Defy? No! Sad.

Torchwood Episode 1x13 - "End Of Days"

Episode grade: D


Previously: Bilis was a creepy old fucker, Ianto shot Owen in the back, and Owen decided to end the world for shits and giggles. Tool.

Start with a pan across various images of Cardiff, of course. It's still Welsh. Into Gwen's apartment, she watches Rhys lying there, smiling fondly. He mumbles that it's rude to stare, she giggles and tells him she was trying to make him get her a cup of tea via telepathy. They share some banter and, I mean, it is cute, but there is always this undercurrent that they are just putting on a show, pretending everything is OK between them because maybe if they pretend hard enough, it actually will be. It's just delaying the inevitable. Rhys gets out of bed, naked, to do her bidding. Rhys's Arse Unleashed! Again! And then Gwen's phone goes, Rhys calls out "Don't answer it!", Gwen doesn't even hesitate to ignore him now. It's Jack, of course, and all he says is "You watching the news?"

Because if she was, she'd know there's scenes of chaos going on, of course; people are being sucked through time all over the place, UFOs over the Taj Mahal, civil war soldiers in the centre of London. And I just noticed the headline scrolling bar at the bottom includes "Beatles on the roof of Abbey Road studios", awesome. Some people are claiming it's wacky terrorists, some people are claiming it's all an elaborate bluff, some religious nutsos are getting it right and being all "JUDGEMENT DAY IS UPON US!" but they do that every time it snows or whatever.

Credits! Written by Chibnall, again, so of course it doesn't pass muster. It's just a wild mess of plot points pulled out of a hat and thrown into the crazy script-writing blender. (The blender also mixes a fabulous metaphor!) Original title reported as "Apocalypse". This one is slightly better, what with the whole Time Kompression thing going on, but it's still an annoyingly generic season finale title.

Hub, the whole team gathered. Ianto's quoting from the Bible, because "Christian mythology" was one of the things that was pulled out of the hat. Owen reflexively bitches at him, Jack decides to put on daddy's stylin' leather jacket and be all "You people love anything that denies the randomness of existence", and complains that the FBI and the CIA and any other three letter acronym you care to think of have been calling him up and asking if it's his fault. Well, since Jack was the one who chose frickin' Owen as his second in command when Suzie went crazy, let's go ahead and say "Yes." Tosh (who still has her hand bandaged, nice touch), does some of her computer mojo and makes a map of the world appear with all roads leading to Cardiff. I'm no Riftodontist, but I can't see that it proves anything beyond "You can draw a straight line to Wales from any point on this map!" Jack informs them all that the Riftmouth is splintering, sending shockwaves all around the world, and IT'S ALL OWEN'S FAULT. Owen gives a shocked "Wha..?" and then gets all offended and sulks "If it wasn't for me, you'd still be stuck in the past making out with yourself!" That's so Baltar. "Gaius, did you betray the entire human race?" "How dare you accuse me of that thing that I did? I SAVED YOU FROM CANCER!!" And then Owen asks "Are we going to sit around crying into our lattes or are we going to do something about it?" Jack is cool with that, but when he suggests rounding up all the soldiers and the Beatles that are out of time, Owen starts yelling "Then what are you going to do? YOU CAN'T CONTROL TIME! THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO!" Because that is so much more helpful than crying into your latte, Owen. Shut up.

Jack notices that morale is not exactly high among his staff and half-heartedly attempts to be inspirational; "This is not the end of the world. I'm certain of that." Ianto gets an instant message from the hospital saying 'lol 2 many ppl dieing', Owen says he'll go check it out. Jack sends Tosh to go with him, Owen complains that he doesn't want to get cooties or whatever, but it falls on deaf ears. And then Gwen starts bitching at Jack for picking on Owen "in public". Well, I think that says it all, right there. Jack tells her that "All our actions have consequences", she complains that "All your staff have feelings, too. Even Owen", Jack retorts "Well, you would know". Meow! Gwen repeats Owen's Gaiusing, but gets interrupted by a phonecall. It's Andy, her old police partner; he's got a Roman soldier and he didn't know who else to call.

