Torchwood Episode 1x08 - "They Keep Killing Suzie"Episode grade: A+
After the usual Jack's usual "Arming the human race against the future" spiel, we get some actual previouslies for the first time; an extremely brief reminder of exactly who the hell Suzie was which is probably a little too brief to be of any help to anyone who hadn't seen
the first episode anyway. But still, it's nice to know that continuity will be making the occasional appearance on this show. Also making cameo appearances this week; snappy dialogue, good pacing, actual use of ensemble cast and a rather excellent detective played by one Yasmin Bannerman, previously seen being awesome in
Doctor Who as
Jabe. So, let's get this wild ride going. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.
Straight into the action, the Symmetric Hyena pulls up in a generic suburban street, the A team step out, all wearing sunglasses, which is kind of dorky, but I guess it
is pretty sunny. Jack shakes hands with Jabe, she introduces herself as "Detective Swanson", Torchwood being the super-secret organisation that it is, she already knows who he is. He attempts a little flirting (Old Jack! Hurrah!), but Swanson is decidedly unreceptive and gets right down to business; there's been a few rather grisly murders going down, she explains the details, but they're pretty unnecessary. Joyfully, we're spared bitching from Owen about how they should be above such day to day, petty concerns as random murders, which I was totally expecting, and instead Swanson leads the crew straight into the building, where Gwen OMGs at the reason they've been called; someone's smeared "TORCHWOOD" on the wall with the victims' blood.
Credits! Already! Wow, teasers are short when you put in exactly what they need to contain and nothing more. Initial intelligence had the title down as just "They Keep Killing", but, unlike some of the other name changes, I imagine the plan on this one was always to add the last word, they just held that back until after "Everything Changes" aired to keep up the pretence that Suzie was going to be in the regular cast. This episode written by Paul Tomalin & Daniel McCulloch. I guess it takes two people to write an episode this awesome, which I can't really complain about, but I think I do have grounds to complain that these two are currently the only
Torchwood writers not considered important enough to get their own Wikipedia pages. Oh and hey, now that they've got up to
"Army Of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" in the U.S., some folks on the TWoP forum have been noting that the
Torchwood theme is used as incidental music in those episodes, which is pretty cool stuff. I promise to find some reason for negativity by the end of this recap.
Swanson tells Jack they've found a few of the killer's hairs and are working forensic magic on them as we speak. Jack thanks her then tells her to get her people the hell out of there, because they're not cool enough to see Torchwood's special equipment. Swanson does as she's told, but on her way out snits "It was only a matter of time." And of course Jack has to pry, so Swanson can get in his face telling her that Torchwood are big mean bullies and Jack is totally directly responsible for these people's deaths because someone was bound to get pissed off with him and go on an insane killing spree sooner or later. I can't really find a flaw in that argument. Owen rolls his eyes and shuts the door on her, Gwen looks slightly bemused like she's just been told that actually, it's an urban legend, and Sweden doesn't have the highest suicide rate in Europe at all (The correct answer is Lithuania). Owen pointlessly snarks that if they know it's someone they've pissed off, they can narrow it down to "ooooh... four or five million?" See, I can always rely on him to provide reason for negativity: Shut up, Owen. Oh, but then Jack makes his line worthwhile again by adding "And that's just the humans" and making it sort of funny. Well, looks like that one can't count. Tosh is back in the Hyena, working her Apple Mac Guffin, but it can't find any link between any of the victims, or any record of them having anything to do with Torchwood. Swanson's got the DNA results back, which suggest a Caucasian male in his early forties who likes smoking and drinking tequila (and that right there is where you know he's evil), but don't match any DNA profiles. Also, he has a weird chemical compound in his blood, which Owen recognises immediately, and is duly highly concerned by: it's retcon. (And, man, if I was making a list of my favourite things about this show, somewhere near the top I would put the fact that they have made retcon into a chemical. That is seriously so awesome.)
Hub. Ianto sullenly wanders into the meeting late, where Owen is showing chemical structures on his big flashy screen and expositing for newbies that retcon is "the magic ingredient of the amnesia pill". Gwen surmises that this means the guy is someone they've given the pill to, Owen wonders whether he's just now remembered that he's a serial killer, or if 'serial killer' is a side-effect of the Retcon. Jeepers. Gwen's fairly understandably all "Dude, you gave
me that stuff!" but Jack laughs it off with a "You'd better stay away from sharp objects then!" Haha, yeah. Um. See, I think it's maybe that kind of cavalier attitude towards them that leads to your employees
going crazy and/or
keeping robotic killing machines in the basement, Jack. I'm sure they have courses about that. Ianto reports that 'someone we've given Retcon' narrows down their list of suspects to 2008. Owen is, for real, actually jumping up and down with glee wondering "What if they all become psychotic?" He is so creepy. Tosh is on my side with that; see, she's totally cool. Jack sets her and Ianto to narrowing down the 2008 suspects to those who fit Swanson's profile, and tells Owen and Gwen to try to find a link between the victims. Gwen suggests asking the victims themselves, Jack and Owen are immediately all "NO WAY IN HELL", because, unlike her, they worked with Suzie for... months? Years? I don't know. Anyway, point is, they knew her, she was a friend, or at least an ally, and that pesky Glove destroyed her, and they ain't letting that happen again. Cool. Gwen insists that Torchwood is partially responsible for the mess that's going on, so they should be the ones to clear it up.
...And apparently, even though this is in direct opposition to Torchwood's usual modus operandi, that's all it takes for Gwen to win Jack over. He just can't resist those puppy dog eyes. So, Ianto standing by, looking grim as ever, Jack gets the Glove out of storage, expositing that it washed up in Cardiff around 40 years ago. Owen idly comments that they never gave it a cool name, which confuses Tosh; "I thought we called it the Resurrection Gauntlet?" Owen sarcastically reiterates the 'cool' part, and shit, I've got to take his side on this one. Ianto, with grim determination (which is hilarious, considering the task); "What about the Risen Mitten?" Well played, tea boy.
