’ around Cardiff to keep the team busy, whilst Captain John lures Jack back to the hub, where he and Gray take him prisoner. And speaking of even more prisoners, we learn that it is John, not Gray who is forced to work with the other.

Jack wakes up to find himself in Cardiff – in the year AD 27. Gray buries him as a ‘foundation stone’ and claims that Jack’s immortally is a ‘curse’ and that Jack will spend ‘every death thinking about what he has done’.

John suddenly has a change of heart, when he returns to the present and once he is free, he works with the Torchwood team, in order to bring down Gray’s reign of terror. Jack meanwhile is dug up by the Torchwood team of 1900 and asks them to freeze him because there are two of him, shagging around, in that time period.

Back to the future where Gray sets up a nuclear reactor to blow up and as Tosh tries to stop him – he shoots her. When Owen gets to the plant, he learns that he can stop the meltdown but at his own risk. Tosh, despite bleeding to death, helps him from the hub and after a tearful goodbye, they both die. The reactor room blows up with Owen inside it and Tosh dies in the arms of Jack, who has returned from the freezer. It’s a beautiful scene that would have had some fans crying.

Jack has one last showdown with Gray and as Gray refuses to forgive his brother, Jack drugs him and freezes him.

It’s a breathtaking episode that does have its questionable points. Tosh’s appearance in ‘Aliens of London’ was briefly explained, very poorly though. I also didn't understand Gray's motive, it seemed a little bit childish to me. If someone had made me lose my brother's grip and imprisoned me, I would want revenge on the ones who had chased me, not my brother. I thought that was the main reason that let the episode down.

8/10

Well it's goodbye Owen and Tosh, there is also no more Torchwood until 2009. Let’s hope the mini series, ‘Children of Earth’ will be the start of a new and improved era for Torchwood.

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 12 - Fragments

Well that was an episode worth watching! After weeks of writing critical reviews, I can finally praise the efforts of Torchwood.

The story sees the team (minus Gwen, who is being lazy and is in bed, still stuck to Rhys) being led into a building, which blows up and they get trapped under the rubble. We then get to see ‘flashbacks’ of how each of them joined Torchwood.

With Jack trying to position himself near ‘The Rift’, in order to meet The Doctor again, he gets stuck in the Victorian era and is reluctantly recruited by two very foxy ladies, who work for ‘Torchwood’. They notice his immortality and his constant mumblings of ‘The Doctor’ and task him with finding him. Jack initially refuses, as Torchwood are after The Doctor but after a chance meeting with the fortune teller, known as the ‘scary little girl’ (from ‘Dead Man Walking’), he is told that he will meet The Doctor in 100 years. Jack goes back to Torchwood and reluctantly takes the job. Let the shagging begin! Things take a wrong turn for Jack however, when in 1999 a member of his team goes bananas and shoots all the team and himself dead, in the belief that the 21st Century will be ‘the end of everything’. So Jack must now recruit a new team….

Tosh is next and after she is blackmailed into getting some plans for a sonic device, she is nicked by UNIT and placed into somewhere that all prisons should be like. Jack comes to the rescue by employing her on the basis of her ‘quick learner’ ability and the fact she can delete all cookies from a computer!

Ianto’s story is crap. After the events of the Doctor Who episode ‘Doomsday’, he is out of work and heads to Cardiff and stalks Jack until he gives him a job. But it’s Owen’s story that is truly great and heartbreaking at the same time. He is engaged to Katie, who is believed to be suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Owen pleads with his hospital colleagues to scan her brain, again and they find what seems to be a tumour. It isn’t – it’s an alien parasite that kills her and all the surgeons in the operating theatre. And as Jack gets involved, Owen tries but fails to get any information out of him and Jack covers it all up. Until Katie’s funeral that is, when Jack tells all and offers Owen a job. It’s brilliantly acted and gives us some insight into why Owen’s charter is such a ‘bastard’!

Meanwhile Gwen and Rhys arrive at the building and free the team. But someone is waiting for them, it’s a Captain John hologram and it seems he’s got Jack’s brother Gray. John threatens to ‘tear Jack’s world apart’. Should be fun next week, eh?

