Torchwood: Adam

By Rhea Dee

Oh Adam. What a strange, sad episode you were! You plunged your sci-fi hands into my chest and snapped my heart in two. It hurt so much, Adam, mostly due to the fact that I was not expecting any sort of heart-snapping.

The episode started with Gwen and Rhys wrestling in bed. Gwen then hops off to work, telling Rhys she’ll see him later. All seems normal.

But all is not normal. When we flash to The Hub, we see Team Torchwood yapping with a guy named Adam. Not strange at first, but then it’s revealed that Team Torchwood is treating Adam like he’s one of the team, and that he’s been there for ages. Gwen walks in, sees everyone being all chummy-chummy with Adam, and then asks the question we’re all thinking:

“Who are you?”

Everyone looks at her strangely, and for a moment you think the spell (at least, you think it’s a spell) might be broken. But then Adam steps up to Gwen and touches her shoulder.

“That’s exactly what I said to you the first time we met,” he says. Gwen experiences a series of flashbacks of her “meeting” Adam for the first time, and when we cut back to reality, her face breaks into a smile and she says “Sorry, Adam, couldn’t resist!”

Umm, what? Seems like Torchwood has a problem they don’t know about.

And the problem is pretty big, as each member of Team Torchwood seems to be experiencing memory failure and personality differences. Gwen returns home to not remember Rhys (although everyone else remembers him), Tosh is confident and cool, and in a “serious” relationship with Adam, and Owen is a glasses wearing geek infatuated with Tosh (who doesn’t return his feelings–nice swap).

It’s a mad, mad, mad day at Torchwood.

Meanwhile, Jack is seeing ghosts, mostly, a small boy ghost. Jack tries to shake it off, but while he’s out hunting a Weevil with Adam he sees an apparition of his father. Terrified, Jack abandons the Weevil mission and tries to ignore the memories ghost dad brought forth. But Adam has an intense interest in these buried memories. He insists that Jack tell him what he saw, and he touches his arm to help persuade him (it’s clear that this is Adam’s memory manipulation technique).

Jack reveals a bit about his past, and we learn the small boy ghost is Gray–Jack’s younger brother. When aliens attacked Jack’s home, his father told him to take Gray and run. However, when they were running away, Gray’s hand slipped from Jack’s and he lost him. By the time Jack realized that Gray wasn’t behind him, it was too late–Gray was gone. Jack returned home alone to share the tragic news with his parents, only to find his mother grieving over his dead father.

Meanwhile, back at The Hub, Ianto, Tosh and Owen are trying to open a mysterious box that has fallen into Torchwood’s possession. Tosh is anxious for Adam to call her as it’s their anniversary. Owen moons over Tosh a bit more, giving her a box lunch and saying he’d cherish her properly when Tosh frets over Adam not returning her call. Tosh is indifferent to Owen’s affections, but Ianto is sympathetic; when Tosh shoots down an idea of Owen’s about how to open the box, Ianto offers to look through his diary to see if he’d made any notes about it. Yes, Ianto keeps a diary. His awesome-ness extends out of this world.

When Ianto leaves, Owen moons over Tosh some more, finally revealing that he’s in love with her and has been for quite some time. Tosh responds negatively, snipping that she’s with Adam and that she could never love Owen because he’s not her type. She storms out of the room, leaving a heartbroken Owen standing alone.

During this time, Gwen is at home, trying to readjust to Rhys, who isn’t taking it very well that Gwen cannot remember him. Bits and pieces do start to come back to her eventually, and when they return home for the evening, Rhys reveals that he was always scared that she settled for him. New-Gwen however, without her Rhys memories, is falling in love with him again. She expresses that to him, and it casts away Rhys’ doubts.

Back at The Hub, Ianto makes a startling discovery–there is no mention of Adam in his diary. Adam confronts him but Ianto (Super Ianto, in my opinion) stands his ground. When Ianto accuses him of not existing, Adam’s arm begins to fade out, Back to the Future style. However Adam will not be exposed–he touches Ianto’s forehead in a very mind-meld-y way and infuses Ianto with memories that he’s a serial killer, killing women in back alleys. Ianto is clearly suffering from the bad memories, and Adam remarks that he’d forgotten how good it feels to give someone bad memories. He leaves Ianto on the floor and runs away.

When Jack returns to The Hub, he sees Ianto on the floor, obviously distraught. Ianto reveals to Jack that he is a killer, but Jack refuses to believe it. He makes Ianto take a lie detector test, but Ianto passes (he does after all, believe the memories are real). Despite that, Jack refuses to believe that Ianto is a killer. Jack looks through Torchwood’s video files, convinced that something made Ianto this way, and he stumbles across the tape of Adam doing the mind-meld thing with Ianto. Jack pushes even further back on the tapes and catches Gwen, earlier that day, saying “Who are you?” to Adam before he touched her.

