Torchwood: Something Borrowed

By Rhea Dee

There is something beautiful about Captain Jack Harkness dancing cheek to cheek with another man. We saw it in Season One’s “Captain Jack Harkness,” and we got to see it again in “Something Borrowed.” I feel totally spoiled.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Jack doesn’t cut a rug until the end of the episode. But still, I couldn’t resist opening with that image of Jack slow-dancing…

I kind of figured that Torchwood would follow up the dramatic ‘Owen is dead’ arc with something fairly light and funny. The last three episodes of Torchwood were taxing on the soul, so it was nice to see something a bit more cheeky.

The episode opens with Gwen’s bachelorette party. Throughout this sequence, you see flashbacks of Gwen before the party, fighting off a nasty looking alien shape-shifter. Gwen chases him down and they scrape for a bit. The shape-shifter bites Gwen on the forearm before Jack kills him.

At the party, you see Gwen with a big bandage on her arm from the bite. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain or discomfort.

That is, until Gwen wakes up the next morning. She opens her eyes and sees her wedding dress hanging on the closet; today she’s marrying Rhys. She jumps out of bed and…

She’s pregnant. Frickin’ full term pregnant, like nine months have passed in twenty-four hours.

Gwen looks at herself in the mirror.

“Ohhh,” is all she says.

Gwen calls Owen and Jack over to her apartment. Jack deduces that Gwen was impregnated by the shape-shifter that bit her the other night, while Owen tells Gwen that she’s not going to explode; if there was any alien/human incompatibility, Gwen would already be dead.

Owen tells Gwen of the procedure to remove the alien baby, but the process takes two days. Gwen refuses treatment, much to Jack’s disapproval, and tells them that she’s going through with her wedding and that she’ll do the procedure afterwards.

That’s dedication, baby.

But now it’s time to break the news to poor, sweet Rhys.

Rhys is, of course, very upset about Gwen’s sudden pregnancy. He blames Jack specifically for making Gwen work the day before her wedding. Rhys starts to make plans to postpone the wedding but Gwen again refuses. Alien baby or no alien baby, she wants to get married to Rhys today.

Back at The Hub, Jack reveals to the rest of the team that Gwen is still going through with the wedding. He tells Tosh to head over early and keep an eye on her, sends Ianto to get Gwen a new wedding dress, and tells Owen to autopsy the shape-shifter so that they can get more info on Gwen’s alien baby.

And now, an aside for Ianto’s dress adventure (gee, I hope you can’t tell that I’m totally obsessed with Ianto).

Ianto browses through the boutique’s selection of dresses, picking one out and holding it up to himself while looking in a mirror. A salesman appears behind him, asking Ianto if he needs any help and Ianto tells him he’s buying a wedding gown for his friend.

The salesman gives him a look.

“Of course you are, sir. You’d be surprised–we’re quite used to men buying dresses for their ‘friends’.”

Ianto gives the man a blank look. He’s still holding the wedding dress up to himself. Oh, Ianto.

Gwen heads out to the hotel in the country to start preparing for her wedding. Everyone is surprised that Gwen is preggers, although I have to say I feel the most sympathy for the bridesmaids at the bachelorette party since they saw Gwen very un-pregnant the night before.

Meanwhile, Tosh has arrived with Gwen’s new wedding dress. One of Rhys’s groomsmen, an oafish looking guy nicknamed Banana Boat, tries his hand at wooing Tosh, while she struggles upstairs carrying the box holding Gwen’s dress. Tosh is completely uninterested however, which kind displays her loyalty to Owen. Plus, that Banana guy is a doofus.

Upstairs, Tosh gives Gwen the new wedding dress and tells her that she thinks Gwen made the right decision marrying Rhys today.

“You’re very lucky,” Tosh says.

Gwen notices the slight dejected tone, and she tells Tosh that she too will get married someday, suggesting that there’s always Owen. Tosh laughs it off, saying the vows would seem like a bad joke given that Owen’s dead. Tosh decides to leave Gwen to herself and goes downstairs to the bar.

Meanwhile, at the Hub, Ianto is showing Jack a picture of the dress he bought for Gwen. Jack says he made a good choice and Ianto reveals that his father used to be a tailor. The two share not so subtle innuendo that is cut short when Owen bursts into the room (damn him). Ianto quickly drops the flirting and pretends nothing happened.

