Torchwood: Fragments
Star TrekStargate:AtlantisFireflyBy Rhea Dee
Oh my. Torchwood has finally decided to do an origin story. And we finally get to see how Owen, Tosh, Ianto and Jack joined Torchwood.
The episode works in a series of flashbacks. The team (sans Gwen, who overslept) heads out to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Apparently there’s some mucho alien activity happening there.
Once they head inside though, they realize that it’s a trap–someone has left a series of bombs for the team to find instead of an alien. The bombs explode, decimating the building and leaving the members trapped underneath the rubble. Gwen arrives with Rhys (he gave her a ride) to help the rest of the team, but while they’re waiting, their lives before Torchwood flash before their eyes…
We start with Jack, way back in the Victorian era. He has just come back to life after being stabbed to death by a bottle. He pulls out the bottle and then notices he’s being watched by two women. They take him back to prison looking area, and kill him repeatedly. They question Jack, asking him about the Doctor, who Jack has been rambling about drunkenly in local pubs. Jack asks the two women who they are and what do you know! they’re Torchwood. Ancient Torchwood. The two women ask Jack to come work for them, but he refuses because they view the Doctor as a threat. The two women eventually manage to threaten Jack into working for them, and his first assignment (with a little Victoria era cape and all) is capturing a blowfish man, like we saw in the first episode of this season. Jack brings the blowfish man back to Torchwood, and the women kill him in cold blood, much to Jack’s disapproval.
When the Torchwood women offer Jack another assignment, he refuses, stating that he doesn’t agree with their ethics. He leaves and goes to the pub, where he meets the little fortune teller girl from Dead Man Walking. She tells him that he will not see the Doctor again for another century. Frustrated, Jack returns to Torchwood, to serve time capturing aliens while waiting his century for the Doctor (wouldn’t you wait a century for David Tennant?).
Time passes, and Jack’s file gets updated with the passing technology. Then in 1999, Jack returns to The Hub to find all the members of Torchwood dead by the hand of their leader. The leader is holding a locket, which showed him the future. He tells Jack that he killed the team out of mercy for the horror to come. The leader then gives Jack command of Torchwood and shoots himself, leaving Jack alone.
We then move forward to Tosh’s flashback, which takes place 5 years ago. Tosh works for an upscale research company, doing the whole Office-ish Pam Beesly. After her boss leaves one night, Tosh heads downstairs and steals some files from one of their storage rooms. She goes home and opens the files; they’re instructions on how to build something. Tosh gets working and finally has a sci-fi looking device. She heads out to a secret facility run by a man and woman. The woman asks her for the device, which is a sonic modulator. Tosh agrees to give the device once they show her that her mother is safe. The man drags out Tosh’s mother, his arm around her throat. (I guess that explains how Tosh got in with these thugs.) Tosh asks for her mother to be released per their bargain but the woman has changed the plan: she tells Tosh that she must continue working for her or they will kill her mother. Tosh refuses, and the woman puts on headphones and switches on the sonic modulator, which emits a piercing sound that drives Tosh and her mother to the floor. Before it can cause any permanent damage, the fuzz burst in and switch off the modulator, and then arrest Tosh.
Tosh is then thrust in a gulag, with nothing in it. At all. A voice comes over the speaker and lets her know she’s in a super secret high security prison and that she will have no communication with anybody, not even her mother.
Months go by until Captain Jack arrives. He tells Tosh that the sonic modulator instructions were faulty, but that Tosh modified the mistakes in her head to make it work. He tells her that she will be kept in the prison indefinitely…unless she comes to work with Jack.
We then move to lovely Ianto Jones’s flashback, 21 months earlier. Jack is in a park, wrestling a Weevil when Super Ianto in his super cute jeans (I know how to obsess) comes along and helps Jack take down the Weevil. Ianto casually identifies the Weevil, but Jack plays dumb. As he’s walking away, Ianto yells after him: “By the way…love the coat.”
The next morning Jack leaves The Hub to see Ianto standing there, still in super cute jeans, holding a coffee for Jack. He then tells Jack that he wants to work for him. Jack refuses. It’s revealed that Ianto worked for Torchwood London, which turns Jack off even more, as he’s severed all ties with that Torchwood. Ianto begs Jack, but he turns him down again, walking away from him. Ianto calls out again: “I really like that coat.”