Med Bay. Everyone's kind of nervous, Jack explains as he puts on the Mitten that Suzie only got resurrection times of two minutes through practice; the rest of them will likely not be able to get more than thirty seconds. Tosh sets up a camera recording and tells us the dead guy is called 'Alex Arwen', and they're ready to go. Jack sticks his beMittened hand on the corpse's forehead, and gets all pain and/or orgasm faced. Gwen asks how it works; "You just sort of feel, like... reaching into the dark," Jack explains. But you reach into the dark, you never know when something might be waiting to bite you. Jack jerks his hand back like he got an electric shock, and Alex is still dead as a doornail. Jack apologises, and tries to hand the Mitten off to Owen, who refuses it on the grounds that they all tried it before, and Suzie was the only one who could ever get it to work. Gwen points out that she's never tried it, Jack wordlessly hands it over, looking a little concerned. Gwen says "it's cold", Jack tells her it'll warm up and babbles some nonsense about it relying on compassion and whatever. You have to believe in the love, or the time kompression will kill us all! Gwen gives it a go, and Alex immediately bursts into life; Ianto starts his stopwatch going, Jack starts yelling at the guy. Because that is the first thing you want to see when you've been brought back to life.
THERE MUST BE SOMETHING MORE!!! That's not what Jack's yelling, it just seemed appropriate. Very appropriate, actually, thinking about it. Shit, when did I turn into a fangirl? And, since I think I do this quite often, I think I should mention that when I talk about 'fangirls', I'm not necessarily referring solely to females, or to blithering idiots. It takes all sorts. So, dead Alex is hysterical and "Who the hell are you people?" and "I want to go home" and the usual, Gwen tries to be the soothing good cop to Jack's bad cop, but neither of them can get anything useful out of him before he's gone again. Gwen begs Jack to let her try again, but resurrection don't strike the same place twice. Ianto is amazed that she could get 24 seconds on her first try. Owen snarks "Give Ianto a stopwatch and he's happy," Ianto gives the first actual smile I think we've seen since Lisa and tells him "It's the button on the top." Jack asks Gwen, who is looking mighty dishevelled, if she wants to stop.
Cut to Tosh getting the surveillance set up for victim #2, Mark Roscoe, so I guess not. This guy doesn't wake as soon as Gwen touches him, and neither he nor Gwen are even nearly as shocked, he just looks around the room in confusion. Jack tries the friendly approach this time. Mark asks after his wife, Jack smoothly lies that they're looking after her and presses for details on his attacker. Bizarrely, it turns out that this actually works a lot better than yelling, and they manage to get a fair amount out of Mark before he starts getting hysterical; he knew the guy from something called 'Pilgrim', his name is Max, and there was a woman there who knew him much better. Tosh starts googling for Pilgrim+Max (actual top results; an electronics store in Newcastle, a quick summary of this very episode and something about the Canterbury Tales), while Jack insistently asks for the woman's name; just before he kicks the bucket again, Mark croaks out "Suzie". Ianto calls time; one minute, five seconds. Owen muses that there are a lot of women in the world named Suzie, Jack points out that they're probably aren't too many with an obvious connection to this case; "We've been talking to the wrong corpse." Awesome.
And then they spend the next five minutes not talking to the right corpse, which seems a little odd after that announcement. But I'm not complaining; these first ten minutes have been dynamite, and the next five are excellent too. I knew this episode kicked some major buttocks, but I'd forgotten it was awesome even before Suzie came back.
Dining Room, which seems to also be a sort of conference room. Tosh has tracked down Pilgrim already. They are not fooling around here; no time wasted. I love this episode so very much. So, Pilgrim; "Religious support group, more like a debate society, meaning of life, does God exist, all that stuff. The point is, it was tiny. More like a hobby, run by Mark Briscoe's wife, Sarah." Which would be why he was so concerned about her, nice little detail. Tosh continues; Sarah had all the Pilgrim information stored in a wardrobe, "hand written and photocopied, that's why we couldn't find any records, she isn't even online." So they
did take a while tracking this down, we just totally skipped over that part. Awesome! See, nine times out of ten, I'm sure they'd have spent ten minutes of the episode doing detectiving on that, and it would have been kind of dull. There's no actual record of Suzie or Mark in Sarah's Pilgrim files, because she didn't even keep a register, so we're going to have to do a little more detectiving, but still. Owen remains convinced that it's a different Suzie, because theirs wouldn't be down with "all that support group bollocks". Gwen asks how he can be sure, was he particularly close with Suzie? Owen shrugs that she "kept herself to herself", and the others nod in agreement. Jack decides it's time they got to know Suzie better.
Which still doesn't mean groping around in the darkness for her spirit; they've taken the Hyena to a big ol' storage locker, which apparently contains all of Suzie's worldly possessions. Gwen's a little put out at the fact that when crew members die, Torchwood gets to keep everything they own. You'd think they'd have told her that when she signed up. None of the others appear to be surprised. See, I can still nitpick! Gwen asks Jack what they'll do if she tries to leave her stuff to Rhys, Jack tells her straight "We'll stash him away too." She thinks he's joking. Cool little shot from inside the locker of the door opening to the A team all shining their torches at the camera, and Jack gestures at the pile of boxes inside and dramatically intones "This is the life of Suzie Costello". They all rummage around, and Tosh murmurs that "that's all we are in the end; a pile of boxes" which is, admittedly, no less stupid than when the same comment was made with
'meat' replacing 'a pile of boxes'. Gwen finds a picture of Suzie and her father and asks if he's still alive. Tosh tells her they don't know, Gwen's all "Surely you told him his daughter died", Tosh explains that Suzie was trying to escape when she died, and destroyed all her records so they'd have less chance of tracing her. "She was good at computers," Tosh reminisces fondly, "Well. She was good at everything." "She was good at murder, too," Owen adds, "Laugh a minute, that was Suzie." Heh. Jack also finds a book of Emily Dickinson poems, with just a small whiff of 'THIS IS IMPORTANT' in the air. And then he finds what they're looking for; proof of Suzie's connection to Pilgrim, which means it's time to bring her back. YAAAY!
