"Torchwood, episode 1x01: Everything Changes" Staring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen, Indira Varma According to my update page, it has been two years since I last wrote a recap. I could come up with all sorts of excuses for why it has taken me this long to get back to recapping, but they all boil down to the fact that every time I looked at the stack of movies to recap I was filled with a sense of dread and boredom. But biting the bullet and recapping one of those wasn’t challenging enough, apparently, which is why I chose instead to start recapping a British show full of people who were unknown to me spun off of another British series I’ve never seen and have no desire to. Chrissy: I am seriously thinking of having you committed. Diandra: Oh, I almost forgot you were there. Chrissy: You’re the one who asked me to be here. Diandra: I did? Oh. Right. Hey, did you know it’s our anniversary? Chrissy: I told you that wedding was just a vivid dream you had after you passed out drunk one night. Diandra: Smart ass. No, I mean it’s been ten years since I first recruited you to help me with recaps. Chrissy: You mean that time you had me sit next to you and slap you if you made slash jokes? That was eight years ago. Diandra: It was? Chrissy: Unless you found a time machine and somehow managed to go back and write the recap of “Pirates of the Caribbean” before it was even released in theaters. But we can call it an anniversary. Eight years of your insanity probably counts as ten anyway. Diandra: Hey! Chrissy: Oh, you know I love you. So, how do you want to celebrate? Want me to slap you if you make slash jokes again? Diandra: You know absolutely nothing about this show, do you? Chrissy: No, why? Diandra: Then this should be fun. We pan over Cardiff, Wales at night and zoom in on a body lying on the ground in the pouring rain. Jesus, two seconds in and it’s already raining. Welcome to the UK. A chick in a police uniform with a big gap between her front teeth asks who the victim is (and some random extra darts through just long enough to call her “Gwen” so I’m spared having to come up with a nickname for her). A dorky looking guy also dressed as a cop says, and I’m only paraphrasing a little: ‘search me. Say, are you going to that party later?’ Nice to see you guys are hard at work trying to catch a killer there. Somebody gets a call and suddenly the CSIs...or whatever they are...are shooed from the body. Gwen flags one of them down and asks what’s going on. He has no clue, but they have orders to clear out so “Torchwood” can get special access. Before anyone can ask who the hell that is (which they apparently can’t answer anyway), an SUV pulls up and four people all dressed in black brush past her. Gwen whines about them contaminating the evidence, but the CSI washes his hands of it and slips away. She watches for a minute, then apparently decides she can see better from the parking ramp next to the alleyway. She runs up, like, five sets of stairs and across the whole damn ramp and still manages to get to the ledge before anybody does anything important. Possibly because the prettier of the two men has been rambling a non sequiter the entire time like he just loves to hear the sound of his own voice. Blah blah Estrogen getting flushed into the water, screwing with the fish and somehow going back up into the air and coming back as rain. “Contraceptives in the rain. I love this planet. Still, at least I won’t get pregnant. Never doing that again.” Chrissy: I think I just figured out why you’re recapping this show. Ilsa Pucci is putting on a metal glove that looks like it fell off a coat of armor. Chrissy: Nobody remembers that show anymore. Diandra: I do, damnit. SCREW YOU, FOX! The scrappier, funnier looking guy gripes at her to move faster and the glove starts making funny noises and lighting up. The pretty guy who just validated an entire subcategory of fanfiction instructs her to concentrate. She picks up the dead guy’s head with her gloved hand and the guy gasps awake. Oh, we’re doing “Pushing Daisies” now. Awesome. Chrissy: I think you just really miss Chi McBride. Diandra: Probably. *sniffle* The Japanese woman who has had no lines so far leans in and tells him he only has two minutes so he has to listen carefully. Then she tells him he’s dead which A) confuses him for a minute and B) is a surefire way to get him to freak the fuck out. “Who did this to you,” she asks. “Why am I dead,” he yelps. “I don’t wanna be dead!” Yeah, this is going well. Ilsa says they only have sixty seconds left. Pretty Guy rolls his eyes and sighs heavily. Dead Guy says he didn’t see anything. Well, there was something behind him... Funny Looking Guy confirms there was only one stab wound to the back, so he may not have seen