"Torchwood, episode 1x02: Day One"

Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, 
Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen

Oh, goodie, we get an opening monologue this time. “Torchwood: 
outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien 
life on Earth and arming the human race against the future. The 
21st century is when everything changes. And you’ve gotta be 
ready.” Nope, still doesn’t make any more sense than it did the 
first time.
   Chrissy: *holding up a bottle of schnapps* I thought 
    that’s what this was for. 
   Diandra: No, that’s for when I give up even trying to 
    make sense of this.
   Chrissy: Suit yourself. 

Gwen and her boyfriend (whose name still hasn’t been mentioned 
as far as I can tell) are having date night, which involves 
bowling, a movie and dinner. Oh, and she calls him Rhys when 
she complains about his boring choice of movie. Thank you! 
Finally! She’s trying to convince him over dinner that her new 
job is just a lot of boring paperwork (yeah, that’ll fool him 
for about three episodes), but he’s excited about her starting 
tomorrow. Apparently he thinks it’s a promotion. And he’s still 
a sweetheart. Then it all goes to shit when he looks up and 
asks “is that plane on fire?” Everyone in the restaurant gawks 
as a giant fireball streaks overhead. She grabs him and they 
follow it until it crashes into some hills in the distance. Her 
cell phone starts beeping almost instantly. “I’ve got to go to 
work,” she says, all breathless and excited. That will probably 
last about three episodes too.
   Chrissy: Ever the cynic, aren’t you?
   Diandra: Just saying. It’s all exciting and fun at 
    first, but after a while it’s all ‘oh, hell, another 
    UFO. Can’t I just have one night to myself?!’

Blippy, vaguely creepy credits.

In the SUV, on the way to the crash site, Jack declares this a 
“simple clean up operation” (famous last words). Gwen is 
distracted by the fancy computer equipment crowding most of the 
backseat. “Is this CRIMINT,” she asks, pointing at the screen 
over her lap. “This is the police computer system. You 
shouldn’t have this.” Jack thinks she should start referring to 
them as “we”, not “you”. Hey, she wasn’t even supposed to be 
starting until tomorrow. Forgive her for needing some time to 
adjust.

Crash site. A bunch of military guys are already milling 
around. “All right, usual formation,” Jack grumbles and starts 
marching toward the soldiers. “What’s usual formation,” Gwen 
yelps, stumbling behind. “Varies,” Owen says. Oh, well, in that 
case...what? Gwen has to go back to retrieve her duffel bag and 
falls behind long enough for Jack to apparently bullshit them 
all past security, then circle back to retrieve her when some 
meathead tries to have her removed from the area. It’s like she 
goes through a time warp every time she gets separated from 
them. 

It does look exactly like just a plain old meteorite. The size 
of a Smart car. Owen confirms it looks like run of the mill 
space debris. They go through the motions of taking samples of 
it, Geiger readings and yadda yadda science science. Gwen looks 
bored. “Make yourself useful, sweetheart. Pass us the big 
chisel from the toolbox,” Owen calls condescendingly. It’s 
Gwen, actually, she says from between clenched teeth. He’s all 
no? How about Sweet Cheeks? Freckles? New Girl? She picks up 
the chisel, notes the smaller one in his hand and says “it’s a 
shame your tool’s not big enough for the job, darling.” Okay, 
now I love her. She tosses it to him, completely missing his 
head (unfortunately), and embedding it in the “meteorite”, 
which seems to split a little and start emitting gas. Jack 
tosses masks at everyone (slapping Gwen’s over her face himself 
because she’s just staring, slackjawed) and they watch a pink 
cloud fly out of the meteorite and zoom off. Gwen makes an “oh, 
shit” face.

Elsewhere in the city, a young woman is leaving an angry 
voicemail for her cheating boyfriend who stood her up. “I wish 
I’d never met you. I wish I were dead! No, I wish *you* were 
dead! Call me back.” What sort of “fuck you, you cheating 
bastard” voicemail ends with “call me”? ‘I hate you, you 
bastard and I hope she gives you herpes! Rot in hell! Kisses!’ 
Before we can dwell on the bizarre nature of her love life any 
longer, she turns and comes face to...whatever with the pink 
smoke, which backs her against the wall and gets sucked right 
into her nose and mouth.

