Hm, I Echo Angst

Torchwood 1x03 - "Ghost Machine"

Episode grade: A-


Previously segment is actually just Jack's expositional monologue, "21st century is when everything changes" and all that, voiceovered onto a fairly random collection of scenes from the previous episodes.

And then we start straight in with the extended running about. I guess it's good to get it out the way now so it doesn't come between the meaty stuff. Tosh is directing Gwen and Owen, who are hot on the trail of some sort of alien signal. There's a whole lot of dramatic music and changes of camera angles and zooms to try to make it exciting, but it still isn't. Jack's also chasing in The Symmetric Hyena. Tosh gets a visual on the fleeing signal; suspect is some sort of generic chav. More running around that goes on far longer and is far more overdramatic than it has any right to be. There's even an Indiana Jones roll under a closing gate. I think they're aware of they're own ridiculousness here, but that doesn't really excuse it. Eventually, Gwen catches up with him outside a train station, and manages to nab his jacket in the ensuing struggle, though he gets away. Fortunately, the alien artifact is on the jacket, which Tosh has to explain to Gwen, like, twenty times before she gets it. SMRT. Gwen takes out the artifact, which turns out to be an electric razor with random blinking lights all over it. Best thing to do when handling unknown, quite probably dangerous alien tech in a crowded public place? It sure as hell isn't 'Go ahead and press a button', Gwen.

What this does, in fact, is make everybody disappear, Gwen's heavy breathing suddenly get way loud on the soundtrack, and creepy slow piano music play. And then a little boy, dressed in the clothes of a World War II evacuee, because that's what he is, walks up. And handily, WWII evacuees come with nametags, so I can tell you straight off that he's called Tom Erasmus Flanagan. Gwen asks who he is, Tom, clearly not able to see or hear her, tells her with all the emotion of someone reciting a phonebook "I want to go home. No one knows who I am here. I'm lost." Gwen, faring a little better on the emotional conviction scale, implores him to come back, but he still can't hear her. She lets go of the button and returns to the real world, looking a little flustered, as Jack and Owen turn up. Jack asks if she's alright, Gwen, wide eyed, tells him "I've just seen a ghost" which is probably jumping to conclusions a little, but I guess it'll do for a segue into the credits.

We return to Torchwood Hub, Tosh is going over the video footage of the big chase, and there ain't no little refugee boy, so I guess Gwen's going crazy! Because it's certainly weird that when an alien artifact makes you see things that aren't really there, it doesn't show up on CCTV? Just go with it. Gwen frantically yells that not only was her encounter with young Master Flanagan real, it was MORE REAL THAN REALITY, apparently. OK then. Oh, and she could feel what the boy could feel. Remember that, it's important. Owen subscribes to the "Gwen is crazy" theory, mostly just to wind her up, I think. I can't say I blame him, honestly. She really is getting worked up over nothing. Jack's fondling the ghost razor and everyone suddenly panics and yells at him not to press the button. Because he might get ectoplasm all over the carpet, and they just had it cleaned. Jack's all "As if!", because he's not stupid enough to go pressing buttons all willy-nilly when he doesn't fully understand what they do. Isn't that strange. He tells Tosh to get on her Apple MacGuffin and track down both the guy they stole the jacket from and Tom Erasmus Flanagan, however long it takes. Owen gets all 'All of your fancy computers cannot bring you LOVE' and finds Tom Flanagan in the phone book.

So, Owen and Gwen go to pay him a visit, and for some reason their arrival is punctuated by random closeups of the number 74 on the door, the door knocker, Gwen's face. Gwen flashes her badge and tells the woman who answers the door "I'm D.I. Cooper, this is D.S. Harper, could you spare a few minutes, please?" and Owen rolls his eyes at her because, GOD, hasn't she got over her ridiculous 'police' phase already? Once inside, Gwen tells the woman and her father, who is the Flanagan they're looking for, that they're looking for eyewitnesses to an incident at the train station last night. Tom's daughter tells her they were in last night to watch the Strictly Come Dancing final so that Owen can comment that the winning newsreader has "legs upto her armpits". Tom's daughter offers to make tea, Gwen volunteers Owen to help and tries to think of a non-suspicious way to steer the conversation towards what she actually wants to ask Tom about. Fortunately for her, he's like a Final Fantasy NPC with the willingness to tell pertinent parts of his life story to random strangers that walk into his house, so it literally just takes a "Not from around here, are you?" to get him rambling on and on about his evacuation. It's quite amazingly ridiculous.

Outside, Owen is, as usual, complaining, because Gwen stuck him on kitchen duty, while Gwen muses about the 'ghost' she saw, since the visit has proved quite resoundingly that it was a memory of something that actually happened. She's interrupted by a call from Rhys, which causes Owen to give an annoyed sigh and storm off into the Hyena. As happens in every single episode, Rhys is calling to balh blah blah about some mundane and uninteresting thing so Gwen can angst about how the job is taking her away from him so much. It's not getting any more interesting, and I can't fathom that it ever will, so I do hope they stop it soon.

Torchwood Hub. Jack uses the Apple Mac Guffin face recognition software to learn that the guy they stole the ghost machine from is one Sean Harris, AKA "Burnie". I have no idea how he knows that part, because all it says on the screen is "Sean Harris". Also, I thought that was Tosh's job? What actually is the point of her? Gwen does her Carys thing again and sticks Burnie's entire life to the walls. Kid's a petty thief, basically. Owen's playing one of those arcade machines with the giant plastic guns and asks if they've figured anything out about the ghost machine. Jack blathers a little, but no, they haven't figured anything out. So, next move, Jack suggests, is trying to find Burnie. Tosh reports that he lives in 'Splot', and there's a little amused disbelief from the non-natives at the stupid town name, which, it's no 'Mianus', but fair enough. Ianto hilariously informs them that "estate agents pronounce it 'Splow'." That's rhyming with 'blow', not 'plow'. I'm not great with the phonetic spelling, OK?

Gwen and Tosh pay a visit to Burnie's house, but his mother informs them that the "little bastard" until he pays the £50 he owes her. Cut to various acquaintances of Burnie saying much the same thing; he's a thief, and he can fuck right off. No luck finding the man himself, though Owen did find four pasties for a pound, which is not to be sniffed at, for sure. Jack gives them all a disappointed look, and wanders off down the riverbank. The others follow, and Gwen asks where exactly they're going. Jack wants to go back to the train station to recreate the events of last night as closely as they can, so they can analyze it. Gwen's not exactly enthusiastic about going through the terribly harrowing experience of seeing a lost little boy that she now knows will grow up to become a perfectly content old man, so Jack volunteers Owen to take the hit this time. Gwen points out that they don't know what the machine actually does or what will happen. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm going to guess that Owen might perhaps see a young Tom Erasmus Flanagan lost at the train station. Or, he would if they didn't get distracted from this plan by Owen deciding to press the button right here under a bridge, rather than waiting until they get to the station.

Suddenly, it's a dark, stormy night, the others disappear and Owen watches a crying girl, dressed like she's in the sixties because (SPOILER!) she is. She rants about how her mother was right, "his eyes are too close together!" That is certainly reasonable ground for distrust. Owen asks the girl what her name is, and a shadowy dude walks in from the other side of the bridge and helpfully singsongs an answer; "Lizzie... Oh, Lizzie Lewis..." What a good samaritan! Lizzie tells him "You're a bad one, Ed Morgan," and my, isn't it awfully convenient how they both used each other's full names to make the search easier for Owen. Or maybe everyone talked like that in the sixties. Ed walks closer so we can see his ridiculous quiff, and tells Lizzie she's "not like the others" and he can see the way she really is, and history has a habit of repeating itself. Wait, getting my creepy voiced stalkers mixed up. Lizzie cowers and puts up no resistance for a while when he kisses her, but then she starts to struggle so he hits her and then pulls out a knife. Thankfully, even with the adult timeslot, we're not going to watch what happens next, just Owen watching it all and looking horrified.

After hyperventilating for a while, Owen comes back to present day. Gwen asks if he's alright and takes the ghost machine off his hands. Owen just whispers "She was so scared" and breathes heavily some more. He's doing an excellent job of looking incredibly shaken by this. I'm actually not hating him right now!