his attacker. Everybody sort of stares like “well, that was a huge waste of time”. Ilsa says there’s still thirty seconds left. Japanese Girl has no idea what else to say, so Pretty Guy leans over and asks what his name is. It’s John, but who cares? This is just an opportunity for Pretty Guy to introduce himself. He says he’s Captain Jack Harkness and asks what John saw when he died. “Nothing,” John whimpers. “I saw nothing. Oh, my god, there’s nothing!” Then he dies again. Well, that was cheerful. Funny Looking and Japanese argue about whether she should have told him he was dead. Jack reminds Funny Looking that the last guy spent two minutes screaming for an ambulance because he thought he was just injured. “Maybe there’s no right way of doing it.” Then he looks up at Gwen and shouts “what do you think?” She gasps and darts away like a frightened animal. And then we cut to her going home. What? They just let her run off? Didn’t even try to figure out how much she saw or anything? That seems incredibly careless. Not that it matters because she plops herself on the couch next to her boyfriend, who asks if she had anything to do with that murder he just saw on the news and she says nope, not at all. She asks what he’s still doing up. He was visiting with some guy named “Banana Boat”. Seriously? Who nicknames themselves Banana Boat and for the love of God WHY? Chrissy: I think I can take a guess how that happened, but you really don’t want to hear it. Diandra: Ew. Probably not. She claims she’s tired and goes off to bed and leaves him to watch the rest of the news. Next day. She pulls aside another cop named Yvonne and asks her to do a search for a Captain Jack Harkness. Yvonne says she’s really busy and there are proper channels for that sort of query and what sort of captain? Gwen doesn’t know. Yvonne says she’ll do it if she finds time. What a good friend. Gwen brings a tray of coffee into the meeting room where they’re discussing the string of murders that ends with the guy from last night. A 70-year old woman, a 40-year old woman and John, who was 19 and they were all found in random places. Nothing linking them whatsoever except they were all killed with the same weapon – an 8-by-3-inch blade. Has anybody called the British equivalent of the BAU yet? Oh, and the women were stabbed from the front and the man from behind, which the team leader says means they’re looking for a “coward”. Or, you know a smaller person with slighter build who doesn’t want a confrontation. Or somebody who just didn’t want the guy looking at them while they murdered him. Seriously, don’t you guys have a psychologist on staff? Later, Gwen asks the lanky guy from the night before - who is apparently her partner – again what Torchwood is. His guess is they’re DNA specialists because it’s all about the DNA these days since all that “CSI” crap started. Damn American TV shows. They continue on with the less glamorous part of their day to day work: breaking up bar fights, and Gwen gets her head whacked on the bar so hard she ends up the hospital to get stitches or something. So she’s wandering around the hallways of the hospital when she catches a brief glimpse Jack running up one of the stairwells. Clearly not having heard the one about curiosity, she follows him. He loses her and she ends up at a dead end with a hallway blocked off by plastic sheeting and yellow tape. She asks some maintenance guy what happened. He doesn’t know, but somebody ordered that area sealed off around 9 in the morning. Chemical spill or something. He wanders off, clearly uninterested. Gwen pushes through the sheeting and stands in the middle of a deserted hallway calling “hello?” Somebody has clearly never seen a horror movie in her life. A vaguely humanoid creature comes out of one of the rooms at the end of the hall and she walks right toward it, asking if it saw a man in a military coat come through here just now. The creature just stares at her, cocking it’s head back and forth like “what are those weird noises coming from that thing over there? I wonder if it’s edible?” Gwen keeps coming closer and asks if it’s all right and that’s an interesting mask it has on, now could it please answer her question? It bears some hideous teeth and snarls. This appears to have no effect whatsoever because Gwen clearly doesn’t have any sense of self preservation. The maintenance guy shows up again before it can attack and starts rambling about how there is no chemical spill so he has no idea what the fuck is going on and what’s this guy doing here? He apparently has even less self preservation sense than her because he goes right up to the thing and tries to poke at the “mask”. The creature, having had more than enough of this bullshit, grabs him and starts gnawing on his