"Torchwood, episode 2x02: Sleeper" Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd The opening monologue has changed. Torchwood is still “outside the government” and “beyond the police” but now it’s “fighting for the future on behalf of the human race” and ‘totally not ripping off The X-Files’. The 21st century is still when everything changes, but now “Torchwood is ready”. And they demonstrated this readiness in the last episode by nearly getting themselves killed about three times (except Jack, who of course actually did get himself killed). Chrissy: So nice to know these guys are the first line of defense. Diandra: Well, I suppose it’s an improvement over half of the DC superheroes and ALL of the Marvel ones. They usually are the source of all the weird shit they have to keep from destroying the planet. We open on an interracial couple sleeping peacefully in bed when a distant noise makes the woman sit nearly upright. She asks “Mike” if he heard that. It happens again and they both sit up. She asks if he’s going down there to check it out (translation: go down there and check it out). “Are you,” he fires back (translation: are you crazy, woman? Do I look like I could scare a burglar? Are you trying to get me killed?) She gives him a look that suggests he will not be spending the rest of the night in this bed even if whatever it is doesn’t kill him. He picks up a cricket bat he just happened to leave lying on the floor and creeps from the room while she grabs a phone and calls the police. She gives the dispatcher her name and address (Beth Halloran and who cares?) and is just saying she thinks they have a burglar when two guys in ski masks shove into the room, tossing her husband to the floor. She shrieks and obeys their order to drop the phone, but she’s smart enough to still call out details to the dispatcher including a request to send an ambulance because her husband is injured. One of the burglars stops and asks “did you hear that?” And then we cut away as the burglars start screaming and pleading and there’s a bunch of weird squelching noises. After the credits, the team pulls up to what we will assume is the same address while Tosh recites that there are two male victims – one already dead and one wounded – who fell from a fifth story window on top of a police car. Jack orders Owen and Gwen to go with the guy who lived to see if they can interview either him or the couple. He takes Tosh into the building with him where a policeman says nobody saw or heard anything. You know, the usual. He’s pretty sure the husband did it, because who keeps a cricket bat in the bedroom if they aren’t expecting trouble? Jack says he should “come around to my house for a game of hockey sometime” and shoos him out the door. Tosh says the window was broken from the inside out. Jack bends over the dead guy and says the police identified the weapon that killed him as a long, narrow blade, which doesn’t describe anything in the room. Tosh says the husband was knocked unconscious and the wife “probably weighs less than I do” so neither of them are likely candidates for throwing a full grown man through the window. Jack points out that people can do crazy things when they fear for their lives. Or the lives of those closest to them. Hospital. Beth says she didn’t see anything. They just heard this strange noise and the next thing she knew she was in one corner and one burglar was in the other, dead, the other nowhere to be seen. She sat frozen in place waiting for the police to arrive. She berates herself for not checking on her husband, who is currently awake and looking perfectly fine except for a bandage around his head. He scoffs and says she did the right thing. She tells him to shut up – the doctor said he’s supposed to be resting. He laughs that the Doctor wasn’t referring to his MOUTH. She says yeah, actually he was very specific that Mike shouldn’t talk at all for the next week. Gwen and Owen roll their eyes at each other over the affectionate teasing and Gwen says okay, they’re just going to leave them to it then (translation: I have to go vomit). Outside, Owen notes that neither of them has any blood on their hands. Gwen asks who did it then. Owen says the wife, obviously. Gwen asks why that’s obvious. Owen says just LOOK at her. Gwen peers around the corner to find Beth looking distraught and Mike trying to comfort her. “Yeah. I can see what you’re saying. She’s absolutely terrifying.” Owen says yeah, whatever, it’s always the one you least suspect. Besides, the husband was unconscious, the burglars were “mangled” and she survived without a scratch, so that’s suspicious. Gwen says okay, how? Owen says he hasn’t quite worked that out yet. She smiles condescendingly and starts to walk away. He calls her Jessica Fletcher, which...I didn’t know anyone under the age of fifty even knew that reference, and asks who she thinks did it then. She thinks it was the husband, protecting his wife from danger. Owen says okay, sure...”he kills one man, wearing gloves, and then he swallows the murder weapon and the gloves and then he knocks himself out.” She squints at him and says “something like that, yeah.” “Right,” Owen says dryly, then turns to answer a call on his com link. It’s Jack asking if they have anything yet. Nope. Both of them check out. Jack says one of them obviously did it, they just don’t know how yet. He tells Owen to stay with the burglar all night if he has to to figure out the rest of the story. Owen rolls his eyes, but agrees and relays the message to Gwen. She asks if he’ll get her a coffee and a light flickers out nearby as she’s fishing a coin from her