So, over to the police station. The Roman is yelling in Latin and charging at his cell door, Jack is ridiculously condescending to Andy because he does not immediately accept the idea that this guy is an actual Roman soldier, from Roman times without being just a little bit surprised by that fact. Gwen slightly less condescendingly confirms that Jack is telling the truth, Andy calls them "Mulder and Scully" and asks, assuming he does believe them ("which I don't, because it's bollocks"), how he is supposed to handle a prisoner from 2000 years ago. Jack tells him not to worry, he and Gwen are going to take the roman off his hand and inexplicably turns back into Happy Fun Jack momentarily, all "Under normal circumstances, an exuberant Roman soldier would be my idea of a perfect morning" and ducks into the cell to tranq the bastard. Outside, Gwen attempts to reassure Andy that the world is not totally fucked, but he's well and truly got her number; "I've seen you use that smile on a lot of people. The one you use to reassure people when deep down you know everything's gone to shit". Rhys has been seeing a whole lot of it lately, I'd wager.

Owen and Tosh at the hospital, wearing those kickin' white contamination suits. Long story (and really, I mean LONG.) short; it's the Black Death! Rad. And Owen is the only one smart enough to figure this out. Well, on the show; I got it about five seconds into the scene, which is not a boast, because man is it goddamn obvious. Owen takes a moment to start being a little self-aware and moans about how it's all his fault, then goes into Dr. Harper mode (hurrah) and starts ordering the hospital staff around. One of them finally cottons onto the fact that they are dealing with the plague here, and starts freaking, and yelling at Tosh and Owen for not magically fixing everything straight away, because that is, apparently, what Torchwood are supposed to do. Owen is surprisingly restrained in his response, and man, if there was ever a time when I wouldn't hold his being an offensive little shit against him, this would be the time. But all he does is tell them they could have any disease in history popping through their doors, ending with the winningly inspirational "Are you scared yet? Because fuck knows I am!" Tosh drops back to add "Call us if things get worse", to which the hospital guy responds "How much worse can they get?" Tosh has nothing to say to that, so she just walks out to catch up with Owen.

But Owen is nowhere to be found, and then the soundtrack goes whoosh, and an older Japanese woman is standing there, and everything but her and Tosh are moving in slow motion. Tosh identifies the woman as her mother, of course, and, in subtitled Japanese, she relays the usual "something coming in the darkness" message to Tosh. Tosh asks what is coming, but visions of dead (I am guessing) relatives are, as a rule, even worse than Jack at giving straight answers, so Ma Sato just tells Tosh "If there is no other way, you'll have to do it" before vanishing. Now, I know that, again, as a rule, visions of dead relatives are supposed to give cryptic warnings that only make sense immediately after the moment the warning would actually be useful, but still, even within those parameters, THAT WAS A FUCKING USELESS MESSAGE. And now that Mama Sato has vanished, of course, it's time for Owen to suddenly find Tosh and tell her to get a move on.

Back over to the police station, Jack's doing some kind of scan on the unconscious Roman. Gwen asks if they can't use the Manipulator to send all the out-of-timers back home, since it got Jack and Tosh back and all. Yeah, that's also what caused this whole mess in the first place. I don't think the Manipulator has an undo button, Gwen. But maybe it does and Bilis is just hiding it in his microwave. Jack tells her there's a world of difference between "taking control of time" and "bringing two people back from the past" which... makes as much sense as anything else in this storyline. Gwen rolls her eyes at his "Besides, look at the damage that Owen caused", because she is a moron. Jack, by way of a 'trust me on this', asks if he's ever let her down. Have you ever not, Jack? Gwen starts to walk away, but stops dead when someone starts calling her name from a cell next to her. It's Bilis! And he's talking all telepathical-like! He tells Gwen he's sorry, so sorry, then Jack call her over again, and when she looks back, Bilis has vanished.