Hub. Jack and Gwen helpfully remind us of what we've spent the last 15 minutes watching. Thanks, guys! Tosh gets on the Apple Mac Guffin and finds some info on Lizzie, which we also pretty much knew already. Owen asks her to try getting info on Ed Morgan, Jack has a sudden realisation and yells out "Quantum transducer!" Man, I totally figured that out hours ago. You're slacking, Jack. Tosh gets on with the business of technobabbling. Right, that's the point of her. I use 'point' in the loosest sense, of course. Jack gets all excitable and asks endless "ever had deja vu? Felt someone walk over your grave?" questions, and explains that the machine shows strong emotions imprinted in places and rah rah rah, it's like putting too much air in a balloon! This bit would be going on far too long even if it wasn't telling us stuff that was pretty self evident. Owen furthers my actually liking him in this episode by bringing things back to the matter of Lizzie and Ed. Tosh is confused by what exactly he wants her to look for, Jack angrily reminds him that solving crimes is not what they do, and anyway, "you saw the echo of a moment, amplified by alien technology", like a balloon, and... something bad happens, and that's not going to stand up too well in court. Owen yells some more, Jack yells right back, and he's the guy in charge here, so he gets yelling superiority and sends Owen home. So, just to summarize; Owen a) really wants something to be done about Ed Morgan and b) doesn't care about the law. Yes, Jack, it's absolutely a good idea to let him out of your sight.

Jack leads Gwen into a backroom somewhere (no, not like that) and tells her she needs to learn to use a gun, though he hopes she won't need to. That sounds kind of stupid when I write out like that, but it makes sense really. Trust me on this. Gwen's all giggly about it, which is an... odd reaction, to say the least, and says "I don't even kill spiders in the bath." Jack arches an eyebrow and says "Nor do I. Not with a gun." Heh. And then there's, like, an hour of gun training porn. I'm not kidding at all. "Woah! Woah! Too fast. It's all in the breathing. Hold it firmly. Don't grip it. Focus. Squeeze gently." Jack says all of these things. And hey, their earmuffs have the Torchwood hexagoned T logo on! Cute. Yeah, I know, what the heck am I paying attention to that for. And now we need a montage! Montage! Dude, that was fully 6% of the episode devoted entirely to Gwen learning to shoot. That's a little excessive. Gwen suddenly notices the time and that she should really be getting home, but wastes some time making small talk with Jack first anyway. She asks when Jack gets to go home then wonders if maybe he lives in the Hub. He just shrugs and parrots his "21st centrue is when everything changes" spiel. "...And I hate to commute." Gwen giggles and asks where he sleeps, he looks at her gravely and says "I don't." Yeah, tell me about it. Insomnia sucks.

Gwen's place. Rhys isn't home, so Gwen pulls out the ghost machine, like, nice job enforcing that "no alien tech leaves the base" policy, JACK. We're interrupted momentarily by some pretty nice arty shots of Owen continuing to stress out about Lizzie and Ed, then we return to Gwen using the ghost machine to re-experience some happy memories with Rhys back before Torchwood came along and ruined their gloriously ordinairy relationship. Awww. First time, I was totally expecting there to be a memory of some terrible thing that happened in the house before Gwen and Rhys lived there right about now. But, nope. Just a jump back to the present and Rhys appearing in the doorway to tell Gwen that he really doesn't mind her working late, as long as she still wants to come back to him at the end of it. Which she does. She really does. Aw. Really, it's such a shame the two of you don't have a hope in hell of lasting. Gwen's re-experiences of her own previous experiences of horniness have made her so again, or probably something like that, anyway, so they procede to couch makeouts. Or it might just be a distraction tool so she can slip the ghost machine in her purse unnoticed. Well, two birds, one stone, probably.

Pan across scattered printouts of newspaper reports and the like littering the floor to Owen, looking haggard and in definite need of sleep, looking through more of them. Seems he's found what he's looking for and it leads him to tearing a page out of his phone book and underlining one "Morgan, Edwin". What is up with the tearing pages out of phonebooks thing? Seems to me, it's not exactly much effort to just copy the address onto another sheet of paper, and then the next time you need to look up a Morgan or a Mortimer or whatever, the page will still be in your phonebook! But, hey, I'm not an angsty private eye or related occupation, so what do I know. Owen, on the other hand, furthers his credentials as one right now by taking a long swig from a bottle of, I think, whiskey.

So, the house of Edwin Morgan. Owen knocks on the door, Ed, who has certainly not aged gracefully, checks through the window before opening and asks rather gruffly "What do you want?" Cut rather abruptly to Owen inside the house, Ed asking him "Who said there was gas? I can't smell anything. Can you smell anything?" Owen asks him to step into the living room and calls him 'Mr. Morgan' for like, the fifth time in the last ten seconds. I have no idea why he likes saying it that much. It's not like he's called "Mr. Weiner". Ed obliges, and breezily informs Owen that he doesn't have a gas heater or anything. Owen tells him to sit down. He does so, and continues rambling, asking if it was "her next door" who reported the gas, "She can't mind her own business. Something wrong with her, she makes stuff up." That's a nice and subtle bit of foreshadowing. Cool. Now that Ed's sitting comfortably, Owen can begin. So, he basically tells Ed in nice sinister voice that he knows what he did back in '63. He goes into a lot more detail than that, but I'm not going to recap all that, since we already know it. I'm not complaining; it's not the kind of 'repeating what we already know' that annoys, mostly because Burn Gorman's delivery is really quite excellent. Ed just grimaces and clutches tightly at the arms of his chair for a long while, then suddenly bursts to his feet and yells "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" and, interestingly, "I've told you before, you'll get nothing from me!". I actually didn't pick up on that first time through, that's some more of the right way to foreshadow.

Outside, Owen takes a moment to catch his breath, and gives a casual nod to a nearby postman, which is somehow kind of hilarious. Inside, Ed takes off his glasses, holds his head and glares at the wall miserably. Owen walks back to his car, and sitting there watching him is 'Burnie' Harris. Remember him? It seems awfully convenient that he'd be sitting right there, but knowing later events I can probably wank some fairly logical reasoning to it. Anyway, Burnie makes a break for it, so it's time for yet another overly long chase scene. Oh, how I love those. Along the way, a kid playing football shouts some encouragement to Owen; "Go on, kick his head in!", which is kind of awesome, but still. Filler, filler, filler. After Owen finally catches up to him, Burnie pitifully cries "Don't hurt me please, I've got asthma!" Owen calmingly assures Burnie he's not going to kill him -- "...I'm gonna bloody kill ya!"

Abrupt cut to Owen and Burnie having friendly drinks at the pub. Whuh-huh? Well, that was a total non-sequitous segue. A non-seguetor, if you will. I can't say I'll blame you if you won't. Burnie tells Owen the story behind his nickname; he burned down his neighbours shed when he was twelve, "I was just havin' a fag and I got a bit carried away, like." The rest of the Torchwood crew arrive, and Burnie's protestations that he doesn't know anything about some dodgy dealing that obviously he knows plenty about are cut short when Jack presents him with the ghost machine. Burnie gives up on paranoid denial and goes straight into exposition mode; he stole it from a crazy old guy who had a whole warehouse full of junk including a biscuit tin containing foreign coins, weird rocks and, of course, the ghost machine. In the manner of someone revealing some great secret, he tells them all about what the ghost machine does, and again it's explaining things we already know, and yet again it isn't as annoying as that usually is. His first ghost machine experience; a woman drowning her own baby. Burnie tells them he later found this woman and told her what he'd seen, so she gave him money not to tell anyone else. Owen judgmentally interjects "You blackmailed her?" And, like, I know you take some steps towards redeeming yourself in this episode, but still, that's rich coming from a SERIAL DATE RAPIST. Plank of wood, eye, all that jazz. Burnie defends himself by pointing out that it was her idea to buy his silence and continues with more harrowing tales of the ghost machine. So, turns out he saw Lizzie being raped and murdered by Ed too, which seems a pretty unlikely coincidence, really. Owen interrupts to tell him he's seen the same thing and, convinced that Burnie knows nothing useful, the Torchwood crew get up and walk out. Burnie complains that they can't walk out with 'his' ghost machine, but they ignore him. Well, until he asks if they don't want the other half, then.

Burnie's place. Jack explains that the rocks and coins Burnie found with the ghost machine are alien in origin, "Driftwood, washing in through the [Hellmou... sorry,] Rift." He asks Burnie if the machine was in two pieces when he found it, as Tosh figures out how the two pieces fit together. Burnie asks if they're not going to arrest him, but no, they just want to steal all his stuff. As the Torchwood crew turn to leave, Burnie desperately calls out "Don't go!". He's so pathetic. Gwen, ever the non-jaded new girl, is the only one to actually pay him any attention, so he tells her what happened the one and only time he used the other half of the machine. See, that half shows the future, and what Burnie saw was himself, bleeding to death in the road, and not looking any much older than he does now. That's pretty rough, so I can sort of he's why he's so twitchy and pathetic, but still. Jack comes in to hurry Gwen, so she tells Burnie she'll be right back and goes after him.

