TW #19 : Reset

"I'd rely on Martha if the world was ending. It fact... I did."

Episode 19 :            Reset.
Companions:           Jack Harkness, Qwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones, and Martha Jones.
Air Date:                 13th February 2008.

Martha Jones arrives at Torchwood after reports of numerous deaths. A medical researcher has been injected with "Mayflies". The "Mayflies" cure all illnesses before killing the patient, and Martha has got one...

Reset is the start of a trilogy focusing on Owen Harper and the return of Martha Jones, now a UNIT doctor. This episode has Jack call Martha in to help investigate a series of bizarre murders. Ultimately the investigation leads them an unscrupulous medical research firm which is using aliens to perfect medical cures  and not caring that one or two attempts have gone awry. When Martha is captured and implanted the team have to go in and rescue her. Unfortunately Owen is shot and killed during the extraction.

This is the sort of stories that Torchwood should be doing. It fits well with the premise of the show and much better than some of the episodes, and they are plausible within the confines of the Whoniverse. Thankfully that is what Reset gives us and it makes it a great episode to watch.

It is nice to see the return of Martha Jones, tying the two shows together. We get some nice references to Doctor Who as well. Torchwood should be it's own show but one thing it has lacked has been a real sense of being part of the same universe.

The episode ends with Owne getting shot, doing perhaps the one selfless act of his (on screen) life, protecting Martha. A bit of a shock at the time as I rather like Owen and his dark persona. But this won't be the last we see of him.

Reset is the sort of episode that  we should have seen more of each season and it has been a nice breath of fresh air to see it again doing these reviews.

TW #18 : Adam

Adam: You always remember what you killed, don't you, Jack?

Episode 18 :            Adam.
Companions:           Jack Harkness, Qwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:                 13th February 2008.

An alien with the power to change memories infiltrates the team. With Captain Jack caught up in the memories of his lost family and Gwen struggling to remember Rhys, it takes Jack's love of Ianto to reveal the truth. Yet there's always a price to pay.

The premise of this story is another typical and over used science fiction trope, the addition of a new team member who everyone knows but is in reality a psychic extraterrestrial with the power to insert his existence into the memories of others. It has been done so many times before in shows like Star Trek and while Adam is no different it isn't bad either. Some care has been made to make this work. Adam is inserted into the opening credits just like the rest of the team members, giving pause to the regular viewer.

The episode itself is typical of Torchwood in that despite being an entertaining forty five minutes nothing actually happens. There is no real plot other than Jack slowly coming to notice that something is wrong and then fixing it. Fixing it in such a way that this episode only happens for us the viewer. Every member of Torchwood has it retconned at the end.

What does make the episode is Adam reviving the memories of the younger Jack losing his little brother, Gray -  whom Captain John Hart mentioned having found at the end of the first episode of this season. We learn that Jack's home isn't Earth but another colony and that they were attacked by some terrible race who may have taken his brother. Finally after all this time we are getting something on Jack's back story. Enough to pique the interest but not too much. The rest of the team get sort of personalty switched by what Adam does to them but their interactions aren't as interesting as the experiences Jack has.

The problem with Adam is that it simply feels like a filler episode with no real addition to the story other than the flashback to Jack's past. I would have just preferred something more tangible out of it.

TW #17: Meat

"Have you never seen something so mad, so extraordinary... That just for one second, you think there might be more out there?"

Episode 17:     Sleeper.
Companions:   Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:         6th February 2008. 

Gwen is forced to reveal Torchwood's true nature to Rhys after he follows her to work and accidentilly uncovers the truth behind the mysterious alien meat. Is there a price to pay for Rhys, Gwen, or Torchwood?

Meat is a fairly interesting story. Again nothing original but played just right so that it works. The story follows the team as they investigate a new source of meat that is coming onto the market in Cardiff. Some strange whale-like creature has washed up through the rift and been taken by some men who are looking at making money from it. The creature regenerates any flesh taken from it and grows as a result. The meat is packaged as something like beef and sold on with no one any the wiser. When Rhys becomes involved he has to infiltrate the gang so that the Torchwood team can close the operation down for good.

At last we are getting Rhys into the story more rather than being a background character as he was throughout the first season. He really is the center to this one and it is nice so see a character who isn't one of the Torchwood team get the spot light in the show. Although I didn't remember Rhys being so up himself as much previously even when you consider that he's having to deal with Gwen having a secretive new job.

Although different in appearance and design, the poor creature reminds me of the star whale from one of the early 11th Doctor stories, The Beast Below. They reused the sound for that so is it a juvenille or similar species? Probably not but nice to think that we can link them together. Both episodes also focus on human abuse of an alien animal.

There is more sense of the surreal in this episode. I can watch Doctor Who and see strange aliens, mysterious worlds and the like, and it never or rarely causes me to ponder it. Meat is a good Torchwood story but it feels out of place when you drop something like this in although that is maybe the point of the show. Doctor Who is science fantasy while Torchwood perhaps shows us how bizarre such events might be if you see them from an everyday person's point of view.

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.

TW #15 : Sleeper

Tosh: You said we weren't allowed to use that again.

Jack: It's just a mind probe.

Ianto: Remember what happened last time you used it?

Jack: That was different. And that species has extremely high blood pressure.

Ianto: Oh, right, their heads must explode all the time.

Episode 15:     Sleeper.
Companions:   Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:         23rd January 2008. 

A burglary turns into a slaughter and Torchwood suspect alien involvement. When the investigation escalates into a city-wide assault, Jack realizes the whole world is in danger.

