"Torchwood, episode 1x10: Out of Time" Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen If you're reading all of my recaps of this show (bless your heart) you probably noticed that I just skipped episode nine, which was titled "Random Shoes". I actually liked that episode, but I chose not to recap it for two reasons. One, the plot about a guy dying and hanging around until the authorities figure out what happened to him and he can move on is not all that different from your typical ghost story and I think I got enough of that recapping "Haunted". Two, it's about a dead guy. Moving on. As in GOING INTO THE LIGHT. One episode after Ilsa spent whole monologues explaining that there IS NO GODDAMN LIGHT. Now, we might be able to explain that away by saying she's evil so of course she wouldn't go the same place as a perfectly sweet young man who was killed by total accident, but...no, actually we can't because she wasn't the only one to say it. The only possible reason I can think of for anyone to suddenly go into a beam of light when they die on this show is the writers suddenly developed some sort of specific amnesia that causes them to forget their own cannon. And three (because I can't count I guess), this episode has no impact on any other episode and can easily be skipped. It is the ultimate stand alone episode. Life is too short for me to waste my time recapping it when I know it's basically just filler. Anyway... Episode. Right. We open on a plane that looks like a WWII relic circling above some sort of airfield. Jack, Gwen and Owen are standing by a runway watching it come in for a landing. Which it takes its sweet time doing. A woman with bright red lipstick hops down from the driver's seat and greets them, babbling about hitting some turbulence and having to make an unscheduled landing. She introduces herself to Jack as Diane Holmes and asks if this is some sort of secret base or something. She seems totally unconcerned with the weird flashing thingy in his ear and the strangely dressed people standing behind him. Chrissy: Probably stopped paying attention to anything else once Jack started talking. Diandra: Oh, I forgot you were here. Chrissy: You usually do. A man and another woman in period dress crawl from the plane and stumble over to ask when they can leave again. Jack asks when they left. About half an hour ago. He says no, what year. "1953," Diane says with exactly the sort of bafflement one would have if one suddenly stumbled through a rift in time without realizing it. Chrissy: Or, to put it in terms more people could actually relate to: waking suddenly from a drunken stupor to find a bunch of police officers asking why you are in some stranger's house and why you are naked. Diandra: This is why I don't go to your parties. Hub. Jack assures Diane and Co that there is nothing to be afraid of...while escorting them into a swoopy futuristic underground lair full of alien tech and a pterodactyl. Sure. The man asks who they are. Jack says the less they know, the better. Why? It's not like they're going to tell anyone. Everyone who is not Jack introduces themselves. The other two with Diane are named John and Emma. Owen escorts them to the med bay or something while Gwen turns to Jack and mutters "at least it wasn't a spaceship full of aliens." "That might have been easier," Jack says. On a side note, we’re like five minutes in and Jack hasn’t flirted with anyone or made any mildly inappropriate comments yet. This is probably a record. Conference room. Jack is explaining to Diane and Co that they fell through a "transcendental portal" and jumped forward fifty years. John thinks this is some sort of elaborate trick. Not sure what kind of people he spends his time with who would go through this kind of trouble to convince him he had lost fifty years. Unless of course, he's a spy and he thinks the Soviets REALLY want to find out what sort of intel he gathered during WWII. Tosh shows them pictures from the last fifty years, including millennium celebrations from their home towns and blueprints of what modern airplanes look like. Diane - ever the practical one apparently - cuts right to the point: how do we get back? Jack says they don't because historical records say their plane just vanished and none of them were ever seen again. So this is what happened to Amelia Earhart is what we're saying? Chrissy: I thought it was common knowledge that she was abducted by aliens. Diandra: No. No, it isn’t. Emma asks what will happen to them. John asks what happened to their families. Short little depressing montage of the team trying to locate friends and family. Emma’s parents are dead, Diane apparently has no family or friends to look for and Tosh can’t seem to find John’s son because records from the 50s are shit. All right then. Jack sets them up at some sort of hotel. John gives him a camera that he says has pictures of his family. “Don’t worry, Captain Harkness,” he says. “I’ll look after