So, Gwen runs after the rest of the crew outside, and the fully comprised ghost machine starts itself up, so Jack gets to have a hilarious slow motion "Gwen, NOOOOOO!!" for no reason that I can fathom. Awesome. So, she sees a future echo of herself, hands covered in blood and babbling about not being able to stop Owen, who had a knife, and wanted to kill someone. Or 'will have had a knife, and will have wanted to kill someone'. Aren't time travel affected verb tenses fun! Back to the present, JAck snatches the ghost machine from Gwen, and asks what she was thinking. Gwen just stares fearfully at Owen, who glares right back. And there's no sign of the going back to Burnie that she promised not ten seconds ago.

Torchwood Hub; Gwen's explaining what she saw to Jack. You know what, there's a whole lot more explaining stuff that we already know than I remember there being. It is starting to bug. Jack assures Gwen that it's just one possible future, it won't necessarily actually happen. Gwen suggests that Burnie might want to know that. So what she does is get right on and tell him... no, no it isn't. What she does is sit there and flirt with Jack some more. Yeah, I'm sure Burnie won't want to know he's not actually certain to die soon that much. It wouldn't be a hugely pressing concern for me.

Hey, let's stop by and see what Ed's doing! Remember Ed? Sure you do. Right now, he appears to be dialling a phone number from a scrap of paper, only halfway through he decides it's just too much effort on his stupid old style phone with an actual dial, and gives up. OK then!

Pub somewhere, different to the previous one. Over drinks, Tosh tells Owen that she found the Ed Morgan he was looking for, Owen replies that so did he, and he went and put the fear of God into him too. Tosh, somewhat taken aback, tells Owen she found his medical record; paranoid, claustrophobic, two recent suicide attempts, and he's barely left his house in years. I bet you feel big now, Owen!

Ed tries again to dial the number. But who could he be calling? Well, it's not going to be someone who hasn't featured in this episode, that would just be stupid. We know Owen didn't leave him a number, and presumably, none of the other Torchwood guys have paid him a visit, so, who does that leave? Right. Burnie worriedly answers his phone.

Back at the bar, Owen's just now decided to actually pay attention to what Ed was shouting at him, ie. the apparently nonsensical "I've told you before"s.

Torchwood Hub. Jack takes a photo of Burnie from the wall and echoes of Burnie's words in the pub come to him. "I've seen things you wouldn't believe. There's the old bridge down on Penbrook Street. There was a man, and a girl, from ages ago..." And he's just now heard from Gwen that she saw a future echo that suggested Owen will have wanted to kill someone. He's quick on the uptake is our Jack.

Gwen has finally deigned to go give Burnie the good news. Burnie muses that "Some things, you're better off not knowing." Yeah, like the fact that Westlife are headed for a friggin' FOURTEENTH number one single. Gwen gets a call from Jack, he's found out that Owen went all vigilante on Ed Morgan earlier. I presume Tosh told him this, and he didn't figure it out with his mad skillz of insight, formidable as they may be. Jack also (correctly) believes that Burnie got there first and was trying to blackmail him, to which Gwen, with Burnie standing RIGHT THERE, asks loudly "Burnie was blackmailing him?" Smoothe move, P.C. Cooper. Jack tells Gwen to stay put, they'll be right there, and Tosh and Owen are both there with him, so maybe Owen came clean to Jack himself? I don't know.

While Jack and Owen get in the Symmetric Hyena to go trundling along to Burnie's flat, the Apple Mac Guffin helpfully shows Tosh some CCTV footage of Ed heading in the same direction, so she calls Jack to tell him about it. In Burnie's flat, Gwen chastises him about the blackmail thing while he takes paranoid glances out the window and, presumably spotting Ed heading for his flat, makes a break for it. Gwen starts after him, but turns back when her phone goes off; it's Jack, telling her about Ed. So, this whole bit has had a lot of jumping around, so the recap might be slightly confusing, apologies if it is. Anyway net result of it all; Jack, Owen, Gwen, Burnie and Ed all end up in the street outside Burnie's flat, and now it's time to resolve all the stuff that's been building and building since the start of the episode. And, yeah, that's the street that Burnie saw himself bleed to death in, so you'd think maybe he'd want to keep away from it, but he's a little dim.

So, out in the street, Ed, holding a knife, unhingedly stumbles towards Burnie and tells him "I knew you'd find me in the end, I knew you'd come for me. Been waiting for years." He sees Gwen carefully walking up behind Burnie and asks if she's come for him too. He rambles on some more in his 'driven completely off my rocker by guilt' way, until Gwen interrupts with a soothing "Edwin..." and he suddenly snaps his head down towards her and snaps "Igloo bitch!" Well, that's what it sounds like. I've listened many times, but I just can't make out the first part. It might be 'ignorant' but there really don't seem to be enough syllables for that. Gwen, as calmly as she can manage, tells him to put the knife down as he starts advancing on her, misogynisting "You're all the same, you blame me, make me the bad one! I wasted my life for you!" Burnie, still looking like a frightened weasel, but not actually being a total coward right now tries to step in between Ed and Gwen and frantically promises Ed that they won't tell anyone else what he's done. Ed tells him he's damn right that they aren't going to tell anyone, "That's why I came," and we can see Jack and Owen stealthily advancing behind him now. "That's what you want, isn't it?" Ed asks, and then Jack and Owen grab an arm each, and Owen gets the knife. Uh oh!

So, Owen advances on Ed, doing his sinister whisper thing and sounding not much less unhinged than Ed was just now. "I've got the knife, Edwin. You were so close. You were going for her, weren't you. Just like with Lizzie. I've got the knife Edwin. You were so close." At this point he presses the blade of the knife right against Ed's cheek. "As close as I am now." Gwen flashes back foward to her future echo, Jack, still holding Ed's arms behind his back, yells at Owen to stop. Owen ignores him. "You said you were sorry, you said you didn't want to hurt her, but you DIDN't STOP! What if I didn't stop now?" He suddenly thrusts the knife downwards, but it's OK, he's just holding it out so Gwen can take it off him before he does something he'll regret. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, Jack yells at Owen to go make sure Burnie's OK, Gwen is being all thankful that nobody died. And then Jack lets go of Ed, and he, with huge relief, tells Gwen "I knew you'd come for me." and goes and hugs her, impaling himself on the knife that she's still holding out in front of her. It's not immediately obvious that he knew the knife was there, but I'm pretty sure he did. Remember where Burnie got the ghost machine? "I knew you were coming for me."? Yeah. So, Gwen's future echo gets to come true now, while Owen frantically tries to keep Ed alive. I like that it's him that does that. I mean, he's the doctor and all, but y'know.

So, just time for a calm reflective closing scene. Owen knows he screwed up, but hey, at least he didn't kill anybody, right? Seriously, he says "I didn't kill him. I could've, but I didn't." as if that totally excuses his actions. Yeah, he's still a tool. Gwen blames herself for Ed's death, Jack and Tosh assure her that he wanted to die, it wasn't her fault. Jack holds up the ghost machine and muses that "The problem with seeing the future is you can't just sit and look at it. You gotta try and change things." He ands it to Ianto, who heads off to put it in the 'secure archives'.

Jack and Gwen hang out outside somewhere, Gwen still thinks she killed Ed, Jack babbles on about how the sun's coming up, new day, all those people, all that energy. All those ghosts. This is wildly unnecessary. "We can't see them, we can't touch them. But they're there alright. A million shadows of human emotion. We've just gotta learn to live with them." Jack, SHUT UP already! Oh, he has. Well, good.

My One Big Eyeball #6

Battlestar Galactica 3x07 - A Measure Of Salvation
Episode grade: A

Galactica sends in the marines to investigate the abandoned cylon base star that Gaius was on last week and find and bring back five living cylons, models Six, Eight, Simon, Doral and Leoben. Everybody freaks out for a while about the disease, but fortunately for them, humans are immune, of course, but also, even more fortunately (also, conveniently) Athena and Helo's baby continues it's miracle curing; as well as curing Roslin's cancer last season, it's made Athena immune to the disease too. And, turns out the disease was pretty definitely left by the 13th colony, and also probably totally by accident since it's kind of like the common cold for the humans, which is pretty cool.

Meanwhile in Cylonia, Three tortures Baltar, believing him to be behind the disease, and he goes into his head with Chip Six and she sexes him up to keep his mind off the pain and he gets some weird Christ thing going on and, mid-torture, tells Three he loves her with all his heart, and it's all incredibly weird and icky.

And, back on Galactica, there's some definitely awesome shit going down. Simon gets to be the one they interrogate, seeing as how he's had little to no screentime since his first appearance way back in The Farm, and he's rather quickly forthcoming with all sorts of information, like 'the Cylons are searching for Earth too', and 'Baltar is still alive and we have him'. And then Apollo comes up with a plan to wipe out all the cylons forever; if they get in range of a resurrection ship and then kill their prisoners, the disease will transfer to the cylon fleet, and that'll be that. You have to make a kind of big leap of logic to actually buy that this makes any sense at all, but I can cope with doing that, and if you do, it's some seriously excellent moral quandary stuff. Helo freaks out on the whole genocide idea, because he is married to pretty excellent proof that the cylons are not irredeemable. Adama pussies out of actually making a decision here and passes the buck to Roslin, who, having been down on New Caprica for four months, doesn't hesitate to give Apollo's plan the go ahead. So, in spite of the fact that even his wife, an actual member of the race, supports wiping out the cylons, Helo takes matters into his own hands and kills all the prisoners before Galactica can get into resurrection ship range. And Adama totally lets him get away with it, because he's awesome, and the passing the buck was him not wanting to admit to Roslin that he agreed with Helo.

