Review: Torchwood S2 12 Fragments
Sorry about the delay. It's the Secret Origins of Torchwood episode!
I watched the Location Photos thread on OG this summer. After a report of Jack and Ianto taking out a Weevil but not knowing each other and a report of Tosh working with UNIT, I said, "This is going to be a 'Secret Origins' episode." Looks like I called it. ("Secret Origins" stories occur in comic books to show where characters came from.) Although I pictured them telling stories around a few beers, not lying half dead from bomb blasts.
We start with our Team investigating an alien reading. (I've never seen them this color-coordinated. They're all wearing black/dark grey coats and medium blue/light grey shirts.) The readings turn out to be a trap. Traps are not accidents. Traps are set on purpose. This trap was purposely set by someone who:
1) knows how the Team operates,
2) knows how to fool the Team's sensors,
3) sent the Team to an unpopulated area away from both innocent civilians and emergency help (i.e., not Bilis)
4) knew how to entice the Team to split up,
5) uses bombs,
6) uses bombs that are seriously underpowered and/or have charges shaped to send blast away from where the Team is likely to be standing. In other words, it's someone who could easily have killed them but instead gives the Team a good chance to survive. YET who still uses potentially lethal bombs on them.
Hmm, who does that remind us of?
The bomb blasts trigger flashbacks. We start with Jack's.
"1392 deaths earlier." Gee, isn't that number kinda low? I mean, it's been over 100 years, 2 world wars, goodness knows how many alien invasions, and let's not forget the Master. Jack gets picked up by the psycho lesbian couple running Torchwood 3 in 1899.
*blink* Okay. Goodness knows there were plenty of psychos running things in 1899. And lesbians weren't frowned on as long as they kept their private business private; it was only after Freud that people really got into psychoanalyzing sex. And since Torchwood was Victoria's pet project, she could appoint all the female chiefs she wanted without Parliamentary interference. Still, it's been a while since I've seen a psycho lesbian couple. Almost makes me feel nostalgic.
Almost.
But why add fuel to the "There are no good lesbians in Torchwood" fire?
After killing him a few times, they interrogate him about the Doctor. (These ladies could learn a lesson from Mony Python's Vikings. Get the order right!) Seems like Jack has been getting drunk and muttering in his cups about his favorite Time Lord in every grog shop in town. This would explain why he no longer drinks in public. Curiously, they don't torture him for everything he knows, but stop at the few scraps that he tells them which they have probably already got from any Doctor-witness. Instead they offer to hire him as a freelance alien catcher, only it turns out that "catcher" means "hit man" even though someone else actually pulls the trigger.
That's quite a fall, from Doctor's Companion to alien assassin, and Jack feels every inch of it. Barrowman conveys Jack's pain, anger, repugnance, and frustration very well. But he's told that Torchwood will consider him an enemy if he leaves and the Doctor won't show up again until the 21st Century, so he's left with few other choices, especially since he would have to change his ID completely every few years if he didn't work for them. After a century on the job he's made it from freelancer to field operative, surely one of the slowest career paths on record, and inherits T3 in 1999 after his last boss goes nuts and kills everyone else.
By my count this means that the only T3 boss we've seen who doesn't wind up crazy (and I include Jack) is the one from To the Last Man, who retired early shortly after we met him. No people, it's not that Jack's a bad leader, it's that he's got a very bad job.
Cut to Tosh's flashback.
It's 5 years ago, and Tosh is working at the Ministry of Defense. Bad guys kidnap her Mum in exchange for Tosh stealing the plans for a Top Secret McGuffin and building a working model for them. Why Tosh doesn't blooming tell someone I don't know, nor why she gives them a fully functional McGuffin. Honestly, would it have been any harder to build one that burned out a critical circuit after half an hour? That seems to be about how long any gadget I buy lasts these days. And why on this or any other planet did she trust them to keep their word?
I could understand Ianto's desperate hope for Lisa in the face of the unknown. There was insufficient data to say if she could be saved or not. I could understand Tosh's desperation as well. But terrorist kidnappers are a known quantity. Anyone over the age of 15, tops, knows they don't willingly return their victims in one piece. While I can understand feeling that level of desperation, acting that way is -- the nicest thing to call it is naive.
Of course she gets caught. Of course she gets thrown in the slammer. Even excluding the extreme paranoia of 2003, I'm not sure I would believe someone so smart could be so -- naive.
Be that as it may, 2003 is a very bad year to even live on the same street as someone who has the same last name as a suspected terrorist, let alone what Tosh got caught doing. Tosh gets dumped in a dungeon for several days. Then Jack pays her a visit. Turns out UNIT wants to make an example of her. Jack finds her brave and clever, and offers to spring her if she'll come work for him. There are some fairly harsh conditions though. It's not clear if the conditions are Jack's or UNIT's, although from the way they're acting I'm inclined to say UNIT.