That is interesting. Jack and Ianto’s little relationship is my favorite romantic bit in the show, but I will admit that I’m a bit confused as to what exactly their relationship is. Are they just sleeping together? Does Ianto love Jack and vice versa?

Or does Ianto love Jack but think that Jack doesn’t love him back so he’s reluctant to show any feelings towards him even though Jack probably likes him more than Ianto thinks?

As you can tell, I’ve thought on this quite a bit.

But yes. Owen has burst into the room. It seems he’s figured out what kind of shape-shifter bit Gwen. And the news ain’t good, because the shape-shifter is a Nostrovite. Their mating process is extremely gruesome: the male impregnates a host and when the host comes to term the female hunts her down and rips the host apart, giving “birth” to a baby Nostrovite. All three men head out to the country to stop Gwen’s wedding (it just isn’t her day).

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Back to Gwen’s wedding. At the bar, one of the groomsmen hits on an attractive young lady, telling her that a she needs a flower. As he’s trying to pin it on her, he accidentally pins her. She dabs a napkin to her chest while he apologizes and orders her a drink, but she leads him away, telling him they can grab a bite instead. Tosh heads back up to the bar to order another drink when she notices the napkin the woman dabbed away her wound with. The blood is black.

Tosh races after them, searching upstairs, when she runs into Banana again. She draws her gun and tells him to stay back. She hears screams from one of the rooms and rushes in.

Seems the lady at the bar has had her bite to eat–and it was the groomsman. Tosh prepares to shoot her but the bumbling Banana bursts in and the woman knocks out Tosh and rushes Banana, telling him that he’s lucky she’s watching her figure (I guess even aliens are vain).

Gwen isn’t doing so well now. She starts to doubt her decision to go through with the wedding, and the lies she’s had to build between her parents and Rhys’s parents about the source of the baby. When her father comes to talk to her before the ceremony, Gwen breaks down and tells him that she’s carrying an alien baby that she picked up working for Torchwood, the organization that hunts down aliens. Gwen’s father seems supportive, but when he leaves her he tells his wife that Gwen is buckling under wedding pressure.

Back to Tosh, who’s now conscious. Turns out that the shape-shifter woman is saving her for later, seeing as she’s trapped in a tar cocoon with the annoying Banana. Tosh tries to free herself but she can’t. She’s stuck to a doofus, for now.

The ceremony begins. The preacher asks if there’s anyone who opposes the marriage and Jack bursts inside, telling them to stop. He shuffles Rhys and Gwen into the bridal suite and fills them in about the Nostrovite hanging about. He demands that Gwen not go through with the wedding, and she again refuses, saying that she owes it to Rhys to go through with the wedding because she’s put him through a lot of crap (although by this point, I think Gwen might just be exacerbating things by trying to finish the wedding).

She then challenges Jack by asking ‘Who else will marry me?’ which is some Gwen and Jack shipper business that I simply cannot get into, especially with Ianto hanging around. Are they trying to say that if Jack said ‘I love you and I don’t want you to marry Rhys’ that Gwen would be ‘okay!’ and leave Rhys standing there?

Also, when did Gwen and Jack’s relationship turn into an unspoken desire? Have I missed it this whole time? Has Ianto distracted me or are they trying to force a ship on me that I just will not ship?

Speaking of Ianto, Ianto and Owen are searching the rest of the hotel for the Nostrovite. They stumble across Tosh and Banana and release Tosh from her annoying prison. Tosh tells them that she’s seen the Nostrovite and the three continue the search.

Unfortunately, team Torchwood is unable to keep the situation under wraps. One of the bridesmaids discovers the dead groomsman and rushes into the ceremony room and yells that someone’s been murdered. Jack tells Ianto to block all outgoing calls, so that the situation won’t spiral even more out of control.

But it’s a little too late for that, because Tosh has spotted the Nostrovite! She points her out to team Torchwood and the woman’s face transforms. The team shoots her multiple times but she manages to get away alive.

Jack turns to Gwen and tells her that she needs to be operated on now. Owen comes up to Gwen and busts out…the Singularity Scalpel. Gwen naturally recoils, but Owen assures that he’s modified it since the mayfly incident. Before he can use it however, Rhys’s mom rushes in, rambling about a monster on the loose. Owen leaves them for a moment to go and help Jack.

