Are you ready for a new run of Torchwood? Haven’t watched Torchwood before? Now’s a great time to start. Read on, my friends.
If you’re not familiar, Torchwood is a BBC television series, which was started as a spinoff of Doctor Who. In case you didn’t realize (which I didn’t for months and was mocked mercilessly for by my nerd friends), Torchwood is an anagram for Doctor Who. That said, this show has nothing to do with Who, but I wanted to throw that out there due to my mild obsession. The show ran for two seasons, followed by a 5-part “miniseries” called Children of Earth. If this show piques your interest in the least, I recommend Children of Earth as it’s rife with theoretical moral issues and just a darn good story.
BBC for whatever reason didn’t pick up Torchwood for another series, but Starz decided to, in association with the BBC, and Russel Davies, the creator and original producer is still on board, so this will hopefully keep the same tone as original Torchwood. Apparently though, the people in the UK won’t see the episodes until 6 days after it airs in the US, which I hear as quite the source of contention across the pond. Now you know how Doctor Who fans usually feel, Brits! Anyway, on with the show!
The show opens with a news report on Mr. Oswald Danes, scheduled to be put to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. The reporter comments that there are surprisingly no anti-death-penalty protesters, as Oswald Danes is just evil. We see Mr Danes, who looks somewhat disturbing – actually a lot like a young DeNiro, then you realize it’s Bill Pullman, and relief sets in that he’s not a good guy everyman-turned-hero like in so many other roles. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bill Pullman and all, but when I heard he was going to be on the show, I was dreading seeing him as the ultimate Good Guy, because in Torchwood, there tends to not be anyone who is truly good. In any case, it turnes out Danes is truly an evil person, telling police that his victim, “Should have run faster”.
Cut to Danes being strapped to a table, hooked up to the lethal injection machine, and asked if he has any last words. He remains silent, and the table he’s on flattens out to a laying position.
The drugs start flowing through the IV lines, and Danes appears serene, then starts to appear to choke, then yell, and basically seem like he’s hugely suffering, but one thing he’s not doing is dying. I like when shows get right to the plot, don’t you?
Now we get to see Mekhi Phifer on the phone with a blonde woman in some official-looking office, by the name of Esther Drummond. Esther asks if Mekhi (Rex Matheson) if he’s heard of Torchwood, and I wonder when someone will actually say Esther’s name, because I watched the whole episode twice, and never once heard her name. Thanks and praise to Al Gore for the internet. Apparently the word, “Torchwood” has been emailed to “every single east coast section chief, completely bypassing security” in what turns out to be the CIA. Upon quick investigation on her computer device, Esther says it’s some pretty freaky stuff, and offers to send it to Rex, and all the computers completely shut down.
I should note at this point, Rex is driving along in the dark rain and frankly, not a good a good rainy night driver. Safe distances, Rex! A tractor trailer in front of him skids to a sudden stop, and some rebar comes flying off the back, through Rex’s windshield, and through his chest.
Now we’re in a dark room, where a woman wakes up with a start. The man in bed asks if she’s ok, and she says she’s having a bad dream about Torchwood. Cut to title sequence. I know this is the most minute of details, but I enjoy the theme music the way it is now – it’s a lot slower, and slightly creepier than it was before.
Rex is wheeled into the ER, soaked in blood, with pieces of rebar stil in his chest. The staff shares he’s not the first one to come in who should be DOA but is still alive. He is taken into the operating room and slips into unconsciousness
We return back to a rural homestead in Wales. The woman who was having a bad dream is outside with her husband, and a black helicopter flies overhead. The woman looks worried and her husband reassures her everything is ok. I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you the woman’s name is Gwen and her husband’s name is Rhys because I’m tired of these people expecting us to automatically know everyone’s name *coughEsthercough*.
Gwen is now feeding her baby, discussing a story about a woman coming from the sky and doing some fancy mystical-type stuff. Rhys tells Gwen to stop telling the baby stories, but Gwen argues the baby thinks its a fairy tale. Rhys argues it was a nightmare and it shouldn’t be discussed. The argument is prevented from escalating by a knock at the door which startles the crap out of the two. Meanwhile, the adorable baby continues to sit in her high chair, look cute, and wonder where the Food Machine went. Rhys and Gwen rush to pick up some firearms. I guess this means they don’t like visitors.