the ladies.” Good idea. Keep Jack away from them. Meanwhile, Gwen asks why Emma was on that plane headed for Dublin. Emma was apparently headed to her aunt and uncle’s place to take care of the kids since her aunt was sick and lord knows men can’t take care of children because it’s the 1950s and that’s the sole job of the womenfolk. Chrissy: Yeah, I’m going to go get a bottle of wine or something because obviously this is going to be a LONG recap. Besides, Emma says, it will be good practice for when she has kids of her own which, of course, is the only thing women are good for on this Earth. Chrissy: Screw the wine, I’m getting vodka. Diandra: [yelling in the direction of Chrissy’s retreating back] Have I mentioned how much I goddamn hate the 50s?! Emma falters and says she supposes her mom has figured out she went missing by now. Gwen reminds her that that happened in 1953 so really that was over fifty years ago. Yeah, time travel is a bitch. Emma muses that it must be like one of those unsolved murder cases where the body is never recovered. Gwen says they assumed the plane went down in the water, then comforts Emma as she cries. Next day, Hub. Jack and Gwen give the group their fake identities and bank cards, which Torchwood will keep an eye on for a while until they get the hang of the difference in currency and stuff. John immediately balks. “You can’t take away our names! It’s all we’ve got left.” Jack points out that technically they don’t exist and using the names of people who were declared dead decades ago is bound to send up all sorts of red flags. Oh, no, sorry, that’s me. Jack gives in like the spineless jellyfish he is and says of course they can keep their names. How stupid of him to suggest that they try to stay under the radar. That’s not asking for trouble or anything. Ianto takes them to a grocery store to practice using their weird looking modern currency that looks like play money. He’s breaking down a suggested budget that totals to 45 pounds. Emma, flabbergasted, says her dad only made 10 pounds in a week. Yeah. Hence why you need to practice. They stop at the automatic door, jumping back when it slides open and staring at it like they just stumbled into some alien future world. Ianto starts to explain via technical jargon how they are able to do that when Diane gets distracted by a giant pile of bananas and runs off. “Of course, bananas are far more interesting,” Ianto says without missing a beat. Heh. Poor Ianto. The girls both wander off, but John hangs back, slackjawed at the sheer amount of food everywhere. “We’d just come off rationing in ’53,” he murmurs. Ianto apologizes. “We are a consumer society.” Montage. Emma fills a whole basket with junk food (she’ll fit right in) and tells Ianto he sounds like her mom when he points out that she’ll ruin her teeth with all that crap. Yeah, Ianto would probably make a good mother, actually. Diane becomes fascinated with the color televisions and, when Emma wanders in her direction, hands her a DVD, marveling that they sell movies you can watch right in your house now. John is marveling at the fact that they sell magazines right in the grocery store with covers featuring women who appear to be dressed in their underwear. “There’s children around,” he points out, waving one at Ianto. “She’s a children’s TV presenter,” Ianto replies. Yeah, that’s still less confusing than it is in America where we have exactly the same sort of pictures being plastered everywhere but one woman bares a half-covered breast for half a second and everyone starts shrieking about children being scarred for life (because, you know, there were probably some watching somewhere). They’re packing everything when Diane wanders over, a pack of cigarettes in her hand, looking stricken. “What does this mean,” she asks, showing Ianto the “smoking kills!” warning on the box. It means people in the 50s were morons who thought inhaling a bunch of smoke and chemicals was actually good for them, Diane. Welcome to a slightly more enlightened time. Chrissy: Yeah. Slightly. John has them drop him off at Millennium Stadium so he can “take a look”. He tells the girls he’ll be back by dinner. Of course, the minute the car pulls away, he goes in the other direction. Like, he doesn’t even wait for them to be out of sight. I take back what I said earlier. He would make a terrible spy. He goes to a tiny, old building that has obviously been boarded up and forgotten about years ago. He asks somebody walking by if they know what happened to the man who used to live there – his son Alan. Of course they don’t. Some sort of communal kitchen for the apartment building. Or something. Diane is poking at the microwave like it might come to life or something. Emma is ripping open tea bags and dumping them into a pot. I’m not British, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you’re supposed to do with those. Unless you like chewing your tea/coffee grounds, in which