She rounds the corner and tries to go back into the club she 
apparently came out of. When the bouncer protests, she kisses 
him and he mutters “um...okay then” and lets her through. Yeah, 
because she would need alien superpowers to accomplish that. 
Let’s face it: men really are that easy. She grabs some random 
guy standing alone by the bar and drags him to the bathroom. “I 
don’t even know your name,” he gasps as she plasters him to the 
wall. She puts his hands on her ass and he’s like ‘yeah, never 
mind. Names are overrated.’ They rut for a while on the counter 
until he starts making orgasm noises and explodes into sparkly 
light. Excuse me for a minute. 
   [Diandra grabs the bottle of schnapps from Chrissy and 
    takes a large gulp]
   Chrissy: You’re welcome.

Gwen is still apologizing as the team arrives back at the hub. 
Jack tells her to knock it off. She doesn’t. Jack tries to look 
at the bright side: they have an undamaged sample of the 
meteorite/spaceship/whatever. Owen grumbles that they also have 
an alien on the loose and they don’t know where it is, why it 
came to Earth or what it’s doing. Funny looking twinks, 
apparently. Might want to watch yourself, Owen. 
   Chrissy: Gee, thanks for putting that image in my head.
   Diandra: You’re welcome.
Ianto (almost forgot about him) interrupts to say there’s a 
report of an unusual death at a nightclub that might be 
connected.

Nighclub, daytime. Jack jumps out of the SUV the second it 
stops moving and runs past the cops by the door, muttering 
“Torchwood” as he passes. Well, hello to you too. One of the 
cops is Gwen’s former partner, though, so she has to stop to 
have a little small talk. Hi! Hi! Special ops, huh? Yeah, it 
just happened suddenly. Jack sticks his head back out to ask if 
she’s planning on joining them anytime soon. Not sure what they 
needed her for as in the next scene they’re all just staring at 
the pile of dust on the floor like “this is the body? Really?” 
Jack asks the bouncer the possessed girl kissed earlier how he 
knew it used to be a person. Apparently he saw the whole 
orgasm/explosion on the security footage. Which he was jerking 
off too. Because there’s no way we’re getting out of this 
episode without at least one image that will haunt our 
nightmares.
   Chrissy: Can we at least have a scene that will undo 
    that image? Like...say...Jack taking off his shirt? Or 
    Ianto. I’m not picky.
   Diandra: That last statement I can vouch for. 
   Chrissy: Watch it. 

So the bouncer shows the footage to the team and Jack makes a 
joke about the guy coming and going. Because he has no filter 
whatsoever. Owen giggles and says that’s how he’d like to go. 
“I’m sure we could arrange it,” Tosh says from between pursed 
lips. Hee. Gwen tries to ask the usual information gathering 
questions (were they regulars? Did they arrive together?), but 
the bouncer doesn’t know anything and starts getting flustered. 
Jack pats him on the back and says thanks, we have all we need. 
Gwen’s like ‘what the hell are you talking about?’ Jack just 
starts giving orders to the team to cover up the dead guy’s 
disappearance by planting a body with a mangled face and making 
it look like a suicide. Gwen finally asks the right question: 
“you have a stash of bodies?!” Jack ignores her so she chases 
him outside into the alley next to the club, squawking that the 
kid has a family and they can’t just fake his death like that. 
Jack says they can’t exactly tell the family the truth (your 
son died fucking some chick he just met who turned out to be an 
alien, but at least he died happy, eh?). He points at the 
doohickey he’s waving around and says it’s recording the same 
elements they found at the crash site. Luckily there’s a camera 
trained on the alley too, so they’re able to pull the footage 
and watch the pink smoke possess the girl. Gwen whimpers that 
it’s all her fault the boy’s dead and vows not to let her kill 
again. 

Meanwhile, the possessed girl is sitting in some living room 
somewhere staring into space while some guy prattles on about 
work. “Carys,” he calls when he realizes she’s not responding. 
“Dad?” she replies, dazed. He assumes she’s hung over and asks 
what happened last night. Trust me, dad, you REALLY don’t want 
to know. It doesn’t matter because she says she doesn’t 
remember. He shrugs, kisses her head and goes off to work.

