Torchwood: Dead Man Walking

By Rhea Dee

Owen’s dead.

There’s no “mostly dead” about it. Owen Harper, cynical yet lovable Owen Harper, is dead dead.

The episode opens with Martha decked out in full Scully gear, getting reading to perform an autopsy on Owen. The rest of team watches on in despair.

Before Martha can even position the saw over Owen, Jack bursts into the autopsy room and tells Martha to hold off on cutting Owen up until he gets back. He then runs off, leaving the rest of the team confused as hell.

We see Jack go through the city and eventually enter a seedy nightclub. He approaches A Little Princess looking girl (she’s got ringlets and everything) who’s expecting him. She has a mysterious looking Tarot deck that seems to feature Jack as The Knight.

The girl examines the Tarot deck for Jack’s question, which she knows, without Jack vocalizing anything (I expected no less, from a creepy little girl in a seedy opium looking den). She warns Jack of the consequences of his goal, but Jack shrugs them off. The girl is last seen holding the Death Card as Jack runs out.

We follow Jack to a church, which is occupied by a gazillion sleeping Weevils. Jack creeps over them and begins to search an array of chests that are stored inside.

After rifling through some creepy dolls (why does it have to be creepy dolls? Those things are my worst enemy) Jack finds the chest he’s looking for but the dozing Weevils are now fully awake. Great.

We cut back to The Hub. Jack bursts in, and the team questions where he’s been. Jack opens the chest and pulls out…a frickin’ resurrection glove.

“I’m bringing Owen back,” he says.

The team isn’t all for this, of course. I mean, the whole Suzie thing was just last season. Jack assures them it’s a different glove and a different person, so the results will be different this time. He positions the glove under Owen’s head and brings him back. He tells Owen he’s dead and that everyone has two minutes to say their goodbyes.

Jack turns to Gwen, who is still in shock from the whole ordeal, so of course she says nothing. Tosh runs up to Owen, says she’ll miss him and that she’s always loved him.

And Jack, wonderful Jack…asks Owen what the code is to the alien morgue.

“You brought be back from the dead for a passcode?!?!” Owen shouts.

“I’m sorry, but you’re the only one who knows what it is.” Jack responds.

Owen gives him the passcode and then Jack tries to prepare Owen for death and the darkness coming. Owen gives Jack one last frightened look before his two minutes run out and he dies, again.

Jack holds on to Owen’s hand, crying into his shoulder, while the rest of the team looks on and cries as well.

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After a minute, Owen asks, “When will I be getting my hand back?”

Seems Owen isn’t dead dead anymore. The glove has resurrected him past the two minute mark. Yay! Right…?

Jack discards the glove, and we see it twitch a little. I really hope that was involuntary.

Martha examines Owen to try and locate where his life energy is coming from. Unlike last time, the glove is not sapping life from Jack and transferring it to Owen. After a but of analysis, Martha states that she doesn’t know where the energy source is coming from.

Owen is put under lockdown. While he’s wandering around The Hub, Tosh approaches him about her little confession. Owen waves it away as totally textbook, something said in consuming grief. (He doesn’t even give Tosh a chance to refute him…jeez, seems like dead dead or walking dead, Owen is still kind of a meanie).

After Tosh leaves him alone, Owen suddenly plunges into darkness, a wavy warped darkness which makes him look like a funhouse mirror. There are weird voices in the dark, and we as viewers assume this is death.

But why is Owen back there?

Once he comes back from the dark, his eyes turn black and he chants something in some non-comprehensible language. Freaked by his little journey, he escapes The Hub.

We see Owen wandering around town in a haze; he finally stumbles into a bar and buys a beer. A woman hits on him at the bar, and as she runs her hands into his pants, Owen realizes that he can’t enjoy carnal pleasures as he has no blood flow. He attempts to run out, but Jack has caught up with him. The two fight, and Owen asks (well, screams) if the only reason Jack brought him back is because of a passcode. But before Jack can answer, they’re apprehended by police and taken to the station.

