Date 13th Feb 2008
Time 9.00pm
Torchwood encounter an alien, Adam, who can manipulate the memories of any person he touches. He implants false memories into the team, making them believe they have known him for three years. As a side effect Gwen loses all memory of her fiancé Rhys and treats him like a stalker. Adam also reveals, alters, and completely fabricates other memories. Jack is haunted by memories of his brother, Grey; Toshiko becomes more confident due to her "love" for Adam; and Owen becomes a geek with an unrequited crush on Toshiko. After Ianto discovers Adam's secret, Adam implants a belief in Ianto, accompanied by terrible memories, that he is a serial killer. Jack recognises the threat and realises that the solution is to give the team short-term amnesia pills to erase their memories of the past forty-eight hours. However he is also faced with the knowledge that if he takes the pill he will lose all memories of his father. Toshiko takes the pill knowing that she will go back to being the person who had no flat warming because she had no friends to invite, and is reluctant to let Adam go.
More detailed outline to follow.
Analysis by Cuisle Adam was an episode for real Torchwood fans, not for casual viewers, and certainly not for nit-picking, carping TV critics who think it’s clever to have a go at the programme because the fans like it. You had to be a fan, because you had to understand about the characters and care about them enough to find their changed circumstances distressing. You had to understand why Owen finally admitting he loves Toshiko only to be brushed off was so tragic – mainly because it’s she who has been trying to tell him she loves him for so long. You had to understand why it is impossible that Ianto could have been a serial killer, and why Jack knows him so well and was suspicious when he made that heartfelt confession.
Basically, you have to care. Torchwood is a series that requires an emotional engagement from the viewer and those who are left cold by it haven’t done that. The idea of putting a character into Torchwood who could make them all believe he has known them for three years, and change their personalities in such a way as he did with Owen and Toshiko, is inspired. It’s not entirely original, it has to be said. I read a story in the Bunty in the mid-1970s where a girl woke up one morning to find she has had a sister for ten years that wasn’t there when she went to bed the night before. Stargate did something in an episode in which an alien had been working with them for months. It is a science fiction plot device with endless possibilities. This was one of the possibilities.
And it worked, brilliantly. Adam was a sinister character from the start. We saw right away what he was doing when he altered Gwen’s memory so much that she forgot Rhys. Later, when he messed with Ianto’s mind so cruelly we knew that he really was evil. He wasn’t just a well meaning alien who really wanted to be a Torchwood agent. His association with Jack is strange. Why was he probing Jack’s memories? It was a device that kept Jack confused enough, for long enough, that he didn’t catch on that something was wrong, and it was an interesting insight into his 51st century childhood. But it was less important in some ways than what had been done to the others. Two scenes were absolutely magnificent. First, when Jack finds Ianto and helps him realise that he isn’t the monster he thinks he is. Just how much Jack feels for Ianto was never quite certain until that moment. But he truly loves him and knows he is not a killer. And that drives Jack to find the truth. It has to be said that Adam was a little thick not to spot that everything that goes on in Torchwood is recorded on security cameras. He ought to have thought of that. But since he didn’t, Jack and Ianto found the truth and worked together to put it right.
The second scene was even more magnificent, and this is the one where you really needed that emotional investment. Because otherwise you wouldn’t see anything in it. Jack put the team around the boardroom table and had them calmly reach back before Adam’s interference to find something of their real selves. Gwen’s strange declaration that she loves Jack more than Rhys was something everyone had suspected all along, but since they’re all going to forget it, that doesn’t matter for now. Jack’s tender promise to Owen, that he would be the one to save him is, we hope, prophetic, given what’s happening in the next few episodes. But the way he touched him on the shoulder, in an almost fatherly way, reminded me very much of their reunion hug in the last episode of season one. There is a lot that Owen and Jack ought to get together and talk about some time. If the plotlines would let them. Similarly, when Toshiko asked who would see anything worthwhile in her, his simple answer “I did’ and another reassuring moment of physical contact was sweet.
Then the special moment between him and Ianto. After losing his girlfriend last season in such tragic and horrific circumstances, Ianto could have gone right off the rails. But it was Jack who healed him. What looked like casual sex to everyone else, a part time shag as Owen described it, was far more than that for them both. And it is signified in that one word ‘You’ from Ianto, and the loving kiss that Jack gives him in return, the tender caress of his face. One by one they take their Retcon pills that will rid them of Adam and Jack stands alone in the boardroom as they sleep. Adam is still in the cells. One more pill will rid them of him. Jack faces him. And there he makes one emotional mistake. He really shouldn’t have risen to the bait and let Adam interfere with his memories of his family. The bad memories he has are a part of him as much as anything else. They have made him the man he is, for better or for worse. He shouldn’t have given in. But when he did he was left in no doubt that, whatever Adam was, he meant him no good.
We never actually do know exactly what he is. Maybe we don’t need to. We, the viewer, though, have been let in on some of the team’s vulnerabilities, and also some of their strengths. At least, those who made an effort to watch it. Casual viewers and critics will have missed out. And that’s their hard luck, because it was worth it. The puzzle box at the end, with the sand in, was a bit of a loose end. Will it turn out to be significant later? Who knows. And a last golden moment was Ianto’s face when he found out that Jack had read the entry about measuring tapes! A great episode. But there will be those who don’t think so.
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