At the hub, Jack is using satellite tracking data to try to 
trace where the meteorite came from. Gwen muses that Rhys does 
this sort of thing all the time as a transport manager. No one 
cares what he does, Gwen. Though Tosh perks up at the mention 
of a boyfriend. So far it looks like everyone else who works at 
Torchwood is depressingly single because, as Tosh notes, they 
don’t have time for relationships with their jobs. Gwen asks 
how they “switch off from all this stuff? What do you do to 
relax?” Jack, Owen and Tosh all look at each other like 
‘er...um...’ Because people in dangerous lines of work are 
always sad loners in TV land since nobody could POSSIBLY 
UNDERSTAND, DAMNNIT. 

Sometime later, Owen is trying to make sense of the gas 
readings on the pink smoke and Tosh is running Carys’ face 
through recognition software. They are getting squat and 119 
matches, respectively. No match on the prints Gwen found 
either. Ianto brings Jack his coffee and offers to go through 
all the 119 images manually because fuck computers and their 
unreliability. This makes sense (even if it would take forever 
and a bloody day), but since he’s just the errand boy everybody 
seems to ignore it and he slinks off. Poor baby. Jack suggests 
tracing her route back on the surveillance network and Gwen 
adds that they can cross-reference that with the addresses of 
the 119 names on the list. Aw, look at them working as a team 
already.

Meanwhile, Carys is crying in the shower and then sitting in 
front of her dressing mirror staring at herself and doubling 
over in pain. A deliveryman arrives at the door. She yanks him 
inside and starts ripping off his clothes. “Your dad’s not in 
then,” he asks, dazed. I certainly hope not. And ha. She throws 
him on the couch and climbs on top of him and I guess we’ve 
skipped some time here because Jack and Tosh burst through the 
back door, masks over their faces and guns pointed. Gwen and 
Owen belatedly come through the front door. Jack tells the 
deliveryman to put his pants on and get the hell out. “It 
always breaks my heart to say those words,” he adds as the guy 
runs off. Snort. He just can’t help himself, can he? 
   Chrissy: And that is why we love him.
   Diandra: Agreed.

While they’re distracted for a minute worrying about the air 
quality and whether they can take off the masks, Carys makes a 
break for it. Owen throws some sort of seashell shaped thing at 
her feet and a tube of blue lights comes up around her. Then he 
plays the role of exposition fairy and tells Gwen it’s an 
“inflatable cell”, but it has shitty battery life and only 
lasts for an hour. Gee, wonder if that little detail will be 
important later? Jack bitches at him for not getting his 
permission before taking alien technology from the lab. “Fine. 
Don’t thank me,” Owen snots. Jesus, everything he says makes 
him sound like an unlikeable little bitch.
   Chrissy: Sound like?

So they take Carys back to the hub, where Jack orders Gwen to 
interrogate her. Gwen sputters that she doesn’t know what she’s 
doing and Jack points out that that’s not usually something you 
want to say in front of the person you’ll be interrogating. 
Come on, Gwen, you’re a cop. 
   Chrissy: Apparently not a good one.

Gwen puts Carys in one of those glass-walled cells, which is a 
funny place to conduct an interview from. Carys is like ‘where 
am I? Who are you? Is this MI-5? What do you want?!’ Gwen says 
there’s something “living inside” Carys and she knows what it 
made her do.
   Chrissy: She’s having Rosemary’s Baby?
   Diandra: Feeling the effects of the alcohol already?
   Chrissy: What makes you say that? *hic*
Gwen keeps talking about the kid that died, but Carys 
interrupts her by shrieking and slamming against the wall like 
something threw her across the cell. Then she glowers at Gwen. 
“You broke my ship.” Gwen switches tracks and asks why the 
alien is trying to invade Earth. “You can forget about 
enslaving us.” You watch too many movies, Gwen. Alien Carys is 
like ‘are all humans this stupid?’ No, she just feeds off the 
energy. Gwen blinks. “Right, so just to recap, you’ve travelled 
here to feed off of orgasmic energy.” Alien Carys is like ‘duh. 
Do you have any idea how high you can get off that shit?’ then 
flings herself all around the cell, shrieking. Gwen, stupidly, 
goes into the cell. Oh, for...*headdesk*. “Help me,” Carys 
whines. Then the alien takes over again and she slams Gwen 
against the wall and starts kissing her like she’s trying to 
feel Gwen’s tonsils with her tongue.