pocket. Owen brushes it off as usual maintenance of hospitals, but Gwen lingers for a moment after he leaves to get the coffee. Sometime during the night, Gwen is trying not to fall asleep in the chair where she’s keeping vigil over the burglar when he wakes up. He stares at her, wide eyed, making alarmed noises. She assures him that he’s safe now and asks who did this to him. “The woman in the flat. Keep her away from me!” Then he flatlines. Don’t you just love when witnesses give you clear, coherent information just before dying? So they drag the wife back to the hub and put her in the interrogation room where they questioned Ilsa. Chrissy: *sigh* You are never getting that name right, are you? Diandra: What name? Jack demands she tell them everything. She cowers and asks what they’ve done with her husband. He says he’s safe. For now. “Tell me what happened in the flat, Beth. It had to be you or Mike. So how did you do it?” She shakily demands a lawyer and a phone call. Jack says she doesn’t need any of that because they’re not charging her with anything and they can keep her in this room for as long as it takes anyway. This little strategy is called Bad Cop/Shady Cop. He barks at her to tell him what happened already. Beth sobs that she already told Gwen and the police that she doesn’t know anything. Gwen spreads out the pictures of the dead burglars (and yes, thank you autocorrect, but I did NOT mean buglers) while Jack informs Beth that the second one just died after begging them to keep “the woman in the flat” away from him. Beth swears she didn’t touch the guy. Jack asks if she’s covering for Mike. Because it makes perfect sense that the burglar would be afraid of her if the husband was the one who actually killed him. The lights suddenly flicker out and Jack storms off. Gwen switches to good cop mode and tells Beth in gentle tones that it would be understandable if she did this because she and her husband were attacked so it could be seen as self defense. Beth solemnly insists she has no idea what happened to those men. Upstairs, Jack asks Tosh if she’s gotten anything on the body scans. She says nothing out of the ordinary. Jack asks what that light going out was: just a power surge? Tosh says no, but there was a buildup of electromagnetic energy around Beth. Owen says the same thing happened at the hospital. Jack concludes that they need to run some sort of tests and Owen runs off without any further questions. Luckily, as Gwen is escorting Beth from the interrogation room, SHE asks what sort of tests they need her for. Gwen says oh, stuff, you know, couple blood samples... Beth repeats that she hasn’t DONE anything and Gwen sighs and says she believes her, but this is their job. They’re just trying to figure out what happened at her flat and if she didn’t have anything to do with it – like she says – then she has nothing to worry about. Yeah, that’s what they always say. Gwen takes Beth right through the center of the hub and Beth gawks at the weirdness of it. “Don’t you have any windows?” Gwen says that wouldn’t really support the whole secrecy thing. Oh, people on the street know who you are, but you’re still supposedly top secret? Beth leans over some device and sniffs at it. Ianto sticks his head in the room to bark “we don’t sniff the sub-etheric resonator.” Okay, now I want that on a t-shirt. Owen’s lab. Beth is strapped to the gurney like maybe they expect her to try to escape or they plan to torture her for information or something. You know, that’s really not a good way to get people to cooperate, guys. She flinches at the sight of the needle Owen produces to take a blood sample. He frowns when the needle breaks immediately upon touching it to her arm. The second one does exactly the same thing. Beth starts to protest that she doesn’t want to do this if their “doctor” is so incompetent he can’t even use a needle then squeals when he picks up a scalpel and tries to jab that into her arm. The blade snaps right off without breaking skin. He asks when she was last in a hospital. She can’t remember ever being in one. He asks when the last time was she was sick. She doesn’t remember ever being sick either and attributes it to taking a lot of Vitamin C. Oh, yes, because drinking a shit ton of orange juice will prevent you from getting any sort of illness ever. Jack, hovering nearby, says okay, so they can’t break her skin and she makes lights explode. “What planet are you from?” Venus. Didn’t you read the book? She’s baffled by this and says there’s no such thing as aliens. Oh, so you didn’t see the ship hovering over London on Christmas morning a couple years ago then? Jack drags Beth down to the cells to introduce her to Janet, who hisses and snarls from the other side of the glass. Okay, so aliens are real, but Beth still insists she isn’t one. Jack asks why she gives off electromagnetic waves then. She starts wailing that she wants to go home to her husband. Janet creeps closer to the glass, sniffs, and suddenly starts backing away from Beth, bowing her head submissively and moaning. Beth asks why she’s doing that. Jack says search him: she’s never done it before. Beth calms a little and says this is really happening isn’t it? She says she honestly doesn’t know why any of this weird shit is happening around her and asks how she can prove to them that she isn’t an alien. Cut to the team setting up some sort of interrogation chair/torture device. Jack picks up a medieval looking contraption and Tosh notes that he told them they weren’t allowed to use that anymore. He says it’s just a mind probe. “You remember what happened the last time we