It’s a nice-looking older couple at the door asking about the best way to go hiking or some such crap. Rhys looks at hte baby who is practically saying, “Where the hell did the food lady go?”, and Gwen tells the people to get off her property. The couple walks off, and we see them pause and give each other Meaningful Looks before moving on. Very subtle, Torchwood
In the hospital, Esther talks to a nurse (I think?), who tells her Rex will be ok, which understandably surprises Esther. The nurse gives quick exposition that they’ve been on the phone with the morgue, who asked why they were sending live people down there. They got on the phone with other hospitals, then one in England, where no one had died. The media is calling it “Miracle Day”.
A representative of the Governor’s office, Alex Peterson, sits down with Danes, to apologize on the behalf of the governor for any pain and suffering Mr. Danes may have endured. Frankly, Danes is being kinda bitchy about it, but I guess he’s the Most Evil Man In The World, so I’ll allow it. Danes shares that he served his sentence, so he should be allowed to go free. There’s some back and forth about this until Danes lays the smackdown on Mr. Peterson that the 8th amendment prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment, of which the unsuccessful execution/successful torture session would apply. He threatens Peterson with a lawsuit against the governor’s office for wrongful imprisonment along with a laundry list of other allegations he could make millions of off. He is a delightfully diabolical TV villain.
Esther is back at the office where she’s told the Torchwood case is closed and only goes through the office of Brian Freaken(sp). The word has been banished from the office. Searching the computer will bring up no results, anything on paper has been removed and is classified under the 456 regulations and everyone should stay away because everyone from Torchwood died, and they were all young, and everyone is expected to just accept that and move on. Right.
Rex is watching TV in his hospital room flipping through news reports, which are naturally focused on the total lack of death in the world. Some crazy-eyed lady is interviewed and yells at the camera that these people should all be corpses, and that’s all they are is LIVING CORPSES and they SHOULD BE DEAD! They always put the crazies on TV. Rex starts to freak out and rip out his IV lines and a nurse comes in to calm him down.
A doctor comes in and gives him the scoop on his injuries. His spine was missed, but the pericardium was lacerated and the coronary artery was crushed. However, the pericardium surrounds the heart, so I’m assuming the thing went through the heart itself, leaving some unwanted ventilation? Rex didn’t just cheat death, he slapped it in the face, knocked it to the ground, and slept with its mother while eating it’s birthday cake. Then again, there will clearly be people worse off than Rex (Spoiler?). Rex asks if he’ll get better or heal, and the doctor tells him he got lucky with the “miracle”, so she had time to fix him. She sort of glosses off the incredibly creepy factor of no one in the world dying. Rex asks if he’ll die when the “miracle” is over. That’s kind of a hard question to dance around, so she kind of looks at him, when we cut to Rhys and Gwen, painting and giggling at home.
Gwen receives a phone call from an Sgt Davison, who tells her in code her dad is in the hospital. Gwen is upset and says they have to go back.
Esther(Whose name still hasn’t been uttered out loud), goes to a big library-looking building and fibs some story to get the guard to let her look at old files for Torchwood information. She searches the stacks and finds a box on the very bottom of the pile that appears to have relevant information. Isn’t the important stuff always on the bottom of a pile? She sees a note that the Torchwood files are “EX-red under the 456” with a “JF3238 designation. “456” piques her curiosity and she continues her search.
Now I can tell you, “456” is very relevant to Children of Earth, but I won’t spoil it. I just hope they explain it at some point, because otherwise it’ll just seem random about this stuff.
She finds photos of a woman, and another of a man in a long WWII-era coat. She looks up and he’s standing near her in the shadows. He steps out, saying, “Come with me” and she runs. As a quick aside, the Terminator has ruined any version of “Come with me” any movie or TV show could ever write into their script because I always immediately hear it in my head in an Austrian accent saying, “Come with me if you want to live”. Ah, let that memory sink in for a second. You’re welcome.