Upstairs in the lab, Owen glances over at the CCTV feed and his 
eyes bug out. “Hello. Happy Birthday me,” he purrs. Pervert.

“Okay,” Gwen gasps. “First contact with an alien. Not quite 
what I expected.”
   Chrissy: You expected an anal probe?
   Diandra: There’s a joke in there somewhere involving Jack, 
but I’m getting too drunk to find it.
She flips them around and starts attacking Carys’ mouth.

Owen calls Jack and Tosh over to see what’s going on 
downstairs. “Thought she had a boyfriend,” Tosh murmurs. “You 
people and your quaint little categories,” Jack laughs. Yeah. 
What did I say about Jack and monogamy? Tosh says they should 
get Gwen out of there. “Yeah,” Jack says distractedly, staring 
at the screen with his mouth hanging open. He shakes himself 
and starts running for the basement. Ha! Tosh runs after him. 
Owen just sits and hits the record button.
   Chrissy: Seriously, I think I hate this guy.

Carys rips the front of Gwen’s shirt, looks at her breasts and 
starts shoving her away, growling that this isn’t going to work 
because “it’s got to be a man”. And she’s just now realizing 
this is a deal breaker or she’s just now noticing that Gwen is 
a woman? She shrieks and bangs herself against the wall a 
couple more times. Then Carys surfaces to moan that she’s 
losing to the alien and makes Gwen promise to help her 
(which...yeah, that’s never a good idea to make promises like 
that). Gwen’s phone rings as she emerges from the cell. It’s 
Rhys, who has a sixth sense for when he needs to give his 
girlfriend a guilt trip. She flashes a thumbs up at Jack and 
Tosh, who finally arrive (too late). Rhys asks if she’s had a 
lot of excitement at her new job. “Some,” Gwen says with a 
perfectly straight face. He asks when she’ll be home so he can 
know when to start dinner. She doesn’t know. He sighs that he’s 
a “special ops widow” now. She leans on the glass front of one 
of the cells after she hangs up and is reminded of how stupid a 
move that is when the Weevil inside bangs on it and roars at 
her. 

Owen gives Gwen a round of applause as she comes back out of 
the holding area. She grabs him by the neck and slams him 
against the wall.
   Chrissy: YEAH! THAT’S MY GIRL!
   Diandra: That’s what it takes to get you to like her, 
    huh?
   Chrissy: If she punches him in the face I may have to 
    declare a girl crush.
She growls at him that this poor girl is suffering and he 
thinks it’s a JOKE and she’s not a lab rat, damn it! Owen says 
no, she’s a murderer and reminds Gwen that she was the one who 
swore they would catch the girl before she killed again. Jack 
sticks his head around the corner. “You know, strictly 
speaking, throttling the staff is my job.”
   Diandra: And by throttling he means...
   Chrissy: EW! Don’t make me picture Owen naked! 
Ianto thankfully interrupts this awkward moment by sauntering 
up with bags of Chinese food.

So they’re sitting around a conference table chatting about a 
past case that involves a woman’s husband “leaving black piles 
of mucus in the bathtub”, which sounds like lovely dinner 
conversation. Jack announces he has to pee and runs off. The 
minute he’s out of ear shot, they all turn to Gwen and ask her 
what she’s found out about Jack. Because they figure she’s a 
cop so she would know how to weasel information out of people.
   Chrissy: They really haven’t seen her work, have they?
Gwen is stunned. “You don’t know anything?” Nope. Not a clue. 
Well, except that he’s gay, says Owen. Tosh says well, that’s 
what Owen *thinks*, but she doesn’t. “And I don’t care,” Ianto 
cuts in. Oh, you will, Ianto. Trust me, you will. 
   Chrissy: Does that qualify as a spoiler?
   Diandra: Not if you’ve spent more than ten seconds 
    looking at fan fiction for this show. Or fan pages in 
    general. Or promotional images beyond season 1.
“Period military is not the dress code of a straight man,” Owen 
argues. Oh, and you’re an expert on this, are you? You know 
what? I’m with Chrissy. Fuck you, Owen. You’re an ass.
   Chrissy: That’s my girl!
Tosh actually has it right: “He’ll shag anything if it’s 
gorgeous enough.” Although...how does she know that, exactly? 
   Chrissy: Cameras? She’s the techie, right? She can 
    probably hack into feeds.
   Diandra: If that’s the case, I may have to declare my 
    love for Tosh right now. 
   Chrissy: Wouldn’t that make her as perverted as Owen was 
    being, like, five minutes ago?
   Diandra: Yes, and I called him a pervert then. I never 
    said that was a bad thing, did I?

