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The Torchwood series Two Box set is a bit of a let down in some ways. The extras are very lightweight. For a start there are no commentaries. There have been several reasons given for this. The most believable one is that every member of the cast and most of the crew was busy ever since filming completed. It is a bit disappointing, because last year’s commentaries were a lot of fun. Especially those involving John Barrowman.
Disc One
9/10
7/10 To The Last Man was a fabulous story. I wish I’d thought of it. Actually, I did. At least, the idea of a man frozen in the cryogenic store that needs waking up every year. My version went a little bit differently. This one features Tommy, a WWI soldier who has to be woken up yearly to find out it if is time for his destiny to be manifested. He has to return to his own time, to Torchwood 1918, in order to seal a rift in time that could destroy the planet. Brilliant stuff. 10/10
Disc Two Meat is another fabulous episode with a really rude joke that I always mention every time we go for a kebab – and any other time it will be nicely inappropriate. The creature in this episode, a huge space whale that continues to grow no matter how much meat is cut from its body is a tragic reminder of the cruelty of abattoirs in a truly science fiction way. It is also a terrific Rhys story, finally bringing him fully in on the secret and letting him be the hero. 10/10
10/10
7/10 Dead Man Walking is a strange, sinister and rather peculiar story in which Owen was resurrected by a second glove, and then battled Death himself in the form of a very strange, smoke-clad skeleton that stalked a hospital, killing people until it had the required number of victims to be mortal again. A creepy little tale. The idea of undead Owen is disturbing and I’m not sure I like it, but he proved quite heroic when he faced Death on behalf of the Human race. 8/10
Disc Three
The only problem was that the mission, to infiltrate the home of a local eccentric millionaire, was pointless. The dangerous alien artefact turned out to be an alien communications device saying hello to the Earth. It achieved two things – Maggie stopped wanting to kill herself and so did Owen. 8/10
10/10 From Out of The Rain is a fabulous looking episode with plenty of ambience, some great scenes with Ianto and some even better ones with Jack, but basically, incomprehensible. Much was made of this being a PJ Hammons story – the creator of 1970s hit, Sapphire and Steel. But everyone seemed to have forgotten how incomprehensible Sapphire and Steel was. A watchable episode, but not for the plot. 5/10
Disc Four Adrift is not one of my favourites, either. I found Gwen’s
pushy attitude annoying. I found Andy’s pushy attitude annoying.
I wanted to slap Rhys for his ‘we need to talk about this baby
thing’ motif, yelling at Gwen because she put work before having
a The episode is also notorious for a scene with Jack and Ianto with shirts off and flies undone have a cuddle in the arboretum which was as close as the series has ever come to showing those two in a real sexual relationship. 7/10
Owen’s story was probably the best of all. It explains the hedonistic ex-doctor’s cynicism about life and love. He was ready to do the middle class thing, marrying another doctor and setting up a regular home, when she was killed by an alien in her brain. Enter Jack Harkness to take her brain and recruit Owen to stop it happening to anyone else. A brilliant idea for an episode, though I would have insisted on a bit of continuity in the dialogue, personally. 9/10
10/10
Extras The Lifes and Deaths of Captain Jack is a very nice documentary about
the convoluted history of Jack Harkness as he is portrayed in both
Torchwood and Doctor Who. The 10/10 The Outtakes are just about the funniest I have seen, mainly because of John Barowman, who is a genuinely funny, larger than life person. I do wonder, though, looking at these scenes, if he goes over the top sometimes. It must be hard work getting through an average day with John Barrowman’s personality going off like a comedy bomb every so often. Imagine having to work with him if you’ve got a bit of a headache or you had a rough night last night. He could possibly start to get on your nerves. But, hey, he’s such a NICE person at the same time, it’s hard to blame him. The sequence is nearly ten minutes of fun. 10/10
7/10
Disc Five – Declassified 1. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang – Boring about James Marsters, but
some good stuff about the falling stunts and how they were done. 2. Sleeper focuses especially on the big effects scenes, especially the explosion in the middle of Cardiff that got them into real life trouble as it was filmed the day after a real life terrorist alert in Glasgow. No apologies needed and none given. A location film is a really expensive thing to do and they can’t just cancel at the last minute. 3. Last Man Standing focuses on how much of a love story that is at the heart of that story. They also talk about how, after the effects laden previous episode, the biggest effect on this one is done with a wind machine and lights. John Barrowman jokes about how Tosh is the only one who gets regular sex on Torchwood. 4. Meat focuses on the creation of the biggest ever monster on Torchwood. A design problem and a model making, CGI, and actors using their imagination. Russell T. Davies dismissed an elaborate design and went for a huge lump of meat with an eye and mouth which I think worked best. The filming of the scenes with cranes and green screen are interesting, even though we’ve seen umpteen green screen filming scenes by now. It also features Rhys and how he developed from the house husband sap to a hero. 5 6. Reset focuses first on Martha and the first real Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover. That’s all right. Because there is a strong connection between the two programmes. What we DIDN’T need was the big deal about Alan Dale. Russell describes him and John Barrowman together as two icons clashing? Come again? Isn’t one of them a soap actor from Australia? Give me a break. 7. Dead Man Walking deals with the emotional issues of Owen dying
and being resurrected and the consequences of that. John Barrowman
and Burn Gorman on the prison cell scene are funny and sweet as they
discuss how the two have such a man to man talk in such extreme circumstances.