So now Jack and Ianto know the truth.

Cut to the next day. Everything is normal in this mirror-glass world. Owen brings Tosh flowers and apologizes for his behavior the previous day, Gwen is still struggling to remember Rhys, and Adam saunters in happy as ever. Ianto and Jack watch Adam closely.

Then Jack decides to screw discretion and point a gun at Adam’s head.

This of course puts the whole team in a frenzy (save Ianto). Jack tells them that Adam is not one of them, that he’s somehow infiltrated into everyone’s memories. The team has a hard time digesting this, since Adam is in their heads, and when Jack leads Adam off to the holding cells, Tosh pulls a gun to Jack’s head. She screams at Jack to let Adam go, but Jack is firm in his assumptions and the gun is finally wrestled out of Tosh’s hands.

Back upstairs, Jack reasons with the team that Adam has infiltrated all of their memories and that in order to return to normal they have to hold onto a memory they had before they all came to Torchwood. Jack dims the light and does the soothing hypno-voice thing, trying to get the team to search the new false memories for the hidden truths.

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We are drawn into each character’s head as they slowly begin to uncover the true memories of who they are and the truth is out: Adam isn’t real.

Jack says that each of the team has to take a short-term amnesia pill to erase Adam from their memories. As each member takes the pill and passes out, Adam begins to fade away.

Jack leaves his crew to sleep it off, and goes back to the holding cells to confront Adam. Jack says that once he takes his amnesia pill, Adam will be gone. Adam tries to reason with him, telling Jack that he can help surface more of his childhood memories if he lets him live. Jack is tempted and soon he’s in a memory before Gray is lost and his father is dead. They’re playing on the beach, but soon the memory is tainted; Adam is there now. Jack tries to push him away but it’s too late, the memory is changed, and Adam is holding the memory ransom. He tells Jack that he can only have the memory back if he lets him live, if not, Jack will lose all his memories of Gray and his father forever. Jack, who was already living with the memories deeply buried, takes the pill and passes out, while Adam disappears.

The next day, team Torchwood shows up at the office, confused because two days are missing from their lives. Tosh notices the flowers on her desk are from Owen, but Owen denies doing this, saying he doesn’t do flowers. Everything seems back to normal. (Although you have to wonder why Rhys is going to say.)

Later, in Jack’s office, Ianto comes by to pick up his diary (yes, there is innuendo. It is Jack and Ianto after all). Jack notices an evidence bag that says ‘Property of Adam.’ Confused, he pulls out the box Ianto, Tosh and Owen were examining earlier, and it’s suggested this is how Adam made his way into the office. How very genie-like. Jack opens it easily when he notices a small puzzle piece-key in the bag. There doesn’t seem to be anything inside, but when Jack flips the box over, sand pours out onto the floor.

When I love an episode of a show, I go father than just saying ‘that was one of the best episodes of the series.’ No, I go all the way and say ‘that was one of the best hours on TV.’

Adam was one of the best hours on TV. The emotional resonance of this episode will stick to me for a long, long time.

I found myself being really moved by the whole ‘hypno-Jack search for your true memory’ thing. It sounds squiffy, but it was handled elegantly.

The most heartbreaking memory reveals had to be Tosh and Owen’s. Tosh is revealed to be quite lonely, (no one comes to her flat warming because she doesn’t have anyone to invite) and Owen is revealed to have a messed-up relationship with his mom.

At the final moment, when everyone realizes who they really were, Tosh expressed that she wanted someone to see how special she was, while Owen expressed that although he’s saved thousands of lives, he wants somebody to save him. Jack comforts them both, but the pain of leaving the new memories behind is hard for Tosh, who believed she was in a happy relationship with Adam and didn’t want to give up her new confidence and feeling loved. She finally takes her pill with an encouraging smile from Owen, and the two connect over their tragic true selves.

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The theme of this episode, the fact that being happy under false pretenses is never as good as reality, is one of my favorite themes in general. It was great to see it applied to the Torchwoodverse.

One last thing. I know I never do a “Next Week on Torchwood,” but I can’t resist: MARTHA JONES IS BACK BABY!

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Rhea Dee loves being a geek. She also loves female revenge flicks, campy horror, trashy novels and rock ‘n’ roll records. Rhea’s love for rock ‘n’ roll led her to be a regular contributor for the now defunct Now Wave webzine. She’s all about Edgar Wright. Important to know.

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