Ahem. Gwen says well, they know he’s from America. Owen says no 
they don’t. Tosh recites that there is no US birth record of a 
Jack Harkness for the past 50 years. And they wouldn’t have 
thought to check earlier, of course. Gwen suggests his identity 
is classified. Ianto agrees: thinks he was CIA. They are 
interrupted by the sound of Carys crying on the security feed. 
Jack returns and Gwen asks what the hell they’re doing eating 
and gossiping while this poor girl is suffering. You have to 
eat sometime, Gwen. Jack says actually the computers have been 
running all sorts of tests on her and the environment around 
her the whole time, so... She’s unimpressed and accuses him of 
being so focused on the job for so long that he’s lost sight of 
“what it means to be human”. “So remind us,” he says.

So Gwen prints off all sorts of pictures and paperwork on Carys 
and plasters it all over her workstation. Because nothing quite 
captures what it means to be alive like dental records. 
Seriously? What are those doing in there? Okay, so she also has 
school pictures and report cards and girly e-mails between 
Carys and her friends “discussing the relative merits of 
Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger”. Bet they’d be embarrassed to 
know those e-mails are being read by other people.
   Chrissy: Just think. Somewhere, someone could be reading 
    all those e-mails you and your boyfriend send each 
    other.
   Diandra: He’s not my boyfriend. 
   Chrissy: No, he just drunk texts you in the middle of 
    the night and entertains your slasher fantasies for 
    hours.
   Diandra: Which is what makes him such a good friend. By 
    the way, that description applies to you too. 
   Chrissy: Aww...I love you too, sweetie.

Gwen then gives Jack a speech about how this is not just about 
a meteorite and alien gas, it’s about a girl they can save if 
they can just get her to hold ON, damnit. She realizes Jack is 
just staring at her with a funny sort of expression and asks if 
she has something on her face. Apparently he was patting 
himself on the back mentally for bringing her in because she is 
“brilliant”. She recommends they bring in the girl’s dad. And 
crashing back down the reality... Jack says no, absolutely not. 
We’re not putting a civilian in the cell with an alien. They 
argue a little and Tosh interrupts to announce that something’s 
happening with Carys. Apparently that scan Jack mentioned 
earlier picked up powerful pheromones. Well, duh. Couldn’t you 
have guessed that was going on earlier? “She’s a walking 
aphrodisiac,” Jack summarizes. He asks if Gwen still wants to 
put her father in the cell with her. Oh, dear God, no, Gwen 
says. “We can’t let any man near...” And that’s when they 
realize Owen has disappeared. 

Tosh and Gwen run to the cell, where luckily (or unluckily 
depending on how you look at it), Owen is still alive. He is 
also naked, handcuffed and locked in Carys’ cell.
   Chrissy: Damnit, we could have been RID OF HIM by now!

Except Carys hasn’t left the building yet and I have no idea 
how Gwen and Tosh could have passed her without noticing. Is 
there a back entrance to those cells somewhere? It looked like 
there was only one door. Oh, who cares?
   Chrissy: There’s the alcohol kicking in.
   Diandra: Bring it.
Jack blocks Carys’ path as she emerges into the main part of 
the hub. She runs to a table full of weapons, grabs a medieval 
looking club with spikes and starts swinging at him. He grabs 
what looks like a broom handle and gives chase. Dude. You’re 
gonna die. They both manage to lose their weapons within a 
minute, so I guess they both suck at this.
   Chrissy: They also both fight like girls.
   Diandra: Hey now.
Carys grabs the creepy floating hand in a jar and Jack 
immediately yells “put that down! It’s worthless to anyone but 
me”, prompting me to throw my keyboard at the screen and shout 
“YOU FUCKING MORON!” I mean, seriously? What kind of dumbass 
strategy is that? Then he pulls his gun and threatens to shoot 
her, but she doesn’t buy it on account of she’s still holding 
the tank and she wasn’t born yesterday. She backs into the 
elevator and the real Carys surfaces for a moment to whimper 
“help me”. Jack chases the elevator up several flights of 
stairs and somehow makes it to the hallway at the top almost 
immediately behind her. The elevators in this universe must be 
infernally slow.