Back to the action, Esther runs up the stairs and sees the guard, now with some bloody wounds and gurgling. Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds. The mystery man appears and shoots another man lurking about. Upon inspection, Blondie and mystery man inspect the man, only to find explosive attached to him. They make a break for it out the window, followed by a huge ball of flames, and land in the fountain outside. The man’s name is Captain Jack Harkness and freaking Esther still doesn’t introduce herself. This is going to bother me for awhile.
As Esther and Captain Jack sit and talk, Jack says the man was after him, and discusses a bit of Torchwood with the lady. She says the photos of him in the box were marked 1929 and 1930, and is it his father? He responds that it must be, and inspects a wound on his arm. He shares that Torchwood was formed by the British Royal family and they investigate the paranormal and alien activity. Jack wants to keep Gwen safe, so he tells Esther he’s never going to let anyone drag Gwen into the situation, which I think we all know isn’t going to happen. Just when I start to wonder why he’s giving her all this information, he explains to her he put an amnesia-inducing pill into whatever it is she’s drinking, and she passes out, just after being told she won’t remember anything that happened. Those are pretty handy little pills, aren’t they?
The doctor (not The Doctor, but Rex’s doctor) is on the phone with Rex who is trying to discuss the case, and she tells him she can’t talk. She tells him to check the internal security cameras when he questions why she’s being all weird. So he busts out his laptop and gets into the security system to watch what’s going on.
Doctor lady (Dr. Vera Juarez) walks into the morgue, where there’s a large table with a bloody sheet over what is most likely a body, but looks rather… redistributed. They uncover him to find an extremely charred, mangled, gasping person. Jack is there, claiming to be FBI, and asks the mortician if he detached the head, would the person survive. The mortician is way too eager to get on board with this plan while the doctor points out the person is still alive, and therefore sort of crappy to decapitate him. Also I’m pretty sure there’s something about not decapitating live people in the Hippocratic oath, or at least a pretty strong implication that it’s not OK. The mortician decides to go ahead with it anyway. They all watch, the mortician walks away, and the burned person opens his eyes. The whole thing succeeds in being rather unsettling.
Gwen and Rhys are in the car, on their way to the hospital where they see a vigil being held. Clearly Gwen has no idea what’s going on. They hug Officer Alex Davison, who gives her the scoop on her dad – he’s had two heart attacks, and it appears he only survived because everyone else is. He ends up spilling the beans on the whole “Miracle Day” thing, which completely astounds Gwen.
Gwen discusses the whole no death thing with her family, and breaks down crying because she doesn’t know where anyone from Torchwood is, and she has no idea what to do. I smell a reunion!
Gwen and Officer Davison are reading various articles on the internet and discover that animals are continuing to die, so it appears this whole miracle deal is directed at the humans only. Alex boy finds some statistics saying an average of 300,000 people die in the world every day, which means about a million (it’s an estimate, ok?) extra people in three days time if people stop dying. Also, with about 500,000 being born daily, that’s going to make a situation where Earth would become grossly overcrowded and run out of food. Some guy on the TV says there will be 4 months before society completely collapses. Rhys pops out of nowhere and lectures Gwen on not investigating. Gwen shows Rhys the ICU overflow and asks him what it’s going to be in a few days time while the hospital continues to get more and more admissions. Rhys is still not on board with the whole investigation though, and they bicker until Rhys asks if their daughter will live forever. Both of them seem pretty ok with that, and it looks like they’re going to just let it happen. Well, ok then, that makes sense. Thanks Rhys and Gwen for the collapse of society in 4 months. Bravo.
Esther wakes up face-down in her bed. No, dirty birds, she’s wearing clothes. She gets up to find a huge bruise on her side and has no clue what it’s from. Cut to Jack with a very similar bruise, and a confused expression. I’m not an expert, but I think it’s from taking a belly flop into a shallow fountain from the second floor of a building.
In the office, one of her coworkers comes up and hands her a thick file, apparently smuggled from Freaken’s office. It’s full of Torchwood information – the last there is, apparently, and she takes a peek then hides the file in her desk drawer, and gets a case of Dodgy-Eyes.