I seriously cannot believe how much the show has improved this season, because it was already absurdly good. Anyone involved in the creation of this show and it's continued existence; thank you so much.


Desperate Housewives 3x07 - Bang
Episode grade: A+

OH MY FUCKING GOD YES. Best episode ever. It's like, not even a close run thing. Totally floored me. Just way better than I ever expected out of this show.

So, it goes down like this; Bree confronts Orson about the whole spousal abuse thing, he claims self defence. Bree, as ever, accepts Orson's explanation, and decides to get revenge on Carolyn for feeding her more "lies" about Orson by telling Carolyn about Harvey's affair. Carolyn, never the most stable of characters (and on this show, that's really saying something) decides to go shoot Harvey up in the market where he works, only he hides himself in an office, so Carolyn holds all customers hostage. These inculde Julie Mayer and her love/hate blah blah just get it on already crush Austin, Edie, Lynette and Nora.

Outside the hostage market, Gabby wins the house in the divorce, but Carlos wins every single thing in it, since he taped his little trick last week. Gabby procedes to start destroying all the stuff Carlos won, and he retaliates by starting to destroy the house that she won. It's the kind of completely ridiculous yet strangely awesome thing this show did so well in it's early days, and not quite so well more recently. But then they learn about the hostage thing, and Gabby realises she's turning into a crazy shrew like Carolyn, and she and Carlos decide they're still in love, so what the hell are they getting divorced for. Woo!

Bree, on hearing the news of the hostage situation, decides to host a party. Naturally. Of course, her insane cheeriness melts a little when she realises a) some of her friends are in there and b) it's kind of her fault for driving Carolyn to this. Mostly Carolyn's fault for being an insane bitch, but still, Bree blames herself.

Back in the hostage market, Julie's freaking out and is impressed by Austin's calm, Susan is freaking out and tries to join the hostage exchange program (hee hee!) to get Julie out, Nora decides it's the perfect opportunity to start bickering with Lynette, and in all the trying to get Nora to shut the hell up, Lynette lets slip to Carolyn that Nora tried to seduce Tom a little. So Carolyn shoots Nora, and she dies in Lynette's arms and oh man. Lynette goes crazy ranting, and just as Carolyn is about to shoot her dead too, one of the other hostages beans her with a can of soup, so the shot hits Lynette in the shoulder, Austin tackles her to the ground and another hostage grabs the gun and kills Carolyn. Wowza.

So, you've got all storylines weaving together excellently, perfect mix of dark comedy and drama, and everyone's acting firing on all cylinders. Hard to choose from all the many, many amazing moments, but I think Tom's hamburger speech wins. Man did that choke me up but good. I'm not going to question why I watch this show again for a while, that's for sure. Lost writers, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?


Heroes 1x07 - Nothing To Hide
Episode grade: B

So, Niki is not dead, neither is ikiN. But ikiN's name is actually Jessica, apparently. I don't know when or how Niki learned that, but she did. But anyway, she's not much on the screentime this week; Matt and the Petrelli brothers get the bulk of it.

So, Matt's FBI friend thinks she's found Sylar, but, not so much. What she has found is Radioactive Man! So, with his radiation powers, he accidentally put his wife in a coma and freaked out rather. Matt uses his mind reading power to tell Radioactive Man his comatose wife's thoughts before she dies, which is a pretty nice scene. Later, he uses his mind reading power to discover that his wife has been cheating on him with one of his police buddies and clocks the guy in the face. He's totally going to hook up with the FBI chick, though, so it's all good.

At the Petrelli household, we finally meet Nathan's wife, who's wheelchair bound, and Peter does an excellent job of covering for Nathan when he's having trouble answering a reporter's questions about his time in Vegas, so Nathan gets hold of Isaac's missing painting that Simone has sold to Linderman. But then he tells Peter that Linderman wouldn't give it up. Whuh? I don't exactly know what the hell is going with that, but I do enjoy the brothers Petrelli's relationship, and Nathan's general asshattery.

And, more coincidence/fate Hero meetings; D.L. and Hiro combine their powers to save someone from a car wreck, but manage to do so without actually finding out each other's powers, I think. And Micah, being the son of two Heroes, has powers of his own, of course, his being the power of machinery-control or somesuch. His superhero name is totally Repair Man, anyway, and he uses his powers to call Jessica from a broken payphone and tell her where D.L. has taken him. Oh, and he totally knows about the Niki/Jessica thing. He's so cool.


Lost 3x06 - I Do
Episode grade: D

Flashbacks; Kate, only she's calling herself 'Monica', marries Cap'n Mal Reynolds, only he's calling himself 'Kevin'. But light up, light up, as if you have a choice, Kate can't keep up the pretense that she's not a fugitive, and drugs Mal and makes a break for it, because she's BORN TO RUN. And not even Nathan Fillion can make up for the invariable complete dullness of a Kate flashback to tell us that she is BORN TO RUN, just like every other Kate flashback.

Craphole Island; Locke and his band of merry men bury Eko right where he is, rather than having a grand ceremony back on the beach, because, per Locke, they've had too many funerals lately. That, there is actually good stuff, it's as shame this stuff was only, like, five seconds of the episode. Also, he marks Eko's grave with Eko's Jesus stick, and in doing so see something about 'looking to the north' written on it, so I'm sure we'll get right on with finding out what that and the four-toed statue are all about when we come back in February. In five second bursts each episode between the far more important Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, OFF COURSE.

Other Island; Somehow, Jack is suddenly by far the coolest character here, kind of excellently telling Benry that he's going to let him die. But then someone leads him into the surveillance room and he gets to watch Kate and Sawyer have sex in the cages they can get out of whenever they feel like it, but still don't, which is still incredibly fucking stupid. This seems to change Jack's mind, but then in the surgery, he deliberately fucks it up, tells the Others that Benry will die in an hour if he doesn't fix it and he's not doing that until Kate and Sawyer have got away. He calls them on walkie-talkie to tell Kate to run, instead of informing him of the whole Alcatraz situation of not actually being on Craphole Island, just tells him she can't leave him behind, and Picket holds a gun to Sawyer's head and threatens to shoot without actually firing for the whole enitre episode or so, and it's all very melodramatic and stupid.

Right now I just don't care, and I'm on the verge of giving up. Come February, Lost, you've got two episodes to win me back. Use them wisely.

My One Big Eyeball #5

Battlestar Galactica 3x06 - Torn
Episode grade: A

Seems like an 'A' grade is actually just a pretty average week for BSG at this point. It's just so very, very amazing. I just can't repeat that point enough, honestly.
So, Gaius is still chilling out on the cylon base star, only he's not so much 'chilling' as 'being constantly scared for his life', because if he doesn't prove his worth to the cylons over and over, they just might decide he's not worth keeping around after all. Right now, of the seven cylon models that actually exist, it's three votes to three, with the Sixes abstaining, on whether he should live. (Seems likely that Threes and Eights want to keep him, Dorals and Cavils want to airlock the son of a bitch. I don't know where the Simons or Leobens stand, Simon's too non-entity so far, and Leoben's too completely insane.) And also, Gaius might be one of the mysterious other five models himself, but probably not. Well, he tries to prove his worth by helping lead them to Earth, since he actually kind of knows the way, only someone's left a virus that only affects cylons in the path, and some of them think Gaius deliberately set up a trap. He doesn't help his case by totally lying about what he sees when he goes to investigate.
And, by the way, the base star set really is so totally awesome. Disco inferno!

Meanwhile, on Galactica, Gaeta uses Baltar's research to find the same path to Earth, and the humans seem to be much happier with the cylon in their midst; she's a different Sharon to Boomer, so she needs a new callsign, and everyone just makes 'chromedome' or whatever jokes, there's no "THAT FRAKKING THING SHOULD BE PUT OUT THE AIRLOCK"s at all! Anyway, Hotdog makes the only serious suggestion, so Lieutenant Valerii is now 'Athena'. Cool.
Also, Tigh and Starbuck put on their full-strength crazy and spend the episode trying to stir up a civil war between the New Caprica survivors and the guys who got away on Galactica, Pegasus and whatever other ships were with them, but Adama is just far too frakking awesome for that; he comes down and orders them both to shoot him in the head is they don't want to stop being crazy. OH YEAH. Starbuck relents, cuts her hair, and reconciles with little Kasey and her real mother. I think she'll be alright. Tigh, on the other hand, may not actually shoot Adama in the head, but he does tell him he fully intends to go even more crazy, so he'll just disappear into the fleet and do that, OK? Man, does Michael Hogan deserve so many awards.

