Torchwood: From Out of the Rain

By Rhea Dee

Oh, yes. A carnival episode! Carnivals are one of those things that I think are totally creepy…and then I’m fascinated with why I think they’re totally creepy.

A woman and her daughter are walking through the attractions of a carnival at night. It’s apparent from their attire that it’s quite long ago, perhaps around the 1920′s or so.

The pair approach the Barker, a classically creepy guy, complete with Snidely Whiplash moustache and tall black hat. He beckons them into the show, telling them it’s the show of a lifetime.

The girl looks terrified. He holds a ticket out to her and smiles his total creep smile. She takes the ticket hesitantly, and walks through the main gate.

An animal cries out in the distance and the mother turns back, distracted. When she turns back around, her daughter is gone. So is the rest of the carnival. The mother is all alone, standing in an abandoned field

Cut to the present day. We see a young man splicing together bits of old film. Most of the footage is of bustling streets, but all of a sudden, the Barker from the beginning of the episode appears on the film, doing the creepy beckoning thing. Perplexed, the young man tries to fast forward through the footage, but the Barker’s image remains. He lifts up the reel to cut out the footage of the barker, when his window bangs open, knocking over his equipment. The young man rushes to fix it, and the film reel spools back to the beginning. When the young man returns to the screen, the Barker’s image is still there, beckoning, even though there’s no film running through the machine.

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Cut to The Hub. Jack is hanging around alone, when he suddenly hears a snippet of organ music. He seems to recognize the sound and wanders around the Hub, trying to place the music. Tosh arrives and sits at her geek station. Jack goes up to her and asks her if there’s a traveling carnival in town, but she says no (is that a normal question to ask in Britain, I wonder?). He then asks where Ianto, Gwen and Owen are and she said they went to a movie. Jack decides to join them.

And now cut to Ianto, Gwen and Owen, running through the rain to a theater called Electro, which is dedicated to those old silent films of yore. Gwen and Owen obviously expected a regular theater theater, complete with popcorn, pizza, ice cream shops and annoying tweens. Ianto reveals that he used to come to this theater a lot when he was a kid.

While the Torchwood gang head into the theater, the owners of said theater loiter around the ticket booth discussing where Jonathan is with the film. The man is quite agitated, while the woman tries to sooth him, telling him that Jonathan will arrive soon.

Quick cut to the young man from earlier, Jonathan, running out of his apartment/warehouse with a film reel tucked under his arm (turns out his parents are the owners of the Electro). He arrives at the theater just in time for the show, and he runs upstairs to load it in.

The films starts out okay at first, with the shots of the streets we saw when Jonathan was splicing the film, but then, carnival shots worm their way into the stock shots. And eventually, the creepy Barker is on screen with his ‘come hither.’

Jonathan’s father rushes upstairs to chastise Jonathan for showing the wrong film. But Jonathan has realized this and he’s trying to pry the film out of the projector because it won’t stop.

Back downstairs, Gwen and Owen giggle through the archaic footage, while Ianto shushes them, his eyes glued to the screen.

The carnival footage loops over and over. Gwen and Owen grow bored of this and try to shuffle Ianto out. Ianto stays transfixed to the screen though, and his transfixion is rewarded–when the film goes back to the carnival shots, who does he spy in the footage? Why, Jack of course! He tries to tell this to Gwen and Owen, but when they look, on screen Jack is gone, replaced by the beckoning Barker. Gwen and Owen head out to the lobby but Ianto remains inside. The film cuts off and a couple of shadows run past him, out of the theater.

Well, that’s a great prelude to future scares, if I ever saw one.

Meanwhile, Jack arrives at the Electro. He heads into the theater, and sees Ianto still standing there, staring at the blank screen (hey if I saw a couple of shadows dart past me, you bet I’d be rooted to the spot as well). Ianto tells him about the shadows and then makes his creepy speculation that the carnival people forced their way on screen, like they wanted to be seen. Jack follows up with the equally creepy statement of something is trying to force its way out.

So we’ve got creepy carnivals that disappear, a creepy beckoning barker, escaping shadows, and something trying to push its way out of the screen.

That’s an even better prelude to future scares than the shadows running around!

Tosh calls Jack to let him know there was a peak of rift activity coming from the Electro, and that traces of it can be found on a street not too far from the theater. Team Torchwood decides to investigate, given recent creepy events.

Meanwhile, down the street from the Electro, the two shadows have materialized into two of the carnival performers, the beckoning Barker and Pearl, a woman dressed in a swimsuit kind of thing. They see a woman sitting alone at a bus stop and they accost her, asking her if she wants to come to their show or even better, join their show forever.