And now we're down in the cells at the Hub, and apparently the walk there from the police station was not long enough for Gwen to finish relaying the information "Bilis appeared, said sorry, disappeared" to Jack, because he is just now asking the obvious questions like "You're sure it was the same guy?" and "'Sorry'? That's all he said?" Or maybe Jack just asked a bunch of really inane questions first, I don't know. Ianto leads a Weevil into an empty cell and reports that the Weevils are going crazy all over the place. Out of his thoroughly leashed arse, Jack pulls the theory that the Weevils are time-sensitive and so it's clearly the Riftmouth exploding that has them all on edge, and states this as if he didn't just make it up right there. But this means he's blaming Owen for another thing, so I'll let him off for it. Ianto also tells Jack that all their cells are full, so he'll have to open up some cells further down, which have never been used since Ianto started working there. Jack gives him the go ahead and then he and Gwen leave to go see if they can't wrangle up some more info on Bilis. Which means Ianto's left down there all alone, so... yep, there's Lisa! Dressed in normal human clothes, and not the cyberkini, thank God. Unfortunately, we do get a quick flashback for people who missed "Cyberwoman" which gives a one-two punch of the cyberkini AND Ianto's ridiculous scrunched up crying face. At least put a warning before you go throwing that out, come on! Ianto asks what she's doing there and then declares "this isn't happening". Lisa paces robotically towards him and tells him "There's only one way to stop this before things get worse. People will die, Ianto. Thousands of people. Unless you open the rift." Now, I was under the distinct impression that opening the rift is exactly what Owen did in the first place to start all this shit. I really don't know why I'm still trying to make sense of any of this. So, Ianto slowly blinks, and when he opens his eyes, Lisa has vanished, and then he puts his hands on his hips and looks around the room doing this hilarious little "Well I never!" huff.

Upstairs, Owen's returned for another round of his favourite game of all; "Bitch At Jack For Not Adequately Cleaning Up My Mess". Jack asks if Owen has any better suggestions, but all he has is "I suggest you lead us." What the hell is that, seriously. That's just ridiculous on a level that my brain can't really cope with. I can't even paraphrase that in a way that brings out it's inherent stupidity in order to make fun of it, because, hey look, Owen's already done a much better job on that than I ever could! Let's just rewind and check the exact lines there:

Owen: Only consolation is it's treatable these days, but what happens when the next carrier comes through, Jack? Someone carrying smallpox or ebola or something from the future we don't even know about, what do we do then?
Jack: Yeah, well, it's not going to do us any good standing around speculating.
Owen: We need to be prepared! We're helpless! All we're doing here is putting sticking plasters on gaping wounds.
Jack: What do you suggest?
Owen: I suggest you lead us. And tell us what the instructions are.

Yeah, I... yeah. And then he goes on to assume he is speaking for the rest of the crew, as if that weren't enough already. It's not like it's even hard to come up with helpful suggestions, just grab, like, the Ghost Machine or whatever, declare it to be "the weapon of a god", and suddenly it will be able to beat the crap out of the Riftmouth! Problem solved! Well, Owen almost manages to stumble upon an actual point somewhere in his ranting, irrelevant as it may be; "You keep all the secrets, now's the time to tell us a few." And so Jack lets them into a little 'secret' that I'm pretty sure he's been telling them since the start of the episode; there is no solution to this, the world is screwed and it's all Owen's fault. "The first thing you learned when you joined Torchwood was don't mess with the Rift[mouth]!" Policy has clearly changed since then, because the first thing Gwen learned when she joined was "Jack can't die!" Owen again whines that he only disobeyed that order to get Jack back, and quite aside from the fact that that's completely not true, because he actually did it to get Diane, how is it that he is still having to ask Jack if he should have just left him in the past. Note the total lack of mention of the fact that Tosh was trapped in the past too. The HoYay is just through the roof on this one. Because with all that text getting in the way, the subtext has precious opportunities to make itself known, so when it finds one, it has to bite down hard and not let go. IFYAKNAWAHMEN. Owen abruptly changes tack again to asking Jack "Who the fuck are you, anyway?" because the Internet doesn't think he exists, and the Internet knows all, of course. Owen decides that if Jack doesn't exist, there's no reason for him to follow Jack's orders. So, got any helpful suggestions now, Owen? Now that you've point-blank refused to follow your one and only "suggestion" thus far? Jack tells him to get out, if he's going to continue wilfully disobeying orders, and Owen gets totally offended, because when you quit your job and tell your boss to shove it, you should be totally allowed to hang around the premises starting pointless arguments, I guess. Gwen attempts to intervene at this point, saying they need to stick together, and, I get the sentiment; the more help they have saving the world, the better, but this is Owen we're talking about, and he actually provides a negative amount of help. But Jack's having none of it; "If I can't rely on you, if I don't have your complete trust, you don't belong here." He directs this to the rest of the group, too, and they spend approximately half an hour giving each other uncertain glances, which I'd say is a pretty clear sign that you do indeed not have their complete trust, Jack, even if they aren't going to make as much of a show of their mutiny as Owen.