neck, spraying blood. Jack bursts into the hallway and shoves Gwen back down the hall. The rest of the team appears to tackle the creature to the ground, but it all happens so fast that it’s not really clear what the hell is going on. What were they doing for the past five minutes anyway? Gwen runs and doesn’t stop until she’s back in one of the main halls surrounded by people. Okay, so maybe she’s not a total idiot. She’s out in the parking lot when the black SUV nearly runs her over. She jumps in her squad car and chases it, much to the annoyance of her partner. She calls in the license plate number and Yvonne cuts in to say she couldn’t find any record of a Jack Harkness. Found time in your busy schedule already? Gwen asks if she looked outside of Cardiff. “No, that never even occurred to me,” Yvonne snarks. Yes, she only found about 15 people with that name and the only one that was a captain was an American. “That’s it,” Gwen yelps. “He’s American!” Yvonne says oh, well, in that case, he went missing sometime during the blitz in 1941 and is presumed dead. So unless she’s seeing ghosts... Chrissy: Or time travelers. If this is like X-Files, it could be either one, I suppose. Diandra: Hold that thought. Gwen follows the SUV to a spot by a pier where Jack, Japanese, Funny Looking and Ilsa are dropped off. She tries to run after them and is distracted by a security guard yelling about her car being in a no parking zone long enough for them to disappear into thin air. Back in the car, she is told that the license plate on the car doesn’t exist either. Before she can start tearing her hair out or something, her partner jumps in the car, griping that he had to walk all the way here. Heh. She tries to explain what just happened, of which he believes not a word and insists she go home and lay down or something. Oh, and there’s no record of anybody being killed or injured or anything at the hospital, so who knows what happened to that guy. “They were here,” she keeps whimpering. Chrissy: And now you know how Fox Mulder felt, sweetie. I think we’re skipping a day here, but it’s not clear at all. Gwen tells her boyfriend – who is making dinner – that she has to go to work because blah blah shift change. He takes this very well because he is apparently the most understanding boyfriend ever. Gwen hangs around the square where she last saw the Torchwood team, staring at one of those big glass waterfall thingies until she sees a pizza delivery guy on a motorcycle go by. She follows him to the nearby hole-in-the-wall and flashes her badge at the guy behind the counter. Has he made any deliveries to a Captain Jack Harkness? The guy checks the computer and says there’s no record of that name. She tries a couple other variations on “Harkness” and then, out of desperation, “Torchwood”. Yes, because they would order pizzas under the name of the supposedly super secret organization they’re working for. Oh, they would? Okay. So the next thing we see is Gwen marching up to a shabby looking “tourist information office” with a couple pizzas in her arms. A friendly looking guy in a suit comes out of a back office somewhere and asks who the pizza is for. She says Mr. Harkness. The guy just smiles and reaches under the counter to push a button, opening a hidden doorway behind her. Gwen goes down a hallway into an elevator and I suddenly lose my subtitles track. Damnit. She comes out in a giant underground lab of some sort with the giant waterfall thing from above apparently running down the middle of it. Japanese is sitting at a computer, completely ignoring her even though a giant flashing light above the doorway appears to be announcing her presence. The door – a giant steampunk cog – slides shut after her and the light stops flashing. She blinks at a table full of random bullshit including a severed hand floating in a small tank full of bubbling liquid. Chrissy: Can I assume that is from Dr. Who? Diandra: I’m going to go out on a limb and say: duh. Ilsa is doing something with a blowtorch in the corner and Jack is walking around one of the catwalks over their heads. He comes down some stairs right in front of Gwen and very pointedly doesn’t look at her because everybody is pretending she’s invisible I guess. He goes back into his office and she starts to follow, gawking as she passes behind the computers Japanese is sitting at. Funny Looking – who was hidden behind Japanese at another bank of computers – starts giggling. Japanese starts giggling. Somebody snorts and Funny Looking says “I’m sorry, I can’t do this!” Jack whines that he didn’t get a chance to draw out the little “creep out Gwen” play they were apparently putting on. Ilsa ditches the blowtorch and asks how long Gwen was wandering around outside. Three hours? “You could see me,” Gwen