used it?” Ianto calls. Chrissy: You certainly seemed to be enjoying it at the time! Oh, wait...what kind of probe were we talking about again? Diandra: No, not that time. Jack says that was different because that species is known for having extremely high blood pressure. Ianto says right, so their heads must explode all the time then. Gwen, who obviously wasn’t around back then, gives Ianto a wide eyed look and tells Jack he can’t use this thing because he could kill Beth. Jack insists he won’t and they have to find out what she is. He swears he’ll stop at the first sign of trouble and sends Gwen to retrieve Beth. Ianto, who is apparently developing a morbid sense of humor this season, sits in the chair they’re setting up and does an impression of a body being electrocuted. Chrissy: This is just known as “frat boy humor” in Texas. Cut to Tosh strapping Beth into the chair. Beth assures her that the straps aren’t too tight and asks Gwen if she’s sure this is safe. “Yep,” Gwen says tightly, smiling reassuringly. Beth nervously asks them to try not to, you know, kill her or anything. What? No! What do you think is going to happen: your head is just going to explode or something? Oh, you weren’t thinking about that and now you’re wondering why I brought it up? No reason. It’s perfectly safe. But just in case, could you hold this car battery while we flip this switch over here? Ianto produces a water bottle and offers her a drink, warning her that she may get dehydrated during the probing. Chrissy: And then Jack says “that’s funny, he said almost those exact words to me last night!” Diandra: Somewhere inside of you there is a teenage boy trying desperately to break free. Chrissy: Nah, he’s perfectly happy. I’m not sure about the guy I left chained to the bed this morning, but I left him plenty of food and water so he should be good for another hour or so. Owen places the medieval torture device on Beth’s head and Tosh taps at her keyboard a bit before nodding readiness to Jack. Jack tells Beth that this device will “drill” through her consciousness and make anything hidden down there “pop to the surface.” Really? You attach a questionable device to somebody’s head and your explanation of what you plan to do with it includes the words “drill” and “pop”? What is WRONG with you? And because that year he was gone apparently removed any tact he may have once had, when Beth accepts this and asks if it will hurt he just says “yeah”. Beth just blinks at him and says his bedside manners really suck. “You should see his manners in bed – they’re atrocious,” Gwen pipes up. Oh, HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? Chrissy: She had Tosh set up a security camera. She quickly adds ‘uh...at least, that’s what I’ve heard anyway...’ Ianto says oh, they are, actually. “I remember this one time...” Jack clears his throat before Ianto can finish. Diandra: Chris, do you remember what it was like to recap a show where I DIDN’T feel like I had to add “and I’m actually not making that part up” all the time? Chrissy: No. Diandra: Yeah, me neither. Gwen squats beside Beth and tells her that everything is going to be fine: Tosh will control the probe, Owen will make sure her vitals are okay and Ianto will be standing by with water if she needs it. And she’ll stay right here for moral support. Chrissy: At least until the sparks start flying. Beth looks at Jack and asks “what does he do?” Nobody knows, really. He says he’ll be watching. Chrissy: Yeah, he’s good at that. Gwen goes back to stand by Jack and Tosh types something into the computer. The probe makes a buzzing noise and Beth yelps. Owen taps furiously on the keyboard of another computer, which is, I assume, reading Beth’s vitals. Jack asks again who killed the burglars and Beth stops shrieking long enough to repeat that she doesn’t know. Jack is stubborn though: he asks again what planet she’s from. She insists she’s human and begs them to stop because it hurts. Jack tells Tosh to go deeper. Tosh hesitates and Jack barks at her to DO IT, damnit. Beth wails. Owen announces that her vital signs are all over the place, but they’re within a safe range. Tosh says she’s reading an electromagnetic buildup. Jack asks who killed the burglars and Beth screams that she doesn’t KNOW and Gwen yells at him to stop this craziness. Jack keeps ordering Tosh to go deeper and everyone gets uncomfortable until the lights start flickering and exploding and alarms go off. And then Beth stops shrieking and goes still. She sits up, staring ahead robotically, and her arm unfolds into what looks like a fleshy maze with a blinking light behind it. Gwen tries to go to Beth, but Jack holds her back and asks Tosh what just happened. Tosh, fingers flying on her keyboard, says they hit a buried compartment that Beth couldn’t possibly have been aware existed. Jack stands in front of Beth and asks who she is. She robotically recites something in an alien language that is probably at least part Klingon. Jack asks where she/it is from and she/it repeats what sounds like exactly the same phrase. The team look at each other and Jack asks what she/it thinks of his boots. She/it glances down at them and then spits out exactly the same answer for the third time. Jack grabs Tosh’s do-all tech gadget and points it at Beth’s robot arm. Gwen asks what she’s saying. He says oh, the usual stuff a captured soldier says: name, rank and serial number. Tosh asks how he knows that’s what she’s saying. He says he knows who she is now and why she’s here. And without explaining anything further, he tells Tosh to turn off the probe. Beth instantly switches back to normal, her