Original Transmission
Cast
Plot Outline from Wikipedia The team is still recovering after the events of "Reset". Owen Harper, shot dead, is about to be opened up for autopsy by Martha Jones. Jack however tells everyone to leave him alone until he returns. Jack runs to a place where he talks to a girl, a fortune teller. She says he owes her a favour, and appears to have a tarot card with Jack's face on it. The young girl tells him where to find what it is he is looking for, though as he leaves she is seen holding a tarot card depicting the Grim Reaper. Jack goes to the location where the girl had sent him, which is an abandoned church called St. Mary's. It is also the home of many Weevils. He manages to locate the box which holds the item he desires, and returns to the hub and shows the astonished team exactly what he had found. He holds up a resurrection glove, similar to the one that was used by Suzie and Gwen. Gwen immediately objects to what Jack is about to do, reminding him of what had happened before with Suzie, though Jack ignores her and hopes to bring Owen back for two minutes or so for everybody to say their goodbyes to him. He resurrects Owen, who is confused and scared. Toshiko tells Owen that she loves him, and Jack tries to prepare Owen for death. The connection is lost, Owen stops breathing, and Jack holds Owen's hand, believing he is dead. We then hear Owen's voice saying that he will need his hand back, and it is obvious that the plan has backfired.
Owen then finds himself occasionally having visions of himself in a place shrouded in darkness and hearing eerie whispers. He also temporarily loses control of his body during which his pupils dilate and he speaks in an unknown language. Although he has been put in quarantine, Owen escapes and goes out to a bar in Cardiff, where he discovers that he is no longer able to digest drinks, or pump blood (in order to have sex), as he is now the walking dead, and his life processes have stopped. Jack catches him and they have a bar brawl which results in them both being put in a police cell. During their time in the cell, Owen intentionally vomits the drinks that would have otherwise been stuck in his stomach and starts to panic about death. He and Jack bond, and Jack reveals that he once dated Marcel Proust and that his immortality, which Owen is coveting in his position, is not as good as Owen suspects. They then leave after Jack reveals his thoughts on immortality. Once outside they encounter numerous Weevils that chase Owen and Jack until they are cornered on a rooftop. They are surprised that instead of killing them, the Weevils bow to Owen who again temporarily loses control of his body and addresses the Weevils in the same unknown language.
Upon analysis, it is found that Owen's cells are changing slowly, and upon 100% transformation something will happen. Research shows that a similar situation occurred in legend, and that Death itself comes back with the revived and searches for 13 victims whose consumed souls will enable Death to remain in the world; Death would otherwise quickly perish. The story says that 'faith' was what stopped it. Believing this legend is in the process of repeating, Owen suggests that he must have his neural pathways closed by being embalmed in order to stop Death from using him as a gateway. During the embalming process, the resurrection gauntlet comes to life and attacks Martha before being destroyed, draining the life from her and reducing her to an old woman. Owen shoots the gauntlet, and as his cells fully change, he loses control again, and the gauntlet transforms into a dust which appears to possess him. He speaks in the same voice as he did when changed earlier, and says 'I will walk the earth forever, and my hunger shall know no bounds' - a phrase attributed earlier to Death. Death escapes from Owen and heads to a hospital, being drawn to those close to death, and begins taking their souls. Martha is also brought to the hospital in her heavily aged state, where a nurse says that as her red blood cell count is low and as she is over eighty, her chances of survival are slim. The team evacuates everyone from the building while Death, after taking twelve souls, chases after a young leukaemia patient who had been accidentally left behind. Owen saves the child and helps him and Tosh to escape. Ianto, who is waiting with Martha, explains to the team that the 'faith' which defeated Death before was in fact the resurrected child, whose name was Faith. Owen then realizes that he himself is the only one who can fight the Grim Reaper as he is already dead and therefore has nothing to lose. After kissing Tosh (and stealing her lockpicking/sealing gadget), Owen locks the other members of the team out of the hospital and begins a brawl with Death, eventually consuming its energy and forcing it back into the darkness.
Upon returning to the Hub, Martha explains to Owen that now the energy keeping him 'alive' is dissipating but could take an unknown amount of time to do so, anywhere between 30 minutes and 30 years, or even longer. Jack explains to Toshiko that you can never defeat death, only escape it. The episode ends with Owen asking Jack to let him work again, as by doing his job as a doctor he can try and repay the lives of those lost when Jack brought Owen back.
The spoilers for this episode were rather misleading. They talked about Owen being brought back from the dead as the king of the weevils, and leading them in some kind of battle against evil. It was nothing of the sort. The weevils did, indeed, react oddly to Owen, but then they always have. Remember the one in Combat? What this was, rather, was an exploration of the strange contrast of Jack who can’t die because he is full of lifeforce, and Owen who is dead, but just doesn’t die. The scene in the police cell, apart from the rather surreal bit of Owen standing on his head and expelling a river of used beer is a fantastic piece of philosophical debate between the two of them, and possibly the best indication of how much Jack cares for Owen and vice versa in all of the two series so far. Plus we found out another literary genius who Jack Harkness has dated! That’s Christopher Isherwood and Marcel Proust so far. WHY exactly Jack did bring him back wasn’t completely explained. He seems to have a reason other than getting the code to the alien morgue! There are some interesting theories on the internet, but I don’t think I’ll go into them right now.
Did Jack make a mistake bringing him back? Should he have just let him go? That’s the big philosophical question. Owen seems pretty much sure he shouldn’t have, since he seems trapped in a half life without the ability to eat, sleep, shag, basically anything that makes life worth living. “Death” walking in Cardiff seeking out the souls of the death seems a bit of a subplot in comparison, and no harm to that. But let’s look at that subplot. It was a better idea than a lot of the critics have given credit for. Death, personified, looking for a way to take possession of the Earth – why not? Death defeated by a man who was already dead and had nothing to lose is classic. It is on a par with some of the sneaky ways monsters are defeated in Greek literature – the gorgon tricked into seeing its own reflection.
Some of the same critics complained that the CGI Death didn’t work. Well, aside from the fact that there was nothing wrong with the CGI, it was meant to look like an ethereal, not quite there skeleton within a cloud of smoke, again I have to ask exactly what they expect? Torchwood IS fiction. They didn’t actually call Death and ask him to make a cameo appearance any more than they had a real giant meat creature two episodes back. Again, I think some people need to use a bit of imagination and apply a little suspension of disbelief. This was an excellent Owen vehicle. Burn Gorman played some wonderful scenes. The aforementioned one in the cells was one. The scene with Jamie, the leukaemia patient, was another. Those who doubted that Owen had anything beneath his brash, crude exterior were proved wrong.
Two things did need explaining better. Who was that strange child with the tarot cards? And WHY do weevils sleep in a disused church with a collection of old toys that they seemed to have accumulated? There seem to be some stories there that could be explored. It’s a pity that in thirteen episodes they don’t have time to do that. There was a slight disjointed feel to the story, some of the scenes not quite slotting together as well as they might. But overall, it wasn’t a bad story, and certainly unpredictable.
Incidentally, I can’t help wondering if Matt Jones is a Terry Pratchett fan? For some reason I kept thinking about a character called Reg Shoe and a horse called Binky while watching this. Anyone who understands those references knows exactly what I mean. Those who don’t, this isn’t the place to explain.
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