She nearly runs into Ianto in the tourist office. “Need me to 
do any attacking, sir,” Ianto asks as Jack emerges behind her. 
No, we wouldn’t want you to get that nicely pressed suit dirty, 
now, would we? 
   Chrissy: Better take it off first.
   Diandra: How did I know you would go there?
Jack says no thanks, honey, just open the door, then holds out 
his hands for the jar. She chucks it over the counter behind 
her and flees. Gwen and Tosh come up to find Jack crouching 
behind the counter, cradling the disembodied hand like a dying 
lover, utterly fucking useless. So they give chase, but Carys 
has disappeared.

Sometime later, after Jack has put the hand back in a new jar 
full of bubbling liquid, Gwen chastises him for making *that* a 
priority over helping Carys, proving that her earlier speech 
made no apparent impression on him whatsoever. Jack snots that 
she can make herself useful by tapping her police resources and 
finding Carys. Gwen’s like ‘fine. I’ll just put out an APB for 
a woman possessed by an alien gas going around fucking men into 
dust. Will that work?’ Before they can bicker any further, Owen 
interrupts to drag them down to the autopsy bay. He’s been 
going over Carys’ bio readings, but he can’t make sense of them 
because there’s basically two: one for Carys and one for the 
alien controlling her body like a demented puppet master. So he 
infected a rat with a combination of the gases they found at 
the crash site. He pulls up a diagnostic on the rat, showing 
its heart rate going insane, its brain swelling and basically 
every body system going batshit insane just before the rat 
explodes in a shower of blood and fur all over the inside of 
its little cage. So they better have hazmat suits ready when 
they find her, then. Just in case.

While they’re doing this, Carys is wandering around downtown in 
a daze, gawking at amorous couples and billboards of half-naked 
or sometimes fully naked people. Yeah, welcome to Western 
society. Nothing sells like sex. Actually, no, that’s not even 
true, but you can’t convince advertisers of that no matter how 
many studies prove that it has hardly any effect whatsoever.

Gwen thinks they need to try thinking like Carys if they want 
to find her. Jack argues that they don’t know who’s in charge 
right now though, Carys or the alien. Tosh says but the alien’s 
survival instinct is tied to its need for sex so let’s assume 
that’s the overriding drive right now. And she thinks she knows 
what she would do in Carys’ position.
   Chrissy: I notice you skipped over Owen’s input in this 
    scene.
   Diandra: Figured it would just piss you off.
   Chrissy: Thank you.

Carys goes to see the boyfriend she was leaving that passive 
aggressive voicemail for last night. Except now we find out 
that he’s not cheating on Carys. Carys is the other woman. And 
is that a baby crib in the corner? Oh, honey. No. Bad idea. She 
accuses him of not caring who he’s fucking as long as he’s 
fucking somebody, which...you don’t know a lot about men, do 
you dear? She asks if he ever loved her. “No,” he says with a 
shrug. “You could have saved yourself,” she growls, jumping on 
him.

By the time Jack and Gwen burst into the room, Carys is gone 
and there’s a pile on the couch where the ex used to be. Jack 
says at least Tosh was right and she seems to be working 
through exes. “Luckily she’s young. Work your way through my 
back catalogue and we’ll be here ‘til the sun explodes.” Yes, 
we know, Jack. You’re a whore. You don’t need to remind us 
every other scene.
   Chrissy: Although we wouldn’t mind a demonstration.
   Diandra: Down girl.
   Chrissy: What would happen if they let Carys have at 
    him? I mean, if he can’t die...wouldn’t that buy some 
    time or something?
   Diandra: He’d have to resurrect from dust, which I 
    assume would take a long damn time. Plus, he’s still 
    keeping that little talent a secret from Owen and Tosh 
    for some reason.