The dreary, interminable silence is finally broken by Owen angstily reminding everyone that you don't just leave Torchwood; at some point in the next 24 hours, Jack's going to find a way to slip Owen some Retcon. Oh, boo hoo, thanks to you, the world's on the verge of ending anyway, so what's it even matter at this point? And so Owen walks out and leaves and exits and departs and FOR FUCK'S SAKE HOW LONG DOES THIS SCENE NEED TO GO ON FOR?

And now Gwen and Jack, both not looking at each other, find their way to Bilis' clock shop (but of course!), "A Stitch In Time". Which is quite clever, you know, because it's like, not a stitch in time as in one delivered with good punctuality, but as in a stitch literally in the fabric of time (and space). Which, for the longest time, is how I interpreted the wording of the proverb, which always used to confuse the heck out of me, let me tell you. Anyway, Bilis doesn't appear to be around, though his shop is open, so Jack and Gwen feel free to start speculating on how Bilis earns his living; clearly, going into the past and finding clocks for cheap and then selling them in the present as antiques. Bilis takes their idle speculation as his cue to suddenly appear behind them in his usual creepy manner and tell them he has to make a living somehow. They ask him what's the deal with his being in two times at once, only Gwen, because she is an idiot, words this as "How is it possible to be in two timezones at once." Dude, any idiot can do that, just stand on the border between, say, Spain and Portugal, and hey presto! Two timezones. Anyway, Bilis "explains" this, and by that I mean he tells them what they already knew; "I can step across eras like you'd walk into another room." He spins some sob story about how it's a huge curse because he can see the whole of history, but he doesn't fit in anywhere, and leaves a lingering pause for a moment to give Gwen and Jack time to eat this up, as if they need it, then continues by telling them they're going to have to open up the Riftmouth so it can suck everything back in. Jack tells him no way; "It's too dangerous", but Gwen, having as little understanding of how the Riftmouth works as me, is a lot more receptive to Bilis's suggestions, and asks if they can do that. Jack's all "opening the rift will put thousands of lives at risk!" and Bilis is all "if you don't open the rift, things will keep falling through time, and thousands of lives will be at risk!" I wish someone could make any of this make even a little bit of sense to me. Jack pulls a gun on Bilis. OK, people pointing guns at each other, that I understand. Good. Jack wants to take Bilis back to the Hub, but Bilis is not down with that so he casually pops out of time. Jack tells Gwen to do a temporal scan and runs around frantically trying to track down Bilis. OK, the guy can go ANYWHERE IN HISTORY. I think at this point you're taking futility to a whole new level, Jack.

While Jack's off gallivanting outside, Bilis pops back in to have a private chat with Gwen which is all kinds of creepy, even for Bilis, all "Do you want to know? Then take my hands", and then suddenly jerking them away when she hesitantly tries to do so, saying "Only if you're sure." Gwen decides that she is sure, so Bilis grabs her hands and does his soul-staring thing, and then we get a shaky-camera'd Gwen-eye view of her walking into her apartment and discovering Rhys's lifeless body on the floor. Which is what Bilis was apologising about earlier; it's a vision of the future.

Gwen goes bursting out to save Rhys, but when she arrives at home, Rhys is fine, because "future", not "present", Gwen. She lets out some severely psychotic laughter and yells "YOU'RE CLEANING THE OVEN!" WOW, she is so completely unhinged these days. Which has actually been gradually seeping in for a while; since "They Keep Killing Suzie", I think. And you know what, that actually makes sense, because clearly Suzie did some fucked up stuff to her then, and that's actually been pretty consistently characterised since then, think on her weird twitchiness in "Out Of Time" and then crazy Retconning of Rhys in "Combat". And, as a logical corollary to this theory of an actual character arc, for real, I'm going to pass "Random Shoes" off as a weird Retcon hallucination of Gwen's. How's that for fanwank! Now, obviously, this is all bollocks, but this Torchwood in my head is clearly a lot better than the Torchwood that is happening on my screen (I have to assume the same is true of Chibnall), so, hey, why don't you join me?

