Original Transmission
Date 5th Mar 2008
Cast
Just hours before her bachelorette party, Gwen chases down a shape-shifting alien, eventually engaging him in a fight wherein he bites her arm before he is killed by Jack. The next morning they discover that the alien had transferred its eggs into Gwen, which had matured inside her body to the point where she now appears pregnant. Gwen and Rhys, at the insistence of Gwen, decide to have their wedding anyway, with Gwen's condition being explained away as her being pregnant with Rhys's child, as they do not want to have to explain about aliens or Torchwood.
During an autopsy of the alien creature, the team discover that it is a Nostrovite, a race of carnivorous shape shifters who hunt in pairs and mate for life. After fertilisation, the female passes the eggs on to the male, who then transfers them to a host to act as an incubator until the time is right. The female then tracks the host down, and when the egg is ready to hatch she tears the host apart to free the offspring. They realise that the mother must still be out there and that they need to hurry as it is out looking for Gwen.
The female Nostrovite tracks Gwen to the hotel where she is having her wedding. Her presence is soon detected, at which point the team tries to catch her while at the same time minimalise any information leaking out to the public. They also decide to use the singularity scalpel to destroy the eggs incubating within Gwen. Rhys does this, which infuriates the female Nostrovite, who then attacks him. Jack manages to kill the creature with a very large gun.
Rhys and Gwen’s wedding resumes, and the couple are successfully wed. At the reception, and just before Rhys and Gwen leave for their honeymoon, they realise that Jack has retconned the entire wedding party to wipe their memories of the Nostrovite. Jack offers the couple the amnesia pills, and Gwen declines stating that there’d be no secrets in their marriage. They say their goodbyes and leave whilst Jack and the others proceed to clean up. Alone at the Hub, Jack retrieves an old tin box, containing old pictures from his past. He looks at them, reminiscing, and comes across a particular one of him and a lady in a wedding dress at his own wedding.
Analysis by Cuisle Something Borrowed has something missing for a Torchwood story. The adult factor. It looked and felt more like Doctor Who. There is a rumour going about that Torchwood is going to be scaled down and made into Saturday evening family viewing with more stories of this sort and less about orgasm gas monsters. Stories of this sort fuel that rumour and make the fans of the grown up stories worry. We really would prefer the grown up, raunchy, edgy stuff.
That being said, this isn’t a bad story. It flows very well, from the scenes with Gwen chasing a shapeshifting nasty with sharp teeth that takes a bite of her the night before her wedding, to her waking up in the morning fully nine months pregnant, through some cracking scenes involving the wedding guests. There is an amusing scene with Ianto picking out a larger size wedding dress in a shop with a male assistant for whom the phrase ‘camp as a row of tents’ is appropriate if not entirely politically correct. Later there is a sweet Ianto/Jack scene in which Ianto reveals that his dad was a master tailor who could tell a man’s inside leg measurement by his stride on entering the shop. Jack wants to test that out later. And that’s as rude as this episode gets. But since that’s the first hint we ever had about what kind of background Ianto comes from, it’s a little gem.
What is less satisfying to a lot of fans are the numerous scenes, including the flashback at the start, in which Gwen and Jack seem to be mooning over each other. Gwen is about to marry Rhys, who she keeps insisting she loves. Jack is supposed to love Ianto. What the heck are they playing at? Ok, the scene where Gwen admits to having a thing for Jack turns out a no go. She confesses it to the shapeshifter disguised as Jack – and wasn’t THAT creepy!
In the end, with the shapeshifter having eaten the DJ and scared the pants of Banana Boat, Gwen and Rhys DO get married. Well, thank goodness for that. It all looks fairy tale happy ever after. And then comes a scene that has the fans confused. Gwen and Rhys are dancing. Ianto is doing the DJ role, and looks very content about it. A man of many talents, he is! Then Jack comes and does a gentleman’s excuse me and dances with Gwen. They look into each other’s eyes and Jack tells her how lucky she is and what a great man Rhys is. How many times do they have to tell each other that? THEN, Ianto seems to have found a stand in at the decks and he asks for a dance – with Jack. The Captain looks happy as he slow dances in his arms, but then he looks around once at Gwen and Rhys, and when he turns back, his expression is not quite there. I don’t know what we’re supposed to make of it. Possibly nothing. This is about fifteen seconds of screen time, maximum, including inserts of Gwen and Rhys. Maybe John Barrowman couldn’t remember what expression he was supposed to have when his head turned back around. Maybe he didn’t realise there was another close up before the long shot of them together that was meant to echo Jack and Captain Jack in last year’s Captain Jack Harkness. If so, ok. But if they were implying what some websites are saying, that Jack really wants Gwen and poor Ianto is just a stop gap, then that is really unfair and whoever thought of that storyline is being really cruel. The FANS, for the record, gay or straight, want Jack and Ianto to be an item and Rhys and Gwen to be left alone.
There is another little scene that throws some cats among the pigeons. At the end, Jack comes home to the Hub. He pulls a handful of confetti from his pocket, blows it around and smiles. Then he goes to his desk and pulls out an old tin full of memories. One of them is a wedding photo from the sepia days when people had to keep very still while the picture finished. The man in the picture was Jack. The smiling bride…. Will we ever know? How long will it take for an explanation to appear in the fan fiction? Just as long as it takes me to think of a plausible plotline, that’s how long.
Yes, this story worked. The plot was plausible. The acting was fine, apart from the horrible council estate common women who appeared to be Gwen’s hen night chums and bridesmaids. Where does a nice girl like Gwen know two tarts like that from? It didn’t need too much in the way of CGI effects for anyone to grumble about. It needed a bit of grown up umph apart from Mervyn getting eaten from the groin up by a hungry shapeshifter. But it was enjoyable apart from those complaints.
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