There's a 'To be continued...' at the end, so I guess there must have been a cliffhanger? Every other week is a 'to be continued...' week, these days, I lose track. Oh right, I think Athena has the disease from the abandoned basestar, what with her being a cylon and all. We'll see!



Desperate Housewives 3x06 - Sweetheart, I Have To Confess
Episode grade: B+

Awesomely, the housewives minus Bree decide to get drunk out on the lawn! There's a lot more awesome to go round, but that alone makes up for, like, uh, mosquitos? But yeah, the drunk thing is so totally awesome.

Susan tries to avoid Ian, until she walks in on Mike and Edie totally doing it on his hospital bed, at which point she decides that maybe getting with Ian is not such a bad idea after all! And after the aforementioned drunkenness ensues, she decides to turn up at his house, forgetting about the fancy party he's hosting that he'd mentioned earlier, and procedes to throw up all noisily in his bathroom and have no actual recollection of it in the morning, but they get together afterwards, so it's all good? I guess? He's a pretty excellent match for her, really.

Tom buys a horribly decrepit restaurant without Lynette's approval and after an argument, ends up staying the night there. Crazy Nora assumes that this is the perfect time to make a move on him, but he realises that for all her lack of faith in his dreams, Lynette is way better for him than this hunk of batshit insanity, so he goes home and there's apologies and honesty all around. And then Lynette goes over to Nora's and incredibly awesomely threatens her if she ever goes near Tom again. Woo!

Carlos puts the con on Gabby, getting her to seduce him by planting info on a fake new job of his that Gabby would be missing out on a whole lot of money from if the divorce went through soon, if the job actually existed. And drunken lawn Gabby admits that actually, she still loves Carlos, so if they could go ahead and get the fighting over soon that'd be great, because it is starting to get a little tiresome.

And, in non-drunken news, Orson's crazy ex-neighbour Carolyn is prodded by her husband Harvey into giving an extremely fake apology to Bree, which she pretends to accept, then actually accepts when she realises that everyone is avoiding her at the country club because Carolyn's been telling them about Orson' psychotic tendencies. They have a pleasant meal together, in which Carolyn gives Bree a police report detailing Orson beating ex-wife Alma, and Harvey telling Orson about his affair with a girl called Monique. That'd be the Monique that somehow Mike knows THROUGH THE AMNESIA, and also Orson made weird comments to her unidentified corpse a couple of episodes back. I don't know what the hell, honestly.


Heroes 1x06 - Better Halves
Episode grade: B+

As the title suggested, it's Niki/ikiN focused, of course. But first! We see, I think, our first glimpse of adorkable present day Hiro's transition to totally badass future Hiro when he and Ando hide in the bathroom at a 'friendly' poker game while everyone else gets slaughtered, instead of using his super powers to save them. But Ando actually makes himself useful for once, telling Hiro that maybe when he gets better control of his powers, he can come back in time and save those guys? Excellent. It's a shame you're pretty likely to die and be the major catalyst in Hiro's character growth, Ando.

Meanwhile, Mohinder's friend (apparently named Eden though they've never mentioned that in the show, I don't think), who is so totally in league with Claire's creepy dad turns out to be in league with Claire's creepy dad. Surprise! Mohinder is heading back to India, no really, he totally means it this time, so Eden makes out with him as an incentive to stay. But he still goes! Mr. Bennet tells her to get him back. Ooooh.

Mr. Bennet also says "That's cool" upon learning of Hiro's spacetime-twisting power, which is pretty excellent. And he arranges a meeting with Claire's biological parents too, except they're actually just more henchmen of his. He sure does have a lot of henchmen. Claire seems to fall for the ruse, but then idiot Mrs. Bennet gives the game away, the fool. Also, I like that there seems to be no sexy feelings, unrequited or otherwise, between Claire and her friend Zack and I hope they keep that up, because it's kind of refreshing to have a TV show suggest that maybe a teenage boy and a teenage girl can be friends without either one of them have naughty thoughts about the other. And check out their Myspace pages! Cute.

Anyway, onto Niki. So, her jailbreak husband D.L. is back! And he's also a Hero! His power: walking through walls, or just generally passing through things. Wicked. He's certain that if he can just figure out who framed him (somehow he knows it's a woman, so, like, duh) he and Niki and Micah can be a happy family again! Only, unfortunately, ikiN is not down with that and, after taking a quick detour to slaughter everyone at Hiro's poker game, she tells Niki to take the money and run, take the money and run, take the money. But D.L. spots her trying to make a getaway, so we get our first bona-fide superhero fight! AWE. SOME. ikiN takes the reins, of course, but she's no match for D.L.'s ability to SITCK HIS HANDS INTO HER CHEST AND MAYBE FUCK AROUND WITH HER ORGANS OR SOMETHING? I dunno. Whatever, it ends with ikiN lying on the floor, maybe dead! But probably not.


Lost 3x05 - The Cost Of Living
Episode grade: B-

So, flashbacks do a pretty good job of fleshing out the transition from drug baron Eko in The 23rd Psalm and holy man Eko in ?. It's nothing we couldn't have pretty much guessed for ourselves from those two, but it's pretty interesting to watch anyway, what with the extremely Quentin Tarantino shot of Eko in full priestly attire walking out of the church clutching a blood-dripping sword and all. That stuff was fine.

And that's pretty much where the positive marks come in, because what goes down in present-day land? That shit is WACK, yo. And not in a good way. Is that allowed? Can I use that phrase not in a good way? ...Can I use that phrase in a good way? Anyhoo. It ends up with Eko dead, and man did I love Eko, yet somehow I just didn't care at all, and I've been puzzling out why that is? Well, basically, it was all a pretty massive cop out. So, Eko decided to say a big 'fuck you' to life, the universe and everything and not try to repent for all his past misdeeds and, I mean, "I ask for no forgiveness, for I have not sinned" was really bad-ass and all, but WHAT THE HELL, LOST. It took me a while to notice, since we haven't actually seen Eko in any state other than unconcious sine he completely failed to grasp the concept of 'blast doors' in last years finale, but WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? So, despite the fact that repentance has pretty much been his major driving force since we've known him, he has a crisis of faith for some reason and slowly comes to the realisation that he doesn't want to waste his life feeling sorry for himself or something? SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO SEE THAT ON SCREEN AT ANY POINT AT ALL IN, I DON'T KNOW, THE PREVIOUS FOUR EPISODES WHERE HE MADE NO APPEARANCE? LOST?

Oh, and also, Locke leads a bunch of merry men down to the Pearl station, and unlike Jack, he let's anyone come who wants to. Which is the perfect opportunity for Paulo and Nikki to come along, because you know how they've been itching to go on these treks ever since they crashed on the island, it's all they ever talk about, right? BECAUSE THEY'VE SURE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME. *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*. And they see a pirate on T.V. Well, a guy with an eyepatch. Do you think he has four toes? I think he has four toes.

And there's some stuff on Other Island with Jack and Juliet which, shockingly, is actually pretty cool; Juliet tells Jack he's just gotta save Benry from cancer, only unbeknowest to the security camera, the film she's silently showing him isn't To Kill A Mockingbird, it's Juliet Does The Bob Dylan Flashcard Thing And Tells Jack To Deliberately Fuck Up The Surgery So Cancer Kills Benry. Does she really want Benry to die, or is it just another mind game? I just don't know. I don't really care all that much, but still. I don't know.

Seriously though, unless next week's 'mini season finale' totally kicks my head in, which is looking increasingly unlikely, the long wait to February just won't seem that long.

Any Doe

Torchwood Episode 1x02 - "Day One"

Episode Grade: C+


In spite of the fact that the first episode aired literally like two minutes before this one, we get a previously montage, but fuck that shit. So, hey, I'm suffering from major flu bug right now. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but for real, I haven't had it this bad, like, ever. I don't know if that will affect my performance, but I'm guessing maybe, because I can't seem to convince myself that the 'affect' in this sentence shouldn't be an 'effect', and I'm sure I should know that without even thinking about it. Anyway, enough of that.

Kaiser Chiefs shout away as Gwen and Rhys ten pin bowl. Gwen gets a strike, and looks rather pleased with herself. Hey, have you noticed how most all of the major characters in this show have four letter names? Especially since Suzie offed herself. I mean, I know Toshiko is technically seven, but she's often referred to as Tosh, so I'd still be watching my back if I were you, Ianto. Yeah, apparently illness makes me go off on irrelevant tangents all the time. Or maybe that's an attempt to distract myself from the lameness of this episode. You decide!

