TW #16 : To The Last Man

Jack: [draws a line on a piece of paper] Linear time. [balls the piece of paper up] Screwed up time. Imagine your life is a straight line, from birth to death. Now, try drawing that line on the paper without flattening it out.

Gwen: It's impossible.

Jack: That's why we gotta stop it.

Episode 16:     To The Last Man.
Companions:   Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:         23rd January 2008. 

Once a year, for a single day, Tommy Brockless is defrosted in the Torchwood hub to make sure he's still working. He is kept alive until the day he is needed, when ghosts appear at a hospital and it is clear that the time has come.

Much like Greeks Bearing Gifts in season one, To The Last Man focuses on Toshiko above all other regular characters. She has fallen in love with Tommy Brockless, a soldier from the first world war but must deal with the fact that he must return to the past and die so that the present and the future can be saved. As a science fiction troupe it is nothing new but the episode is well written and perfectly acted out to carry the emotional resonance that it needs. The only issue with this particular story is that it doesn't explain the how and why of Tommy's initial crossing over which makes the loop a paradox. But hey, this the Whoniverse and such events seem to be common place.

The ghosts that are sighted are phantom images of the nurses and patients at the soldier's hospital in 1918 where Tommy was taken from by early Torchwood team members. There is some interaction but I really felt that the "ghostly" encounters could have carried a more frightening countenance than what they did. Although it is a love story for the most part, a hint of the horror of the Great War via the "ghosts" would have improved the story immensely much like they did in Ghost Machine.

To The Last Man is one of the more interesting episodes of this season and worth a watch.