Another issue is the filming of an action sequence in the tight confines
of the Torchwood medical room set. Added fun was Owen as a Thunderbird
puppet when he got his contacts in. 8. A Day in the Death is Owen-centric. Burn Gorman gets to talk quite a bit about the way this story was constructed. Technical secrets revealed include Owen’s dive into Cardiff Bay – underwater scenes done in a tank, of course. 9. Something Borrowed features the fun of organising a wedding story. The location, the orangery in Margham Park, is a main talking point. Breaking windows in a Grade 1 listed building was a huge technical issue. Of course they did it with a specially constructed scaffold and a recreated window. Fun with black goo also provides a talking point as they explain the big scene in the stable with an exploding model of Rhys’s mum. 10. From Out of the Rain begins with the way they created the circus
on a very small budget and tight filming. It was created on location
in Bute Park and the most difficult thing was hiring people who could
do old fashioned circus acts. Creating the look of the Ghostmaker
was another talking point. So was the problem of Camilla, as Pearl,
in a tiny costume in cold water. It has to be cold water, incidentally,
because warm water has germs in it. So there’s something you
didn’t know before. Ben Foster talks about his approach to the
music for this episodes, too. 11. Adrift starts with them setting up a very complicated night shoot on the Cardiff Bay barrage, mixed with Eve Myles and others, talking about the emotional issues of the story about missing people. The whole cast and crew seem to be aware of how emotional and how real this storyline is. It moves from there to an exploration of the Andy/Gwen relationship that is actually a bit less interesting. Because Andy really is a drip. He’s still a drip. Rhys moved on, but Andy is a DRIP. 12. Fragments discusses the way the writer approached the flashbacks
of the four characters. They then focus on the four different flashbacks.
John Barrowman enjoys talking about his Victorian experience. Naoki
talks about Toshiko’s story and her 13. Exit Wounds opens with more James Marsters, which I could live without. I never really got into his character. They then focus on Gray and his hatred of Jack and how he set out to destroy him before turning to the highly emotive issue of Owen and Toshiko being killed off. The crew all talk about the parting of friends in this last episode. 8/10
The lack of commentaries is a huge loss for this DVD and lets it down badly. Some episodes that don't quite live up to expectations let down the series. But for Torchwood fans it is an absolute essential buy, still. But we WILL expect better next year. 8 out of 10
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Kiss
Kiss Bang Bang – The much talked about debut of James Marsters
as Captain John – actually he was a bit of a pain in the rear.
But Captain Jack was magnificent in his return to Torchwood after
his outing with The Doctor. There is no mention of how long he was
gone, exactly, but it was long enough for the team to reform without
him and to be irritated by him when he came back. But they soon discover
that an immortal team leader is handy when there are deranged Time
Agents on the loose. Oh, yes, and Gwen is engaged. Oh, yes, and Captain
John has found Gray. Open the internet theory floodgates.
Sleeper
is one of the ones I don’t like very much in this series. It
features an advanced guard of alien invaders called Cell 114 who have
been posing as humans for years, forming relationships, having children,
apparently, and then one day, they are all activated and they walk
away from their Human lives and turn into killing machines. At the
end, the impression is that they’re coming back, in force, but
actually, they don’t, at least not in this series. 
Adam
is a very clever and original idea. Torchwood appears to have a new
team member – who has been around for nearly three years. It
turns out that he has altered everyone’s memories. He made Owen
a geek hopelessly in love with trendy and sexy Toshiko who in turn
was madly in love with Adam. Meanwhile, Ianto has memories of murdering
women for kicks and Jack is haunted by his past. We discover a sliver
of information about him. Once he had a mum and dad, and a kid brother
called Gray. The last scenes are tender and heartbreaking
Reset
is the story that brings Martha to Torchwood. She comes to help with
a series of unexplained deaths. It also has Alan Dale as the sinister
Doctor Copeley. I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to
care about that. We had enough fuss about James Marsters. I’m
not excited about an ex-Neighbours star. The story was interesting.
The alien technology and the alien creatures were different enough.
But I somehow couldn’t engage with the story. The nicest bit
was the scene where Martha talked to Ianto about his relationship
with Jack.