OK, so, Gwen and Rhys are now at a restaurant, he's all giddy about her first day at her new "special ops" job tomorrow, she's... kind of not, for some reason. Apparently it's already time for my first Buffy reference, because this scintillating conversation is interrupted when Rhys spots a big meteor falling to earth. The effects here are more special and less "special" than they were on Buffy though, if you get my meaning. Speaking of "special" things though, Rhys's reaction to it is to ask "Bloody hell, is that a plane on fire?" Honestly. By the by, I do apologise for the absurd number of Buffy references I'm chucking in, but, I wouldn't make them if the similarities weren't there, I'm sure. While we're on that subject though, I know I'm going to make some mention of how similar this episode is to the second episode of that other spin-off show at some point, so it might as well be here. Gwen drags Rhys running out of the restaurant without actually paying, which you'd think might cause some reaction in the staff, and tries to chase the meteor, which clearly isn't going to do any good. She gets a text message that just says "Torchwood" and lines it up neatly in the centre of the screen, which is infinitely more aesthetically pleasing than any text I've ever seen, and tells Rhys she has to go to work.

Credits. The theme tune remains nothing on Doctor Who's, of course, but it's frequently getting stuck in my head now, which I guess must be worth something. This episode written by Chris Chibnell, whom tv.com (no more or less reliable than imdb, I've found. So, not very) tells me wrote more episodes than anyone else this season. Let's hope the others are better than this.

The Torchwood van (which could do with an excellent nickname like Metallicar, but right now I've got nothing), trundles along the motorway, heading for the meteor. Gwen marvels at all the surveillance gear they have in the van. Tosh tells her all about it, Gwen's picks up on one of the things as being a police database, and objects; "you shouldn't have this!" Jack tells her "You might want to stop saying 'you' and start saying 'we'", and let me tell you now, he's got plenty more anvils where that one came from. After a long aerial shot of the van driving that makes me feel like I'm playing Spy Hunter, only without the awesome soundtrack or the fun of actually playing it, they pull up outside the crash site, only to discover that the Army (or, as Owen puts it "the amateurs") have got there first.

Jack tells Torchwood to take the "usual formation", Gwen asks what this is, Owen tells her "it varies". Heh. Everyone ignores her questioning how exactly that is possible. Before they're past the Armyteur blockade, Gwen contrivedly decides to run back and grab a toolbox so she can be denied entry because the Armyteur guy doesn't believe she's part of Torchwood, "And even if you were..." "...You'd have put out the welcome banners," Jack finishes.

So, down to the meteor. "Bog standard space debris," Owen informs. Jack and Owen do some casual tossing about of tools, so when Owen asks her to pass a chisel, Gwen (after snitting that her name is 'Gwen', not 'sweetheart', "one syllable, I'm sure you can manage it") throws it to him, only he totally fumbles the catch and it embeds itself in the meteor, which expels a load of glowy purple gas. Jack quickly tosses gas masks to everyone, the gas goes off in search of unprotected victims, Gwen looks around guiltily.

Outside a nightclub (which, far as I can tell, is actually called Night Club, like, WAY TO NAME YOUR CLUB IMAGINITIVELY THERE), a young girl is drunkenly crying on the phone to, presumably, her boyfriend's answerphone, because she's been standing around on her own, waiting for him to show up. The purple gas approaches, appears to fondle her breasts a little, then flies into her mouth. She heads back to the club, the bouncer refuses to let her back in, but changes his mind pretty quickly when she plants a kiss on him. And, man, she seriously looks like Kim from Sugar Rush. I actually did think it was Olivia Hallinan first time round, but apparently not.

Inside the club, she finds a random guy, drags him into the toilets and starts making out with him. He halts her to point out that he doesn't even know her name, she just carries on regardless, he has no objections to that. With nary a nod to foreplay, they go straight to screwing on the countertop and literally only a couple of seconds pass before he's telling her "I don't think I can hold on". She tells him to just go ahead and shoot his load, and his screams of pleasure get more and more over the top, then he explodes into gold dust. Maybe if he'd paid attention in school, he'd have known about the dangers of unprotected sex.

Torchwood Hub. In spite of Jack's protests, Gwen is repeatedly apologising to anyone and everyone for setting the purple penetration gas free. Owen is a dick about it, of course. Gwen tells them that whatever it is she's set off, she'll sort it, and anyway, "it was just gas, wasn't it? It can't be too bad, can it?" Owen snarks "Right, because gas never did anyone any harm," which, you know, fair point. Jack weighs in with the positives; they've got a good sample of the meteor. That's it. Owen brings up negatives; alien gas on the loose, they don't know what it is, why it's here or what it's going to do. He kind of stretched that point to make it seem like the negatives greatly outweigh the positives just a little. Tosh tells him to give Gwen a break already, Ianto coughs politely and tells them he may have a lead; nightclub death with unusual circumstances. Hi, Ianto! Bye, Ianto!

The imaginitevly named Night Club. Well, I haven't actually had a clear view on the second word yet, but it's definitely Night something, and that would be pretty funny. Couple of policemen hang around outside, Torchwood van pulls up and Jack gets out and just says "Torchwood" and they let him straight in. Gwen gets stopped again, this time because one of the coppers recognises her. He gives her an impressed "Bloody hell, look at you all posh!" and wants to hear all about it, but Gwen doesn't get a chance to make up any lame stories before Jack comes back out to hurry her. And hey, I've got a clear look now; it's actually "Night Spot", which really isn't much better than "Night Club" would have been anyway.

Inside the club toilets, a rather shellshocked bouncer is showing the Torchwood guys the pile of dust that used to be Mr. "Names are overrated". Jack asks how he even knows it used to be a body, and there's another of the many immensely gratuitous flexings of the post-watershed muscles in this episode as we flash back to the bouncer masturbating furiously to the security camera image of the first of said flexings. Jack tells him they need to see the security camera footage.

Cut to another room, and fine, it wouldn't make sense for the Torchwood crew to not watch the footage, but that doesn't mean I need to see it a THIRD time. Everyone is rather shocked, Jack quips that the guy "just came and went", Owen says it's how he'd like to go, because he's an ass. Gwen tries actually doing something useful and asks if the bouncer knows the girl's name, if they arrived together and suchlike. No luck. Jack thanks him for his help and says they have all they need. First order of business; the cover up. Jack orders a faked suicide with a body with face altered to look like the gold dust guy. Gwen's rather shocked that they have a supply of dead bodies on site. While Owen and Tosh run off to sort that out, Jack user a McGuffin counter to trace things into the alley where the purple gas of penetration found the girl, and there just so happens to be a security camera pointed straight at that spot. How convenient!

So, there's more watching of things we've seen before, Gwen melancholily points out that it's kind of her fault that the guy's dead, what with the chisel throwing that let the gas out. How about we go ahead and blame Owen instead. Idiot needs to learn to catch. Jack dismisses this; "It'll get you nowhere, that kind of thinking", and, I don't know what it is, but I really liked his delivery on that one. In case we weren't sure where she stood on the whole issue of murder, Gwen asserts that they can't let the gas girl kill again. Wow, I totally thought you'd be in favour of continued killings, Gwen. Thanks for clearing that up!

A house, somewhere. Our gas girl just sits there, staring into space. Either because she's possessed right now, and the alien doesn't know what to do with human living, or because she's not possessed right now, and the human doesn't know what to do with the things she's done. A man, ostensibly her father, blathers on and on about whatever, and, as usual for this kind of scene, I don't give a damn what he's saying, it's background noise. Well, except when he gives gas girl a name; Carys. But otherwise, the point here as that she's unresponsive, so when she starts responding, his words do become important. She claims to not remember what happened last night, due to alcohol. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't even know if that's Carys talking right there. Dad asks if she's out again tonight, she responds with an absent "Yeah".

Torchwood Hub. Gwen asks what Jack's doing, he "explains" by technobabbling, Tosh actually explains that he's trying to figure out where the meteor came from. Gwen contrivedly parallels it with Rhys's job so that everyone can act all surprised that she has a boyfriend. Come on, there has to be a better way of working that into a conversation than this. Much awkwardness. Gwen asks what they do for fun, then. "I torture people in happy relationships," Owen offers, and, OK, I still don't like him, but that was awesome.

Back with Carys, she's standing in the shower, crying, so I guess she was lying about the memory loss. And, since I know you're keeping track, no visible nipples.