Wow, where were we? Right, "YOU'RE CLEANING THE OVEN!" Rhys is possibly on psychotropics too, because he cheerfully agrees, but then Gwen grabs his arm and hysterically tells him they have to get out of there now. Rhys is like "Can't I at least finish cleaning this oven?", but Gwen is just not willing to take that risk, so she tazers Rhys into unconsciousness. Wow. I have to assume she has shown plenty of warning signs, Rhys; this is why you should certainly have ditched her before now.

And, time to catch up with Owen. Can you guess what he's doing? 4 words, rhymes with 'Elf instructive nemo downstage'? And he's all alone, (like, there doesn't even appear to be anyone behind the bar, huh?) so it's time for his ghost visit, and of course his ghost is Diane, and anyone want to tell me why Tosh didn't get Mary? Yeah, yeah, she was "evil" and all (Yeah, I still have a weird thing about Mary not being evil. I think I probably should watch "Greeks Bearing Gifts" again so I can well and true be left wondering what the hell I was thinking on all that.), that didn't stop Lisa, right? And just like the other two, she wants Diane to open the Rift. OK, actually, Diane has fairly logical reasons for wanting Owen to open the Riftmouth; she's lost in time, fair enough. Lisa appealed to Ianto's general need to help people, fair enough. What the hell would Mary say to convince Tosh? I can't think of anything. I mean, not that it would be possible to come up with something worse than "If there's no other way, you'll have to do it", but I guess I'm glad they didn't saddle her with that.

And over to the Hub again, Gwen's locked Rhys up in one of the cells. Well, of course she has; she doesn't love him or need him any more and she damn well knows it, but she is also not at all ready to let go, so what else is there to do? You can lie to him and lie to yourself and pretend that everything's fine, and then Retcon him when you need to take a moment out from all the lying, but you just can't keep doing those things for ever, so what are you going to do? What has Torchwood taught you to do? Stick him in a box. Lock him away where nothing bad can get in, that'll keep him safe. That'll keep him preserved, just in case you need him later. Rhys wakes up, and Gwen apologetically explains that she had to do this, because he wasn't safe. Rhys is as hysterical as you'd expect anyone to be if their girlfriend tazered them without warning and they woke up in a dingy cell. Well, anyone but Logan Echolls, maybe; he's got to be used to those kinds of things by now. Gwen tries to soothe him, tells him she loves him, she's just trying to take care of him and everything will be alright. And... then she just leaves him there to go back to work. Nice.

Upstairs, she asks Tosh to stick CCTV of the cells up on the screens, Tosh says "No problem", and everyone's being totally comforting, because of course they all understand her completely lunatic desires; she learned it from them. Since Day One, what they've been doing is teaching Gwen to forget to be human; teaching her to be Suzie. Tosh can't understand how Bilis could show her that vision, because it's not like Bilis can do anything else they don't understand, right? And it's not like they have, in their vaults, a machine that can do exactly that, right? Also, how is nobody making the obvious connection Gwen's vision with their own? These people are serious morons oftentimes. OK, so, mostly I mean Ianto here; Tosh is the only other one who had a vision to connect, and hers was so retarded that I feel I can discount. I am totally not just being biased because I like Tosh better. No way. They take a moment to feel sympathetic for Gwen, as she describes how real the vision felt (again, machine in the vaults that does exactly that!), and then Jack tells them they still have work to do. Cue lights cutting out and alarms sounding. Security breach! Jack tells them all not to panic; cue Gwen charging downstairs yelling "RHYYYS!!!"

Look, you can't just stick Rhys in a box to keep him safe; you're not going to seal it up well enough, and the bad things will find a way through. Or you'll seal it up too tight, and it'll keep the bad things out fine, but it'll also keep out the good things, like love, and oxygen. The end result is much the same either way. You can't lock him away from the world and only take him out in the moments when you need him, because that's not the way it works. You don't get to pick and choose you moments, because if you're doing that, you're talking about taking control of time, and in the end, you'll find that all that happens is that you're the one who's locked away from the world. And then you summon some giant demon for no reason whatsoever, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Down in the cells, Rhys's door opens of its own accord, and he cautiously steps out. Bilis is crouching at the other end of the corridor, Rhys asks him if he works there, dropping Gwen's name, and while he's saying this, Bilis calmly walks up to him, pulls out a weird twisty knife and stabs him in the stomach. Rhys's eyes go wide with shock, Bilis pulls it out and then stabs again, twisting it upwards. Dying Rhys's eye view of Bilis casually walking away, wiping the blood from the knife with a handkerchief and then popping out of time again, at which point the lights come back on, the alarms stop, and, aside from Rhys dying on the floor, of course, there's no evidence that anything unusual happened at all. And obviously, literally no time basses between this happening and Gwen and Jack bursting in there, and Gwen breaks down quite impressively. In between assaulting Jack, and the floor, and the walls, she screams "We can bring him back! We can bring him back!", but Jack shakes his head. "There's nothing we can do."