case...ew. Diane says she’s going to go check on the plane. You know, in case it escaped during the night. Can’t have it wandering through the woods by itself, you know. Emma’s just going to watch that movie she bought. Diane wonders if she’d be able to find some aviation work in this era. Pretty sure that would involve some retraining, but sure. Why not? Emma thinks she’ll have to find a husband. Because you know, with the possible exception of Diane, only men worked in the 50s. Chrissy: Starting to see why you couldn’t watch Mad Men. Diandra: Blarg... Two twenty-somethings saunter in and introduce themselves. Diane and Emma watch as one dumps tea bags in cups and pours water over them like a normal person. Diane beats a hasty retreat while the girls are complimenting Emma on her shoes. Emma is all smiling and friendly and it’s totally obvious she’s going to fare better than the others here. Apparently Owen drove Diane to the hangar because he trails after her while she does I honestly have no clue what to the plane (although it looks like checking the oil). He says he’s been doing some research on her. She flew from England to Australia in four days, which was impressive in 1952. “Terrible wind across the Bengal Bay,” she says. “Something you ate?” Owen jokes lamely. Chrissy: *groan* Somebody please shoot him. He asks how she got into this line of work. She says she ferried planes during the war. After the war, she was supposed to go back to being like Emma and defer to a man for the rest of her life, but she was obviously too progressive for her time. She asks if she can fly the plane. Owen points out that her license expired, like fifty years ago, so no. She relents and says he can make it up to her by teaching her all about this strange new world. Meanwhile, John and Jack are in a bar somewhere drinking beer. Must be the next day. John is yammering on about sports, so he may as well be speaking Swahilli for all I care. Then he shifts gears and asks about Jack’s American accent. “How did you end up here doing whatever it is that you do?” Jack evades with the old “it’s a long story”. No shit. John says he has time and Jack knows everything about him, so it’s only fair. Jack says it’s “complicated”. “What, did you fall through time too?” Ha. Hahahahahaha. Yeah, but explaining that he was born in the 51st century (on a planet where people have American accents for some damn reason) and was traveling with an alien in a flying police box until the asshole ditched him on a space station thousands of years from now might be a bit much for a guy who hasn’t even seen humans land on the moon yet. So he just says “yeah, you could say that”. Chrissy: That’s how you chose to reveal that you have been watching “Doctor Who” these past months after you said you had absolutely no intention of doing so? Diandra: Yeah, you really shouldn’t pay attention to me when I say things like that. Meanwhile, Emma is helping those two girls she just met decorate for Christmas. Because she is obviously the most adaptable of the three. She asks what they are doing Christmas Eve and suggests caroling. Okay, maybe not fully adaptable. The girls laugh and say they plan on partying. And by partying I mean drinking such massive quantities that they will probably spend most of Christmas morning nursing hangovers. Emma asks where their families are. They grew up in foster care. Emma says well she doesn’t have any family either since her parents are dead. And she has nothing to her name either since as far as Great Britain is concerned she ceased to exist sometime in the mid-fifties, but she doesn’t tell them all the details. They ask if she was close to them. She cries a little and they feel sorry for her. Back at the bar, John is bemoaning the awful Christmas his family must have had thinking his plane had crashed in the Atlantic or something. He begs Jack to find his son because he’s all John has left and he just needs to KNOW what happened to him. Jack says absolutely nothing and just makes pained faces at him. Owen takes Diane to some sort of oriental restaurant. She stands behind her chair, staring at him expectantly while he sits down, clueless as ever. He doesn’t take the hint, so she has to spell it out for him: “I’m waiting for you to pull out my chair.” He just laughs. “Let me get this straight: you expect equality AND chivalry.” Chrissy: How about just expecting you to act like less of a prick? IS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK? Diandra: Here, have some Vodka. Chrissy: No, I’m fine. I can get through this scene as long as this subplot doesn’t lead to them falling into bed together. Diandra: ...here, have some Vodka. Chrissy: Oh, you are fucking kidding me. She says she doesn’t see why those have to be completely separate concepts. Owen shrugs and makes a big production out of coming around and pulling her chair out with a stiff “your chair, ma’am.” She pulls out a cigarette immediately and he has no hesitation when it comes to lighting it for her. Diane asks what other progress women have made in the last fifty years. Um...that depends on who you ask. Owen’s like eh, well, you don’t have to have sex to have kids anymore. He then paints a lovely picture that includes a syringe and a “pot” at a sperm bank. “And they say romance is dead.” Well, it is with you apparently. I mean really? That’s the first thing that popped into your head? How are you attracting all these women? Chrissy: That’s what I’m saying. Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Emma is belting out show tunes when John wanders back in and scolds her like she’s his daughter or something. And we’re back with Owen and Diane already? God, this show gives me whiplash. They’re leaving the restaurant. He offers to take her back to his place where she can “read up about [herself] on the net.” He realizes that sounds like a bad come on and swears it isn’t, although he DOES think she’s attractive (which only proves he has working eyesight). He just doesn’t want her to think he’s taking advantage of... “Got any Scotch,” she interrupts. And we’re back at the apartment, where Gwen is now standing beside Emma, who apparently called her all rattled by John’s yelling. He thinks the half a glass of whatever she was drinking was causing her to make a fool of herself. “We’re not meant to draw attention to ourselves. We’re not the same as them. We can’t trust anyone.” He puts a couple plates on the dining table and promises Gwen he won’t “let her out of my sight again.” Emma points out that she doesn’t like liver. He snaps at her again like she’s a petulant child who doesn’t know what’s good for her. Emma finally loses it. “Only my dad gets to talk to me like that.” And she’s never going to see him again. Or anyone else she has ever loved for that matter. Her voice goes up about five decibels until she’s shrieking that she can’t stand this horrible place. She storms off. Gwen frowns at John and follows her. Owen’s apartment. Owen is attempting to clean up a little, yammering about how women have been to space too. And again, I would like to point out that these people would be baffled that ANYONE has been to space. Diane emerges from the bathroom and asks if he has a girlfriend because there’s a bunch of “beauty products” in there. Because in her day, men didn’t use moisturizers. Actually, I’m pretty sure a lot of them would be still offended if you suggested they so much as try to make their hands just a little less like sandpaper. But this is Owen we are talking about here, so let’s assume he’s not that...what’s the word I’m looking for here? Chrissy: Butch? Diandra: Well, that too. No, what’s the word for someone who is so insecure in their sexuality that they overcompensate by acting like the butchest, most misogynistic and homophobic man who ever walked the planet? Chrissy: Rick Santorum? Diandra: Thanks. That’s helpful. Diane notes that the apartment is not very “homey”. He says he doesn’t spend much time in it. Also, he may use beauty products, but he’s still a straight guy and decorating or fashion sense doesn’t come easy to them. She stands by the full wall of windows (Owen has a pretty awesome view, it looks like) and lights another cigarette. He says she smokes too much. She’s like ‘yeah, I’m hearing that a lot, thanks’. She asks the question I implied earlier: is Amelia Ehrhart still out there somewhere then? Owen doesn’t think so because he says there was a one in one zillion chance of their merry little band falling through the rift like they did. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Oh, wait, yes it does. So unless the rumors of her crashing on an island and getting killed by the natives are true, she could probably come spitting out any time. Owen assures her that she’ll fit right in to this weird alien-future world, so don’t worry. Actually, I’m thinking Emma will fit in faster. Also, are you trying to smile or are you in pain, Owen? Don’t make that face anymore. And we cut to them rolling around in bed together. Chrissy: That’s it. I’m out. You’re on your own. Diandra: But...damnit. Come back here! [Front door closes] Diandra: *sigh* Diane admits that she had a lover who was married once, which was a nice arrangement for her because she didn’t have to cook and clean and play good little wifey to him. “I’m not exactly marriage material.” No one is, really. “I always thought the 50s were uptight...sexually repressed,” Owen muses. That’s because they WERE. Then Owen has to go and ruin everything by offering to be “fuck buddies”. Diane has no idea what that means, so Owen explains that it means they would be friends who have casual sex. She blinks and says what they did wasn’t “casual” and sex shouldn’t be “devalued” like that. Then she reaches under the sheet and does something that makes him gasp, so I guess she’s not totally turned off. Next day. Rhys is completely bare-ass naked (oh, thank