An excellent episode, let down only by Ianto’s story. Beautifully acted, written and we even got to some girl-on-girl, which evens up for all the Jack/Ianto ‘moments’!

9/10

Next Time: Lots of things get blown up – Jack’s jealous!

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 11 - Adrift

When I didn’t think it could get any worse, Torchwood proves me wrong yet again! After a cameo by ‘Papa Lazarou’ last week, this week we have ‘Sloth’ from The Goonies!

I suppose ‘Adrift’ is supposed to tug on your heartstrings – it tug my patience! So when a young lad, Jonah, disappears as a result of ‘rift activity’. Seven months later, he is back but he’s has severely aged, his looks have gone the way of John Merrick and he is locked in a ‘hospital’ ran by some strange nurses and Jack is reluctant to tell Gwen about it.

In fact plenty of people have gone the same way and everyone but Gwen seems to know. As an ex-police officer – she has to investigate. Enter the excellent Tom Price as ‘PC Andy’, a character that should be in Torchwood a lot more!

So with Gwen doing the woman’s thing, setting up support groups for parents who have had children go missing, Jack is burrowing himself into Ianto. Ruth Jones guest stars as Jonah’s mum and her performance is, at times, a bit OTT. Stick to comedy, love!

The plot is so ridiculous, I can’t be arsed going into it. Needless to say a possible reference to The Doctor is made, as Jonah was rescued from a ‘burning planet and taken into a rescue craft’. The rest is about how Mum wants to keep Sloth but he’s a bit ‘round the twist’ so he has to stay in the hospital. Marvellous eh?

2/10

Next Week: We are coming to the end, so will the last two episodes be the saving grace of the series? I hope so but the way things have been going - I very much doubt it!

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 10 - From Out Of The Rain

You know what? I’m getting sick of writing negative reviews for Torchwood. My range of insults need a rest sometime but they are unlikely to if they keep producing stories like ‘From Out Of The Rain’.

It’s a bit of ‘Last Action Hero’ and ‘The League of Gentlemen’ but set in Wales – and you thought Royston Vasey was weird! On paper, it’s a great idea but sadly it doesn’t come off.

They try to do ‘Gothic Horror’ but it comes out all American-ized and dull - much like Buffy. Next we’ll be having singing vampires, with rubbish southern accents, who fall in love with school girls! Torchwood doesn’t need to rip off other shows it should attempt to forge its own style. This series as been almost a ‘who’s of who’ of programmes that have been ripped off, or ‘influenced by’ as the writers put it!

After some old film cans are found at a cinema, the characters, namely a ‘ghostmaker’ and his assistant come to life and ‘half-kill’ people by taking their ‘breath’. Of course when the ghostmaker, or 'Papa Lazarou' as I call him, tries to take Owen’s breath - he can’t. Yet Owen still goes around talking - I’m not going to let this go you know!

Of course Jack was involved with this Circus, somewhere down the line as ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Die. I’m sure one viewing of this episode would kill him off once and for all! The episode threatens to go into an ‘older kiddies’ type of mystery and the resolution of the plot is straight out of ‘Goosebumps’!

It’s camp, over the top and a huge let down. Thankfully it’s nearly the end of the series!

3/10

Next Week: More ‘fun’ as Gwen finds herself playing ‘Strip Twister’ with the pizza boy from the first episode of series 1. Spotty freak!

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 9 - Something Borrowed

So Rhys will finally make a (dis) honest woman out of Gwen but will she ever get to the church? After a typically boozy night out in Cardiff, she wakes up in the morning and finds herself pregnant - eight months pregnant! Don’t worry though, she can explain it – it ‘came’ from an alien bite! Hmmm better tell people its Rhys’s, instead!

As they try to hide it (!) she insists she wants to go through with the wedding and we get to meet one of Rhys's mates – a bloke called ‘Banana Boat’. This weird bloke is soon put in his place by Tosh, so the story isn’t affected by smatterings of ‘brainless ponce’, throughout!

