Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia After the old cinema "Electro" re-opens, the old scenes of a black and white film are interrupted by mysterious sequences which show a travelling company in the early 20th Century before the age of cinema. The Ghostmaker (the leader of the company) and Pearl ("the mermaid woman"), once captured on film, manage to escape it. Ianto witnesses the escape, noticing that two characters have suddenly disappeared from the film, and informs Captain Jack Harkness.
The escaped characters start roaming the streets of Cardiff. They steal the last breath of innocent people, keeping their breath in a silver flask, leaving the victims only half alive with a heartbeat, but no breath. Torchwood starts investigating the casualties and begins research on these old travelling companies. Jack used to be a member of one of the companies, performing the act of "the man who couldn't die". He tells of the "Night Travellers", who perform only during night, and the mythology surrounding them, saying that 'young children were told to hold their breath while the travelling show passed by'.
The ghosts begin to bring all their other travelling carnival fellows to our reality at the old cinema but, finally, it occurs to Jack that, being filmed again, the loosened entities may be recaptured onto celluloid. Effectively, Jack manages to achieve this with a home movie camera, filming all the phantasmagoric creatures. He exposes the reel to the sun then, vanishing the carnival ghosts for ever. However, for its last act before disappearing, the Ghostmaker throws the open silver flask and, despite Ianto's quick catch, most of the human souls are lost in the air, so the coma-like affected victims of Cardiff die, except for a child. The silver flask ends up being stored by Jack in his safe at Torchwood.
Though the threat of the Night Travellers has been stopped now, Jack speculates that there could be more films with their ghosts trapped inside, confirmed by a scene at a boot-sale where a man and his son purchase an old film reel. The metal case of the film is briefly opened and, back at the Hub, Jack hears a sliver of the Night Traveller's carnival music.
There was a lot made of this episode because it was written by PJ Hammond. PJ Hammond, is an old hand, he wrote Sapphire and Steel. Well, great. Except, does anyone actually remember a single episode of Sapphire and Steel? Can anyone explain an episode? I recall that the first story in the short lived series of the late 1970s, early 1980s, was ok, but the rest of it was just plain baffling. And it always seemed a poor relation of Doctor Who. So actually, why is it such a coup that PJ Hammond is writing an episode of Torchwood?
Even so, the idea of mysterious people from the past stepping out of the film into the real world sounded good. I was ready to be impressed by it. Sadly, I wasn’t. There WERE some good bits. The effect of the people stepping out of the film was good. The way they stole the last breaths and left people catatonic, was very impressive. The two villains were delightfully sinister and just mysterious enough.
The Electro was a lovely set. And I thought Ianto’s fascination with old things, that brought him there, was a nice addition to the little bits and pieces we have learnt about his character. In fact, his fascination was such that I actually wondered, is Jack the only one who is a little out of his time. Ianto’s whole demeanour, his diffident manner, his way of wearing suits, even the fact that his father was, according to last week, a master tailor, all seems about twenty years out of date. Do they even have master tailors any more? If there was a story that told us Ianto fell through the rift from the 1970s and simply adapted to the 21st century I would not have been surprised. I liked the scenes in which Jack and Ianto talked. Although there was frustratingly little physical contact between the two, these scenes in which Jack was standing to the side and slightly behind Ianto seemed to be rather beautifully framed from a photography point of view and hinted at what we all think is going on between the two.
But beyond that, the whole thing was a mess. What was the point of Jack being seen in those old films, apart from giving Ianto a bit of a shock? Jack seemed to know no more about the Night Travellers than anyone else. I was reminded slightly of Small Worlds, when he had a lot of prior knowledge of the faeries, and could add something to the plot. But here, although he apparently worked for some time for a travelling show, he seemed to have nothing to add. That whole part of it seemed superfluous and pointless.
Something that really annoyed me, considering that PJ Hammond is supposed to be such an experienced writer, having been in the business for so many years, was the bit where Jack asked if there was film in the hand held camera and then told everyone what he planned to do. Has Hammond no idea of creating mystery? Of keeping exposition to the minimum and letting the viewer work out for himself what was going on? It was obvious that Jack was going to film the Travellers and then expose the film to sunlight and destroy them. We should have been left wondering until he did that. The way the people died because the top came off the flask and their breaths were lost also seemed dissatisfying to me. Yes, this is Torchwood, not Doctor Who. Happy endings don’t happen on Torchwood. The Doctor would have caught all the breaths and saved anyone. Ianto, bless him, only managed to save one – the little boy. And his tears as he watched it happen were beautiful. But it did seem very pointlessly tragic. Why the heck COULDN’T they have saved them all? It would have made it all seem less pointless. Happy endings CAN happen on Torchwood, surely?
Anyway, the whole thing was just too scrappy, too much like an episode of Sapphire and Steel that promised much and didn’t deliver. It was no fault of the principal actors, or even the two villains, who were rather fantastic. The problem was sloppy, lazy writing by somebody who, I think, imagines that just because he’s been in the business for so long, he can write anything. If he was less possessive of his art, a good script editor might have pulled something out of it that satisfied. As it was, it stands as the disaster episode of this series.
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