Cool dramatic music and camera work as Jack pulls her frozen corpse out of the wall. Yeah, so, maybe it's kind of creepy to keep the bodies of your mutinous underlings around, but hell, you never know when they'll
come in handy.
Med Bay. Everyone hangs around Suzie's body awkwardly. Gwen's creeped out again by the fact that she's given herself, mind, body and soul, to Torchwood, and questions Jack about the whole keeping employee corpses frozen in the wall thing. "Rules and regulations," Jack says mechanically. See, they're sort of supposed to be the good guys on this show, so we get the whole 'arming the human race against the future' spiel as our motto, instead of the rather more sinister
"If it's alien, it's ours", but that's still the Torchwood Prime Directive. And it's commutative; "If it's alien, it's ours", but also "If it's ours, it's alien". And that's why they lock all your stuff away and stick you in the wall.
So, resurrecting Suzie. Let's do this thing. Owen checks that Ianto has his stopwatch ready, of course he does. Tosh apologises and tells them she's going over to her station like she's chickening out of actually having to look at Suzie, which she is, but she was at her station for the other two resurrections anyway, so there's really no need. Jack asks if any of the others want to back out too, but Gwen can't, and Owen wants to look macho, and Ianto is too emo to care. Gwen half-jokingly wonders how she's supposed to find empathy for Suzie when she tried to kill her, Jack smiles and says "You and me both." Forming emotional connections with your subordinates; that one's probably in the leadership handbook. Gwen just sucks it up and sticks the Mitten to Suzie's head. She gets the immediate deep breath like with first guy, but Suzie doesn't move. Owen starts to get a reading, some quick flashbacks to Suzie pointing a gun at Gwen and shooting Jack, but it's not working. "Just memories," Gwen sighs, "She's too far gone." Tosh asks what they do now, Jack, with disappointment tells her there's nothing they can do. Well, that was an anticlimax!
Owen brings up the sharktooth knife that Suzie killed all those people with; "It's made of the same metal as the glove." So, wait, I think this particular plot point is making a little more sense than it did first time around; you can only revive people who've had the knife stuck in them, and that was why Suzie was the only one who could work the Mitten, but if so, how was Gwen able to resurrected those other two guys, unless Max has his own version of the same kind of knife? I can't actually remember if he does; I hope so, because the plot actually making a reasonable facsimile of sense would add yet another level to the kickassery. Tosh technobabbles an explanation about 'metallic resonance', and how it's like putting too much air in a balloon. Well, she actually says "like completing a circuit", but whatever. Jack's all 'Don't want to piss on your cornflakes, guys, but it's a little late to be killing Suzie with the knife.' Gwen almost supplies us a title; "Then we'll just have to kill her again." With much theatrical reverence, Jack pulls the knife from it's box, and Owen looks to Ianto, who takes a deep breath, aware of the grave importance of his task, and delivers; "Life Knife." Jack looks questioningly at Owen, who nods his approval. Hee! I hope Ianto gets to do more Wonkey Donkey-ing in future.
Med Bay. Jack tries making a small cut on Suzie's arm with the Life Knife, which gives Gwen a small spark, but Suzie's still not becoming a frankenstein. So Jack plunges the Knife straight into her chest, and we're finally in business. Ianto starts the stopwatch, Suzie starts ranting "they'll find me, I've got to go" and so on, Jack attempts to calm her down. Which gets her to focus a little more, and the first thing that catches her attention is, understandably, the huge knife sticking out of her chest. She asks Jack if he killed her, Jack reminds her that she killed herself, Suzie's all 'Oh yeah! Forget my own head if it wasn't screwed on!' Jack tries to needle her towards Pilgrim, but Suzie's still preoccupied with her death; "Wait a minute, didn't I kill you?" Owen gets a 'WTF' look at that one, and Jack presses some more. Suzie asks who's taken over the glove, and gives a fantastically bitter "Oh no, not Gwen Bloody Cooper!" when she finds out. 30 seconds. Jack gets into the specifics about the Pilgrim thing, Suzie is offended that they brought her "all the way back" just for Max. Jack tells her they need a surname, Suzie rolls her eyes and says he was just "some loser". Owen reports that they're losing her, Gwen Bloody Cooper is not having that and starts yelling "Stay here, damn you!" Jack tells her not to force it, but Gwen doesn't listen, and gets shocked like Jack did on his first attempt. Owen goes to check she's OK, Jack complains that he knew this would happen; "it's the glove, they get hooked." Owen tells him "It's OK, it's over now." Ianto politely interrupts, and for a second I thought he was going to say "I think you mean 'it's the
Mitten, they get hooked'," but no, he's actually pointing out that Suzie is still showing life signs, she's just unconscious. Jack's kind of terrified and pulls the Knife out of her chest, but to no avail; She Aten't Dead. One minute thirty, and counting.