you, show, that’s a lovely image) and digging for something in the refrigerator when Emma – who apparently spent the night on Gwen’s couch – wakes up. She lets out a shriek that I’m pretty sure reaches decibels only dogs can hear. And we immediately cut to sometime just a little bit later where Gwen is explaining to Rhys – now wearing a robe – that Emma is her aunt’s stepdaughter. She is making tea so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye, presumably, and she has this mildly frantic look in her eyes while she stammers out a story about Emma and the aunt having a fight and Emma calling her because she didn’t know where else to go. Shouldn’t you have, I don’t know, thought this through a bit earlier, Gwen? Were you hoping he wouldn’t notice the strange woman sleeping on the couch or something? She says she was thinking Emma could stay with them a while. THEN she introduces him officially to Emma as her “long suffering boyfriend”. Good of her to acknowledge that. Emma’s eyes bulge a little as she notes that they aren’t married and are living together and “don’t your parents mind?” “Emma’s parents are a bit religious,” Gwen explains quickly. Rhys says she better not tell him she saw his “morning glory” then. Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be scrubbing that image from her brain as soon as possible, actually. He leaves and Gwen mutters that she couldn’t tell him her parents are dead because he would ask questions and he doesn’t know what she does for a living, so, you know, if Emma could just play along. Thanks. You can’t keep him in the dark forever, Gwen. Eventually he’s going to notice all the weird shit going on around you. At the hub, Gwen is explaining to Jack that she felt she had to take Emma in because John and Diane are strangers to her and shouldn’t be expected to take care of her and where the hell is Diane anyway? “I think she was in a B&B,” Owen offers as he wanders by. “I’m going to take her job-hunting later.” Well, I think I can safely say I’ve never heard either of those euphemisms before. Tosh comes in and grabs Jack, announcing that she thinks she’s found John’s son. By the way, Jack did not say one word in this entire scene. Just stared at everyone looking mildly baffled and making occasional fish-faces. It’s like he forgot why he was even there or something. He seems to be doing that a lot this episode. Were the writers trying something new or do they just not know how to utilize him in this plot? Cut to John visiting his son Alan, who is, of course, in a nursing home. A nurse introduces him as a nephew researching his family history. “Is Sally coming,” Alan asks vacantly because he apparently has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember that his wife Sally is long dead. The nurse apologizes to John, saying this is obviously not one of Alan’s better days. Of course, Alzheimer’s wasn’t well understood in John’s day so she has to explain what it is. “He never had any children,” she finishes. Hence why he ended up in a nursing home when he could no longer take care of himself. After the nurse leaves, John sits with him and tries to show him pictures of his childhood. Alan isn’t paying attention and when the nurse comes back around he asks when he can go home. She says – for probably the twentieth time that day – that he’s not well enough. John asks her what Alan did for a living. “I think he was a fireman,” she says before wandering away. John smiles and says that’s what he did during the war. Alan continues to stare blankly. We leave that cheerful little scene behind for a moment and go back to Owen and Diane, who are trying to get a half an hour of flight time with a Cessna, which she notes hasn’t changed much in style in the past fifty years. He says they’ll have her back behind the “throttle” in no time. I’m going to take the high road on that one. Meanwhile, John is describing some sort of game they both watched when Alan was little and Alan finally seems to have a moment of clarity. This prompts John to see if he recognizes him: “It’s me, your dad!” Alan quickly fades again as John continues trying to remind him of details from that last Christmas they had together. The nurse sees him crying and comes back over to explain that he sometimes remembers snippets from his childhood. Alan looks at her and asks “when’s Dad coming, Mum?” John grabs his hand and tries to get his attention and Alan asks point blank: “who are you?” Back in the hub, Jack, having suddenly found his voice again, is playing exposition fairy (yes, I know I used the word “fairy”. Get over it). He says John is witnessing the last of his bloodline die out and there’s jack shit they can do about it. He starts getting philosophical about how there is no enemy here – just three people lost in time who are somehow Torchwood’s responsibility. Tosh just blinks at him silently. I think I’ve discovered a subplot in this episode. Jack was infected by some sort of personality