Torchwood Hub. Tosh has a computer going comparing the image of Carys from the CCTV to the face of every human being ever or something, Gwen complains that "you can't have this!" because it's against civil liberties and blah blah, Jack snits "Still doing that 'you' instead of 'we' thing?" and OH MY GOD I GET IT ALREADY. Gwen has still not fully adjusted to the new job. I FUCKING GET IT. CCTV's too low res to have a clear image, so the software can only narrow it down to 119 possibilities. Owen complains, Ianto offers to sort through the 119 possibilites "the old fashioned way." Off everyone's looks, he adds an awesome "With my eyes!" I love Ianto. Gwen asks about the fingerprints she took, but no luck there. Owen snarks at her uselessly, Gwen snaps that at least she's trying to help, which so fucking word. After more blather, they eventually hit upon a helpful plan; looking at the adresses of their 119 suspects and seeing who's anywhere near the club, is I think the gist of it.

In her room, Carys is in a bathrobe, brushing her hair, when she has a sudden stab of pain. She stares at herself in the mirror some, then gets another stab, and another. And if the screaming is any indication, they're getting worse each time. The doorbell rings, and somehow this seems to stop the pain. Man, I guess all that aspirin was a waste of money, huh? She rushes downstairs and answers; it's a postman. He cheerfully starts to tell her about the package he's got for her, and he didn't mean it like that, but Carys doesn't realise that and is straight away throwing him onto a bed and straddling. What an embarrassing mixup! Anyway, before he reaches explosigasm, gas masked Jack, with the others in tow, kicks down the door and points a gun at them. "Put your trousers on and get out! NOW!" Jack yells, then, in case we weren't sure he's even the same guy we knew and loved from Doctor Who, adds "Breaks my heart to say those words." Gwen's fumbling with her gas mask, and Carys makes a break for it right past her, but Owen catches her by chucking a pebble at her feet that cages her in a force field. Jack bitches at him for taking alien tech off the building without permission, which, we already saw what that can lead to, so, however helpful it was right there, damn right.

Torchwood Hub. Gwen leads a handcuffed Carys, who stares around in awe. While the others wander off to do whatever, Jack tells her to find out what she can from Carys. Gwen's like, "I don't know what I'm doing!", Jack points out that it's probably best not to say that in front of the prisoner. Ha!

Gwen takes Carys into one of the glass-fronted cells. A scared Carys asks if Gwen's MI5 or what, and also, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. Gwen tells her "I think you know, Carys." Carys asks how Gwen knows her name, and denies that she knows why she's here and also denies that she's done anything wrong, ever, and also denies that she shot Kennedy. Gwen calmly tells her that she knows there's something living inside Carys, and what it made her do, and tells her all about the guy she fucked to death. Carys has another pain spasm. Oh shit, no doorbells down here! And then the thing that is not Carys gets right up in Gwen's grill (well, as much as she can do with a big glass wall in between them) and growls "You broke my shell!" Gwen rolls her eyes and tells the thing that is not Carys that it can forget about invading Earth and enslaving us. The thing that is not Carys is like, "WTF, dude, I just want to score some orgasms." I'm serious. Gwen's kind of weirded out, as you would be, and more pain spasming; Carys takes some control back and beats herself against the wall, which causes Gwen to rush into the cell, which, not the smartest move ever. You total moron. Carys pleads for help, the thing that is not Carys takes control again and makes out with Gwen. Who is totally into it! You guys, I swear, it's the other way round. The lesbians come to me.

Upstairs, Owen sees this going on on CCTV, and instead of doing anything about the MORTAL PERIL Gwen is, to his knowledge, in right now, he just sits back and enjoys the show. Tool tool tool! He eventually gets round to alerting the others, who also just watch and make light. So I guess they already know she's safe? Somehow? And that there's no chance of the thing that is not Carys making a break for it through the cell door that Gwen left open? Jack eventually decides they should do something about it, and he and Tosh rush down there, while Owen sits there and starts recording the camera. Total. Fucking. Tool.

Gwen's starting to undress the thing that is not Carys, but it pushes her away and growls that no penis = no party. Not in those exact words. Carys takes control again, pleads for help some more. Gwen promises to help her, which NO NO NO! Don't ever do that! Promise to try, sure, but you promise help, you know someone's going to wind up dead. Right then, Gwen's phone starts ringing, and she steps out of the cell to answer it. Rhys asks her what she's up to, so we can have some totally hilarious wacky hijinks where Gwen is all "I'm definitely not totally making out with a teenage girl!" Totally hilarious in opposite world. And also so they can have a little angst about how her new job means they spend no time together and she doesn't even know when she'll be home, though, as it's her first day, it's mostly only potential angst right now. She hangs up, and leans back against a glass wall to take some deep breaths, which is interrupted when Noodles jumps at the wall and scares the crap out of her. Aww, such a cute ickle murderous beast. Yes you are! Yes you are! Ahem. Gwen takes one last look at Carys and gets herself the fuck out of there.

Upstairs, Owen slow claps and condescends "That is what I call a methodical investigation!" Gwen has had quite enough of his shit and pushes him up against the wall all hardcore and spits that that girl's body has been taken over by something horrible and this is no fucking joke. Owen sneers that Carys is a murderer, "and you're the one that wanted her caught. How come all of a sudden she's your best friend?" I hate him so much! Jack comes to break them up and awesomely tells Gwen that "strictly speaking, throttling the staff is [his] job." Hee! What little tension was left unbroken by that is totally shattered by Ianto's arrival with Chinese takeaway.

So, everyone's gathered around the table eating Chinese and telling funny stories, but we come in halfway through so we can't possibly hope to get it, and all the characters appear to have been there for the whole thing, so it doesn't serve to help us empathise with one of them (I've got the hat trick!), it's just irritating. Jack announces his need for a bathroom break, and the others take the opportunity to share their gossip about him; they don't know Jack. (I think I'm going to use that Jack pun far too much. Sorry about that.) Owen assumes he's gay, Tosh tells Gwen that she disagrees with Owen, Ianto adds "And I don't care." He's awesome. They banter about a bit more, until Gwen hears a noise and they all go quiet to work out what it is; Carys crying. Way to kill the mood there, Carys. Gwen stands up and asks what they're doing eating Chinese while Carys is fighting for her life, Jack rather bursts her self-righteous bubble by pointing out that the computers are doing technobabble this and McGuffin that. But Gwen's still got a good hefty anvil to throw; "You've been hidden down here too long, spending so much time with alien stuff, you've lost what it means to be human." Ow, my head. Jack tells her to go ahead and remind them what it means to be human and oddly (not from our point of view, but as we've established, these guys don't know his deal) specifies "in the 21st century".

So Gwen montages away on the computers and fully prints out Carys's entire life, including "emails discussing the relative merits of Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger" and sticks it to the walls. Jack, genuinely intrigued, asks why she did that; Gwen explains that it's not about gases or meteors, they have a trapped girl that they need to save, and right now Carys is losing the battle, so they need to find something to make her hold onto life. Jack just looks at her, impressed, and Barrowman plays this pretty excellently, and then he gushes at her a little. Gwen suggests bringing in Carys's dad, and Jack apparently forgets everything that happened not five seconds ago and tells her their priority is to contain the alien threat. Whuhuh?? Tosh calls them over for some new technobabble.

The purple gas of penetration is releasing powerful pheromones, hence Gwen's making out with her earlier, which she embarrassedly admits to now as though Owen's "methodical investigation" quip earlier hadn't made it obvious that the others knew about that. Jack asks if Gwen still wants to put Carys's father in there, and she's all "God no, we can't let any man in there". That is so very gross. The girls have a sudden "Oh shit, where's Owen?" look and they go rushing down to the cells.

Where Owen is standing around naked in Carys's cell, looking pissed off. And, seriously, what the fuck is this guy doing on the Torchwood staff? Not only does he have no useful skills and is a date rapist, but apparently he also likes to paint himself red and run around the bullpen and then act surprised when he loses an arm. I mean, seriously, while I may complain about him being a dick to everybody, I totally accept that all too many of those types of people exist in the real world, but if he's stupid enough to walk into that cell, it stretches my suspension of disbelief to accept that he hasn't won a Darwin award already. Fortunately for him, he's so obnoxious that even an alien gas for whom orgasms are like heroin refuses to sleep with him, I guess, because the thing that is not Carys just took his swipecard.

Upstairs, Jack confronts the thing that is not Carys, and I guess it knows that it can't compete with Jack in the pheromone stakes, because it doesn't appear to even try for that and instead goes straight to attempting to beat him to death with a morning star. Jack's totally whooping it's stolen ass though... until she grabs hold of his hand in a jar. Jack immediately yells "Put it down! That's worthless to anyone but me!" which a) that's a whole heck of a lot of words to yell in sudden panic and b) that's just about the last thing you want to tell her in this situation. And, about the hand, since I said I'd mention this; of course it's The Doctor's severed non-fighting hand. It took me way too long to figure that out, for real. Jack threatens to shoot, but they both know it's an empty threat. Carys regains control to plead for help again momentarily, then the thing that is not Carys goes running out the door with Jack's hand.