Suzie's in a wheelchair, in a cell downstairs. Camera pans around so we can see the gaping exit wound in the back of her head, which is very nicely done, and by that I mean totally icky looking. Jack and Gwen come down to talk to her, with the others watching upstairs via surveillance cameras. Suzie sadly misses this absolutely perfect opportunity to start a conversation with "Well now, this is
awkward" but I guess she has been through a lot lately, so I should go easy on her. "How long has it been?" is what she asks in lieu of that. Three months, apparently. Suzie tells Jack she just wants to die, but whatever, you can't out emo Ianto. Jack doesn't shy away from giving her the bad news; she's not going to die, and also, they really don't know what the hell is going on with that. Suzie takes this in, and then asks if she can see her father. Jack, bad cop, flat out tells her "No.", Gwen, good cop, explains about the erased records. Suzie's rather livid about the fact that he doesn't even know she died. Jack gets out photos of all the Pilgrim members (surprisingly many for how small the group supposedly was) and moves onto the whole reason they brought Suzie back in the first place; they need to find Max. Suzie's confused; "What for, what did he do? He was just an ordinary bloke." Jack tells her straight; they think the Retcon made him psychotic. Suzie, with surprise asks how many victims, Gwen, edge in her voice, tells her "Three, the same as you." Hah! That's so petty. I love it. Owen's voice comes over a loudspeaker; they need to know how much Retcon Suzie dosed the guy with. Suzie looks up to the ceiling and says 'hi' to Owen, "You scared to face me?" Owen admits that he is, and Suzie asks if Tosh is still around too. Tosh says nothing, but Owen tells Suzie that she is too, and Ianto gains ten more emo points because Suzie totally overlooked him. Owen asks again how much Retcon she gave Max; Suzie sighs and says matter-of-factly "One a week, every week, for two years." Yowza.
Jack gives an incredulous "What the hell did you do that for?" Suzie shrugs and tells him she needed someone to talk to, because the Torchwood life was driving her mad, so she unburdened it all on Max, once a week, every week for two years, and Retconned him so he wouldn't remember it. That is so excellently fucked up. Jack admonishes her for overdosing him, Suzie, now with a hint of emotion in her voice; no longer talking like she's dead inside, complains "I keep getting it wrong, don't I? Is that why you brought me back? Did you think I wasn't guilty enough?" Jack asks for Max's surname. Suzie doesn't know, and asks again if he can't just let her die. Jack, with a hint of fondness in his voice, tells her "You don't get off that easily", and Suzie snorts and remembers that he did warn her when she signed up, and shouts this next to Gwen Bloody Cooper; "This is the one job you can never quit." Jack presses her again to get down to business, and, after making a show of reluctance, she does now take a look through the photos spread over the desk. There's someone missing; a girl named Lucy Mackenzie who came every week, and works at a club. Jack tries to press for the name of the club, even though I'm certain their Apple Mac Guffins have found people with much less information before, but Suzie is falling unconscious again. Eventually, she manages to bite out a name, although I cannot for the life of me make out what she says. Whatever, it's not like it's important. Unless it's called, like, The Weevil House or something. Because Weevils are the Bad Wolf of the season, remember.
Weevil House. The most emo-shouty part of Funeral For A Friend's "Red Is The New Black" plays and there are lots of jump cuts around the room to signify the confusion of attempting to find a guy you've never actually seen in this crowded place. Gwen, Owen and Jack are trying anyway, each with a camera so Tosh and Suzie can watch from the Hub. Ianto is presumably off making tea and/or cutting himself. Gwen complains of a headache, Suzie cheerfully informs her it'll be the Risen Mitten causing it; "it gets inside your mind". Gwen tells her to stop being so fucking creepy and just tell them if she sees Max or Lucy anywhere. Jack reminds them of Swanson's description of Max, like that's any help whatsoever. Suzie disdainfully notes that Tosh can't even look at her. "Not like you to be so judgmental." Tosh retorts with "Not like you to go on a murder spree." I don't think either of them are right. Tosh continues, all 'I know Torchwood makes you fucking crazy, that's one of the central plots of the show, but dude, you killing a bunch of people just did not do great thinks to make me feel good about myself for working here.' Owen radios in that he's spotted a guy who fits Max's description, but can't get a clear enough shot for Suzie to confirm or deny, but then he sees Lucy anyway. And he decides he did have the right guy after all, because this guy starts prowling menacingly towards Lucy, so Owen leaps on him from behind and throws him to the ground, twisting his arm behind his back. The good news; he's close enough now so that Suzie can identify. The bad news; this guy is not Max, and the real Max is right now about to stab Gwen in the back, but fortunately Jack's close enough to tazer the guy unconscious. A bunch of clubbers clear a circle around Jack and collectively 'WTF' has he gives a shout out to Ianto; "Risen Mitten, Life Knife and that old classic; Stun Gun." Nice. Gwen thanks Suzie for saving her life, Suzie dials the sentimentalism up to 11 and suggests that "maybe there's a reason why I came back." I hope I'm not spoiling any possible plot twists by mentioning again that Suzie is really quite awesome.
Cells. Jack watches as Owen interviews Max, who just stares at the wall ignoring the questions. Well, until Owen tells him "You're inside the Torchwood facility", at which point he starts rabidly pounding against the glass wall. Owen counts up to ten, at which point Max immediately resumes sitting, staring blankly at the wall. "If this is a drug induced psychosis, it's a very specific one." And, between this and Ianto's stopwatch, there's a definite theme going down here. Jack, amused, 'suggests' that it's like he reacts to the word 'Torchwood', which sets Max going again. Owen sarcastically thanks him, Jack apologises and points out that if Retcon does that to people, they're going to have some serious problems somewhere down the line. He starts to leave, telling Owen to report back once the scan's complete. Owen asks what he's planning to do with Suzie, Jack has no idea, and asks for Owen's opinion. Intense look between the two, and Owen just tells him "You're the boss." Jack nods approval at this display of obedience. They both start to exit, and Jack can't resist a parting "Torchwood!" to set Max off again. Hee hee! I know I would.