arm going back to its human state. Owen removes the torture devide and she shivers and moans that that REALLY hurt. “Did you find anything?” Everyone looks at each other with varying expressions of “what the fuck?” Conference room. Jack explains that Beth is a sleeper agent and that thing in her arm is an implant. Owen asks who, exactly, she’s supposed to be a sleeper agent FOR. Jack says nobody knows much about them because they don’t leave many survivors, but the official designation is Cell 114. They infiltrate planets and use inhabitants as hosts while they gather intelligence “until they’re ready to take over.” Ugh. Why are sci-fi aliens always so obsessed with invasion? Jack says if they’re lucky, she’s the first one they’ve sent: an advance guard. She’s been given false memories to blend in so as far as she knows she IS human. So what happened in that first scene was: her self-preservation instinct kicked in and her robot killer self took over briefly, murdering the hell out of the burglars. “Told you she did it,” Owen tosses at Gwen. Oh, yeah. You really called that one. Sure. Men. Jack sighs and says whatever, the point is that by the time her backup arrives and the invasion begins, they know everything there is to know about the planet. He prompts Tosh for further details and she says the implant that is collecting data is projecting a false image so x-rays won’t pick it up. But she was able to download the contents while they were doing that little exercise in enhanced interrogation and she projects a series of what looks like military intelligence pictures and maps on the screen. Beth also has her own personal “force field generator”, which is why they can’t break her skin. It’s only a few nanometers thick. Owen notes that the pictures scrolling from her intel file now include the personnel records of the whole Torchwood team. Ianto complains that they actually know more about this place than he does which is just NOT SOMETHING THAT SHOULD POSSIBLE. Gwen asks what they should do about this. Jack says first he thinks they should tell Beth. So they take a laptop down to the basement cell Beth is occupying and show her a video of the interrogation at the point where the alien took over her host body. She shudders and begs them to turn it off. Gwen stops the video. Beth is staring at her arm as she says that she really did kill those men, didn’t she? Jack says yes, she did. She adds that she’s also a genocidal alien whose entire Earthling life has been a lie. Jack’s like ‘yep!’ She says it couldn’t all have been a lie because she really does love her husband and he loves her. Gwen agrees. That part is real. It happened. “Do you feel human?” Beth nods. Gwen argues that that means she is. “What makes us human? Is it our minds or our bodies?” Chrissy: I like to think it’s our inability to turn into machines that can obliterate the rest of the human race. Diandra: So no Terminators then? She looks to Jack, who appears intrigued by this angle. Beth asks what happens when the disguise comes off because she was kind of hoping to have kids one day and she’s not sure she’s human enough to actually be able to pull that off anymore. She asks Jack if he can fix her – make her fully human. Because she doesn’t realize that if he could do that he would have made himself mortal by now. He says no, she will activate eventually and the alien memories will take over, erasing her human self completely. She says there must be SOMETHING they can do besides keep her in the dungeon next to their pet weevil. She asks soberly if they’re going to kill her. Gwen says no reflexively and Jack looks at her like ‘really? You’re going to make that promise?’ Beth says but they’ve killed aliens before, right? Gwen says only when it was absolutely necessary as a last resort. Beth wishes this hadn’t happened. She could have lived a normal life completely ignorant of all of this weirdness. Jack points out that that would have been temporary until she became active. Beth swears she wouldn’t DO anything because she’s not a murdering psycho. Jack says yes, deep down she is, and leaves her to cry. Gwen looks helpless for a while and then trails after him. Out in the main part of the hub, Jack announces that they can’t let Beth go because she’s too dangerous. Tosh offers a solution of cryogenically freezing her. That way they can wait until they know how to stop her alien self from taking control to wake her up again. Jack says her implant would still be able to gather information, so no. Gwen asks what they could do to deactivate it. Tosh says she could “isolate the transceiver and fry it in an EM pulse.” Is isolate the transceiver even a thing or is that one of those phrases script writers use when they want to sound like they understand how technology works? Chrissy: Yeah, it’s one of those things. Probably. She says right now it’s not sending or receiving at all so it should be safe. Owen, who has been hovering in the background watering plants during this whole exchange because I guess he has nothing else to do right now, points out that that could just alert the aliens that they’re on to the plan. Tosh thinks if they freeze Beth they’ll never know because she can’t activate. Owen asks what about the husband. Jack says she’d have to just disappear, so they don’t have time for goodbyes. Owen and Tosh look at each other as he leaves like ‘since when do we ALL have more compassion than Jack Harkness?’ Jack and Gwen are escorting Beth...somewhere...when she asks about her husband and whether she will ever see him again because, you know, they were planning this trip... She suddenly screams as she gets flashes of memories from killing the burglars. Then she sees an atomic bomb going off in the distance. Jack explains that her real memories are coming back and overriding her fake human persona and they have to do this NOW before it’s too late. She nods and lets them lead her on into Owen’s autopsy bay. Apparently this glimpse into what alien her is capable of has changed her tune because as she lays on a cot waiting for Owen to prep a cryogenic capsule, she begs Gwen to promise that if they can’t find a way to fix her they’ll just turn off the machine and not even try to wake her. Gwen says she can’t promise that, so Beth turns to Jack because she’s pretty sure he’d have no reservations about letting her die for the greater good. “Just don’t let me hurt anyone.” Jack promises that much at least. Beth starts rambling about how she always knew, deep down, that she didn’t quite fit in. Tosh appears and announces that she’s going to do the EM pulse thingy now and Beth shouldn’t worry because she won’t feel a thing. Oh, and it will take out her invincible force field too, so she will have a glorious moment or so of actual human vulnerabilities before Owen sticks a needle in her newly penetrable skin and sedates her so she doesn’t feel a thing when they turn her into a popsicle. Gwen assures her that it will be just like going to sleep. Yes, they say the same thing to people getting lethal injections, I’m sure. Beth says goodbye to Gwen and Tosh and Owen move in to carry out their jobs. Elsewhere in Cardiff, a couple is sharing a bottle of wine while he tells her this story about this woman he met on the train...or plane... something. There’s a beep and he stops mid- sentence, puts his glass down and rolls up his sleeve to get a better look at his glowing, maze-like arm. Then he marches toward the door, his wife shouting after him (apparently his name is David), demanding to know what he’s doing and what the hell that thing is on his arm. He looks at his watch, decides he has enough time, and comes back into the living room to snap her neck. Still elsewhere, an EMT suddenly stops working on an unconscious patient and walks away as his arm starts blinking and transforming. Yet elsewhere, a young woman pushing a stroller stops, looks at her transforming arm and turns and walks away while the crying baby rolls right into traffic. We hear a crash, but we’re spared actually seeing a baby getting killed. Chrissy: So I guess that answers the “can I have children” question Beth had. Diandra: Yep. So long as you’re cool with knowing that one day you might just strap them into the car seat and let the car roll off a cliff. Creepy-ass morgue vault from last season where all former team members are buried. Gwen stands by as Ianto seals Beth’s frozen body into one of the compartments. Chrissy: Seriously? The number on the vault is 007? Diandra: Because she’s an undercover spy? I guess? Chrissy: More like that’s the only spy Americans recognize. Diandra: Oh, that’s not true. He’s just the only British one. They give each other sympathetic looks and Ianto offers his arm to her as they walk out. Inside the vault, Beth’s eyes open and the computer readout attached to the capsule makes beeping noises. Upstairs, the lights start flashing and an alarm blares. Jack sticks his head out from...somewhere...and asks what the hell is going on. Gwen looks at a security feed from a camera that is pointed at morgue storage locker number 007 like maybe deep down they were expecting this would happen and says “oh shit!” The door on it is wide open and it’s empty. Jack says he thought she was frozen. Owen says yes, her vitals were all at zero. Jack asks Tosh, who is frantically checking all systems, if it’s a virus or a lockdown or what. Tosh, baffled, says she just turned off the lights. And according to another camera set up for who knows what reason, she then went “through the tunnels.” Ianto, ever the master of understatement, nods and says “time to change the locks again.” Jack concludes that she collected all the data on the hub in her motherboard (er...whatever) and knew the whole layout and all the security codes. She could have done anything she wanted to destroy them, but she just turned off the lights and ran. Jack asks if Tosh is SURE she turned off the transceiver. Tosh says yes...well, she was until just now when he asked because now that she thinks about it, it could have been another false projection. Owen says if that’s the case then all her vital signs would have been unreliable too. She can fool all of their equipment into showing them whatever they need to believe. Tosh says the amount of energy required to do that would be huge. Owen says that would explain why the lights blew out every time she got upset. Chrissy: Well, that tends to happen when you oscillate the transceiver circuits. Diandra: ...what? Chrissy: See? I can use fancy technical words to make shit up too! Tosh asks if she’s activated now. Jack dismisses that idea because she would have immediately killed them all if she was. Besides, they “took her off the network”, so she must have some other purpose. Hospital. Beth’s husband wakes to find her sitting beside his bed. Because of COURSE the double agent just wants to see the man she loves. Mike asks what’s going on because nobody will tell him anything. He asks if she’s okay. She says yeah, she’s fine, but... “listen, you know I love you, don’t you?” Beth, sweetie, you are apparently part alien, so you are forgiven for not knowing this, but trust me when I say that in all of human history, NO conversation that begins with those words has ever ended