"Torchwood, episode 1x13: End of Days" Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen Diandra: Okay, so this is the season finale, which means it’s the last episode before I switch to a “Doctor Who” three-parter. Chrissy: You’re still doing that, huh? Diandra: Yes. And you’re not getting out of it. I’ll handcuff you to that chair if I have to. After last week’s episode, I suspect I might go insane if I have to go through it alone. Chrissy: I never said I wouldn’t do it. I believe my exact words were “you are batshit crazy, but of course I will be there.” Diandra: You’re such a good friend. Chrissy: And don’t you forget it. Previously on Torchwood, we met a creepy guy named Billis and Owen opened the rift despite Ianto’s armed insistence that doing so would cause all hellfire to rain down on them. Gwen’s flat, morning. Gwen is watching Rhys sleep. At least he looks like he’s sleeping until he mumbles that it’s rude to stare at people. She giggles and says she was hoping she could will him into making her a “cuppa”. He asks what it’s worth to her. She asks what he wants. He offers to draw her a diagram. Please don’t. They kiss and he gets out of bed, giving us a nice, long view of his bare ass as he leaves the room. Gee, thanks for that. Her cell phone rings and he calls back to her to leave it. She ignores him, of course. It’s Jack and he tells her to turn on the news. So the next thing we see is her standing in front of the television in her robe, watching a news report that is outlining all the ways the world has suddenly gone completely insane. UFOs appeared over the Taj Mahal, Crusaders appeared in downtown London, Samurai warriors stormed the Tokyo subway, the Beatles were spotted on the roof of the Abbey Road studios and there’s some vague reference to a guillotine in Paris. So of course they are considering the possibility of terrorism and religious nutwads are claiming this is a SIGN of that the end of days has arrived and any minute now Jesus is going to appear on a fluffy white cloud and they are gonna be raptured (that’s how it works right? I have no freaking clue). After the credits, Ianto is reading from the Book of Daniel. Something about the end of all things and stuff being sealed until the end of time or some such crap. By the way, I’m not a religious person, in case you couldn’t tell. Chrissy: No, really? You were being so subtle, I never would have guessed. Diandra: You can stop being a smartass anytime now. Owen is futzing with...something in the general vicinity of the hand bobbing around in the tank that we are just now being reminded still exists. He announces that some machine has started losing power, but “don’t let me stop your portents of doom.” Ianto puts down the bible and picks up something about Abaddon, the Devourer, “who will lead the world into shadow”. Jack cuts him off with a rant about how “you people” love all this religious crap that “denies the randomness of existence.” I love you, Jack. Really. He adds that he’s been fielding calls all night from the government, the CIA and UNIT (which is the British military’s answer to the X-Files or Fringe division in Whoverse). They all suspect Torchwood is behind it somehow. Gwen thinks this is a valid question. We awkwardly cut to some other part of the hub so Tosh can point to a monitor where she mapped out the patterns of “temporal activity” which clearly shows a mass of lines spidering away from Cardiff like a bomb radius. Jack’s like okay then, we’re clearly ground zero and everything else that happening around the world is a ripple effect or “aftershock”. “The rift is splintering because of you,” he concludes, looking directly at Owen. Apparently, the result of deliberately opening the rift without knowing exactly how to manipulate it is that it totally cracks open and time itself starts falling apart. Owen splutters that if he HADN’T done it, Jack and Tosh would still be stuck in the middle of the Blitz so they can either sit around pointing fingers or they can do something to fix it. Since when is Owen the voice of reason? Jack says they need to round up all the people falling through the rift from various periods in time and bring them back to the hub. Owen asks what the hell they’re going to do with them. “We’ll deal with phase one first,” Jack snots. “Then I’ll tell you about phase two.” Chrissy: ...as soon as I figure out what that is. Diandra: Yeah, that part is implied. He ends by reassuring them that this is NOT the end of the world and he is absolutely sure of that fact. How long were you travelling with the Doctor, Jack? Do the words “in flux” ring any bells? A computer beeps and Ianto announces that they are being summoned to the hospital, which has been sealed off and designated as a hot zone. Owen volunteers. Jack orders Tosh to go with him. She tells Owen to stuff it when he protests and follows him out the door. Gwen asks Jack if he really had to verbally flog Owen in front of the rest of them. “All your staff have feelings, Jack. Even Owen.” Actually, the jury might still be out