We learn that a shape-shifting alien, a Nostrovite, is after the ‘baby’ inside Gwen. I think this is possibly one of the best ideas, for a monster, that Torchwood has come up with. Simply because you don’t know who the alien is and it could change at any minute! Simple but that’s Torchwood!

The episode is more of a comic one and I think it benefits from that. Torchwood has been grim and sad – like Eastenders, so it’s nice to see them have some fun! We even get to meet the parents of Gwen and Rhys! Owen takes a backseat this week but whips out an improved version of his ‘invention’, the ‘singularity scalpel’, seen in ‘Reset’ but it’s Rhys who saves the day and everything, typically, turns out fine. There’s even time for one more laugh, as Jack retcon's all the wedding guests!

Credit to Kai Owen (Rhys) who was finally given a bigger role than being ‘the typical man’, his performance in this episode and ‘Meat’ have certainly shown that there is a point to his character!

8/10

Next Week: The circus comes to town! I wonder if Jack and Ianto will ride the haunted-alien-monster infected-Welsh, Love Boat?

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 8 - A Day In The Death

Richard Briers guest stats in this weeks circus, the man who is known to Doctor Who fans for playing one of the shows most memorable roles in ‘Paradise Towers’. When I say memorable I’m referring to the ridiculous role he had to play in parts 3 & 4 as a ‘possessed corpse’, up until then he was good!

But back to Torchwood, where this week Owen is still dead. While he is sat on the top of building, talking to a suicidal women, we get to see the softer side of him. We learn in flashbacks, that Owen goes on an undercover mission to investigate a number of high energy readings, coming from the estate of Henry Parker (Briers).

It starts off particularly well but doesn’t really go anywhere. Owen is trying to persuade the girl (who we learn was in a car crash that killed her husband – just after their wedding) not to jump, whilst telling her he’s dead. I would have jumped, to be honest!

With Owen promoted from making crap coffee, he sneaks into the old man’s grounds, past the heat sensors (he’s dead, remember!) and as an altercation with a security guard – despite Martha telling him not to because he can’t heal. It’s all very Scooby Doo, as he opens the creaking door to the old man’s bedroom. We learn that Henry is a collector of alien artefacts but is seriously ill. He believes that an alien device – the pulse, is keeping him alive. It isn’t and as Owen explains this, the senile old git has a heart attack and dies. Owen tries in vain to save him but realises his CPR isn’t any help – he can’t breathe!

Which brings me to believe that the writers have seriously dropped a bollock - how can Owen talk? If he’s dead and can’t breathe, how can he have a voice? I would love them to try and explain this one!

It’s a better effort than last weeks, the moments on the roof with the girl were very touching but I felt this new ‘bond’ between Owen and Tosh is very forced and the episode as an whole was just too simple. Martha also bows out of Torchwood and returns to UNIT. But not before giving Jack a very awkward kiss (why?) and leaving us with this thought: Apart from ‘Reset’ what was the point in using her? She was hardly in this episode!

6/10

Next Week: Gwen is getting married but what will be her ‘Something Borrowed’? A new groom perhaps?

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 7 - Dead Man Walking

After the highs of last week, we are once again brought back to earth with a big bump. After instigating the perfect exit for Owen, they had to spoil it by bringing him back to life.

But he isn’t alive, he’s dead but yet he’s walking about. Oooh this is confusing! Fair play to the director, Andy Goodard, for trying his best but he was let down by the pen of Matt Jones. It was a story that wasn’t needed and would have been better if they just cried over Owen for 45 minutes.

So with Owen dead, the team struggle to find out what’s going on. He can’t eat, drink or shag anything, not even Jack! It’s all very sad, the obligatory scary little girl pops up, Owen becomes the ‘King of the Weevils’ (which hasn’t got anything to do with his Weevil bite from series 1 – maybe!) then he fights the Grim Reaper. If this wasn’t shot in live action, I swear it’s a cartoon!

The acting, at times, is the programmes saving grace. Despite working with a ridiculous plot, Burn Gorman was terrific as the very unlikeable Owen and really deserves better than starring in this and a few episodes of Eastenders! Another aspect I do love about this story was the music, once again – take a bow Mr Murray Gold and his team!