asks. Oh, honey. Jack asks who the hell has been ordering pizza under the name Torchwood. Funny Looking says “yeah, that’d be me. Sorry, I’m a twat.” Oh, my subtitles just kicked in again. Thank god. I thought I was going to have to decipher British slang all by myself. Gwen wants to talk about that incident at the hospital. What happened to that man she saw getting attacked by the Flukeman? Chrissy: Oh, look who’s still able to make random X- Files references. Diandra: *cough*Wikipedia*mumble* Chrissy: I’m sorry, did my librarian friend just say she looked something up on Wikipedia? Diandra: And where, exactly, am I supposed to look up episodes of sci-fi cult shows? Encyclopedia Britannica? Jack says the guy’s dead. Gwen says but no one went missing. Japanese (would somebody say her name already?!) details all the crap they apparently did in a very short amount of time to cover up the disappearance so everybody will think he’s only been missing for three days when they find the body. Gwen sputters a bit, then turns to Jack and asks about that John guy. “I saw you.” Jack asks what she saw. “You revived him.” He says nope, try again. “You resuscitated him.” Nope. Try again. She looks him in the eye like she’s challenging him and says “you brought him back to life. Who are you? What’s Torchwood?” He waves around the lab and says “this” is Torchwood which is no answer at all. Gwen, who seems to finally be concerned about her safety, says she’s a police constable and they can’t do anything to her. Jack’s like pffttt, okay then. Come with me. He saunters off. She puts down the pizzas and follows, repeating her questions, momentarily distracted when a pterodactyl flies overhead and screeches. “What was that,” she yelps. “Pterodactyl,” Japanese says in a completely bored tone of voice. “Are you coming,” Jack asks from somewhere off camera. No, she’s just breathing hard. Chrissy: God, not that tired joke again. Diandra: Shush. Let me have my fun. Jack leads her to some sort of basement with glass-sided holding cells, one of which has a hissing Fluky. Jack calls it a Weevil and assures her that it’s safely sedated. Oh, and there’s a couple hundred of them living in the sewers under the city. Which is much less reassuring. They usually just stay down there, but they seem to be wandering to the surface and attacking people with increasing frequency for reasons they’re not quite clear on. Maybe because they’re tired of being literally shit on? All they know is it’s alien. Jack pulls up a stool and encourages her to sit and take a good look at it, which she does presumably until she’s satisfied that this is not all some insanely overcomplicated hoax or a very detailed dream she is having after doing some really good drugs. Back up in the lab, we are finally introduced to everyone else. Owen Harper is the doctor (as is prerequisite, he looks too young to have a medical degree), Toshiko Sato is the tech genius and Suzie Costello will still be referred to as Ilsa Pucci indefinitely because fuck you, that’s why. Then he points to the guy who was in the tourist office and says he’s Ianto Jones, who “cleans up after us and makes sure we get everywhere on time”. So he’s your butler then? “And he looks good in a suit,” Jack adds. “Careful. That’s harassment, sir,” Ianto – still smiling - says in a tone that suggests he’s heard worse. Gwen – who may be clueless at times but is obviously not stupid – asks why he’s telling her their names if this is all classified. “What are you going to do to me?” Lesson number one, Gwen, don’t give Jack an opening like that. Jack just puts on his coat, barks orders at everybody and tells Gwen she’s coming with him. She starts after him like an obedient puppy, but mutters “I’m getting tired of following you.” Jack just smirks and says no, she isn’t. Chrissy: He does have a nice ass. Diandra: Taken and gay. Chrissy: Figures. I stand by my previous statement, though. So is that why I can’t slap you if you make a slash joke? The slash is cannon on this show? Diandra: Sorry, I should have been more specific. John Barrowman is gay and taken. Jack Harkness will screw anything that gives reasonable consent and probably doesn’t understand the concept of monogamy. Chrissy: So basically everything is cannon? Diandra: Pretty much. Chrissy: Your reasons for recapping this are becoming clearer by the minute. Jack steps up on a giant stone block and pulls Gwen up beside him. He punches a button on a giant strap around his wrist and a panel opens in the ceiling. The block rises like an elevator and Ilsa waves goodbye at them before presumably going through the front door like a normal person while rolling her eyes and muttering “show off.” The block reaches street level where it slots into a space between two similar blocks