Sleeper is a story about alien invasion but not the sort that we normally see. In this story we have an infiltration by aliens referred to by Jack as Cell 114. They come to Earth disguised as humans but with their true identities locked away until triggered. At which point they show certain shape-shifting qualities and try to disrupt Earth's defences. The team have found one who they help retain their human identity and try to thwart the invasion.

When this story first aired I figured that the invasion by Cell 114 was going to be the overarching plot for this season. It sets itself up perfectly for that but alas no, Sleep is simply a one off episode with no connection to anything else. The events are never referred to ever again. In hindsight this does spoil the episode for me because by itself the story doesn't do anything. You can't drop something major like this down and then just walk away in my opinion.

Sleeper isn't a great episode anyway. There is nothing to drive the main characters forward either with their own stories or the show in general. Already season two shows that it isn't going to be as good as season one. We know that as the show goes along it gets weaker and weaker each season. I do wonder whether Torchwood should have been left with just the one season?

TW #14 : Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

Jack: So, how was rehab?

John: Rehabs. Plural.

Jack: Drink, drugs, sex and ...?

John: Murder.

Jack: [laughs] You went to murder rehab?

John: I know. Ridiculous. The odd kill, who does it hurt?

Captain John Hart, an old friend of Jack's, appears through the Rift, and causes problems for the Torchwood team.

Episode 14:   Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang..
Companions: Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper and Ianto Jones.
Air Date:       16th January 2008.

Torchwood kicks off it's second season with an interesting start. The Torchwood team are visited by an old associate and lover of Jack's, a former time agent known as Captain John Hart. The new arrival is a violent amoral individual with as big a sense of overt sexuality as Jack's. After committing murder for no real reason, he lures the Torchwood team out with stories of hidden radiation bombs and then tries to bump them off without knowing that Jack cannot die. Ultimately he is found out and sent back through the Rift although he drops hints of something to Jack - "By the way, I found Gray" - before disappearing.

Captain Jack has returned from his sojourn with the Doctor and Martha, and must try to fit back in with his team who are understandably upset about being ditched. There is no indication just how long he was gone but it must have been many months or maybe up to a year but the feel of things. Without the friction of his return I don't think the season would have kicked off as well.

Captain John Hart is played by James Marsters who is more known for playing the vampire Spike in the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer show. I'm quite a fan of that particular role although I do feel Spike is channeled a bit too much in his role as John Hart. Marsters was a great choice for the role though in my opinion. I can't think of many other actors who could pull off that role quite as well.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang is a good start to the season but suffers from a definitive lack of plot. The episode feels more like a filler designed to set up events later in the series rather than a full season opener. It also continues the elements of silliness appearing more and more in the modern Whoniverse. For example it starts up with the Torchwood team chasing a fish-headed alien in a sports car through the streets of Cardiff, stopping briefly to let an old lady cross the road. Really? It doesn't even look very good and the scene is just silly.

Episode #194 : Voyage of the Damned

"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and three years old, and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"

Episode #193:           Voyage of the Damned.
Companions:            10th Doctor.
Air Date:                  25th December 2007.

A spacecraft set on an apocalyptic collision course with Earth, a host of killer robot angels and an evil severed-headed mastermind — it's just another Christmas for the Tenth Doctor.

Voyage of the Damned was the Christmas special for 2007. While the Christmas is the setting for the episode the story is more relevant to old disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure. This is good for me as quite frankly I am sick to death of the Christmas special's being so firmly entrenched in Christmas. How many times can the Doctor be caught in seasonal adventures?

So, the story is simple. After leaving Martha being and a brief encounter with his 5th self, the Doctor's TARDIS is struck by a spaceship designed to look like an old Earth cruise line and appropriately called the Titanic. Things start to go wrong when the Captain turns off the shields and she is struck by flaming meteorites and starts to go down. The Doctor and a handful of survivors must try to save the ship, protect the Earth and find out the cause of all what has happened.

The story to Voyage of the Damned is really rather good. I like the old 60's and 70's disaster movies so it is right up my street. The effects look good especially the design of the star ship Titanic. In these elements the BBC were spot on. Shame that sometimes the same level of detail isn't applied to the regular episodes.

The special guest star is no other than Austrialia's queen of pop, Kylie Minogue! That must have been quite the coup to get someone as famous as her to make an appearance, even on such a popular show. She plays a doomed waitress named Astrid Peth who might have been a companion had she not given her life to save the Doctor. 

We also get a brief meeting with Wilfred Mott before his introduction in the following season. I don't know whether it was the intention at this time to add his character to show or not however. Wilfred is played by veteran actor Bernard Cribbins who already has a connection to Doctor Who as he played a companion in the cinematic adaptation of Dalek Invasion of Earth.

If I like this episode so much what lets it down and reduces it to a average 3 rating? Well, to start with I dislike the elements involving the Queen. As the ship plummets to its doom over London, it is heading straight for Buckingham Palace and the Doctor rings up the Queen to have her evacuate. As he saves the ship she is seen waving and calling out "thank you Doctor". It is played for laughs but it feels so out of touch and it spoils the ending. There is also an scene where the Doctor snaps his fingers, summons a pair of robot angels and has them carry him aloft. The scene once more smacks of the godhood element that has been relevant of late. In fact that scene received many complaints from the Catholic viewers because of the connotation. It is the little elements that spoil an otherwise good episode. If they had been handled better or not included at all I would have been more generous with the rating.

Even so, Voyage of the Damned is one of the best Christmas specials so far.