Interview Room. Suzie's trying again to persuade Gwen to take her to see her father, but Gwen knows that one won't fly with Jack, and apologetically suggests Suzie tells them where he is so they can bring him to her to her. Suzie refuses that outright; she's not letting Torchwood anywhere near him. "If he's still alive." Gwen asks what's wrong with him, Suzie tells her cancer, "All that waiting and then I go and die first." The heartstrings, they are tugged. Gwen tries again; "I could contact him on your behalf." Suzie bitchily asks what exactly she'd say, they both sit and drink their tea in silence for a while. Suzie decides they've probably exhausted that topic of conversation as far as they can and goes for further bonding, asking Gwen if she's enjoyed her time at Torchwood thus far. Gwen brightly tells her that yes, it's been fun. Suzie just stares at her, questioningly, and it takes Gwen roughly five seconds to kind of cave and admit that "This place... It's mad, isn't it?" "Insane," Suzie agrees, and they both start laughing and come to the conclusion that it is, nonetheless, the best job they ever had. Suzie starts aiming for another pity party; "Funny thing is, you always imagine when you're dead... 'are they going to miss me at work?'. But look what happened; I got replaced. By someone better." And if it hasn't been obvious that she's clearly manipulating Gwen up to this point, it sure is now. "You got the glove working better than I ever did." Gwen modestly tries to claim that she just got lucky, but Suzie is having none of that. "And they like you better too." Gwen tells her not to say this, but Suzie, a little forceful, tells her it's true. "And you got my job. Almost like you planned it."
HMMM. "Except that I
didn't," Gwen counters, "I've got my own function at Torchwood [Which is what, exactly? Because so far it's mostly been 'fucking up and getting in the way', and I think the others had that covered pretty well already]. And I'm a lot more than just a replacement." Suzie locks eyes with Gwen, "Have you slept with Owen?" OWNED. I mean, I really ought to hate that, because, like it's not bad enough that Gwen's fucking him and Tosh is totally hung up on him, now Suzie's been on the receiving end of his nonsensical (unless explained by magic date rape perfume) charms? But I cannot hate it, because that was just too excellent a burn. I love Suzie. Gwen has nothing to say to that. "There you go," Suzie smirks, "Replaced me completely."
Gwen strides purposefully into Jack's office, where he's reading some kind of file. He doesn't look up from it as he starts on yet another of his rambling stories. I'd say he's like Grampa Simpson, but the stories are usually far too sex-related. Or, in most cases, I think they just sound like they are because they're coming from Jack (Huge hands, anyone?). He's like a cross between Grampa Simpson and Ace Rimmer. "Had a boyfriend who used to walk into rooms like that. A grand entrance. Kind of boring. Though he was one of twins, so I put up with it. Twin acrobats, man... " Yeah, this isn't one of the ones that just sounds like. Gwen paces in front of his desk, and it turns out that this is in fact a competition to see who will crack first. Jack continues "I ought to write that book. Maybe even illustrate it... I can talk for a long time. A very long time." Gwen takes that as a cue to finally interrupt, and tells him it takes her a while to piece things together. Jack asks for elaboration, she provides; "You gave Suzie the glove [poor Ianto, after all the effort he put in coming up with 'Risen Mitten', no one's even using it! That's another thing for him to write in his livejournal], put her in charge of it, but tell me, Jack, did you ever ask about her father? He's got cancer. He's been dying slowly now for years. And you give his daughter the one device that brings people back to life. Is it any wonder she got obsessed?" Oh, man. Jack angrily asks if that makes it all his fault, and Gwen gets right in his face and pretty much tells him that yes, it does, actually. Jack retorts by telling Gwen it's her fault that Suzie came back to life; she blamed herself for Suzie's death because it happened when she turned up, "Then you brought her back to life,
all the way. Because you wanted it so much, OK?" Pregnant pause. "WE'RE BOTH RESPONSIBLE!" Pregnant with twins. "What the hell are we going to do with her?" Gwen doesn't know, and wonders "What if she never dies?" Jack's all 'hell no, that's MY thing!' and says he'd rather kill Suzie right now than let that happen. Gwen asks "Could you though? Kill her?" Jack's like, "HELL Yeah!" and then they get into an endless loop of "Really?" "Yeah." "Really?" "Yeah." and when exactly did the question change from "Is it physically possible to kill Suzie?" to "Is Jack emotionally able to kill Suzie?" Owen interrupts the infinite loop by radioing to Jack that there's something he needs to see in the conference room. ...in bed! Sorry. I mean '...and they have a plan!'. No, that doesn't make sense either. Forget it.
So, what is it Jack needs to see? Well, Owen's got the surveillance tapes of Gwen resurrecting Mark Briscoe and then Suzie hooked up to some kind of magic camera that can see the lifestream because maybe it's wearing
3D glasses or it's pointed through an amber spyglass or something. And what it shows in the Mark Briscoe tape is a thin ribbon of lifestream (or Void stuff, or Dust, whatever) flowing between Gwen and Mark which stops when he re-dies, but in the Suzie tape, as soon as Jack stabs Suzie with the Life Knife and she repossesses the farm, there's a whole lot more lifestream flowing from Gwen to Suzie, and it's not stopping; Suzie is actually draining the life out of Gwen in order to stay alive. Ruh roh! "There's always a price," Jack says. Exactly. That's the way it is; in a sci-fi story, or at least, in a
good sci-fi story, you generally can't get away with resurrecting a dead character unless it carries some pretty hefty consequences, and generally, that's going to be the death of another character in their stead. I'm sorry, but
vomiting a snake just isn't going to cut it.
Interview Room. Gwen brings Suzie a tray of coffee and biscuits. Suzie bitches at her for serving no useful purpose, which is something I can always get behind, but Gwen is insistent that she try a biscuit, and lifts the plate up to reveal a sheet of paper on which she's written "ROAD TRIP?" Oh, Gwen, you poor fool. You poor, stupid, fool.