Rex calls to discuss the case, and she says her name! Torchwood is discussed, and it turns out the email was sent out at the exact time as the last death on Earth. Someone’s good at this game. Rex gets all pumped up and throws his clothes on, still on the phone where both the nurse and the doctor try to stop him. However, Rex announces he’s hopping a flight to the UK as he hobbles to a cab outside.
He asks for a requisition 15 (clearance to take a handgun on an airplane) which is denied, picks up his passport from a woman who, based on the conversation, may be his housekeeper, and boards the plane. Rex asks about Gwen Cooper who has disappeared for the past 12 months. The flight attendant comes by and asks him to get off the phone, and he flashes his CIA badge. Rex tells Esther to get everything she can on Gwen Cooper, Esther asks for his password to get into the CIA database, and someone grabs the phone out of his hand.
Now we’re in the UK, and he’s back on the phone, sharing his password. Esther is looking up everything on Gwen Cooper, and finds all of one piece of information – that Sgt Andrew Davison from earlier was Gwen Cooper’s unofficial liaison, and tells Rex she can access all his phone calls. One of them is to a phone number that’s on a registry of numbers assigned to people in the witness protection program. Now that doesn’t make sense to me. If there’s a registry of these phone numbers, doesn’t that mean someone can find it? I mean, that’s not the most secure thing in the world, but I’m not a security mastermind so don’t listen to me.
Anyway, Rex complains about going to Wales, and Esther tells him where to find Gwen Cooper’s home. See? Totally an unsecured system. This is bollocks, I’m writing to my congressman.
Rex comes to Gwen and Rhys’ front yard. Gwen greets Rex with a gun, Rex announced he’s CIA to which Gwen asks him “Yeah? So what?”, and Rex coughs a few times and passes out.
Back to Oswald Danes. His survival is now being called an “Act of God”, and the state needs to prove otherwise. He’s apparently being released from prison to mass protest, and looks super creepy smug. I am so not used to Bill Pulllman as a bad guy
Gwen has Rex tied up to a heater, and tells him she just wants to be left alone and they’re making a break for it. Rex chews through his ropes and stumbles out into the hallway. Rex has a mini-quasi meltdown about how hard it was to find them, which the sound of a helicopter gradually increases over. They look out the window and it’s the black chopper from before, hanging right outside the house. That’s never good news. It turns so the side is facing the house, and a person with a bazooka/rocket launcher/huge missile shooter, fires a small missile-type thing through the house. Fortunately, the occupants of the house managed to duck out of the way and the missile didn’t explode until it exited the house, and they all run outside, only to be shot at. Is it me, or is running outside when a chopper is after you not the best idea in the world? I’d think staying under cover would be best, but again, not a security expert here.
The chopper flies away, and we see Captain Jack with a bigass machine gun, shooting at the chopper. Rex recognizes Jack as the person who grabbed the phone out of his hand on the airplane. Jack is really good at being in the right place at the right time.
The team is in an open-top jeep, and is being chased down the beach by the chopper. Rex starts shooting with the machine gun, to no avail, while Gwen finds a rocket launcher of some sort and lays waste to the chopper. Now, given what we’ve seen before, I can only imagine bazooka guy is probably in all sorts of pain right now, but he tried to kill a baby, so I’ll allow it.
Gwen, Jack, Rhys, and Rex are now in Cardiff where Gwen discusses Miracle Day, and states she believes they should rebuild Torchwood. Jack announces he cut his arm, and isn’t healing. Turns out Jack’s immortal and can heal almost instantaneously, which means while the rest of the world becomes immortal, Jack can now die.
Suddenly, a team of officers appears, led by Sgt. Davison, where Rex announces he’s staging a rendition and extraditing the Torchwood team to America. The police surround the Torchwood-ites, guns drawn, no one looks happy, the creepy Torchwood music plays, and we cut to credits. Commence me counting down until Episode 2: Rendition, which Airs 10PM EST Friday on Starz.
Overall, I felt this was a good episode – the pace moved quickly, the audience was clued into most of the information they needed to put things together about existing Torchwood history, and the plot seems like it can have quite the moral dilemmas necessary for an excellent story.
What did you think? Did you like the episode? Do you want to watch the episode? Did my recap go on for ages? I swear I tried to scale it down, but everything in the episode was important, which is nice.
Please share your thoughts in the replies!