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Outside, Jack and the rest of the team are searching for the Nostrovite, who has taken the shape of one of the guests. Owen runs up to them and tells them that he’s left Gwen and Rhys with Rhys’s mother…but his mother is in the garden, talking to Gwen’s mother! The three rush back inside and Jack confronts Rhys’s mom, calling her an ugly dog. Gwen then sheepishly asks if the Nostrovite can mimic smells (which it can’t). Turns out the woman in the room is really Rhys’s mother–Gwen can smell her awful perfume. Jack looks mortified and Rhys punches him for insulting his mother.

The team realizes that the actual copy is downstairs talking to Gwen’s mother. They rush back outside and attack the Nostrovite, who takes Gwen’s mother hostage. The team is reluctant until Gwen comes downstairs, holding a bouquet. She walks towards the Nostrovite, distracting her with the baby in Gwen. The Nostrovite lets go of Gwen’s mother and rushes Gwen who shoots her multiple times with a gun hidden in the flower bouquet (slick Gwen!). But somehow the Nostrovite still isn’t dead (what, is it a terminator or something?). She runs off into the hotel.

Gwen heads into her bridal suite alone, contemplating her weird wedding day when Jack comes in to join her. They talk intimately for a few minutes, and lean in for a kiss (what???).

But before their lips can meet, Gwen notices that Jack’s hands have gone all…wonky. She looks into his face and sees that it isn’t Jack, but the Nostrovite. She fights her off, and Owen and Rhys rush in to her aid. Owen shoots the Nostrovite point blank, emptying an entire clip into her chest. He hands Rhys a backpack and tells them to get out.

Owen edges up to the bed and the Nostrovite sits up and runs out of the room. Okay, why won’t that thing die? Owen rushes back to Jack and the rest of the team and wonders that same question. He tells them that he thinks the Nostrovite is running on pure adrenaline for its young.

“Then we’re going to need a bigger gun,” Jack says.

Meanwhile, Rhys and Gwen have locked themselves in a barn. The Nostrovite is hot on their tail. Rhys takes out the Singularity Scalpel and zaps the alien baby away (Owen did modify it…nice).

But then the Nostrovite bursts into the barn. Before it can cause any damage though, it explodes, via Jack’s big new gun. Double nice. With the alien business over, everyone heads back inside and the wedding proceeds without any more incidents.

Now to go back to what I said at the beginning of this article–Jack dancing cheek to cheek with another man.

At the reception, Jack watches as Rhys and Gwen dance and laugh together. Owen comes up and asks Tosh to dance (aww) and after a moment, Jack asks Rhys if he can cut in. He dances with Gwen for a moment and he tells her that Rhys is a very lucky man and that’s he the best catch for Gwen; he’s brave and loyal and completely in love with Gwen.

Like I said before I have a hard time understanding the whole Jack and Gwen thing, but I can get this, mostly because it seems to be the end of Jack/Gwen. I like to view this scene as Jack finally putting Gwen’s crush to rest. She no longer needs to worry ‘who will marry her’ since she is now married to the perfect man. I also see it as Jack letting go of what might have been with Gwen.

And who comes to figuratively (and literally) sweeps Jack away? Why Ianto of course. Yes, Ianto is the man Jack dances with and yes, my heart did a little dance. Sigh.

As the party goes on, Rhys notes how their parents are peacefully asleep, even though they were fighting off an alien just a few hours ago. Soon though the rest of the reception hall falls asleep and we realize that Jack has drugged the entire company save team Torchwood and Rhys. Gwen says it’s for the best and Jack tempts them with the forgetting drug but Gwen refuses, saying there will be no more secrets in their relationship. The couple says their goodbyes and they take off, leaving Torchwood to clear up the mess.

Later that night, we see Jack enter the Hub alone. He blows some confetti as he enters and then saunters into his office. He pulls out a metal tin in one of his drawers and goes through some pictures of him in the past, finally resting on a wedding photo of him and some woman.

So how did the comedic follow up do? Very well. There was comedy, there was action, Jack/Gwen was put to rest and Jack/Ianto ruled the scene.

Plus Jack danced cheek to cheek with another man. And not just any man, Super Duper Ianto Man.

I feel totally, totally spoiled.

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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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