Hub. In case some people had trouble understanding the words "draining the life out of Gwen" and "there's always a price" and whatever other cryptic clues were dropped in that scene, Jack lays it out in plain English; for the Mitten to resurrect one person permanently, the wearer has to die. Tosh asks what they can do about it, Jack shrugs that they'll have to kill Suzie. Tosh is incredulous; "
Again?" Owen asks who'll have to do the deed, Jack gets out his gun all badass and nods to Owen, "like you said, I'm the boss", and runs down to the interview room, but Gwen and Suzie have already departed. Jack radios to tell Tosh that if she can figure out where the fuck they've gone as soon as possible that'd be great, thanks, and goes running back upstairs. Out in the real world, Gwen wheels Suzie through a car park.
Tosh's internal scans are turning up nothing, so Jack tells her to check the Hyena; it's still present and correct. Tosh tries some exterior cameras, and spots Gwen getting into her own car with Suzie. Owen wonders what the hell she's doing; "Getting herself fired," Jack answers, and they all marvel at how stupid Suzie and/or Gwen must be to think they could just walk out like that, when suddenly the lights all go out and the place goes into lockdown. Jack calls for Ianto, who wanders in with a torch and gives a bored "Captain." Jack asks what the hell's going on, Ianto tells him he thought Jack must have done this. Jack tells him to hurry up and reverse it, but no dice; it's a full lockdown, there's nothing they can do about it. And that's just the beginning of Suzie's criminal mastermind tendencies.
Gwenmobile. Gwen tells Suzie she's only taking her to see her father, then it's straight back to Torchwood, and also, "Jack's not stupid", (unlike YOU, Gwen), he's going to find them. Suzie drearily suggests that they might get lucky, and Gwen starts driving.
In the Hub, everyone has torches now, and Tosh is freaking out at her computer because absolutely everything is down, they can do nothing. Owen injects some urgency into tonight’s proceedings by mentioning that Gwen only has about two hours left to live. Tosh gets her big squishy frontal lobes working on figuring out how the hell Suzie managed to cause this thing, with a vague facsimile of help from Owen. Tosh rules out the possibility of a system override from the computer, since she's officially dead, and it doesn't grant access to corpses. But she gets stuck there, like, "Suzie couldn't have done it, but... there's no one else!" But this gets Jack recalling the fact that they have Max locked up in a cell, and he goes off for another sprint down the stairs. He's getting a good workout in this episode.
In his cell, Max is sitting on the floor, quietly muttering to himself, and Jack recognises what he's muttering as an Emily Dickinson poem; it's a verbal trigger for the lockdown. "He's just a Trojan Horse. Suzie planned this right from the start." Think about it. No,
really think about it; it's awesome. But in case you can't figure it all out, Jack and Owen and Tosh helpfully lay it out, but I'll let them off for this because it'd probably take you longer to work it all out than it does to listen to the exposition, and there's still plenty of stuff that's left to you to go deeper into it. So, here we are: Suzie went to this guy Max and gave him Retcon every week for TWO WHOLE YEARS in order to, by method of hypnosis or whatever, set up subconscious triggers in him so that if he went three months without seeing her, presumably due to her death, he'd go on a killing spree to attract Torchwood's attention and get himself locked in the Hub, where the Torchwood crew would follow the trail to Suzie and be forced to resurrect her, and she'd escape under cover of the Emily Dickinson trigger she must have set up while still working for Torchwood. It's a pretty insanely elaborate plan, for sure, but even more so when you look deeper into it, because
this is her backup plan. This was the fail-safe in case whatever measures she set up for her escape in "Everything Changes" didn't manage to throw Jack off the scent, as actually happened. And also, right, Gwen didn't know that dead crew members get frozen and kept in the wall, but all the others didn't seem fazed by that, and it's a pretty crucial point in Suzie's plan, so I must conclude that at least one Torchwood member, maybe more, must have died before Suzie while she, Tosh and Owen were working there, and I'm thinking still under Jack's command, because otherwise Suzie couldn't be sure that he'd keep her body around. I'm sure there's plenty more to think about in all this, but I've already strayed a long way from the supposed subject matter, so let's get back to what's actually happening in the episode, shall we?
Right, Owen shakes his head in admiration of Suzie's forward planning; "You've got to admit, that is not bad", and Tosh reaches the conclusion that Suzie must have set up another verbal trigger to cancel the lockdown in case she couldn't get out in time. That makes sense, yeah.
In the Gwenmobile, Gwen notes that Suzie's looking healthier and Suzie smiles and tells her "It's all thanks to you." She is a fucking brilliant villain. Which is undoubtedly a major thing the show has been lacking in up to this point. But even someone with her level of psychotic compartmentalisation of duplicity must be prepared for the unexpected; she shot Jack, right in the head, and he just got up and carried on. Suzie would like for Gwen to tell her just what the heck that is all about, if she may. Gwen is as helpful as she can be, which is 'not very', as usual, but she does confirm that Suzie did not hallucinate this occurrence, and also that Jack cannot die, or at least, Jack
claims he cannot die. Suzie bitches that it's pretty unfair for him to make judgement on whether she lives or dies, in that case, and asks Gwen, who is looking rather tired now (the transformation from perfectly healthy to totally dying and vice versa on these two is quite excellently done, kudos to the makeup people), if she doesn't ever wonder who the hell Jack is. Gwen agrees that she does, "all the time." This bit courtesy of Russell T. Davies' claim that the theme of the season is "Who is Captain Jack Harkness?", which, episode of that name aside, like hell it is.
Ianto's managed to get phone reception, and Jack asks, like he's accusing him of being in on Suzie's plan, how the hell he managed that. Just used the water tower as a relay. Duh. Jack gives him a sincere "Nice work, Ianto", and puts in a call to Detective Swanson, who thinks it's utterly hysterical that the mighty Torchwood have managed to get themselves locked inside their own base, and calls all the members of her department in to laugh at them. She's not wrong, and this scene is funny as hell. Jack, against all circumstantial evidence, insists that it's not funny, and tells Swanson they need her to find a book of poetry.