on that one. “You would know,” Jack sneers and stomps out of the room. Wow. Somebody’s cranky today. Chrissy: Ianto must’ve had a headache last night. Diandra: Have I ever told you that I love you? She stares at him slack-jawed for a moment and reminds him, once again, that he would have been stuck in World War II if it wasn’t for Owen. She is interrupted by her phone ringing. It’s Andy, her former partner, and he apparently has something she needs to see. Cut to a holding cell where a guy in Roman dress is screaming in Latin. Andy is showing Gwen and Jack the video feed and explaining that the guy brutally stabbed two people. Also, he doesn’t speak a word of English. Probably because nobody did in those days. He says the only word they can make out is Gelligaer, which is apparently a town where a Roman fort built in 79 AD is located. And by the way Gwen pronounces it – like she’s hiccupping and hawking a lugee at the same time – I’m guessing it’s Welsh. Jack concludes that that was where the soldier was headed when he slipped through the crack in time into the present. Andy blinks at him and asks Gwen if he’s serious. Jack brushes past him and marches toward the cell, saying that just because Andy isn’t aware of something doesn’t mean it’s not true. Gwen is apologetic: she knows this is crazy, but...well... Andy sighs and says ‘alright then, Mulder and Scully, let’s pretend I believe this batshit story: what exactly am I supposed to do with a soldier from 2,000 years ago? Book him?’ Jack pulls out a needle full of...something and says don’t worry, they’ll take the guy off his hands. And because he cannot resist any sort of temptation he adds: “Under any other circumstances an exuberant Roman soldier would be my idea of a perfect morning.” I’m pretty sure anything with functioning sex organs would constitute a perfect morning for you, Jack. Shut up. He holds up the needle and Gwen and Andy crack the door open just enough for him to slip in. Yelling. Banging. Everything goes quiet and Andy decides to start chatting with Gwen like they’re standing at the water cooler. You know, if normal water cooler conversation contained speculations about whether or not the world is literally falling apart, which, come to think of it, might only happen in any universe connected to “Doctor Who” or a major comic book franchise. She grins at him and says no, absolutely not. He says yeah, he’s seen her use that smile before. It’s never a good thing. Her smile falters and she looks at the door like ‘please be done in there, Jack’. Meanwhile, Owen and Tosh have arrived at the hospital, changed into hazmat suits and are being ushered through a highly sterilized biohazard area while a doctor explains that patient zero just showed up coughing up blood and nobody knows where she came from or how she got past the front desk. And within an hour it was already spreading through the hospital. Owen crouches over the body, whose fingers have turned black as the doctor describes the symptoms which were mostly flu-like except for the “bumps” and “black patches” on her skin. Here’s a question: what sort of doctor doesn’t recognize the symptoms of the bubonic plague? I mean, I know it’s mostly thought of as a disease from the middle ages, but it’s not like we ever eradicated it. There was an outbreak in California in the 70s for god’s sake! Chrissy: I’m going to guess an actual doctor would know that. A TV writer in Great Britain? Maybe not. Diandra: Let’s go with that. Tosh opens the bag of her effects to find a peasant dress. Owen notes that her dental plan appears to have been worse even than the usual European fare. Chrissy: Way to go for the sterotypes. Diandra: I’m not targeting Brits. I said Europe. Have you met any of my French relatives? They have fantastic healthcare but no teeth. It’s like everybody has dental plans that Americans haven’t seen since the Wild West. Although we may be going back to it now if the shitty dental plan teachers in this part of the country have is any indication. Owen puts this all together and orders the doctor to burn all the clothes and sheets of anyone who came into contact with the infected. For the benefit of the slow audience members, Tosh asks Owen what this is. He confirms that that woman came through the rift from the 14th century and infected this entire hospital with Black Plague and it’s all his fault. Well, at least he’s finally coping to that. The doctor comes back and Owen rattles off the drugs they’ll need to treat the victims with. “That’s plague medicine,” the doctor stutters, baffled. “Standard issue for bubonic.” Okay, SERIOUSLY?! If you recognized it, why didn’t you come to this conclusion hours ago? WHAT KIND OF DOCTOR ARE YOU? “Well done, House,” Owen snips. Oh, please. House would have figured that out by now. In fact, I distinctly remember an episode where he FUCKING DID EXACTLY THAT. The doctor asks what Torchwood is doing about this insanity because they don’t know what they’re supposed to do if more people show up with weird diseases from the past. Tosh