well. He says of course he does and he loves her too. She asks if that’s a promise. Chrissy: Well, I mean...I’m pretty sure the wedding vows don’t cover what you should do if you find out your spouse is an alien on a deep cover mission to obliterate the human race. Diandra: Really? Seems like an oversight. She says she has to go away somewhere, but she can’t tell him any details. He just has to trust that it’s for his own good that she has to stay away from him. Because if she stays he could get hurt. Mike completely disregards every single red flag she just put up to beg her not to go. Lesson number one, alien Beth: humans are complete idiots. She tells him to remember that no matter what happens, she will always love him. He keeps right on begging her to stay, saying he doesn’t care what she did, they can get through it. She says no, she has to “put things straight” and she loves him too much to do whatever she’s planning anywhere in his vicinity. He cries, she hugs him. He’s still stubbornly insisting he won’t let her go right up until the point where there’s a squelching noise and he starts gurgling. She pulls back and makes little horrified noises when she sees her arm has suddenly gone T-1000 without her permission and stabbed him. The blade retracts via clumsy special effects and she starts shrieking for a doctor. Jack and Gwen show up right at that moment and she babbles that it was an accident - she just wanted to say goodbye. Then she collapses. Gwen waves Tosh’s magic EM scrambler wand thing over Beth’s arm and announces they’re clear. Of what, exactly? Jack says she’s getting worse, losing control and they need to contain her now. They drag her out as doctors swarm in to try to save her husband and figure out how the hell he could have gotten a major stab wound without leaving his bed. And we cut to a typical suburban family with two-point-whatever children, chattering about what happened at school today when the doorbell rings. David (the one who snapped his wife’s neck) is outside and basically immediately after the father answers the door his arm also turns into a giant blade which he rams through the guy’s midsection. The mom and kids come into the hall just in time to see dad fall over dead. She shrieks and begs the alien terminator not to kill her children. David either kills her son or stabs her husband a couple more times in total overkill before turning and walking away. Yeah, that whole thing was awkwardly staged and unclear. The EMT alien stops a tanker truck in the middle of the road somewhere and attaches an explosive device to it. How he got this truck is anyone’s guess. As Jack and Gwen are carrying Beth down one of the halls, Jack tells Tosh via earpiece that they’ve got Beth and “it’s all over”. Ha. Hahahahaha! This is, of course, the cue for a bomb of some sort to detonate right behind them, knocking them to the ground. Lady Irony: It’s over when I say it’s over, bitch. Back at the Hub, Tosh and Owen seem to feel the same explosion and Tosh, fingers flying all over her keyboard, announces that it was the tanker taking out the “M4 link road”. Then she looks at another map and corrects that they weren’t aiming for the road, but the fuel pipeline running under it that the military uses for emergencies. Owen says he has a report coming in that “Patrick Grainger” has been killed. Turns out the dad who was just murder stabbed was the leader of the council. He was stabbed several times in the chest...ish area and once in the forehead (which is I guess why the camera cut away because they might be able to get away with more than “Doctor Who”, but they’re not quite at the American cable show level of violence). He was also the city coordinator, Ianto explains, which means he was the guy who would take charge in the event of a major emergency and he had all the security protocols. Owen asks how Ianto knows that. Ianto says he knows everything. Also, it says so right on the bottom of that computer screen over in the corner. Heh. Jack hands Beth over to Gwen and tells the team that the invasion is happening NOW. The sleeper with the baby carriage walks into a building with an explosive device in her hand and the resulting blast knocks over everyone out on the sidewalk. The team’s coms go dead. Jack says Beth is obviously only ONE member of the cell and they’re all activating. He demands Beth tell him how to stop it. Um...aren’t you the one who was saying that isn’t possible back in the conference room? Gwen tries the good cop approach again and calmly asks Beth what they need to do to stop it. Beth has no clue because she has, in fact, been cut off from their network and has no idea what their plan is. Gwen asks what about the implant. She used it to get out of the hub, right? Beth says the technology is just part of her. She’s figured out how to turn it on and off and use it. Gwen asks if she can use it to trace the “other cell” before even more people die. Wait...what other cell? We were talking about ONE terrorist cell before. Chrissy: Writer too tired to make sense. Need more bananas. Diandra: We’re back to the monkey thing already? Chrissy: Well, it’s either that or at least half of them are drunk. Beth sort of touches her glowing arm with her other hand and announces that there’s only one of them left and she can track him. The one left is David, who is driving somewhere, still covered in blood. He pushes one of the blinking dots on his arm and it beeps. Chrissy: Is it weird that I think this might actually be a pretty cool modification? Diandra: What? A computer embedded directly into your arm? Chrissy: Beats the Apple watch. Probably