Original
Transmission
Cast
Plot Outline from Wikipedia Following the previous episode directly, the Torchwood team goes to sites of rift activity, only to witness explosions all over the city. Jack is held hostage by John Hart but he is not acting independently. Hart is being controlled by Jack's long lost brother Gray, who arrives in 2008 to wreak havoc on Cardiff. John sets off 15 major and well placed explosions in Cardiff. The team try to cope with the workload of a crippled city but Jack can't help them as he is kidnapped by John, under orders of his (Jack's) long-lost brother Gray. Taken back to the future site of Cardiff in 27 AD, John is forced to bury Jack as Jack's punishment for letting Gray go during an alien attack on their homeworld. Jack will go through an everlasting cycle of running out of air and reviving in his earthen grave.
John has now gone free, released from his obligation to Gray, and returns to the present to help undo the mess. Gwen encounters him and they call everyone except Owen back to the Hub, who is trying to contain the nuclear power plant meltdown--a result of the explosions John had previously set up. Unbeknownst to them, Gray is lurking in the Hub with them. He eventually traps Gwen, John, and Ianto in Weevil cells, and then shoots Toshiko, leaving her for dead, whilst Owen becomes trapped in the meltdown chamber where the radiation is diverted into. Owen goes berserk over the prospect of death, and Tosh calms him. He and Tosh say their final words to each other on their comm-links, and Owen eventually stands to face the radiation, telling Tosh that it's alright.
In 1901, Jack is discovered by Torchwood personnel, who dig him out and place him in the cryo-chamber at the hub, with a timer set to wake him up in 2008. Stopping his brother, Jack renders him unconscious and places him in the cryo-chamber. He frees Gwen, John, and Ianto, but time has run out for Toshiko, and she dies in front of Jack and Gwen on their arrival. As Ianto registers Owen and Toshiko's deaths on the hub interface, a pre-programmed pop-up video of Toshiko appears, in which she says goodbye and confesses how she loved Owen. The episode and second series closes with the devastated city recovering, and Jack, Ianto, and Gwen standing together in the Hub.
Analysis by Cuisle The second series had its ups and downs. The finale was billed as being an explosive climax. Somebody posted a near complete spoiler on the internet that gave most of the plot away, so something of the anticipation and the surprise factor was lost. But maybe that was just as well. Were we really ready to lose two of the team without being warned? The critics and the general public might not care, but the hearts of fans wouldn’t take that sort of shock. Even forewarned, the death scenes were emotional. Owen, bravely standing there and facing the onrush of contaminated coolant was magnificent. Tosh, dying in Jack’s arms was beautiful. Between the two of them they wrung out the heartstrings.
They also tied up a loose end. WHY had Toshiko been acting as a medical doctor in the hospital in Aliens of London all those years back? The answer – because Owen was hungover. Strange answer, but it settles the question, finally. The whole episode was about emotions, mostly extremes of emotion. Jack and John, wavering between love and hate, trust and mistrust, did very well. I disliked John from episode one so much that it took me a while to trust him, and I was still glad to see the back of him. I am very bored with the way the American critics go on about him because he is the only member of the cast they actually know. I found Captain John irritating in both episodes.
I don’t know if Gray turning out to be evil was meant to shock. I think I would have expected no less. An ordinary reunion of brothers would hardly be a Torchwood story. His cruelty was extreme. Burying Jack alive for two thousand years was incredibly hard. So was his completely casual shooting of Toshiko. I did wonder what would happen to Gray and was fairly satisfied with putting him in the cryo-store. Jack couldn’t possibly kill him, and he would have had a hard time reconciling any member of his team killing his brother. I thought possibly Captain John would have done it. But in the end, this is a satisfying result. It leaves the possibility of him coming back to bother Jack again, or of a reconciliation. A good writer could make something of that.
It was a great episode. Each of the characters had their moments. Gwen leading the leaderless police force of Cardiff showed how she had grown from their tea girl under Jack’s tutelage. Rhys and Andy were simply gobsmacked by her. The rest obeyed her without question. I am sure some critic will complain that it wasn’t realistic. But that misses the point, which is to show that Gwen is a leader now.
Ianto’s big moment was at the end, when he quietly filed Owen and Toshiko as deceased in the Torchwood computer database. He was so clearly full of emotion yet did his job with the consummate professionalism we expect of him. With Gwen in tears and Jack an emotional wreck from his issues with his brother as well as losing Toshiko and Owen, Ianto was the anchor for them both, at least until Toshiko’s farewell message brought them together and Jack rose to the occasion again.
With the surviving three hugging each other in the closing scene,
the question has to be, where next? If there is a third series, can
three team members carry on? Will there be new blood, if so, who?
And how will they fit in? Will we accept them?
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