It is really disappointing when they pull off a story like ‘Reset’ but follow it up with a very poor ‘sequel’. Don’t forget Martha was in this story too, although you wouldn’t have guessed. If there was an Olympic event for learning everything medical within a year, she would win platinum, never mind gold! Again, its one of many plot holes that I’m simply pissed off with and sick of ranting about it. She looks quite fit when she ‘aged’ though!

I’ve been asked ‘Why do I watch Torchwood, if I hate it?’ I don’t hate it, the writers are capable of pulling off some very good stories, and it’s a shame they have to fill the rest of the series with pointless, plot-dragging stories like this. Hope it gets better!

5/10

Next Week: Will Owen die? Will Jack have his wicked way with Martha? I don’t give a toss either way!

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 6 - Reset

The time has finally arrived, Martha Jones makes her first appearance in Torchwood – and its okay, not brilliant but okay!

‘Jim Robinson’ pops up speaking in a yank accent, (not sure what that’s all about, what’s wrong with his normal (Kiwi) accent?) playing a Doctor who is experimenting with alien lava, which is able to cure a number of diseases. The catch is that all the patients die a horrible death, although somehow I don’t think they know this!

Enter Martha, who now works for UNIT. Ah, those where the days! Jon Pertwee in his velvet jackets, drinking wine and constantly clashing with the Brigadier. While we are on this subject may I just remind RTD and his team of writers that THE UNIT SOILDERS DID NOT WEAR A RED CAP/BERET. It seems with the trailers for series 4 and Jack’s pining for ‘a bloke in a rap cap’, suggests that UNIT have changed.

Anyway back to the episode, where Martha somehow becomes qualified in most areas of healthcare, in just a matter of months. The team eventually find the place where all this stuff has been ‘going down’. Without going into any lewd sex jokes (as if I would!), Martha, goes down ‘undercover’ to investigate.

Eventually the team break in and they find out that a number of aliens have been kept prisoner at the lab and Jim Robinson as been ‘doing things’ to them (I’m no good at not doing a sex gag!). Oh and Martha gets infected with the lava thing, it doesn’t really matter because she’s fine! Owen isn’t, as Jim Robinson shoots him. Did I say don’t read this, if you’ve not seen it? Whoops, never mind!

This episode is slightly better than previous weeks, any more ‘To The Last Man’ and ‘Meat’ would have me writing a very stern letter to ‘Points of View’ to ask why the BBC are wasting money on this rather than let certain BBC executives have that extra car. It’s a mad, mad world! It was a decent story but it stank of ‘political correctness’, I mean that Weevil could have murdered innocent people!

8/10

Next Week: Jack bumps into a gay weevil and invites him to his caravan in Newport.

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 5 - Adam

I’m racking my brains to try to find an insult for this episode but I can’t – it was marvellous! That’s right, I loved it! Even though I wanted to smash Adam’s face in, I thought it was a thoroughly, well written and acted episode.

A bloke called ‘Adam’ (the ‘ginger infiltrator’) gets into Torchwood and modifies the memories of the team to make them think he’s been there for a year. He even ‘memory rape’s’ Tosh (can I use that term? Oh sod it, I just did!) We see Jack’s past, growing up on what looked like Blackpool beach but without the blood, guts and sewage. We learn ‘Gray’ (or Grey?) is Jack’s younger brother and was ‘lost’ when Jack’s homeland was attacked by an ‘unidentified aliens’.

Gwen forgets all about Rhys and nearly destroys the whole show by almost shooting him. You can’t afford to get rid of your best actors, love! Owen is a likeable geek, who is deeply in love with Tosh, who has turned into a confident er woman. Thankfully, she is put in her place later, like all women should be!*

Ianto thinks he’s murderer and to be fair it suits him more than the ‘comic’ role he’s been playing this series. Eventfully Jack susses the ginger infiltrator and before you know it, everyone’s ‘doing pills’ (well its Retcon but….) and Adam is fading away, much like the ‘career’ of Britney Spears.