There's some extended runnning about, of course, then in the Tourist Info room that Ianto appears to run as a front for Torchwood, Jack catches up again. Ianto offers to do some violence, but Jack tells him to just open the door. Jack holds out his arms pleadingly and tells the thing that is not Carys to give him the jar, but instead it throws it into the wall before bolting. That was just mean! Jack, distraught, cradles the hand lovingly, and thankfully does not say anything along the lines of "We even have a love life, of a sort", because that would be so gross, y'all. Tosh and Gwen arrive upstairs and there's further ridiculously amounts of running about outside, but the thing that is not Carys has totally eluded them by now. And this time it's not even a stretch for me to claim that it's entirely Owen's fault that it's been let out into the world!

The Hub. Gwen's scolding Jack like he's a child with his hand in the cookie jar (I'm so sorry) because a hand in a jar is apparently more important to him han Carys's life. He doesn't even try to excuse himself or explain, just tells her to maybe get her police friends to do something useful for once and find Carys. She makes some lame quip about how she'll tell them it's a code mauve or whatever; "woman possessed by gas knobbing fellas to death". Making jokes, Gwen? HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN ALREADY?? Owen jumps in to the room because apparently he actually has something useful to offer at last.

So, in his operating theatre or whatever, he tells them technobabble this and McGuffin that and squiggly line squiggly line. The purple gas of penetration is going to cause Carys's heart rate to triple, brain to expand and lungs to shrink which will eventually result in her exploding, which Owen demonstrates by doing all this to a rat and exclaiming "Rat jam!" Even when he's being useful, he's fucking gross.

Carys Goldfrapps her way around Cardiff with a camera right up in her face for a while, and there's way, way too many "look at all the sex in advertising" shots because, check it out, this alien gas that is obsessed with sex IS A METAPHOR FOR OUR SEX OBSESSED CULTURE! That's so deep.

Torchwood Hub. Gwen's policing, as ever; they need to think like Carys to work out where she'd go. Jack pessimists that they can't really do that when they don't know who if it's Carys or the gas that's steering. But Tosh figures it's a combination of both; the gas just wants sex, and probably won't mind letting Carys choose who with. Gwen lays it out; "You're desparate for sex, because that's what the thing inside you needs, but you know it will kill. Where do you go?" Owen suggests he'd pay Gwen a visit, everyone glares at him, he defensively cries "It's just a joke." Thing about jokes, Owen, their main feature ought to be being actually funny. You lose. Again. Jack's thinking "brothels, nightclubs, anywhere there's eager men", Tosh knowingly says "I know what I'd do," but we don't get to hear what that is because we cut to what Carys is actually doing. I guess we're supposed to intuit that Tosh has the right idea though.

Some seedy flat somewhere, the guy whose answerphone Carys was crying to back when we first met her rants at her about how she should have called, because "Bethan might have been in", and the basic gist appears to be that he is cheating on this Bethan with Carys. The thing that is barely Carys tells him "I could kill you." He's all "I could bloody kill you," but she/it corrects him. "If I wanted to, I could kill you. Now." He still hasn't picked up on the intense weirdness and sleazily tells her she's a lovely girl and all, but he's not leaving Bethan. "You were my first, see," the thing that is quite Carys continues, "I never told you because I thought you'd laugh. And you were crap." He still thinks she's just a stupid little girl getting clingy and continues to be dismissive. The thing that is almost entirely Carys gives him one last chance; "Do you love me, Eddie? Did you ever love me?" He's like "Of course I fucking don't." Fail! "You could have saved yourself" Carys tells him, and gives into the gas and sexes him to death. I don't much like the episode as a whole, but it does have quite a few scenes like that one that are pretty excellent on their own.

Later, Jack and Gwen burst in to find the pile of gold dust that used to be Eddie, and Jack confirms that Tosh figured it out. He makes a quip about how it's lucky she's young; "work your way through my back catelogue, we'll be here till the sun explodes." It's a brave attempt Jack, but you're fooling no one. We know you've misplaced your mojo.

And now we have a trip in the Torchwood van. And I've got the nickname all sorted; it's The Symmetric Hyena. No, no, hear me out, right. Now, I have a weird love of anagrams and the whole thing with the title of this show means that this is my perfect opportunity to exert that love, so it's going to crop up all over the damn place in the recaps, OK? So, what the fuck I'm on about with The Symmetric Hyena; Jack is Fred, of course, Tosh is clearly Velma, which leaves Gwen as Daphne. Owen is fucking Scrappy Doo. Capiche? So, everyone's trying to figure out what the hell they should do now, like, stop the whole of Cardiff from having sex? They all laugh at how stupid that is. Tosh wonders why the purple gas of penetration picked Carys as its host, Gwen assumed, as I did, that it was just random (Hence post title. Come on, I didn't have much to work with.) and that conversation is too removed from discussion of sex to have any part in this episode, so that's as far as it goes. Everyone relies on Gwen to figure Carys/not Carys's next move, seeing as how she did a PhD in Carys Studies earlier, but she's got nothing. Jack asks about Carys's job; Gwen knows she's a receptionist but can't remember where, Tosh gets on her Apple Mac Guffin and finds it out; she's a receptionist at Conway Clinic. Which, for whatever reason, Owen knows is a fertility clinic, ie. sperm donors. So, bingo.

Conway Clinic. Girl behind the counter asks what Carys is doing there, she's not supposed to be working today. And also, why the fuck is she ranting like "It needs more energy! NEEEEED MORE LIGHT!!!". The thing that is definitely not Carys any more answers her with a punch in the face. Succinct. Someone somewhere tells Mr. Tungsten (or, that's what it sounded like to me) that Room 1 is ready for him, he goes in, the thing that is not Carys is waiting for him.

Back to The Symmetric Hyena. Jack hands Gwen a gun, she's like, "What's this for?". He's like, "Do I need to draw a diagram?" She's like, "Yeah, actually, I've never used one before". Jack and all the Americans watching this show on the BitTorrent network are like "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, I THOUGHT SHE WAS A COP!"

Clinic. Carys is telling another guy to relax, and let her do her thing. He tells her "I don't think so, love, I'm gay." Ho ho.

Hyena. Gwen wants to know what they're actually going to do if and when they find Carys. Tosh explains that her tests show that Earth's atmosphere is toxic to the gas, so without a host body, it won't survive long. So, maybe I'm missing something here, but if Earth's atmosphere is toxic to it, why would it come here in the first place? Are our orgasms really that good? Anyway, I guess some point between this scene and zero seconds later when the Hyena's parking, they devise the actual plan, but we don't get to see that, so it can be a "surprise". They arrive at the clinic and charge in, guns blazing. Overly long sequence of everyone barging into rooms to find nothing but piles of gold dust, and eventually Owen finds the droids they're looking for. Everyone comes in and surrounds the thing that is not Carys, levelling guns at it, and it... starts reciting bad poetry. Odd. Owen exposits that the body won't hold much longer; "any second now, she's rat jam." The thing that I don't think is Carys but who can tell any more begs for just one more, begs Gwen to "make me feel human". Gwen reminds her about the lack of penis, and Jack offers himself; "I've got a surplus of life, I'm giving it away." So we're meant to think that Jack will free her because, remember, he can't die, and Tosh and Owen will be all "WTF, dude", only, surprise! That's not happening at all! See, Gwen offers to host the thing instead, because she can't bear to let Carys die, and every acts like this is all a spur of the moment thing, and as soon as the gas comes out of Carys, Gwen throws down the force field pebble and traps it. Or maybe it really was all spur of the moment. Who knows? Who cares? Anyway, the gas is trapped, Owen creates some extremely lame tension by worrying that the gas will outlive the pebble's battery, and then the gas itself turns to dust. It's more brick red than gold though. Jack crumbles a handful of it on the floor and muses "Travel halfway across the universe for the greatest sex, and still end up dying alone", the total emo. Gwen kisses him on the lips and thanks him, and he's all "Huh."

Next day. Gwen returns Carys to her dad, and they hug, and they cry. Jack smiles at the not entirely tragic ending.

Torchwood Hub. Gwen takes Carys's life down from the walls. Jack tells her that "everyone else is off doing... whatever it is they do when they're not here." Gwen shrugs that she wanted to finish off, and asks how long he's been there. He doesn't answer, but instead tells her not to let the job consume her, because then she might FORGET HOW TO BE HUMAN! OK, he doesn't say that. Thankfully. Gwen asks him who he is, what with all the immortality and "the 21st century is when it all changes" and all that. Jack, again, does not answer, and just tells her to go home and eat lasagne and kiss her boyfriend and be normal.

So she does. Only she totally doesn't pay the slightest attention to whatever Rhys is babbling about, which the soundtrack is drowning out even if I did care. He asks if he's boring her. Not yet, but it's a pretty inevitable side effect, isn't it, Mickey? And we end once again with a "Look how pretty Cardiff is!" shot.

Next week: Ghost in the machine! Future echoes!