A
Day In The Life is very cleverly told in a series of flashbacks as
Owen sits on top of a high building next to a woman called Maggie
who wants to kill herself on the anniversary of the day she was married
and then widowed in a tragic car accident. Owen tells her about how
her day couldn’t be any worse than his, seeing as he is DEAD.
He tells her about being demoted from his job, becoming office tea
boy, and then actually taking on a mission that required somebody
who was dead! 
Something
Borrowed was a very good idea. Gwen wakes up on the morning of her
wedding impregnated by an alien. The shapeshifting mother alien wants
her baby back and the only thing they can do is watch out for her
at the wedding. It has many fabulous scenes like Jack mistaking Rhys’s
mother for the alien, Toshiko trapped in an alien web with Banana
boat and Jack stopping the wedding at the crucial moment. It’s
a very watchable episode.
family
– as if any man ever considered taking a year out of their job
to get the baby onto solids! It was all perfectly in character, of
course. Gwen has always been pushy and nosy. It’s what got her
to Torchwood in the first place. But she goes too far when she finds
Torchwood’s secret installation on Flat Holm Island where all
the scarred, maddened and prematurely aged victims of the Rift are
looked after. At that point, it is entirely her fault that Nikki is
left even more grief-stricken than before when she finds her teenage
son is now an old man with terrible scars who screams for twenty hours
at time. If she has left well alone, it would have been all right.
Fragments
is a flashback story that tells how everyone other than Gwen came
to Torchwood. After bombs destroyed a building with them in it, they’re
all unconscious and reliving their past. Jack’s, of course,
goes back to the 19th century and shows him giving sterling service
to Torchwood over the years until he inherits Torchwood Three on Millennium
eve from Alex, the previous Director, who has murdered everyone in
the Hub before killing himself. Jack subsequently rebuilt the team.
He recruited Suzie, presumably, and then Tosh, who he got from U.N.I.T.’s
own Guantanamo Bay, where she was sent after being blackmailed into
stealing MOD secrets. This didn’t quite work for me. I didn’t
see Tosh as being there on a sort of probation. Nor did I quite believe
Ianto’s background. He is too smart to be the average student
and drifter he was described as. Though the way he persuaded Jack
to take him in as a Torchwood employee was good. 
Exit
Wounds was a fantastically written story, and would have been edge
of the seat stuff if some twit hadn’t posted the plot online
a week before. Jack is reunited with Captain John and with Gray, his
brother. But Gray has gone nuts under torture from the enemy that
captured him as a boy and blames Jack for it. He sets out to destroy
everything he cares about. Cardiff is attacked by bombs, weevils and
a collection of alien weirdness while Jack is buried alive several
hundred years before Cardiff existed and has to wait to be dug up
two millennia later. Jack eventually stops Gray and puts him in the
cryo-freezer, but not before he has been responsible for Tosh and
Owen’s deaths. The three survivors of the team are last seen
hugging each other and promising to carry on regardless.
only
problem is that it is narrated by Freema Agyeman who, while all right
as Martha, on screen, has a really breathless and over enthusiastic
manner when narrating, presenting or doing video diaries. Ignoring
her, if you love Captain Jack, and that means every straight woman
and gay man in the world, it’s great stuff.
Deleted
Scenes include the notorious one where Jack cops a feel of Ianto in
the Hub, which was supposedly cut or being too racy. There is also
an extra scene from Adam with Owen demonstrating his geekdom in more
detail, a brief one of Rhys and Gwen in bed, a scene with Owen having
problems with his mother on the telephone. There is a scene with Martha
and Gwen from Reset, where Gwen talks about her impending wedding.
There is a very long, tedious, extended scene - and I mean extended
– it’s about ten minutes long - between Owen and the old
man in the bed from A Day In The Death which seriously needed cutting.
I thought it was never going to end. That’s followed by a completely
pointless 8 seconds of the Ghostmaker flirting with a clown and a
longer piece about the missing people in Adrift, where Andy apparently
gets off with Nikki. Slash fiction writers have not yet picked up
on that one! The last deleted scene is a longer version of Toshiko
in the U.N.I.T. prison cell with a scary conversation with the prisoner
next door.
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Adam examines the origins of Jack Harkness that are revealed in the
flashbacks, filmed on location on a place called Ogmore Beach near
Bridgend. The close up of Jack’s childhood home is the side
of a modern pub in Cardiff Bay, which is rather wonderful to know.
They also feature the harrowing scenes with Ianto in the rain, which
worried Garreth David Lloyd mostly because he didn’t want to
catch pneumonia in the rain at night. Bless him!
surprise
at the way her backstory was written in a very serious way. Burn Gorman
is also quite serious and very pleased with Owens’ story. Gareth
David Lloyd is a bit lighter about Ianto’s background, and he
clearly had fun with John Barrowman doing the pterodactyl scene. Gareth
out of a suit, in jeans and t.shirt, and his hair done differently,
always surprises me in these declassifieds.
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