remover that rendered him little more than a piece of scenery for a while there and now it has transferred to Tosh. That or I’ve grown bored since Chrissy left me a couple scenes ago and started inventing insane plot twists just to keep myself entertained. Anyway. The flight instructor...or whoever, tells Owen that they’re booked for the day and the soonest he can take Diane flying is Friday. She protests that she’s flown for years and she should be able to go without a chaperon. No, see, there’s these things called lawyers, Diane, and they say you need a license that was issued sometime in the past couple decades. Diane tells him to schedule her for Friday then and marches away, Owen trailing after her. Emma is at a dance club for some reason, staring wide eyed at everybody gyrating to a song featuring a lot of screechy electronic beats and a singer praising the way some girl can “shake that ass”. Apparently Gwen thought it would be a good idea to take her here because she and Rhys are over in a corner nursing their drinks. Gwen kisses him. He asks what that was for. “For putting up with me.” He says in that case he deserves a whole lot more than one little kiss. Agreed, but you are in public, dear. Gwen waves at Emma, who has a guy trying very hard to dance with her. Within, like, a minute, Emma wanders off into a corner to make out with the guy and Gwen panics and tracks her down, hauling the guy off her and shoving him away like a bouncer. Emma protests that she wasn’t going to let it get any further than “a kiss and a cuddle”, which just proves that she has a long way to go toward understanding modern men. So when they get home, Gwen tries to teach her by showing her some dirty magazines. She says people are more “sexually aware” these days. I choose to look at it as “less likely to subscribe to the childish belief that a man and wife can have children only when they are married even though they don’t sleep in the same bed”. She urges Emma to be a little more careful. Emma sputters some nonsense about wives being virginal and Gwen says no one cares about that lie anymore. Emma stares at her, waits until she goes to take a sip of her tea and asks how many men she’s done it with then. Gwen chokes and says “a few.” A few like you can count them on one hand or a few like a whole soccer team? Emma asks if she was in love with all of them. Gwen says sometimes sex can just be about “having fun”. Yeah, it’s all fun a games till somebody gets herpes. Emma’s like ‘so if I’m dating some guy and he wants to get in my pants I should just let him’? Gwen flails and finally concludes that sex is nothing to be ashamed of, but she should wait for someone “special”. “Do you wish you had waited for Rhys,” Emma asks. Well, you don’t pull any punches, do you? “I bet sex with him is better than with the others.” Gwen looks at the table with a hilarious expression that goes a long way toward explaining why she is having meaningless sex with Owen. Emma says she’ll just wait for Mr. Right because she’s “not the kind of girl” who sleeps around because we all know what THOSE girls are like. Gwen stares at the table again. Heh. I like Emma. Owen finds Diane on his couch, struggling with a laptop that is apparently running some sort of flight simulation or practice test. She bemoans the fact that you used to have to know how to care for the engine or, you know, do anything that is actually involved in flying the plane and now they seem more concerned with your ability to successfully take a test. Yeah, that one sentence there pretty well describes what is wrong with the American school system in general. Owen tells her to leave it alone and come see what’s in the bag he just brought home from the store. Her eyes light up and she reaches into the bag to pull out a long red dress. I hope you’re good at judging dress sizes, Owen, because I’m pretty sure that minefield of potential fights hasn’t changed much in fifty years. Emma comes home from a job interview at a “fashion house” dressed in a coat that, while very nice, obviously came through the rift with her from 1953. But since fashions always come back around eventually, she tells Gwen they loved it because it is totally back in style. I would say my father should have kept the clothes he wore back in the 70s because they should be coming back in style any day, but...no. Those color combinations were hideous even then. And I seriously hope they have been burned by now. Gwen squeals and hugs her and offers to help her find a flat close by. Yeah, but the job is at the company’s new branch in London. Gwen’s face starts to fall and she warns that London is a big city. Like, really big. They could probably find something closer to Cardiff if they kept looking. Emma isn’t so sure, but she doesn’t say anything. And having seen both of those cities, I wouldn’t be so sure either. John and Jack are emerging from the Hub into the tourists office (when did he get back) and