Gwenmobile. Gwen's having trouble staying awake, but doesn't think anything of it, it's been a long night. She flicks on the radio to help keep her up, and it just so happens to be playing a song that Suzie's mum used to sing to her when she was a kid, which makes Suzie cry, but it's entirely possible that she is making the whole thing up. That is not a head I can get inside.
Swanson gets Jack to repeat, nice and clear so all her colleagues can hear, "We're locked in our base, and we can't get out." I like her. Jack pleads with her to stop making fun already, and pulls the "someone's in danger card," and Swanson decides she's had enough fun and picks up a copy of the same book of Emily Dickinson poems as they found in Suzie's warehouse o' worldly possessions. She's like, "what am I supposed to do with this?" Jack tells her to find "Because I Could Not Stop For Death", and, dude,
a quick google would've sufficed, you didn't need her to track down the exact same collection. Except that is not the key, and, long story short, Tosh decides that if words started the lockdown, maybe numbers will end it, and it turns out that the ISBN of this particular collection of Emily Dickinson poems, one of many dozens that I'm sure must have been published over the years, is the code to end the lockdown. And, I love this episode, it flows fantastically, most of the writing is awesome and everyone's acting is way on form, particularly Indira Varma, but that right there? That is
completely fucking ridiculous. That is a plot point worthy of
CANCELLED!, for frack's sake. Don't let it happen again.
Suzie's noticing Gwen's difficulty in staying awake and tells her they don't want her falling asleep at the wheel, and joking "one corpse is enough for this car." Gwen tells her to please not refer to herself as a corpse as it is REALLY UNNERVING. Gwen asks about the afterlife or lack thereof, and honestly, I'm surprised it's taken her this long. Suzie gives the usual "What do you want me to say?", Gwen asks for the truth. Suzie asks if she's religious, if she believes in heaven. Gwen fobs it off with an "I dunno", but Suzie's not having that: "Yes you do. What do you believe?" Gwen admits that she does believe the whole white light and dead relatives waiting for you thing, and Suzie snarks "Your faith never left primary school?" and tells her that, actually, when you die, there's just nothing. Nothing at all. Gwen asks what the point of it all is, then, and Suzie tells her "this is. Driving in the dark. All those little things." It's nothing remotely original, but these two sell it pretty well. Gwen asks her to confirm that "When you die, it's just..." Darkness. "And you're all alone?" Suzie looks at her darkly; "I didn't say that. Why do you think I was so desperate to come back? There's something out there in the dark. And it's moving."
From beneath you, it devours! FROM BENEATH YOU, IT DEVOURS!! Come on.
In a hospital, Gwen wheels Suzie through a corridor, looking ever more groggy. In the Hub, Tosh is working her techno-magic and has tracked Gwen's car down, and radios the location to Jack and Owen, who are in the Hyena on their way. Owen's rough estimate of the time before the final sands trickle out of the top half of Gwen's hourglass: forty minutes. Jack calls in another favour from Swanson to get the Hyena a police escort so they can ignore the speed limit and not have to worry about any other cars getting in the way.
And then all the urgency disappears for a moment of calm as we take a look at Suzie's father in his hospital bed, wires going in, wires coming out of his skin and all that. Gwen reverentially wheels Suzie in and shuts the door behind her, and finds she's having difficulty standing now without holding onto the wall. Suzie's just sitting and staring at her father, mouth wide open. Gwen starts to slurringly tell Suzie she's not doing so good, then suddenly clutches the back of her head and goes "OAAEUUUH MY GOD!" Suzie smiles slightly. Gwen looks at the blood that's now all over her hand and asks what the hell is happening. Suzie apologises and explains; "You're being shot in the head. Slowly." That is so incredibly awesome, and also, Eve Myles is doing a really stunning job of portraying it. This scene is just fantastic. Suzie cheerily tells Gwen she's doing better and rubs her chin, where the entry wound has disappeared, and Gwen collapses to the ground, sobbing. Suzie gets out of her wheelchair and walks to her dad's side, and, voice cracking says "Hi, dad. It's me, Suzie." Dad's eyes slowly open, and then widen in surprise... and also fear. Wha? And then Suzie tells him "goodbye", and pulls the breathing tube out of his mouth. DUDE, WHAT THE HELL. I mean, Suzie's huge elaborate backup scheme was crazy enough already, when it seemed to be all about putting absolutely everything she had into saving her father from cancer. And now it turns out she just wants to kill him? When he was dying anyway? That is going beyond psychosis. It is certainly treading a fine line between crazy good and crazy stupid, and it is only because this episode is so well done that I feel inclined to give them a pass on this, but it does require me to fanwank another crazy theory about Torchwood 3; Jack did, in fact, know all about Suzie's father, and was keeping her around despite being fully aware of her being totally batshit because she was just so good at her job? I've not really fine-tuned the details, but, you know, it's difficult to come up with another reason why Suzie needed to escape from Torchwood in the first place if she just wanted daddy dead; as we've seen with Gwen, Torchwood may eat up a lot of your free time, but it doesn't completely destroy it's existence. So, assuming, as we are led to, that "Jack don't know shit about his employees" is true, there's no reason why Suzie couldn't have quietly gone to visit her dad on a day off or something. This is setting up Jack as some kind of crazy mastermind on almost the same level as Suzie, but, you what? I'm OK with that.