says they’re working on preventing that but the doctor loses his shit and yells at them to “do something”. “No, YOU’VE got to do something,” Owen snarls back and lets loose a rant about how people are falling through time and if they think this is bad, wait until they start seeing people with all the other diseases we don’t realize are still around. Tosh ushers him away and tells the doctor to call if things get worse. The doctor asks how much worse things COULD get. Two things. First: you could find someone who came through the rift with Smallpox as that’s the only virus we ever fully eradicated and it would probably take forever to get a vaccine from the, like, two samples of it that are kept under what I hope is the tightest security in the world. That’s how much worse. Plague is treatable and - with current medicine - survivable. And second: don’t ask a question like that. Are you nuts? Have you NEVER seen a horror movie? This little exchange has held up Tosh long enough that she loses Owen. While she’s calling for him, a Japanese woman with a bloody cut on her forehead appears in the hallway to tell her that “it is coming out of the darkness”. This would be creepy enough if it weren’t for the fact that Tosh calls her “mum” and appears stunned to see she’s still alive. Oh yeah, another way this could be worse: you could find someone infected with Solanum. Chrissy: Let’s not bring fictional diseases into this. Diandra: Oh, because this show is so grounded in reality that THAT couldn’t possibly happen. Chrissy: You need to stop watching zombie movies. Diandra: Not gonna happen. “If there is no other way,” Mom continues. “You will have to do it.” And with absolutely no clarification on that message, she disappears. Which is Owen’s cue to suddenly appear and tell her to stop “pissing about” and get out of here. Jail cell. The Roman soldier is unconscious and Jack is scanning him with some sort of device while Gwen plays the idiot in the front row and asks why they can’t just do the same thing Owen did: open the rift and toss these people through. Because using exactly the same logic that got you into this mess is probably not going to get you out of it? Jack says as much, but adds some bullshit about it being different because science science time travel science “have I ever let you down”? She’s known you for all of, what, six months? There’s always a first. Gwen walks away and passes a room where Billis Manger calls her name without moving his lips and...telepaths I guess...that he’s SO sorry. Hub. Gwen apparently waits to tell Jack about her little vision until after they have the soldier locked in one of the cells in the basement because nobody on this show knows how to walk and talk at the same time. Jack doesn’t know what Billis would have to be sorry for because apparently Ianto hasn’t shared his suspicions that Billis was behind this whole FUBAR situation with anyone but Owen. Speak of the Devil...Ianto bursts in and bundles a Weevil into a cell. He announces that they have thirteen more reports of Weevils in the city and they’re not going to be able to keep up at this rate. Gwen nonsequiters that they keep making “that noise” when the Weevil moans and Jack hypothesizes that they’re “time sensitive” and there’s been so much disturbance lately that it might be affecting them. Ianto says something about using the vaults below the cells, which haven’t been used as long as he’s been there. Jack tells him to do it and in the meantime, he and Gwen are going to look into this dance hall caretaker guy. Ianto does not say ANYTHING to that, so...fine. Whatever. Once Jack and Gwen disappear, he has a vision of a pre-metal monster Lisa. In case we don’t recognize her, we get a little flashback of Ianto crying over her FrankenTerminator corpse. “There’s only one way to stop this before things get worse,” she says. “People will die, Ianto. Thousands of people. Unless you open the rift.” Yeah, sure. Cyberwoman who shoved her own brain into a dead woman’s skull to try to make herself human again says they should do the exact opposite of what seems logical and everything will just be magically fixed. Sounds legit. The lights flicker and she disappears except...the Weevil is looking at where she was standing like he’s just as surprised as Ianto that she’s gone. So...okay, the visions are connected to the rift like all the other people falling through time, but...not because they somehow know more than the normal people coming through? Owen and Tosh are just getting back as Jack and Gwen arrive upstairs. Owen fills them in on the whole “the plague is making the rounds again and we’re all fucked” situation. Jack asks Tosh, who is still half in a trance, if it’s under control now. She mumbles about quarantine and treatment. Owen says the good news is the Bubonic is treatable. The bad news is he’s not sure what they’re going to do if people with “Smallpox, Ebola or something from the future we don’t even know about” start coming through the rift. Finally, he’s making sense. He says they need to be