Owen and Jack are share a cell. Owen realizes the limitations of his dead body, mostly because the beer he casually drank earlier is now trapped in his stomach (he has no digestive properties being dead). He does a headstand to line up his organs and dispel the beer, and sure enough, it comes shooting out of his mouth Linda Blair style. Jack remarks that it’s the grossest thing he’s ever seen, which is saying a lot since Jack’s been alive forever.

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After the gross beer expulsion, Jack and Owen have a heart to heart about immortality and death. Owen asks Jack again why he brought him back.

Jack tells him, “I couldn’t give up on you. I was waiting for a miracle. I still am.”

Jack pulls Owen into a hug that is as touching as it is completely and utterly hot (I feel like I’m betraying Ianto saying that). Jack gets them out of the cell by announcing that they’re Torchwood and they head back to The Hub.

Unfortunately, this isn’t easy, as a million Weevils have tracked Jack down from his little breaking and entering stint earlier. He and Owen try to shake them, but it’s impossible, as there are a million (well okay, not a million, but a lot). The Weevils corner Jack and Owen on top of a car park, but instead of attacking, they bow down.

Jack looks perplexed. He turns to Owen to ask him what the bleep is going on but Owen’s eyes have gone all dark and he’s speaking in tongues. Again.

After the Weevil bow-down and dark eyed tongue babble, Owen’s undergoing a deeper analysis. Martha discovers that the cells in Owen’s body are massively changing, and that the process is 80% complete. It’s unclear what will happen at one hundred percent. Research of the mysterious language reveals that Owen is harboring Death, who is trying to push his way into our world so that he can claim 13 souls and stay in our realm forever. The team realizes that once Owen reaches 100%, Death will come a-knockin’.

Owen realizes that there is one solution to all of this: kill him permanently. Martha will embalm him, freezing his brain functions, allowing a dead man death.

But remember the glove twitch from earlier? As Martha prepares to inject Owen, the glove rises and attacks Martha Aliens face-hugger style, in that it latches itself to her face. Once the team pries the glove off her and it’s destroyed, we see that the glove has taken Martha’s life–she’s now an old woman.

And to make things worse? During the whole Martha face-hugger incident, Owen has charged up to a 100%. His eyes are black again and a dark smoke pours out of his mouth and rushes Jack.

It’s dark for a while and then Jack comes to in the Torchwood SUV outside of the hospital. We learn that the team has tracked Death here, and that he’s already preying on the sick, gathering up his 13 souls. Martha is also under hospital care, because she’s now dying (what an evil little glove. You really cannot trust a disembodied hand…hasn’t Evil Dead II taught us anything?)

The team desperately tries to research how to stop Death, while trying to save the patients of the hospital. Owen and Tosh rescue a kid with leukemia and while Tosh works on the door with her tri-corder lockpick thing, Super Ianto finally stumbles across something. The last time Death walked the Earth and tried to reclaim souls, he was stopped by Faith–a little girl.

Owen realizes that he is the only one who can defeat Death, because he is already dead, and has nothing to lose. He gives an encouraging speech to the leukemia kid, telling him to never give up on living.

Tosh gets the door open and Owen pulls her into a kiss, swiping her super lockpick while she’s distracted. He pushes Tosh and the kid out and seals himself in with Death.

Owen’s epiphany turns out to be correct; he consumes Death and sends it back. This thankfully reverses Martha’s age (a hysterical scene that involves more surprised, screamy Ianto).

Back at The Hub, Martha reveals that she doesn’t know when the energy keeping Owen alive will run out (but it will eventually run out). Owen, resigned to his new fate as a dead man, asks Jack to put him to work so that he can make up for all the people that died at the hospital because of his return to life. There is hostility in his voice, and you realize that Owen has not truly accepted his fate just yet.

This isn’t the first episode of Torchwood to deal with something decidedly not sci-fi (the others being the lovely but eerie fairyesque “Small Worlds” and “End of Days,” both of Season One). I was surprised at the occult turn of events given the extreme sci-fi of this season and was even more surprised that I loved it–I’m not usually one for occult business.

I suppose occult is a bit of a generalization. This episode was about death, dying, and dealing with death. I love shows that deal with death in a supernatural but also finite kind of way–Death was a figure that could kill, but in death there was nothing but darkness. And eerie reality that gives Torchwood a dark edge.

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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