at the corner Gwen was searching earlier. “But...” Gwen sputters. “But they can see the lift.” She realizes she’s clinging to his arm for dear life and drops it, embarrassed. “They can see everything.” He says no, they can’t, and starts shouting at people to prove it. Nobody pays any attention. Jack says it’s a perception filter. They can sense something is there, but they can’t see anything and it only works on that exact spot. Jack steps off the block and waves at a woman “Hey, nice night.” She looks at him sideways like she’s debating whether she needs to reach for her rape whistle and walks faster. Good instincts she’s got there. Gwen? Take note. Gwen asks how the perception filter works. Jack says they have no idea but his best guess is a “dimensionally transcendental chameleon circuit” that “welded its perception properties to a spatial-temporal rift”. Oh, well, why didn’t you just say so? But that all sounds like science-y gibberish, so they just call it an “invisible lift”. Gwen wants to know how people don’t fall into the hole in the ground that they can’t see when the invisible elevator is rising. Jack sighs and starts walking away, grumbling about Welsh people always managing to find fault in everything. Bar. Gwen slugs down half a tall beer without taking a breath, as it is perfectly reasonable to do after finding out that everything you thought you knew about normal life is bullshit and there are monsters running around the sewers beneath the city. “What I don’t understand,” she begins before Jack launches into a rant about how “you people” can possibly still deny the existence of aliens after that giant spaceship hovering over London on Christmas day, the cybermen and the Battle of Canary Wharf. Okay, I know that last one was a giant clusterfuck involving at least three species of alien, but other than that I have no clue what he’s talking about. But as I am used to watching spin offs without knowing the original context and/or coming into a show in the eleventh hour and having to figure shit out as I go, this is usually the point where I just shrug and say “eh, whatever.” Gwen mumbles something about her boyfriend having a theory that it involved terrorism and drugs in the water supply. Wait...a spaceship was hovering over a major city and they think it’s a terrorist conspiracy to...what? Make people think they’d gone insane? Humans have a high watermark for bullshit, don’t they? “Yeah, well, your boyfriend’s stupid,” Jack says in the least mature fashion possible. She doesn’t blink. “Oh, you’ve met him?” He laughs and I am struck by how much he looks like Tom Cruise. She laughs too and says this is weird. And by the way, she did some research and Captain Jack Harkness disappeared in 1941, so who are you, really? He just gives a cryptic ‘well, that’s obviously wrong. Or is it?’ response. Then he changes the subject. They don’t just catch the aliens, they go through the stuff they bring with them so they can arm themselves against some vague threat from the future. “The 21st century’s when it all changes. You gotta be ready.” Gwen completely ignores the obvious question (“for what?”) to ask who is in charge. Are they with the government? Really, Gwen? Jack says they’re beyond the police, government or UN because the shit they deal with is too dangerous for too many people to know about and they’re really careful to make sure nothing ever leaves their facility. Cut to Toshiko pulling something decidedly alien looking from her purse in the comfort of her kitchen, Owen pulling a bottle of something with a supernatural glow from his bathroom cabinet and Ilsa setting that metal glove she was using earlier on what looks like her dining room table. Yes, I see you have fantastic control over your team, Jack. Tell us again how dangerous this stuff would be if you weren’t guarding it? Chrissy: Nobody said he was the brains of the operation. Diandra: Clearly. But at least he’s pretty. Gwen asks how they ended up in Cardiff. Jack says they’re Torchwood Three. Torchwood One was in London and was destroyed in the aforementioned clusterfuck, Torchwood Two may or may not still be in Glasgow headed by a “very strange man” and Torchwood Four has gone missing but they hope to find it again one day. Oh, and there’s a rift in the space-time continuum that runs right through Cardiff. Should have led with that, Jack. The aliens don’t fly in on spaceships, they just slip through the rift. Gwen says they could liaise on the serial killer case – she could be their police contact. Jack thinks that would be a great idea if Torchwood had anything to do with the killer or, you know, cared. They were just testing the glove on recent murder victims. “We’re busy.” “And your work is more important,” Gwen says indignantly. “Now you got