PREPARED because right now all they’re doing is slapping band-aids on gushing wounds. Chrissy: I’m so glad you understand enough British terminology to know what the hell he just said there because it sounded like “sticky glass” to me. Diandra: Sticking plasters on them. Yeah, I neglected to mention that we’re working without a net now because the DVD died during the last scene. Chrissy: Eh. You’ve become too dependent on the subtitles anyway. You could use the challenge. Jack asks what he suggests they do. Owen “suggests” he leave them and give them instructions. Wait...no, that doesn’t make sense. Chrissy: Lead. Not leave. Diandra: Shit. This “challenge” is going to drive me insane. He rants that Jack is the big fucking cheese around here and one of the many secrets he has stashed away somewhere might be the key to this so maybe he should start spilling. Jack says yeah, here’s a secret: I DON’T FUCKING KNOW WHAT TO DO. There is no way to fix it because rule one of working for Torchwood is DON’T MESS WITH THE FUCKING RIFT, so why the hell would they plan for something no one in their right mind would do? This leads to a predictable exchange. It’s your fault. Hey, I was trying to save your ass! People are dying because of you! Oh, well, EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME. Then Owen points out that Jack Harkness doesn’t even exist so why are they even following his orders anyway? Jack growls at him to get out. Owen blinks. “What?” Jack says he’s relieved of his duty so he can kindly go fuck himself. Gwen yells at them both to knock it off because they’re going to need to work together on this. Jack says he can’t work with people he can’t trust so, you know, anyone who’s with Owen can show themselves out. There’s a long pause while everyone kind of looks at everyone else and then everyone but Owen finds sudden fascination with the floor. Owen says okay then. “That leaves me twenty-four hours to savor the good times.” Gwen asks what the hell he’s talking about. He says nobody leaves Torchwood intact. Sometime in the next twenty- four hours Jack will find a way to Retcon him. He puts his gun on a desk, says “good luck with the end of the world” and storms out, hesitating somewhere down the hallway past the cog door to make gasping noises and shake and generally have a small battle with himself. Chrissy: Almost makes you feel sorry for him. Diandra: What was that? Chrissy: Nothing. Jack and Gwen go to find Billis, who is running a clock shop now. Gwen notes that some of the clocks in the entry go back centuries. Jack says he travels back in time to collect them so he can sell them in the present. Nice guy. “We all have to earn a living,” Billis sneers as he enters the room. Yeah, but some of us try to do it legally. Billis and Jack acknowledge that they met in 1941 and Gwen asks how Billis can be in two timestreams at once. Except she says “timezones” which...no, that’s easy if you’re in Greenwich. Billis non-answers that he can step across eras just as easily as she can walk into another room. He says at first he thought it was a gift, but now he knows it’s actually a curse. Gwen takes the bait and asks why. No, the correct question here is HOW, Gwen. But fine. We’ll play it your way. He says he can see across all of time but he doesn’t fit in anywhere. You and Jack need to have a long talk. He says the “price” of Jack and Tosh returning is that time is splintering and since the city is parked right on top of a massive rift the only way to fix it is to rip that rift wide open and just let everything get sucked back into it. Yeah, we’ve been over this. You may not be a half-Cyberman freakshow, but I think we’ll still take your advice with a truckload of salt. Jack says no. Absolutely not. Are you out of your freaking mind? “Can we really do that,” Gwen asks. Oh, Gwen. Sweet, gullible Gwen. Jack says if they did, millions of lives would be put at risk. Billis points out that millions more are at risk right now and people are just going to keep falling through. Jack laughs and suddenly whips his gun out, points it at Billis and announces that he’s coming back with them. Billis says “in your dreams, Princess” except it ends up coming out as “I’m sorry”. And then he just disappears. Jack says they need to trace the temporal activity around the location and runs out the front door. Gwen hesitates, then turns and runs right into a suddenly reappeared Billis. “I’m not your enemy,” he says. She asks why he told her he was sorry when she saw him at the police station. He asks if she really wants to know. “Hold my hands and I’ll show you.” She takes his hands and has a vision of Rhys lying in a pool of blood in their flat, bloody handprints all over the walls nearby. She reels back and asks what the HELL that was. “The future.” She runs out of the shop, barreling past Jack who has gotten all of twenty feet since he left. Dude, my grandfather walks faster than you. Chrissy: So does mine and he’s dead. She runs all the way home, where she finds Rhys with his head in the oven. Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Oh, wait, he’s just cleaning it. She’s even happier about this than a wife would normally be, but tries to drag him away from it anyway, announcing that they have to leave. And go...where? France? Because that’s about how far you would have to send him to guarantee his safety at this point. He starts grumbling about how unreasonable she’s been ever since she took that damn job, but she cuts him off by jabbing a taser into his chest. She apologizes as he loses consciousness. Chrissy: Yes, because this worked out so well for you last time. Honestly, I don’t know why Rhys hasn’t run away screaming yet. Diandra: Because he’s the most understanding doormat in the United Kingdom? Chrissy: Must be. Owen is at a bar somewhere when Diane appears, dressed in the pilot outfit she was wearing the last time we saw her. We get a brief flash of snippets of their little whirlwind romance just in case there’s anyone in the audience who is just joining at this episode and has no idea who this woman is. She looks dazed and alarmed. She says she’s lost and asks if he can get her back. He’s still trying to process the fact that she’s really THERE and he can touch her. But no, he’s not sure that’s even possible. “Please, bring me back,” she says. “Open the rift.” Yes, because that worked out so well for him last time. Some guy reaches between them and she disappears. A tear or two dribbles down Owen’s cheek. Rhys wakes up in one of Torchwood’s holding cells. Oh, Gwen. Goddamnit. He starts to panic – understandably – and she’s like ‘it’s okay honey. This is where I work. I thought you would be safer here RIGHT ON TOP OF THE RIFT, underground and in the general vicinity of the most dangerous monsters known to humanity. I just hope the glass will hold if everything starts collapsing. Ignore any strange noises you hear from the alien in the next cell. She gets excited when she smells fresh meat.’ Chrissy: Can I point out, yet again, that Gwen is a flaming idiot? Diandra: She’s not supposed to be the brains of the operation. She’s supposed to be its heart. And apparently those two functions are mutually exclusive in TV Land. He demands to know what the HELL is going on because he’s taken a lot of shit from her in the past few months (is that all it’s been?), but this is just going too far. She says he just needs to trust her because she’s just trying to keep him safe. A Weevil moans and he asks what the hell that noise was. She’s just like ‘oh, nothing. Try to relax...get some sleep...hopefully I’ll be back later. You know, if I’m not killed trying to save the world’ and scampers off while he tries to remember why he loves her. Apparently the rest of the team are aware of what she’s doing because when she gets back to the main floor Jack just asks if he’s woken up yet. Really? You’re going along with this? Apparently she’s filled them in on the vision Billis showed her because Tosh mentions it while she tunes one of the monitors to the camera pointed at Rhys’ cell. Gwen marvels that it felt so *real* and she can still feel Rhys’ blood on her hands. Jack promises her that that won’t happen. Yeah. Because your promises never fall through. As if in direct response to this, the lights all go out. “Nobody panic,” Jack says while everyone runs in different directions, Gwen shrieking Rhys’ name. Yeah. Seriously, Jack, next time? Just leave it alone. Sure enough, Rhys’ cell door – and only Rhys’ cell door apparently - swings open. Rhys wanders out and fumbles with the door at the end of the hall for a minute before he notices Billis at the other end of the hall. He asks if Billis works here and tries to explain that he’s Gwen’s boyfriend but Billis just saunters up to him and stabs him in the gut. Twice. Are you happy now, Gwen? Billis calmly wipes the blood from the knife and disaparates. Chrissy: Oh, please don’t bring Harry Potter terminology into this. Diandra: Oh, come on. That can’t have been the first time I did that. The lights come back on and Gwen bursts in to find him exactly as he was in the vision. She completely loses her shit and Jack has to struggle to take his pulse while she manhandles him and shrieks that they can SAVE HIM, DAMNIT. Jack makes a pained face and says there’s nothing they can do, then sits there while she screams hysterically and flails her limbs, hitting him a couple times. Chrissy: And Eve Myles claims the title of best actor on the show. Diandra: That too. Autopsy bay. Rhys is laid out on the table and Gwen is sitting beside him, staring numbly and crying while Jack washes the blood off her hand. She mumbles that she’ll have to tell his family. Ianto, hovering nearby, says they’ll handle it. She grumbles something half-intelligible about his lack of bedside manner and says SHE’LL do it, damnit. Tosh, also hovering nearby, says she’s “so sorry”. Gwen, recognizing this as the empty bullshit people always say when they don’t know what to say, laughs bitterly and points out that Tosh never even met Rhys. She yanks her hand from Jack and says “this is what happens here. We all end up alone.” She insists again that Jack do something to bring him back. She asks if they still have the Resurrection Gauntlet. Ianto reminds her that it was destroyed because it was KILLING HER. And it was never a permanent solution anyway, so what the hell good would it do? She says there’s something wrong with time anyway, so they should be able to go back... Jack says no. “Well, there’s got to be something that you can do, otherwise what’s the FUCKING POINT OF YOU,” she shrieks. She runs at him and slaps clumsily at him a few more times before collapsing against him in a sobbing mess. And this is when Owen shows up. He tries to pry Gwen away from Jack for some damn reason, prompting her to slap at him and wander over to slump next to Rhys’ body again. Owen announces that he’s had enough of this and he’s opening the rift. Jack orders Ianto to stop him. Ianto stares at him for a beat and is like ‘yeah...no, I won’t’. Tosh explains that they’re actually going to help him in case Jack couldn’t figure that out and scampers after them. Gwen babbles that this is what Billis was talking about: if they open the rift everything will go back to normal. Chrissy: Yes, because you can totally fuck up everything and kill a whole bunch of people and then hit a magic rewind button and undo the last week. Diandra: Um...hold that thought. Chrissy: Why? Diandra: I’ll let you know when we get there. Gwen is typing furiously when Jack catches up to them. He tries to order her to back away from the keyboard. Owen steps between them and Jack tells him this is a trap and this is exactly what Billis wants them to do. Owen asks what the hell he’s afraid of. Um, Earth imploding? Gwen reaches some sort of password screen and Jack pulls his gun, ordering her to move away. Tosh asks what the hell he thinks he’s doing. “Final warning,” he says. Then he starts rambling about how they’ve all joined forces suddenly and brings up all their lowest moments: Tosh screwing a crazy alien woman, Owen trying to commit suicide by Weevil, Ianto keeping a half-aborted Terminator girlfriend in the basement that the rest of the team had to kill. How is any of this helping? Gwen moans that she has to get Rhys back. Jack lowers the gun and sneers “yeah, because you’re so in love with him that you spend half your time in Owen’s bed.” This, naturally, prompts her to punch him in the face and scream “fuck you!” The gun bounces from Jack’s hands when he hits the ground and Owen picks it up and yells that they’re relieving him of his command. Yeah, that was a great plan there, Jack. Chrissy: He’s not the brains of the operation either then? Diandra: No, sadly, he is. Chrissy: We’re fucked. Gwen reaches a screen that says retinal scans of all team members are required before she can continue. Good thing that wasn’t required when Jack and Tosh were in 1941. Chrissy: Actually, it would make sense if Jack added that feature since then to make sure no one person could open the rift again. You’d think he would have done that before though. Diandra: Oh, don’t start trying to make sense of it now. I really doubt the writers give two shits about the continuity of their plots. I’m going to teach you a phrase that will become invaluable as we go forward with this show. Repeat after me: What. Fucking. Ever. Jack tries to get up. Owen yells at him to stay there, damnit. Jack sneers some scathing commentary on the alleged size of Owen’s testicles and gets up anyway, at which point Owen shoots him in the forehead. And then again in the chest for good measure. Everyone else stops and stares in horror. Gwen takes the gun from Owen, who is shaking with what I will assume is fury and Ianto kneels beside Jack and cries a little on the inside at the death of another potential lover. And then apparently they get over it two seconds later and start scanning each other’s eyeballs. Nice friends you have there, Jack. Chrissy: Well, if we’re assuming everything that happened in the last week will be undone, that would just give them more incentive, wouldn’t it? Diandra: What did I just say? Chrissy: Sorry. What fucking ever. Diandra: That’s better. Owen scans Jack’s blankly staring eye last and Gwen plugs all the scans in and arrives at a screen that says “warning: protocol activation will endanger Torchwood infrastructure.” Because “warning: are you sure you want to potentially fuck up the entire space/time continuum?” was deemed too melodramatic, I guess. She looks at all the team members not currently dead, looks at Rhys back in autopsy and pushes “ok”. Alarms start going off, everything starts shaking and all the Weevils and accidental time travelers in the basement start shouting. Jack gasps awake and grabs Gwen’s leg. “What have you done,” he asks her while everyone else who hasn’t seen this happen before stares at him, literally slackjawed. A light shoots up the tower in the middle of the hub, all the way up above ground and into the sky. Because what’s the point of having your set surround a giant phallic object if you