Later, they've got Rhys's body laid out on the medical table, Jack cleaning the blood from Gwen's hand while she sits and stares catatonically. She realises she'll have to tell Rhys's family, Ianto kindly says "We'll deal with it", but Gwen remembers the porter from the day she joins, so she knows what "deal with it" really means and she is having none of it, venomously telling him "You won't 'deal with him', Ianto." Tosh offers a paltry "I'm so sorry," Gwen giggles in a way that is really reminding me of Donnie Darko under hypnosis and says "You never even met him" and then demands that they bring him back. Ianto reminds her that they destroyed the Risen Mitten, so Gwen starts mumbling that there's got to be something else or "There's something wrong with time so uh we can we can go back and to the moment to the very moment... well it's got to be there's got to be something you can do otherwise WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT OF YOU?!" And then she gets in another good assault on Jack's chest, and he just calmly takes it, waits until she's let it all out and puts his arms around her, tells her he's sorry. Aw, man. And Owen's back! Tosh is overjoyed to see him, he ignores her, of course, but to be fair, the bloody corpse of Gwen's boyfriend is lying there and that is not something you see every day. He tries to get in on the hug with Jack and Gwen, she shrieks "Don't you touch me!" and walks away. Owen turns on Jack and self-righteously demands to know how many more have to suffer. "I'm going to fix this," he declares, "I'm opening the Rift[mouth]!" Jack looks to Ianto and says "Make sure you stop him," Ianto reflexively starts after Owen, but then pauses, turns back and grits out a "No" and then continues up the stairs. Tosh apologetically tells Jack "We're going to help him" and follows, Gwen steps away from Rhys's body and babbles about how Bilis said it would work and Owen's right and she's going to help too.

Main Hub, Owen's frantically typing away at the keyboard, Ianto tells him to enter Emergency Protocol One which is intriguing, and by that I mean makes no actual sense, of course. Also makes no sense; Gwen tells Owen to get out the way so she can type whatever gibberish needs typing. What? If anyone, Tosh should be the one doing that, I can't imagine how Gwen thinks she has more idea what she's doing than Owen, Owen has no real reason to trust that she is really on his side and isn't going to deliberately fuck it up. It's stupid in so many ways!

Over in the med bay, Jack grabs a gun that is for some reason just lying at his feet all of a sudden and strides in there, points it at them and tells Gwen to step away from the computer. Tosh, looking horrified, asks him what the hell he's doing, Gwen sadly walks up to him and says "Come on, Jack." And then Jack says the following words, and if anybody could shed some light on what possible reason Chibnall could have for putting these words into his mouth, it would be much appreciated, I've got to say; "You're a united front now. Toshiko, the poor girl who'll screw any passing alien that gives her a pendant. Owen, so strong he gets in a cage with a Weevil, desperate to be mauled. Ianto, hiding his cyber girlfriend in the basement. Your three comrades here pumped bullets into him, remember?" What the fuck? Yes, they remember, and I do too, and, you know, it's nice that you do as well, Chibnall, but what the fuck? That is not human speech. Gwen sobs "I've got to get Rhys back", but really she's upset because Jack forgot her, so he obliges now; "Yeah, because you're so in love with Rhys that you spend half your time in Owen's bed." Gwen socks him one in the face, causing him to drop his gun, which Owen quickly grabs and yells "We're relieving you of command, Captain! We're opening that rift and getting back what we lost!" Just in case the ghost visit and all his crying and yelling and self-destructive emo rampaging about it in the last two episode wasn't enough to explain what is going on here; Owen wants to get Diane back. While we're at it, I'll just remind you of everyone else's motivations too; Gwen wants to get Rhys back. Ianto just generally has a need to help people, I think, but it's kind of murky. Tosh has no motivation beyond a need to make Jack stand alone, because only Captain Jack Harkness has the courage and the strength and the valour and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to know what is right and he must bear his cross alone.