Later, Jack is driving to a job and is stopped by Ianto, our beloved suited Ianto, standing in the road. Jack jumps out of the car and lays into Ianto, telling him that there will never be a job for him at Torchwood and that he should stop trying.
“So you’re not going to help me catch this Pterodactyl then?” Ianto asks.
The two head to a warehouse where the pterodactyl (and future Hub mascot) is flying around. Ianto tells Jack that he found the pterodactyl using a Rift Activity Locater he had while working at Torchwood London. The two try and coax the dinosaur so that Jack can sedate it. Ianto beckons it with dark chocolate, which it apparently likes (I now know what I need to fend off a Jurassic Park nightmare). Jack sneaks up from behind but the pterodactyl smells the trap and lifts Jack up in the air. Jack manages to stab the sedative while its flying and the dinosaur drops him, right into Ianto’s open arms. The two fall to the ground, Jack on top of Ianto, laughing. And then, much to my delight it gets a bit sexy.
But then Ianto is suddenly all business. He jumps off Jack and starts to walk away. Jack tells him that he expects to see Ianto first thing tomorrow.
“Like the suit by the way,” Jack calls after him.
Ianto looks (adorably) mortified.
Last, we have Owen’s flashback, four years back. Owen is engaged to a girl named Katie, and what’s this? Owen’s actually…happy?!? At first, all seems well, until we see that Katie can’t remember simple household tasks. Apparently, Katie has early onset Alzheimer’s. Owen begs her doctor to do another scan of her brain, and he agrees. After the scan it’s revealed that a tumor is in her brain…one that wasn’t there weeks ago. The doctor has Katie undergo emergency surgery.
While Owen is waiting outside the OR, he hears a loud thump from inside. He goes inside and sees all the surgeons dead on the floor. And then, suddenly, Jack is on the scene. He tells Owen that Katie has a parasite on her brain and that it releases a poisonous toxin when threatened. Owen’s fiancée is dead. Owen gets frantic and Jack knocks him out with chloroform.
TORCHWOOD - COMPLETE SERIES 2 - BBC NEW/SEALED BOX - R4
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When Owen wakes up he’s in a hospital bed. He tries to tell people about the alien parasite in Katie’s brain, but everyone tells him that Katie died of an inoperable tumor and that Katie’s doctor (one of the surgeons killed by the toxin) died in a car wreck. Owen spools through the hospital footage but he sees nothing of what actually happened, and his doctor prescribes Owen three months of rest.
While Owen is visiting Katie’s grave, he sees Jack hanging around. Owen attacks him out of grief which leads to Jack soothing him in his caring yet hot way (I guess the hurt/comfort thing is the pinnacle of Jack and Owen’s relationship). Jack then asks Owen to come work for Torchwood, to help Owen find purpose after losing his Katie.
Back to the present. Everyone is rescued and alive. As the team walks away from the wreckage, wondering who could’ve set them up, Jack’s little watch thing beeps. And who should pop up by Captain John Hart! Seems like he was the one who set the trap. Apparently, he’s not too happy to be spurned by dear Captain Jack. And to make things worse, he seems to have Grey, Jack’s brother, captive!
“Maybe now you’ll want to spend some time with me,” John taunts.
And then he’s out. Just like that.
Could this episode get any more amazing? Whoa. The origin episode is a major success in my book.
I think Jack and Tosh had the most intruging flashbacks (that’s hard to say, what with me being all obsessed with Ianto). It’s always nice to get insight into Jack’s past, since we still know very little about him.Plus we got the bonus of a little Torchwood history as well. And Tosh…well did anybody predict that was Tosh’s life before Torchwood? I sure didn’t.
And wow, I loved the little ‘lover scorned’ baddie Captain John Hart, which is two parts creepy and one part hot. It’s got echoes of Spike in it, and anything that has echoes of Spike is by new favorite thing in the entire world.
Plus we got to see Ianto in jeans. Really, what could be better?
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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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