Night. The team is discussing their next step. Owen says they 
can’t put Bromide in the water supply because people got pissed 
last time they did that. Wait, what? They question why it 
picked Carys in particular. What sort of job does she have? 
Gwen says she’s a temp, currently working as a receptionist and 
Tosh pulls up a record of her working at a clinic. Which Owen 
recognizes as a fertility clinic. Which means sperm donors. And 
I don’t want to know how Owen knows this.

Carys waits until this moment (naturally) to wander in to the 
clinic, mumbling about how “he” needs more energy because it’s 
not lasting anymore. The woman behind the reception desk is 
confused and unhelpful so Carys punches her out. 

Owen hands Gwen a gun and she looks baffled and splutters that 
she’s never used a gun before. She was just a beat cop. Jack 
says they’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t need to use it. 
For now. Gwen asks what they’re going to do when they catch 
Carys. This is a question that is just NOW occurring to her? 
Tosh babbles that the alien needs a host because prolonged 
exposure to Earth environment is toxic to it but somehow it can 
survive inside a human, which...whatever. Jack thinks they can 
isolate the alien from Carys somehow and hold it long enough 
for it to die off.

They burst into the clinic, waving their guns, looking not 
unlike a coed version of Charlie’s Angels, and start shooing 
guys from the waiting room. They find at least five piles of 
dust in assorted rooms throughout the facility. Okay, how is 
she not an exploded mess yet? They corner her and she starts 
babbling about human obsession with sex (I think...she’s kind 
of vague) and then screams and falls on the floor. Owen thinks 
it won’t be long now before they have to clean her off the 
walls. Carys insists she just needs one more hit and she’ll be 
good, like every drug addict ever. Jack comes to the conclusion 
Chrissy did a couple scenes ago, puts his gun away (the other 
one) and bends down to kiss her. Her skin glows and when he 
pulls away she smiles and faints. Well, I’d say it’s safe to 
assume whatever that was supposed to do, it didn’t work. And 
really, where was he going with that, because the team was all 
standing around watching. Was he planning on shooing them out 
at some point if she took the bait?
   Chrissy: And by “bait”, you mean...
   Diandra: Do you really need me to spell it out?
   Chrissy: Just trying to get an accurate mental picture.
   Diandra: Uh-huh. And you’re calling me a pervert?
   Chrissy: Oh, that’s just stating a fact.

Gwen tries to volunteer herself as host body to the alien, 
begging it to just leave Carys alone. “I’m stronger,” she 
insists when Jack tries to stop her. “I’ll last longer. You 
might be able to save me.” And in the meantime you’ll kill 
Rhys, Owen, possibly Ianto and Jack a few times. I don’t think 
you’ve thought this through. 
   Chrissy: When does she ever?
Jack caves easily because, as Gwen keeps insisting, she’s 
responsible for the whole fucked up situation anyway. They all 
stand back and the pink smoke erupts from Carys’ mouth and 
starts drifting toward Gwen. She closes her eyes and tosses the 
seashell thing she had hidden in her hand onto the ground. Ah. 
So she wasn’t being randomly reckless then. The smoke rattles 
around the inflatable cell making a low moaning noise and 
dissolves into a pile of dust a second before the battery dies 
and the cell collapses. Mr. Plot Contrivance congratulates 
himself on a job well done and makes a hasty retreat. Jack 
makes some comment about the alien travelling halfway across 
the universe only to die alone. Gwen, impulsively, kisses him, 
says “thank you” and slinks off, leaving him to blink at her 
stupidly. He touches his lips and looks thoughtful. 

They bring Carys back to her father and she sobs on his 
shoulder. Gwen smiles at Jack like ‘I told you so’.

Later, Jack finds Gwen undoing that collage of random crap 
about Carys and asks why she’s still there. Everyone else went 
home or wherever it is they go when they’re not on duty. He 
makes her promise that she won’t let the job “consume” her 
because they need SOMEBODY on the team who has a life. “Who are 
you, Jack,” she asks, completely ignoring the subject. She 
points out that he talks about the 21st century like it’s the 
past. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” He completely 
ignores the question and tells her to go home and have dinner 
with her boyfriend like a normal person.

So she does. Way to fold like a house of cards, Gwen.