The computer tells Gwen that retina scans of all Torchwood personnel are required in order to activate, she says "Shit!", Owen roars "STAY DOWN!!" at Jack, who taunts him about the size of his balls, so Owen shoots him in the head a couple of times. Everyone is all shocked, and then Owen says "I'm sick of people doubting me!" You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry! And then everyone stands around looking shocked for a while, except Jack, who just lies there, even though we already know that a bullet to the head does not keep him down for this long. And then they all scan their eyes, and Gwen hesitates, but then looks over at Rhys's body and steels herself and pushes the button. And in the cells, the Weevils and the Roman are going crazy, and everywhere the alarms are going crazy, and Jack finally gets his lazy arse up and grabs Gwen's arm, and melodramatically asks "What have you done?", of course. And then there's a prolonged sequence of the building collapsing, and Rhys's body pops out of time, and the crew all find there way to an alleyway.

Hold on to your hats, because things are about to go really off the rails. And, in case you hadn't noticed, I've been pretty unenthused by this episode so far anyway. Rhys's death has been the only particularly engaging event so far, I think; it was predictable, I said back in the very first recap, I think, that Rhys was obviously going to leave Gwen or die by the end of the season, but really, these people needed some major punishment for their massive bag o' hubris, and since none of the others have... anyone at all outside of Torchwood, that we've seen, it had to happen to Rhys, I don't have a problem with that. And Eve Myles did a pretty damn awesome job of portraying whatever scraps of sanity Gwen had left fluttering away in the breeze, which is what made all the aftermath scenes awesome. Wondering how they could fuck that up too? Let's find out!

The crew are all in this alley, and Bilis is standing there, and he chants "From out of the darkness, he is come!" Gwen demands an explanation of this from the others, but none is forthcoming, which is a shame, because I'd like one too. Bilis continues "Son of the great Beast, cast out before time, chained in rock and imprisoned beneath the Rift[mouth]. ALL HAIL ABADON, THE GREAT DEVOURER, COME TO FEAST ON LIFE." And there's this hundred foot demon thing, that looks quite a lot like Actual, Literal Satan, except not as well animated, and he stomps and roars through Cardiff and it really is just not a convincing effect at all. Bilis adds "The whole world shall die beneath his shadow" to save some more on the animation costs; now they don't have to show Abadon devouring anyone at all, just have a shadow fall over them, and then they die! Masterstroke. And this happens for a while, and it really is laughably stupid. And then Bilis says "I look upon you, my god, and know my work is done!" And then Gwen demands that Jack tell her what to do, and Owen and Tosh and Ianto have all been replaced by cardboard cut-outs, I think. Jack tells Gwen, "just you" he says, to get him to an open space. And so Gwen drives the Hyena to the middle of a field, and Jack gets out and Gwen asks him what his plan is; "If Abadon is the bringer of death, let's see how he does with me. If he feeds on life, then I'm an all you can eat buffet." Gwen tells him to wait and weakly cries "Jack" after him, but Jack will not wait. And Abadon's shadow falls on him, and Barrowman does some truly horrific overacting with the screaming and the wailing, and of course Jack he thrusts his arms outwards, because, hey, if you rearrange the letters of "Captain Jack Harkness", you get "Christ"! And some other letters that I can't be bothered to attempt to rearrange into a semi-coherent sentence. So, anyway, Abadon goes away and the world is saved. Sure, why not. But it appears that this isn't the "drinking with your buddies" kind of death for Jack, either, because he is not getting up. Gwen weeps over his body for a while, who the hell knows what the others are doing.

Gwen goes home and Rhys is alive again, and doesn't remember any of it. But Gwen remembers because A WIZARD DID IT. Gwen kisses him long and hard, and then tells him to go to bed, get some sleep, she'll be back for him. Yeah, Rhys is alive again. Which means Gwen won't have learned any lessons here, and the hubris is just going to continue to build up. Hooray!