Meanwhile, back in the show that is actually happening on the screen and not in my head, Gwen is giving understandable 'WTF'. Suzie gets her into the wheelchair and starts getting the hell out of their. Gwen, now apparently lacking the ability to speak, and also probably most of her mental faculties, attempts to grab the legs of a doctor they pass in the corridor, but fails. Doctors come into Suzie's dad's room and discover him flatlining. Tosh radios to Jack that Gwen's car is on the move again, and she can't figure a specific destination. Jack tells her to just keep feeding it's movements. His phone rings, and he gives a hilariously confused "Hello?" It's Suzie. She asks if he enjoyed the poem. Jack tells her sadly that her continued vitality is killing Gwen so could she please turn herself in, but, of course, Suzie already knows that and gives an awesome little 'what the hell?' laugh as she asks Jack why she'd want to do that. Jack points out that they're tracking her, and they
will catch up. Suzie asks what he's going to do then; if Gwen's dead when he gets there, he's going to kill Suzie "for the last and final time". OK, Jack, a) "last and final"? Like, CALLING THE REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY, yo. And also, b) Aren't you going to kill Suzie either way? Suzie desperately asks if he could really go through with it when "there's a part of her that's now me, if I'm all that's left of her". Jack rather paternally asks why she's doing this, she explains about the whole 'no afterlife' thing. Jack pleads with her to just stop, and she breaks down into tears and starts babbling about how much better Gwen is than her, and, seriously man, quit it with that. She tells him she's sorry, and hangs up.
Tosh has figured out where Suzie's headed; somewhere along the coast, apparently planning to flee the country. Jack asks Owen for an hourglass update: just minutes left. Suzie parks by the sea and pulls Gwen, who's looking pretty corpse-like at this point, out, telling her "It's beautiful, Gwen. Can you see?" And that really is beautiful, you know? She's telling Gwen in that delusionally speaking to a dying lover way that they're going to get on a ferry and it will all be OK, just the two of them. I don't know at what point Suzie and Gwen became lesbian lovers, but, you know, this stuff
always happens to me. Gwen's not objecting, but then, she's not doing much of anything except collapsing to the ground because Suzie can't hold her up any more. Suzie gets on her knees and sadly asks Gwen if she's gone, as the Hyena pulls up alongside Gwen's car and Jack and Owen get out, guns blazing. Suzie strokes Gwen's hair, says "Poor Gwen..." and gives her a quick peck on the lips, then starts to run. While Owen checks on Gwen, Jack points his gun at Suzie and growls "Let her go." I think you're a little behind the times there, Jack. Suzie cries out that she can't, and Owen reports that they appear to be too late; Gwen's dead. Jack pleadingly asks Suzie if killing her will bring Gwen back, like she'd know, and Suzie goes full on crazy with the "I'm the last thing left of her! Can't you see that?!" again. Jack, suddenly bizarrely casual, tells her "Not one bit" and shoots her in the chest. He's right though; I mean, I know Rhys hasn't appeared since
"Small Worlds", but...
Suzie falls to the ground, dead. Gwen does not wake up. For real, just for a moment, I actually believed there was a chance that Gwen would actually stay dead here, first time I saw this; that's one of the many reasons this episode gets an A+. Jack angrily yells "But I broke the connection!" at the world, Suzie opens her eyes again and starts laughing insanely. Jack fires a few more bullets into her because I guess that's therapeutic in this situation. Suzie rolls over and grins at him crazily. Jack suddenly gets an idea and radios to Tosh that they need to destroy the Risen Mitten; it's keeping them connected. Tosh looks around frantically and then yells the order to Ianto. Way to delegate there, Tosh!
Jack fires some more shots into Suzie, just for the hell of it, she tells him it's all his fault for recruiting her, then starts giggling "Captain, my Captain..." I love her so very much. Ianto tosses a gun to Tosh. Suzie asks Jack if he wants to know a secret; "There's something moving in the dark, Jack Harkness, and it's coming. It's coming for you!" Tosh blasts the Mitten into smithereens, Suzie goes "gnnnnnnnnrk!" and dies, Gwen goes "HWRR!" and lives. And Jack stands over Suzie's body and looks out into the ocean, and a song starts playing, and it goes a little something like
this. In the Hub, Gwen's fully recovered now, and is laughing about something or other. Jack walks in and shares an intense look with Gwen for a while, then gives a very slight nod and turns away. She's still OK.
Wall O' Corpses. Suzie's hatch is open (and dude, there are a lot of other hatches here. THIS SUPPORTS MY EARLIER THEORY. HIGH FIVE!), and her body is back on its slab where it belongs. Ianto stands and fills out some paperwork, which Jack thanks him for. Ianto dismisses it as being part of the job, but Jack insists that he's the one who should really be doing it. Jack sighs that some day, they're going to run out of space in the Wall O' Corpses. Ianto looks up and tells him, sounding slightly... nervous? Maybe? "Sir, if you're interested, I've still got that stopwatch." Uh? Jack asks what he's getting at, Ianto gives a flirty smile and suggests "there's a lot of things you can do with a stopwatch." Jack grins and tells him he'll send the others home early, "Meet me in my office in ten minutes." Ianto demonstrates one of the many uses of his stopwatch by setting it counting down those ten minutes. I have absolutely no idea what the heck is going on here. I mean, you know, I can think of a few things that Jack might want Ianto in his office for, without the others around, but at the same time? I have absolutely no idea what the heck is going on here. There is something really odd in their tones for this entire scene, even the parts where they aren't apparently arranging sexcapades in the most bizarre way. Oh, and also, behind Jack, I can see a sign that says "Gloves and hats must be worn in this area when handling bodies", which I find oddly hilarious. As Jack starts to walk away, Ianto calls him back to ask what to put on the death certificate; "she had quite a few deaths, in the end." Jack thinks for a while and suggests "Death by Torchwood." Jack jokes that he'll put a lock on the door in case she goes wandering again. Jack tells him not to bother, "the resurrection days are over", but Ianto doesn't think they can be sure of that; "That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs." That is certainly an intriguing scene on which to end this episode.
Next week: Seriously, you don't want to know.
Labels: Recaps, Torchwood