isn’t confused by tattoos either. Diandra: Yeah, but it’s just as useless for non- terrorist activities. Tosh is yelling at Owen that she can’t just “hook something up” because the whole goddamn telephone network is down. He asks what about mobile connections. She repeats that the entire. Network. Is down. Oh, so there are limits to technology? Ianto comes into the room and backs her up, saying that landlines, mobile and probably even tin cans connected via string are ALL BROKEN. Not working. There are no phones. He mimes picking up a phone and smart-asses “hello? Is anyone there? No, because the phones aren’t working!” Owen glowers at them like ‘I liked you so much better when you were a cross between a butler and a doormat’. Elsewhere, Jack pulls over and disappears into a building. He comes back with a radio and a roll of duct tape. He says they may have knocked out the phones, but they haven’t knocked out the radio frequencies...yet. “What if we try...” Owen begins and Tosh cuts him off to snap that there is NO way of getting in touch with Jack. None whatsoever. It’s impossible. A two-way radio in the background comes to life with a burst of static and Jack’s voice comes out. “Tosh? Owen? Can you hear me?” Chrissy: Oh, well, except maybe THAT, but who uses radios anymore? Diandra: This is where you can tell this show isn’t American. When technology fails, they can actually adapt and continue working around it. We won’t even be able to read a book. Well, I would, but I’m not a tech worshipping idiot who refuses to read something printed on paper. Tosh runs to grab the receiver and asks what happened. Jack says the cell Beth is part of has become active. There are three other members of it. Two are dead and they’re tracking the third. They’re hoping to get to him “before he does anything” and stop all of this. But right now he’s headed for an abandoned farm outside of the city and Jack needs Tosh to look into it and tell him what’s out there. Conveniently, the cell took out communications ONLY, leaving computers, Internet and surveillance satellites intact so they are able to do this. Beth whimpers that they have to hurry. Gwen tries to distract her by asking what happens “when it starts”. Um...the human race gets slaughtered again? Oh, right. You don’t remember the last time that happened. Jack asks how they “get in the heavy weapons”. Beth has no idea because she’s just a foot soldier. All she knows is she has a chip in her arm that lets her communicate with the rest of the cell they sent in ahead for reconnaissance and she didn’t even know how to use it until today. Ianto comes up with records on the area going back as far as possible which...is that a dragon painted on the wall behind him? Chrissy: Yep. A big purple dragon. Diandra: I’m afraid to ask. Anyway. He says there used to be a coal mine there, but the army sealed it off in the 40s. There’s no reason given for that in the public record, so Tosh goes digging through military files. This involves hacking into the military database while noting aloud that they don’t even TRY to make this difficult for her to do. “It’s almost obscene what you do to security systems,” Ianto mutters. Chrissy: Yeah, do it slower. Open her up real wide...really get in there. Diandra: Do I need to leave? Tosh immediately finds what she’s looking for: the military uses the old mineshaft for storage so there are ten nuclear warheads in it that nobody is supposed to know about. Owen is holding the radio up so Jack and Gwen can hear everything that’s going on and Gwen determines that this is how “it” starts. They don’t need to bring in the heavy guns because all the biggest countries are just sitting on massive arsenals that they can use to blow us up. Jack likens this to leaving the key under the doormat so the aliens can just walk in and take over the planet. Yeah, that makes sense, actually. Although, they don’t really need a plan that involves detonating the bombs themselves. Humans are stupid. They could just trick, say, Israel into nuking North Korea. Or anybody into nuking the US. The resulting chain of everybody bombing everybody else would basically wipe out the human race within a week. “Please tell me you can stop this,” Tosh says nervously. Jack says he’s trying, but the good news is if they can’t, “we won’t feel a thing” because they’re effectively at ground zero. Sure. People in Western England will probably have the flesh seared off their bodies by a massive fireball and the fallout could rain down as far away as Scotland, but half of Wales will just vaporize painlessly, so whatever. Tosh doesn’t think that’s very comforting. Jack says “come on, have a little faith! With a dashing hero like me on the case, how can we fail?” Chrissy: Oh, god, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Jack kind of squirms uncomfortably in the long silence that follows this statement (rightly so). Ianto mutters that he IS pretty dashing, actually. Oh, honey, don’t. Just...don’t. Owen turns off the receiver and asks what happens if they can’t stop it. Tosh is confident they will. Owen says yeah, okay, but what if they CAN’T. Ianto thinks it doesn’t matter because they’ll all be dead. Ding ding ding! That is the correct answer. Owen nods, thinks for a minute, and blurts “let’s all have sex.” I wish I were kidding. Chrissy: We all do, sweetie. We all do. Ianto blinks and dryly notes that just when he thought the end of the world couldn’t get any worse... David pulls up to the former mine being guarded by armed military and gets out of the car. The officers order him to get on the ground or they will shoot. He completely