it!” She restrains herself from punching him and points out that the minute she leaves the bar she is basically sworn to tell the police everything because it could help with the case. “If you remember,” Jack says, totally unimpressed. “How’s your drink?” Oh, good lord Gwen. You accepted a drink without knowing what was in it? You are a disgrace to females everywhere. She asks if he’s poisoned her. Nah. Amnesia pill. “Wake up tomorrow morning and you’ll have forgotten all about Torchwood. Worse still, you’ll have forgotten me. Which is kind of tragic.” Okay, you’re pretty, but you’re hardly God’s gift to humanity, Jack. She starts to run off and he says oh, by the way, there’s a sedative mixed with the amnesia pill. She threatens to tell someone else. He points out that they can very easily track that person down and wipe their memory too. She calls him a bastard and runs all the way home, where she starts typing every little detail of the entire encounter into an e-mail to herself. Because that can’t be intercepted. Jesus. I thought you were SMART! Chrissy: Well, I’m guessing writing it down isn’t much better because they can just break in and steal the notebook after she passes out. Diandra: Still. There’s no point in making it EASY. We interrupt this plot development for a little side story wherein Owen attempts to flirt with a girl in a bar and fails spectacularly until he sprays that bottle from his cabinet on his face and she practically rips his clothes off on the spot and drags him outside to hail a taxi. I guess we’re seeing how everybody is using their stolen equipment because Toshiko holds her device up to the copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” on her bookshelf, then waves it in front of a computer screen and it downloads the entire text onto the desktop. Okay, that looks awesome. I want one of those. Ilsa uses the glove to bring a dead fly back to (temporary) life. Because she clearly needs to get out more. Back to Owen, who is confronted by the girl’s boyfriend. They argue for a bit. Then Owen says fuck this and sprays the alien pheromones on his face again and the guy has pretty much the same reaction his girlfriend did. Okay, ha. Gwen finishes her e-mail and blinks woozily at it. From somewhere that may or may not be the lab, Ianto hacks into her computer and deletes the message immediately. The screen goes black and Gwen bangs on the keyboard futilely a few times before falling sideways. And this is why you NEVER TRUST COMPUTERS with important information. Next day. Jack is standing on top of a building somewhere for reasons that are completely unclear. The camera spins around him for, like, five minutes for no goddamn reason. Chrissy: Oh, like you’re complaining. You have a little bit of drool on your chin, by the way. Diandra: Shut up. Gwen’s boyfriend sets a cup of coffee next to her crumpled form, kisses her head and gently asks if she got drunk last night. Okay, he may not be the brightest, but he’s obviously the best boyfriend ever. She says she was working. She was typing something, but she can’t for the life of her remember what it was. She gets to work, where Yvonne asks if she has any leads on Captain Jack Harkness. She’s all “who now?” “Don’t worry about me,” Yvonne grumbles. “Just go ahead wasting my time.” I like Yvonne. Chrissy: You would. Diandra: What’s that supposed to mean? Chrissy: Nothing. Just keep right on recapping and pretend I’m not here. Gwen goes up to the bullpen to file some papers or something and glances at the board with all the leads on the serial killer. “Is that the murder weapon,” she asks the guy working on the case and we get a close up of a wicked-looking blade with tailfins. It should be noted that there is a post-it note beneath it that clearly says “murder weapon concept”. So, yeah Gwen. You’re really observant. The guy blathers about how they came up with that sketch based on the wounds and it shouldn’t be all that hard to find because it looks like something from a fantasy MMORPG. Gwen is staring at it like she’s trying to remember something. She shrugs and walks away, but she’s still thinking about it later while her partner is rambling on about something that sounds boring and even later while her boyfriend is rambling on about some family bullshit. At two in the morning (while she’s awake again), she gets a flash of a real blade that looks an awful lot like the drawing only it’s covered in blood. So she gets up and goes to her desk to start sketching it out on the back of an envelope. Except there are no more details to the memory. Then she looks at a brochure on her desk about events at “Millenium Centre”, on which she has written “remember”. Oh, good. So she did leave more than an easily corruptible computer file as a clue. Maybe she’s not completely hopeless. So she goes to the center, which is right across from the invisible elevator entrance to Torchwood. She wanders around aimlessly until Ilsa shows up and starts rambling about how Gwen was right about liaising with the police and she pulls the blood-stained sword thing out of her ginormous purse. “I’m arresting you for...how do I know you?” Gwen stammers. Ilsa babbles about how one image can sometimes screw with the amnesia pill and since Gwen saw this... She stammers and starts crying and then she’s like ‘I’m sorry, could you just wait a minute while I rummage through my purse?’ Gwen just sits patiently waiting while Ilsa pulls out a gun. It’s all very proper and British and hilarious. “You have to come back,” Ilsa continues. She goes on about how she’ll be gone by morning and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do now and blah blah blee blee why do we get all the crappy aliens, huh? WHYYYYYYEEEEEEEEE? Gwen has no clue what she’s talking about and wants to know why she killed those people. Ilsa’s like ‘so I could use the glove on them. Duh’. She just had to make sure she was behind them when she revived them so they didn’t see her again. What did I say, police guy? Get a goddamn expert in human psychology! She blithers about what she could do if she could get enough practice to get the glove to work longer than two minutes and nobody notices Jack appear suddenly because he’s standing on the invisible lift. At least they don’t seem to, but then Ilsa says something about the perception filter not working on her anymore and shoots him in the forehead. Chrissy: Not the pretty one! I mean...uh... Diandra: *giggles* Welcome to the dark side. Chrissy: Oh, please. I’ve known you for years. I don’t even remember what the other side looks like anymore. Gwen squawks as Jack hits the ground in front of her. “Who is he? Where did he come from?!” Ilsa trains the gun on her and steps over Jack, apologizing and saying she has to kill her now. Gwen freaks out and Ilsa hesitates long enough for Jack to stand up behind her, the bullet hole repairing itself with a slopping noise, and order her to put down the gun. Gwen manages not to crap her pants and run away screaming, though I guess she wouldn’t have made it this far if her weirdness barometer was set that low. Ilsa just looks between the two of them like ‘oh, fuck this’, puts the gun under her chin and pulls the trigger. Gwen sobs and mutters “I remember”. She neglects to add “but I don’t remember anything about that macabre party trick you just did. What the fuck, dude?” Downstairs, Ianto locks the knife and Resurrection Glove in a vault somewhere and everybody else reluctantly returns the stuff they took. Jack zips Ilsa’s body into a giant bank of morgue freezers somewhere in the lab. Some vague time later, Jack and Gwen are standing on the roof of...some building and she’s noting that he didn’t tell Owen and Toshiko that he was SHOT IN THE HEAD and still somehow survived so they must not know anything. But as long as we’re on the subject...HOW IS THAT EVEN FUCKING POSSIBLE? “I can’t die,” he says. “Okay,” she sighs. Snort. Well, we got from “this is freaking weird” to “yeah, fine. Whatever. Bring it” really quickly. “Something happened to me a while back. Long story and far away,” he clarifies. If by “clarify” you mean “doesn’t clarify at all”. Long story short: he died, someone brought him back and now he can’t stay dead. Gwen: But how... Jack: I don’t know. Translation from the writers’ room: STOP ASKING QUESTIONS! Seriously though I went back and found an explanation of what happened to turn him immortal and, while it fits with that summary he just gave, it still doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. Best I can figure is some chick gained magic powers and brought him back to life but forgot to make the spell a one- time deal so he just keeps being brought back to life again and again. Chrissy: Oh, well, that makes perfect sense then. Diandra: It does? Chrissy: That was sarcasm. Diandra: Oh. Anyway. Jack says it kind of freaks people out, so it would probably be best if Gwen doesn’t say anything. Gwen bitterly says it doesn’t matter since he’ll only wipe her memory again and send her home. Jack is offended at the suggestion and offers her the recently opened position on the team. He grudgingly adds that she may have been right about them maybe being able to do more to help people. So does she want the job? Well, when you put it that way... “I do, yes,” she says with barely a second thought. And we pan away slowly until the pterodactyl flies across the screen with a screech. Chrissy: I’m not sure there’s enough alcohol in your cabinets to get through 40 episodes of this show. Diandra: Probably not. But we’ll find out.