Top episode, I’m not giving it full marks, because I have faith that there’ll be an episode of ‘End of Days’ portions!

9/10

* If this will get no ladies writing in, nothing will!

Next Week: I forget that I’ve seen the next episode – Reset and watch it again on BBC Two. Then I write another review and label it as ‘more shite than the contents of Pires Morgan’s mouth’. Or Bob the Builder, the bastard!

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 4 - Meat

After I ‘panned’ last week’s episode, surely this week’s couldn’t be any worse? No it wasn’t, but I was tempted!

I almost dismissed the story before it started. The episode was called ‘Meat’ and it was about ‘Alien Meat’! Ok I watched it and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would have been.

Gwen’s boyfriend Rhys, works for a Haulage firm and when one of their drivers dies in a car crash, he’s called down to talk to the police, then Torchwood turn up.

The meat (in the back of the truck) wasn’t from a recognised animal, but it had an (forged) authentication stamp. So while the team are pissing about, eating pizza, Rhys does some proper detective work and visits the location the deceased driver had been to.

Ran by a few rapscallions, who looked about as viscous as slug smoking Caribbean woodbines, the warehouse held an alien creature that can only be described as a ‘big blob thing’! Seriously, the term ‘cash cow’ doesn’t come into it! So anyway, Rhys confronts Gwen and he’s taken to Torchwood and a few camp mannerisms later, he drives the team to the warehouse.

Once inside, they (eventually) get the better of the men, Rhys gets shot and they all get upset because the ‘big blob thing’ dies. Its hardly got the feeling of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, but this is Torchwood, so it’ll do!

Without the bigger role of Rhys (and to some extent, the ever improving Ianto), this episode would have been terrible. Now that Gwen has refused to give him any Retcon (which makes you forget, just like a few cans of ‘good shit’!), he now knows all about Torchwood and aliens. Which is pretty confusing, considering London has been invaded by aliens in the last few years of Doctor Who.

7/10

Next Week: Jack gets locked in a toilet in a Cardiff library. You can imagine what happens next…

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 3 - To The Last Man

Just when I thought Torchwood was getting better, it brings me back down to earth (or should that be Cardiff?) with a loud thump.

However ‘To The Last Man’ started off well enough. The basic plot was about how a hospital in 1918 was merging with the present day, we even got to see ‘Torchwood 1918’, for a few pitiful moments.

Then it all went tits up. A young solider named ‘Tommy’ was frozen by the 1918 team. Unfortunately he was no pinball wizard, nor was he deaf, nor blind, but he certainly was dumb! He had to be ‘woke up’ every year, in the hope that the time was right to return him to his own time.

Tosh forgets all about her lesbian tendencies and falls for Tommy, who like any young man, is ‘in there’ quicker than John Prescott at a ‘hitting a Welshman contest’. Meanwhile Jack and Ianto are doing yet more gay snogging in a scene that was more pointless than a totally straight man in Torchwood!

I’m really having trouble typing about this. It can be too easy at times to rip apart a Torchwood story but this is so bad, I’m struggling! Sorry Helen Raynor, but after such a promising start to the episode, it nose-dived like Kerry Katona ‘doing a line’, too much for me!

To finish, lets just say the team found out what was happening and Tommy returned to his own time, the world (Cardiff) was saved (but he was eventually shot for cowardice) and Tosh is back fancying women (okay I made that last one up!).

I feel that the episode would have been a lot better if we saw more of ‘Torchwood 1918’. It also badly needed that injection of action and the odd ‘jumpy’ moment, that is why I loved last week’s episode so much! The story had the right idea but it’s a shame that it ran out after 10 minutes!

Just typing about this as made me put it down a mark! Hopefully this is the low point of the series. With that in mind, roll on next week, where we have er alien meat, in an episode called ‘Meat’. Oh no, here we go again!

4/10

Next Week: Gwen's boyfriend leaves her and shacks up in Cardiff Castle with Mel Bush and the Kandyman of 'The Happiness Patrol' fame.