TW #5 :Small Worlds

Jack: Something from the dawn of time, how could you possibly put a name to that?

Gwen: Are we talking alien?

Jack: Worse.

Gwen: How come?

Jack: Because they're part of us. Part of our world, yet we know nothing about them. So we pretend to know what they look like. We see them as happy, we imagine they have tiny little wings and are bathed in moonlight.

Gwen: But they're not?

Jack: No. Think dangerous. Think something you can only half-see, like a glimpse, like something out of the corner of your eye. With a touch of myth, a touch of the spirit world, a touch of reality all jumbled together, old moments and memories that are frozen in amongst it. Like debris, spinning around a ring planet, tossing, turning, whirling... backwards and forwards through time.

Episode 5:     Small Worlds.
Companions: Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:       12th November 2006.

Jack encounters monsters from his past: fairies, with the ability to choke people and change the weather, make a series of killings centred around a little girl, the Chosen One. He also reunites with an old friend, but will Estelle Cole be safe when she starts to get a little too close to these fairies? And how can Torchwood stop a force from the dawn of time, masters of Earth, their domain? More importantly, what is so crucial about a little girl named Jasmine, for whom these creatures will gladly tear the world apart?

Small Worlds is yet another excellent story from Torchwood's first season. Doctor Who has shown us it's take on many different myths and legends over the years but Torchwood brings us that universe's view on faeries. Once again they do a great job in giving us something alien and wondrous but making it horrifying at the same time.

The story centres upon a young girl who has been chosen by the faeries to become one of them. They take a nasty hand in her future killing off anyone who threatens her (or themselves) in any way. When Torchwood investigates they find themselves drawn into a conflict that no matter what they do, they cannot win. It makes me wonder, given how the faeries are described by Jack, how the Doctor or the Time Lords would have handled these creatures?

"Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."