John is babbling about needing to get a driver’s license. I am distracted by the vest Jack is wearing because it looks like it’s at *least* two decades older than the clothes John came through the rift in. What the hell is the deal with his wardrobe? Doesn’t anybody think it’s strange that this guy dresses like he’s been collecting fashions from the past century? Sorry. Moving on. Jack shakes his hand and disappears back down the stairs. John waits for him to get out of range and snatches some keys from the desk. Ianto emerges from the back office before he can get out from behind the desk, though, and he claims he was just looking for bus schedules. Yeah, because tourist offices keep those things *behind* the desk. Ianto is never one to question anybody’s motives though (as you would expect from someone who was hiding a murderbot in the basement for months), so he just hands him a schedule and wishes him luck. John slinks away guiltily. Gwen and Emma come back from shopping to find Rhys sitting on the couch, glaring at the far wall. Gwen, completely ignoring the blatant signals he’s giving off, kisses his cheek while he stays absolutely stone still and sour faced. “What’s up,” she asks brightly. Oy with the poodles. I know Chrissy doesn’t like Gwen much, but I remember loving her in later episodes. I KNOW she is not an idiot, so I’m going to assume that any instance of her acting like one is a result of her still being a little green or struggling to keep her home life and her work life from crashing violently into each other. Which is happening anyway because Rhys says her mother called while they were gone and she doesn’t know who this Emma person is. He’s been thinking about how she got an emergency call from work in the middle of the night, ran off and came back with a new relative and he’s determined those two things are connected somehow but he’s not sure how. Gwen apologizes, says it’s hard to explain and just says Emma was “lost”. Rhys is more concerned about how easily Gwen can lie to him. He starts to storm off but Emma runs after him, saying it’s her fault and she can leave. Gwen protests, telling Rhys that she’s only eighteen. He just glares and slams the door behind him. Sometime later, Gwen is giving weight to my theory by complaining to Emma about how she has to live in two separate world and one of them is full of aliens and weird shit. “That’s why you’ve got to let me go,” Emma concludes. Er...no. I mean, yes, you should eventually go, but not because it will return Gwen’s life to normal. She left normal behind when she agreed to the job. Owen has taken Diane to a private little date on the roof of a parking structure or something because that always works on television. He hands her a glass of champagne and they make nauseatingly flirty talk. Then we fastforward to them dancing to a Tony Bennett song blaring from the car’s speakers. And then they’re home again and he’s peeling her right back out of that new dress. And so endeth his attempt at romance. Back at the hub, Jack’s phone rings and he crawls out of the bunk under his office to answer it. It’s Ianto, up in the tourist office. He yelps that his car keys are missing. Well, this is a strange role playing game...oh, wait. Right. Ianto explains that John was behind the counter where he keeps said keys earlier and now he can’t reach him. Luckily the car is lojacked, apparently, because by the time Ianto gets down to his office, Jack has tracked it and concluded that John is heading “home”. Ianto hands him his coat as he runs out the door. Jack arrives at the boarded up house John was at earlier and follows a signal on his wristband thingy around to the garage where John has closed himself in with the car running. Jack drags him out of the car and John protests that he’s just not strong enough to do this and Jack just doesn’t UNDERSTAND. Jack says he does and gives him the abbreviated version of his backstory: “I was born in the future. Lived in your past. My time is gone too.” Yeah, but you’ll catch up to it again. John says his wife is dead, his son doesn’t know who HE is, much less anyone else and Jack is spewing riddles at him. Jack points out that he’s still young enough to find work and start a family. John points out that he already did that years ago “when I was meant to”. And we interrupt this moment to go back to Owen and Diane fucking because that’s not jarring at ALL. Does Russell T. Davis have ADD? By the way, they are on the pull out couch. In the room with all the windows in the entire flat from the looks of it. Jesus, Owen. Do you really have to broadcast your sex life to all of your neighbors? Back in the garage. “There’s nothing to say or do,” John says. Jack says he can’t leave him alone. John is like ‘okay then, we’ll just wait until the sun comes up and go about the day as usual and I’ll pretend everything’s fine when it CLEARLY ISN’T and I’ll wait until you’re not watching and kill myself anyway. By the way, I hate you.’ Jack says he won’t be reunited with his family because the whole walking into the light thing that they TOTALLY DID IN THE LAST EPISODE is a lie: it’s all just blackness. John asks how he would know. “I died once,” Jack says, neglecting to add “this week. It’s been a slow week.” Unless he’s referring to the first time when nobody knew he was going to come back. Except that must have been a fixed event that was always meant to happen because...time travel. He tries to relate to him again, saying he understands because he’s out of his time too and he’s “alone and scared”. John asks how he copes. Jack non-answers that it’s “just bearable. It has to be. I don’t have a choice.” Oh, come on. You were a time agent. You were always out of your own time. And you always had a fantastic sense of self preservation. At least before you became unkillable. Your problem isn’t that you are out of your time – it’s the standard angst of every immortal character in the history of sci-fi: survivor guilt. John points out that he does have a choice, though, and he chooses to die so if Jack wants to help him he can just let him go peacefully. Back at Casa del Voyeur, Owen is saying he doesn’t think he can do this anymore. “This isn’t how it works for me. I’ve slept with enough women, done the fuck buddies thing.” Look out, he’s coming out of the closet. It’s okay, Owen, you can do it! You don’t have to act like a womanizing jackass to prove that you’re straight anymore! Oh, wait...no, he’s just realizing that he’s in love with her because he just can’t think about anything or anyone else. “It’s been, what, a week? And it’s like when I’m not with you I’m out of focus.” Damnit. He says it’s scaring him, which seems to be the theme of this episode. “I love you too,” she says because that’s clearly what he’s trying to say here but has no frame of reference for. Then she waits until he falls asleep to hover over him with a worried look on her face and add “the thing about love is that you’re always at its mercy.” John is back in the car, the garage filling with smoke, only this time Jack is sitting in the passenger seat holding his hand while he dies. Then he stares into space and gets all teary eyed and it’s an emotional moment but I can’t help wondering how he is breathing in the same fumes and they seem to have absolutely no effect on him. Does carbon monoxide not kill people in the future? Actually...no, actually, that makes sense. With all the shit we keep pumping into the atmosphere I suppose humans would have to eventually adapt to being able to breathe toxic fumes. Fuck you, Waterworld. Next day? Maybe? Gwen is seeing Emma off to London at the bus station. “Now don’t go talking to any strangers, and phone me as soon as you get there, okay?” Yes, mother. They hug and Gwen gets all wistful watching her get on the bus. She waves as it takes off, wishes Emma a Merry Christmas and tries not to cry. Meanwhile, Owen wakes up alone and finds a note on Diane’s pillow. He goes racing to the airfield, where Diane is getting her plane ready to fly. He rants that he can’t let her do this because it’s crazy. She points out that if she listened to every man who told her she couldn’t do something, she wouldn’t even be here. “You’re not thinking straight,” he sputters, obviously flailing for something that might get through to her. “We can talk about this! We can make this work!” She says the weather conditions are exactly the same as the day they accidentally time traveled and she just has a feeling the rift will open again. He says no, there isn’t any way for her to get home. She says she’ll go somewhere new then. Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea, Dr. Beckett. Just keep bouncing around in time and hope you don’t wind up in a time where women like you were tried as witches. He points out as much: they have no idea how the rift works or where she could end up. It’s too dangerous. She thinks that’s the fun and exciting part. Adrenaline junkie. He resorts to begging. She puts her scarf around his neck, kisses him and says “what memories I’m taking with me.” They stare at each other for a few more moments before he backs down. She closes the door and blows him a kiss before taxiing away. He tries not to cry. This is also the theme of this episode. We get a montage of Jack, Gwen and Owen having flashbacks of their experiences with John, Emma and Diane respectively, which may or may not have been happening all at the same moment (it is so hard to tell with this show). This includes a scene I’m pretty sure we didn’t see of John crying on Jack’s shoulder outside the nursing home. And the episode ends the same way it began – on a shot of Diane’s plane flying through the sky. Well. That was cheerful. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go yell at Chrissy for abandoning me and try to convince her to come back for the next episode, which also focuses quite a bit on Owen. Wish me luck.