Original
Transmission
Date 19th Mar 2008
Crew
Jonah Bevan is walking home when a bright light appears over him. One second later he is gone. Seven months later, at the instigation of PC Andy Davidson, Gwen is investigating the disappearance of Jonah. Her research reveals there are more cases that resemble Jonah's disappearance. Toshiko discovers that these disappearances happen during a negative spike in the rift activity, which were previously discarded as background noise. Gwen is able to compile a list of all missing persons and informs Jack. However, Jack tells Gwen that nothing can be done and instructs her to stop the investigation, which she refuses.
The investigation slowly turns into an obsession and takes a toll on the relationship between Gwen and Rhys. When Ianto secretly gives Gwen a GPS device with a stored hidden location, Gwen finds a facility on Flat Holm. It harbours 17 of the missing people that the rift took and subsequently brought back, including Jonah, the boy she has been looking for. However, he has aged 40 years and is very deformed. Gwen also finds Jack there, and she demands access to Jonah. Jonah tells how he was stuck on a "burning planet" and how he was taken into a building that was actually a rescue craft, from which he witnessed the burning of a solar system. Afterwards, Jack reveals that he set up the facility when he first took command of Torchwood, in order to care for the victims of the rift, who had previously been locked away in the vaults.
Gwen brings Nikki, Jonah's mother, in to see him. At first she is horrified, believing it to be a cruel joke, but Jonah starts telling her things that only he would know. Nikki calms and they hug for a moment, but then Jonah starts screaming, a scream so horrible that everyone flees. In a voiceover, Gwen reveals that he screams like that for 20 hours a day because he looked into the heart of a Dark Star, which drove him mad. A week later, Gwen goes to see Nikki, who implores her not to show the island to anyone else. Gwen takes down her notes over the missing and Nikki packs up Jonah's room. At home that night, Gwen prepares a romantic candle-lit dinner for Rhys, who lets her cry into his chest.
Yes, ok, Buffy did an episode where people got taken to an alternative world, worked to death and sent back when they were old – only to have been missing for a few days in our time. But this story was so different, with the emphasis on other aspects than the missing people, that I didn’t even make the connection until somebody pointed it out. So forget Buffy and lets look at what was a far better Torchwood story than the previous one, though not as good as it could have been. There were three things in this story that I thought totally unnecessary.
1. PC Andy making cracks about Rhys, claiming to have a thing about Gwen, and criticising her for not being as deeply involved in the case as he thought she ought to be. 2. Rhys getting uptight because Gwen doesn’t want to have babies yet and won’t talk to him about it. Rhys is being a totally pigheaded man here. Gwen would have to give up Torchwood to have a baby. She doesn’t want to. She enjoys her job. She likes the comradeship, and she is probably better paid than Rhys, but he expects her to give it all up for motherhood. He needs to join the 21st century. And his comment about her not talking about work at home is really hypocritical. How often does HE rant on about the boring transport manager stuff? In any case, it’s only two stories since they were happily married and they’re rowing already? Come on! Don’t give us this sort of soap opera stuff.
3. Jack and Ianto with their shirts off in the arboretum. Totally unnecessary. Purely there to satisfy the straight women and gay men in the audience who wanted to see some kind of proof that they WERE an item. Unnecessary, therefore, but not unwanted. It was interesting. I just can’t work out whether Gwen turned up early to the Hub or very late to catch them in the act. 4. Too many scenic bits of boats on the Bristol Channel and Flat Holm tourism panoramas.
Ok, those are the bits that didn’t work. What did work was a brilliant performance by Ruth Jones as Nikki and Robert Pugh as the old, mutilated Jonah. Both packed a whole lot of emotion into their roles, especially Nikki, who was tragically, sadly true to life. She acted exactly as a mother in such a situation would. Hope of finding Jonah had kept her going. The truth hurt her more deeply than a lie would have.
Which brings us to the crunch of that episode. Was Gwen right to pursue the matter? Should she have listened to Jack? And frankly, I think the latter. Nikki’s grief is entirely her fault for pushing the issue. Jack told her not to get involved. When she found out the truth after all, he told her not to tell Nikki. If she had stopped and listened and trusted his judgement just once, everyone would have been all right, including Nikki.
So why did Gwen lose her faith in Jack so easily? Why didn’t she listen? Was it Andy goading her? Or was it some nagging doubt planted by Captain John all those episodes back? Either way, if she had only given him the benefit of the doubt there would have been no problem. The concept of the sanatorium on Flat Holm Island, the most southernly point in Wales, in which the people the rift has thrown back are looked after is an intriguing one. I wish I’d thought of it! It opens up the idea that Torchwood is bigger than just the five of them in the Hub team.
One loose point in the scriptwriting, though, is the idea that the rift taking people is a surprise. What did it do to Diane Holmes and her plane passengers then? What did it do with Diane, for that matter? Or Jack and Toshiko in the 1941 episode? Out of Time gave the impression that sorting out people who came through the rift is something that they do on a regular basis. Besides, isn’t it kind of obvious that the rift could be two way? Why wouldn’t it be? Better than From Out of the Rain, interesting, slightly irritating because I thought Andy’s goading and Rhys’s arguing were both too prominent in the story. The moral of the tale is definitely, TRUST JACK. When he says no, he means no.
|
 |
|
|