can’t do a scene of it ejaculating into space? Chrissy: Ew. Thanks for that image. Diandra: You’re welcome. Everything’s shaking. Glass is exploding. All the lights are blinking an ominous red. And the Roman soldier vanishes from his cell in the basement. And Rhys disappears from the autopsy table. The team evacuates the hub, Jack leaning on Ianto and Gwen all the way out because naturally he’s slow to recover from his deaths at the worst possible times. They run into Billis, who is looking triumphant. “From out of the darkness, he is come,” he says ominously. Gwen asks what the hell he’s talking about. “The great beast, cast out before time, chained in rock and imprisoned beneath the rift.” Okay, this is where watching both this and “Doctor Who” starts giving me a headache because he’s describing the alien from “Satan’s Pit” that Christianity describes as the devil. Chrissy: Well, that makes sense, actually, as a sci-fi explanation for the devil. Diandra: Let me finish. The Doctor destroyed whatever force field was keeping said alien devil creature prisoner and left him on the hell planet to get sucked into a black hole. About two thousand years in the future. Chrissy: Oh. Maybe there was more than one? Diandra: Not according to that episode. The only way I can make sense of any of this is to assume that the beast/satan/abaddon came through the rift like everything else only from two thousand years in the future and possibly through a black hole. Chrissy: Do you need an aspirin? Diandra: I need alcohol. I’m pretty sure there’s a little whiskey left. This is Chris. I’m just going to take over for a minute while Diandra digs through the liquor cabinet. Billis looks up at the buildings behind the team and says “all hail Abaddon, the great devourer, come to feast on life.” A creature the size of a skyscraper stomps into view and it actually does look like a really old depiction of the Devil. Diandra: (slugging whiskey as she returns) See what I mean? (takes keyboard back) Okay, where are we? Oh, humanity is fucked. Right. Billis announces that the whole world will now “die beneath his shadow”. Um...doesn’t that include you, genius? Why do supervillains never seem to think about that? Luckily, Abaddon ignores the team for now and goes stomping over to a side street where a bunch of red shirts...excuse me...random citizens of Cardiff are running around screaming. Sure enough, the minute his shadow covers them they just drop dead. “I look upon you, my God, and know that my work is done,” Billis says before disappearing to who the hell knows where. What, does he just live out the rest of his life in the past somewhere knowing that he will die before all of humanity is wiped out? Gwen marches up to Jack and asks what he needs her to do now – how are they going to stop this? I think you’ve done quite enough already. Jack would probably be saying the same thing if he had time, but since half of Cardiff is probably already dead I guess there are more pressing matters that need to be dealt with first. He orders her – and her alone – to get him to an open space somewhere. So she drives him all the way out to the edge of the city where there’s a wide open field and THEN asks what he’s planning to do. Seriously, these people must have a lot of long, awkward silences when they’re going from one place to another. What the hell were they doing in the car? Discussing the weather? ‘Yeah, it’s pretty cold today. Think maybe we’ll have an early spring. If any of us are alive to see it anyway. Hey, so what’s the deal with you and Ianto? Are you shagging yet or what?’ Chrissy: (taking away bottle of whiskey) Okay, I think that’s enough of that now. Jack’s logic goes something like this: if Abaddon feeds on life, let’s give him a sacrifice that is basically immortal and see how that works out. Gwen tries to stop him, but he shoves her aside and tells her to get out of range. She sobs and generally looks like her life is officially going to shit all in one day because the most important person in her life is already dead and the second most important person is about to be. Jack screams in Abaddon’s general direction. Somehow, he hears this over all the other screams that are presumably surrounding him and starts stomping in Jack’s direction. As soon as his shadow reaches Jack, John Barrowman does what I assume comes naturally after years of being on a stage: chew the ever loving shit out of the scenery so the people all the way in the back of the theater get a clear picture of what’s going on. The shadow keeps moving and isn’t even on him for, like, half of it but who cares? Abaddon frowns at him like ‘what’s wrong with this one? The other humans didn’t make this much noise when I chased them down main street.’ A beam of light appears, connecting Abaddon to Jack and Abaddon staggers and collapses roughly one foot away and instantly disappears. Possibly into the future. I don’t know anymore. Jack’s face goes corpse white and he collapses and we get a quick montage of Gwen running up and sobbing over him. Sometime later, she goes back to her flat and practically tackles a very confused but alive Rhys in relief. “You were just here a minute ago,” he says. Yeah, you might want to get used to weird, bipolar behavior coming from her. Back at the Hub, she joins the rest of the team, who are hovering around where Jack is laid out on one of the drawers in the morgue. “You’re certain,” she asks. Owen says his body has gone completely cold so... yeah. Pretty sure he’s dead this time. Gwen reminds Owen that he just survived being shot in the head and he told her back when she first started working for Torchwood that he couldn’t die. No, he said he can’t STAY dead. Semantics are important here. She says she wants to stay with him. Owen protests, but she just pets Jack’s hair and repeats that she is STAYING with him, damnit. Owen sighs and the rest of the team slowly slinks away. Timelapse. Gwen stares into space. Gwen hovers an inch from Jack’s face and whispers “wake up”. Gwen futzes with the body bag Jack is in and possibly molests him a little. Chrissy: Ew. Can we skip the necrophilia please? The rest of the team watch her on the CCTV and wonder how long she’s going to keep this up. More time lapse. Ianto straightens up Jack’s office, then pulls his overcoat from the rack in the corner, buries his face in it and cries. Oh, poor Ianto. 0 for 2. Chrissy: If no one else will comfort the boy, I’ll volunteer. Diandra: Oh, stop it. Tosh is with Gwen now. She says Jack’s been dead for days now. Gwen’s just going to have accept that he’s not coming back this time. She needs to let him go. Gwen basically says ‘yeah, screw that’ and continues staring at him like she can will him back to life. Tosh leaves. Apparently, Gwen decides they might be right after all (or maybe we’re skipping ahead a couple hours or something) because she presses his hand to her cheek, kisses him and walks away. She gets halfway out of the room before he says “thank you.” She runs back and he still looks like a corpse but his eyes are open and he’s laughing. Awkward cut to the main part of the hub where Gwen enters with a perfectly healthy looking, fully dressed Jack. Everyone else is busy doing other things, so I guess I’ll just assume nobody has looked at the CCTV feed for the past hour or so that it took to get him dressed and mobile after “days” of lying on a cold slab stone dead. Chrissy: Weren’t you just complaining about me being too logical? Diandra: Sorry. What fucking ever. Tosh drops what she was doing and runs over to hug Jack. Ianto follows her and goes to shake his hand like the most socially awkward person in the world. Jack rolls his eyes and pulls him in for a hug. Then he kisses him. Hallefuckinglujah IT’S ABOUT TIME. Owen comes around the corner from somewhere and drops the toolbox or whatever it is he’s carrying at the sight of Jack. He shuffles over, tears in his eyes and stutters “I...I...” “I forgive you,” Jack interrupts. What makes you think he was going to say he was sorry? Jack pulls Owen into a hug and Owen sobs loudly into his chest. Sometime later, Jack is sitting at his desk wearing his coat for some reason. Gwen asks about the fallout from this whole thing. Jack says the rift closed after Abaddon was destroyed (so, not two thousand years in the future. I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore), “but it’s going to be more volatile than ever”. Gwen reminds him of those visions everyone kept having while this was going on and how they all saw someone they loved. “What did you see?” Honey, the only reason you even HAD a vision was because Billis forced you to see what he was planning to do to Rhys. Or, before that, you had a “vision” of Billis himself. Your visions were nothing like everybody else’s. Jack just confirms what we, the viewers, could have guessed: he didn’t have any visions. Gwen asks if he HAD, what he could have seen that could have convinced him to open the rift. “The right kind of Doctor,” he says and at least half the fandom squeals with delight. He asks where the rest of the team is with those coffees (they all had to go get coffee?) and walks out, leaving Gwen in his office. He stops when he reaches the corner where he’s stored the hand in the jar, which is now glowing and making something attached to it beep. He stares at it until the distinct combination of blips and keys scrapping piano wire announces that the TARDIS is landing somewhere. Papers start blowing around and Gwen runs out to see what the hell is going on, but Jack has already disappeared. The rest of the team arrives and Gwen asks if they passed Jack on their way in. They say no, which makes the first scene of the next episode I recap confusing. “Something’s taken him,” Gwen says. “Jack’s gone.” And we pan up, away from the team members who continue frowning at the empty hub, all the way out over Cardiff. Chrissy: I already don’t know what’s going on. I hope you know I’m going to be completely relying on you to explain shit for the next three episodes. Diandra: Just keep the alcohol coming and we’ll be fine.