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.