Everybody's hangin' down by the Wall O' Corpses, Jack's laid out ready to be stuck in, but no one's done it yet. Gwen asks if Owen (Now leader of Torchwood, everybody!) is certain, he is; "He's ice cold. No vital signs." Gwen points out that Jack survived a bullet to the head, twice even, and tells them all that when she first joined, he said he couldn't die. Owen tells her he was wrong, but Gwen isn't going to give up that easily, because suddenly she is "the heart of Torchwood" again, so she is going to sit there and she is going to wait for Jack to wake up. The others shrug and leave her to it, Gwen fades into various different places to indicate time passing. Rhys has got to be getting pretty impatient back home!

Upstairs, the others watch her on the monitors, and Owen wonders aloud how long she's going to do this. Ianto goes into Jack's office and cries into Jack's coat. Back down at the Wall O' Corpses, Tosh has come for a visit and says "It's been days". Gwen robotically tells her "I believe in him", Doubting Toshiko tells her to let him go, and leaves. And Gwen takes Jack's hand, holds it against her cheek, and kisses him on the lips, and then starts to walk away. But before she's made it more than ten steps, she hears Jack's voice behind her, and what He says is "Thank you." And Gwen stops, and smiles and runs back.

Upstairs, Gwen and Jack walk in, and she is refusing to let go of his hand, which is probably quite sweet but damned if I can tell right now. Tosh is the first to see him, and she runs over and hugs him. Ianto then does the same, and Jack kisses him passionately, because, yeah, they have indeed had a totally offscreen affair. And then Owen walks in and sees Jack, and he just slowly walks towards him, looking on the verge of weeping for his sins, and before he can say anything, Jack tells him "I forgive you", and I fucking hate Owen and it still pisses me off that he's being so completely emasculated here. And Jack takes him in his arms, and Owen does weep for his sins.

In Jack's office, Gwen asks what's happened to the Riftmouth now, Jack tells her "It closed up when Abadon was destroyed. But it's going to be more volatile than ever" and HOW ARE THOSE TWO THINGS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE? How is it that everything they say makes the whole Riftmouth plot even more nonsensical? Gwen tells Jack that they all saw visions of people they loved, and asks what Jack saw. Jack didn't get a vision, because I guess Satan learned the first time around that there is no point trying to tempt Christ. Except there is, because the next thing Gwen asks is if there's anything that would have tempted Jack, and he says "The right sort of doctor", so I guess Bilis was just stupid to not go after Jack too, not that it made any difference anyway. And Jack walks out of his office, I guess to go hang out on a rooftop and angst some more, only his hand in a jar is all glowing and twitching and bubbling, and then there's this VWORP VWORP noise, and we pan over to Gwen coming to investigate the noise, but Jack has already vanished. And Tosh and Ianto and Owen come in through the front door, and they've brought coffee. Gwen asks if they saw Jack on their way in, of course they did not. He's ascended to the happiest place he could imagine, duh, that's what he does after rising from the dead a few days after dying to save the world. And the last shot of the season is Gwen, Tosh, Ianto and Owen looking lost and confused.

April Fool! The last shot of the season is, of course, a nice bit of Cardiff!porn.

So, yeah. Ianto and Jack, I can see that he could have transferred his devotion from Lisa to Jack after he'd got over blaming Jack for her death and realised she died long before they all pumped her full of lead, because it does seem that Ianto needs to devote himself to someone, I could buy that happening, but something that important to 40% of the major characters on the series should have got more than, like, one minute of screentime, total, across the whole thirteen episodes. And I could maybe forgive that, a little, if Rhys hadn't have been brought back to life without any consequences at all. If Tosh hadn't been tempted to the dark side by one tautological sentence from someone we have never seen before. If there had been explanation whatsoever of how, exactly, everyone but Jack was in the wrong opening the Riftmouth when it seemed to me like they saved the world pretty well by doing that. If the Riftmouth, in general, made any fucking sense. If any one of those things had happened, I would be a little more forgiving of the others, but they didn't and so I am not, and so I submit to you that "End Of Days" SUCKED BALLS.

Torchwood will return in 2008, apparently. Let's hope the year off gives them time to improve the writing, because it has the potential to be awesome, it occasionally WAS awesome, but I found approximately 50% of the episodes ("Combat" could go either way) to be big disappointments, and that is just not a good score.