Some Old School DW fans don't believe UNIT could act this way. This Old School DW fan doesn't see the problem. UNIT had a nasty prison in the early 1970s called the Glasshouse. Since 1973, the last time we got a good look at their operation, the Real World has seen Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War, and more scandals and wars than I can stomach listing. It's completely in keeping with the world we live in.
Cut to Ianto's flashback.
Ianto's story seems to assume the viewer has seen Cyberwoman. It's always a bad idea to assume that a viewer has seen any specific previous episode beforehand. Maybe they couldn't find the opportunity to work Lisa's current condition in to the alloted time, but it's a mistake the Whoniverse doesn't tend to make. It would also help to have seen Jack's Doctor Who episodes and the Massacre Battle of Canary Wharf.
Ianto is now in Cardiff, presumably with the critically injured Lisa tucked away nearby, needing access to Torchwood's tech, information, and contacts to save her life. He sets out to acquire all these things by getting a job at Torchwood 3.
I've said several times that Gwen is Torchwood's terrier. She finds a problem and worries it to shreds. In contrast Ianto is a Welsh sheepdog. He finds a problem, looks it up and down, and thinks, "How do I get this big, stupid beast to do what I want?" In this case, the big, stupid beast is Jack.
A lot of people have commented, quite astutely, on Ianto's desperation to land a job to save Lisa, his anguish both when his plan succeeds and when he feels the first stirrings of attraction for Jack, and the use of Myfanwy to both get Lisa in the Hub and to take her out. But Jack's reactions are just as interesting.
When he first meets Ianto, the younger man is dressed for cruising (Phoar!) and helps take down a Weevil. Jack shows some personal interest until Ianto correctly identifies the alien. After that it's the Ice Queen treatment. That bit of TMI kills Jack's interest dead. It doesn't look at this point that Jack has any interest in mixing business and pleasure.
The second meeting is the most revealing, not only for what we learn about Ianto but for what we learn about Jack. Ianto offers Jack a cup of damn fine coffee, Jack pegs Ianto as a minor flunky at T1, reels off his less than stellar (but very believable) CV, and dismisses him. Ianto tries to appeal to Jack's loyalty and compassion, but Jack blows him off. This is the pre-Gwen Jack, who doesn't care about anything except the responsibilities directly in front of him and getting back to the Doctor. Bash Gwen all you like (and I do like) but at least she broke that up.
Jack shows no compassion at all for the surviving T1 operatives, even though they can't all be blamed for Hartmann's stupidity. It may just be an act, like it turned out to be with the Riftugees, but maybe not. Not only was T1 monumentally stupid, but they also appear to him to have killed Rose. Remember that Ianto isn't the only one in this segment with a with hidden agenda.
But there's an interesting sartorial subtext here (isn't there always with Ianto?) The second time we see Ianto, he's dressed just like everyone else who works at T3 except Jack himself. Jack disses Ianto as a loser when Ianto dresses like the Torchwood Cardiff operatives. It's only when Ianto dresses and acts like a Torchwood London operative that Jack hires him. That suggests Jack has some mixed feelings about Torchwood London and his own team, although he may not voice them out loud.
Cut to Owen's flashback.
Owen's bride-to-be comes down with what looks like early-onset Alzheimer's on the eve of their wedding, but turns out to be an alien on the brain who kills her and her surgical team. It's a lovely story, but I'm not sure it's Owen's story. It doesn't exactly gell with what Dian being Owen's First Real Love. Burn Gorman sells the story for me because he's an incredible actor, instead of the script selling me the story.
Cut to the present.
Who has done this dastardly deed? Why it's John, and he's found Jack's brother Grey and is holding him captive in an attention-getting scheme!
Which makes no sense at all. If John found Grey, he could expect a hero's welcome from Jack. Why ruin that with the unnecessary histrionics? John's a better con man than that, and he knows Jack better than that.
(Why yes, I have read the spoilers seen the next episode. It's still a point worth making.)
I'll try to have the final review up in the next few days. I doubt I'll do this sort of deep review for Doctor Who Series 4. I just don't care for Ten that much. Lord knows he's pretty, brave, and clever; but at the end of the day he's too much like Gwen. Both share a fundamental cluelessness about human nature, although at least the Doctor has the excuse of not being human. And once I realized RTD would never, ever give the Doctor a Companion strong enough to really call his shit on the carpet (say, like Joan Redfern) I lost a lot of enthusiasm. PiC was funny and laid some interesting groundwork, but that's about it.