The woman, naturally freaked out beyond all belief (Pearl was stroking her hair) turns them down. The Barker rushes towards her then, placing his hand on her mouth, causing the woman to struggle for breath. He takes out a silver flash and holds it up to her mouth and a gray wisp of smoke flies into his bottle.

Team Torchwood arrives at the bus stop. At first everything seems okay, the woman is still sitting there…but a closer look reveals that she’s in some sort of catatonic state. Owen observes that she’s not breathing, but her heart is still beating. Jack says that something’s been taken from her.

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They take the woman to the hospital, where she’s being treated as a coma patient, although Owen says that’s far from the mark. He likens her symptoms to a spider sucking the blood out of its victims, except with this woman, it’s not her blood that’s been taken.

While they’re talking, another victim showing the same symptoms is rushed into the room. Seems like the Barker and Pearl are having a little wispy smoke stealing party.

Jack decides that it’s time to watch the film Jonathan brought to the theater. Team Torchwood pops in the film back at the Hub, which is now only comprised of carnival footage. All seems well (and freaky) until Ianto points out that something’s different. The spool back and pause in front of a tank; Ianto says there was a woman standing in front of there. Gwen agrees, and then they notice that the Barker is also missing from the film. Jack realizes the film is of the Night Travelers, a carnival group that only performed in the dead of night. He sends Tosh, Owen and Gwen to find out more information about them.

When they’re alone, Ianto questions Jack about his own appearance in the film. Jack reveals that he did work for a carnival sideshow, but never the Night Travelers. He tells Ianto he was billed as the man who couldn’t die (when Ianto first saw Jack on screen at the Electro, he was pointing a gun towards his head). Jack speculates that the Travelers are fighting back against the movies, which killed acts like theirs.

While the rest of the team scans old records for any mention of the Night Travelers, Jack and Ianto try to hunt down a living witness to them. They find an old woman, Christina, who met the Night Travelers when she was a girl. She tells them about a flask the Barker carries that steals your breath (the wispy smoky thing) and that even though she escaped, many people in her village disappeared, including her parents.

Back at the Hub, Gwen substantiates Christina’s story with tales of people disappearing from villages, and the old wives tales that spouted up from the disappearances (things like to hold your breath when a traveling show comes to town). Team Torchwood realizes that the Barker stole the breath of the victims in the hospital.

Meanwhile, Jonathan from earlier, returns home to find his little apartment in the warehouse has been broken into. He creeps inside slowly, and sees Pearl resting in his bath. She sits up when he approaches her and he runs out, terrified. She steps out into the main room and meets the Barker, who takes a film from Jonathan’s stash.

Jonathan calls Jack and tells him what happened. Team Torchwood arrives on the scene, but it’s already too late; the Pearl is gone. Jonathan tells them that Pearl grabbed him, but she didn’t feel like a human, she felt like plastic. Jack realizes that Pearl and the Barker been trapped on a film strip for so long, that they’ve become a film strip. Jack realizes that could perhaps be a way to destroy the Night Travelers; to film them and then overexpose the film.

Jonathan then notices that all his carnival footage has been rifled through, and Jack realizes that the Barker is going to try and bring more of his carnival buddies through the movie screen.

Team Torchwood arrives at the Electro, and Jack watches as each of the performers step out of the movie screen.

Let me just pause and say that this is one of my top ten fears of all time; people walking out of screens, be they movie or TV. Okay.

Jack hides in the back of the theater and films each of the performers before Pearl notices him. Meanwhile, Owen is banging on the projection room door, yelling through to stop the film. The Barker steps through and tries to steal Owen’s breath, but Owen doesn’t have any because he’s dead (it comes in handy, doesn’t it?) The Barker steps away from Owen once he realizes he’s no use.

Ianto and Gwen then attack the Barker and Ianto manages to grab the breath stealing flask. He takes it and runs. But the Barker is apparently super ghost or something, and he appears behind Ianto and takes the flask back from him. Jack and company arrive at the scene and Jack films the Barker before opening the camera and over exposing the film. The Night Travelers disappear, but before the Barker is gone, he opens the flask and throws it through the air, releasing the wispy breaths of the victims for earlier. Ianto catches the flask, but there is only one breath left, meaning that only one victim can be saved.

The team heads to hospital and discover that the victim is a small boy, with all the catatonic symptoms of the other victims. Jack holds the flask up to the boy’s mouth and the boy is saved.

Later, at the Hub, Ianto tells Jack that he destroyed all the other carnival footage at Jonathan’s. But Jack is worried that their might be an old reel lingering in an attic somewhere holding the images of the Night Travelers.

Cut to a father and son at a garage sale. The father purchases an old film reel. While the son carries it to the car, he drops it and the can opens. Creepy organ music drifts out…

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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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