ignores them and starts walking. They all open fire and he just wobbles a bit and keeps going, stabbing one guy who tries to tackle him with his terminator arm and taking his machine gun. He marches up to a computer panel that is right out in the open and starts inputting long strings of numbers to unlock every door in the place. SUV. As they approach the nuclear holding facility and spot David, Gwen asks if they’ve thought this part of the plan through. Jack? Think something through? C’mon Gwen, you’ve been working with him for at least a year. I would think you would know better than to ask this question by now. He just tells them to brace themselves because this is not going to be pretty, stomps on the accelerator and mows David down. David bounces off the hood of the car and rolls to a stop nearby pretty much unharmed because of course this doesn’t work. His skin is less penetrable than the stuff they make space shuttles out of. Unless the goal was to just slow him down, which it does. Jack runs toward him, flipping him over before he can reach his weapon and pointing his own gun in his face. “This wasn’t supposed to happen today,” he snarls. “How do we stop it?” He sees David’s terminator arm start forming into a blade and yells “Gwen”, but she’s too busy doing something with Tosh’s EMP gadget thing so she probably doesn’t even notice what’s happening until the blade skewers through Jack’s chest. David robotically says they can’t stop them. “We know what your weakness is. We know who you are, Jack Harkness. We know all about you and Torchwood.” He says they got a lot of information from Beth before they switched her off so they can factor them into their plans. Taunting Jack has kept him sufficiently distracted from Gwen, who is waving Tosh’s device over David’s arm and announces that she’s finished. Jack pulls himself off of David with a wet, squelching sound and...that didn’t come out right. Chrissy: Sounded good to me! Diandra: The groaning really isn’t helping either. Chrissy: I’m sure it also doesn’t help that technically Gwen didn’t say SHE was finished. She said DAVID was “done”. At which point Jack climbed off the appendage penetrating him. Diandra: I would bet money that somewhere there is evidence that John Barrowman had this exact observation. Chrissy: I knew there was a reason you liked him. David flails and makes aborted attempts to do...something with his terminator arm, but Jack tells him not to bother: his transmitter and force field are dead. David says he’s lying. Jack shoots him in the shoulder/upper chest and he spits up some blood. Then Jack asks when the others are coming. David says they’re already here and opens his hand to reveal an explosive device exactly like the ones the others were using. Jack orders everyone to run and they get maybe a block away before the explosion. Back at the hub, Owen tells Gwen that “it” is done. Tosh is telling Jack that she’ll do...something, but she’s NOT happy about this. I assume all of this will be explained. Ianto comes up with some sort of doohickey with an antenna and hesitates when he realizes that Jack is finishing changing his shirt. Gwen brushes past him and goes into a part of the hub we’ve never seen before to find Beth, announcing that they’re ready with the cryogenics. Beth asks if it’ll work this time. Gwen says Tosh reconfigured the capsule to work around the implant. Except she calls it a “casket”, which...aren’t you supposed to be the sensitive one? Beth notes that if they had been even ONE minute too late they wouldn’t have been able to stop David. “What happens when you have to stop me?” Gwen stubbornly insists it won’t come to that. Beth says she can feel the terminator alien side trying to come through, pushing her human personality out of the way. “What will you do when I lose my last bit of me?” This is a recurring theme in a lot of horror stories – especially zombie stories - and it never fails to not be creepy. Gwen promises they’ll figure something out. Beth says no, they won’t, because they both know she’s too dangerous to risk it. She asks if Gwen has somebody at home. Gwen smiles and says she has a fiancé. Beth asks if she’s ever hurt her fiancé. Define “hurt”. Chrissy: Well, there was the period of time where I cheated on him. Oh, and one time where I got him killed by a genocidal maniac, but he doesn’t remember it thanks to the whole “time reversing” thing. Diandra: So yes, basically. More than once, she confirms. Beth asks if she remembers how guilty she felt about it. Oh, well, I was trying to forget it, but THANKS FOR REMINDING ME. Beth says she should multiply that by about a billion, imagine feeling it every single second of every day and then she’ll understand how Beth feels. And the worst part is that she knows once the terminator takes over she’ll stop feeling guilty because she will no longer be her. She won’t even remember her husband. She says she doesn’t want to die as one of “those things” that has forgotten everything she cares about. Gwen thinks she won’t because if they freeze her who knows what they’ll figure out in a month or a year? Beth thanks Gwen for being so good to her and asks her to remember her as she is now – in her human state. Oh, it’s never a good thing when they say that. She terminators her arm and holds it to Gwen’s throat, taking her hostage as she goes back out into the main area and announces that she’s not letting the team go through with this freezing plan again and she’ll kill them all. The team all appear, guns at the ready and Gwen yelps for them to wait because this is just a trick and Beth won’t actually hurt her. Jack orders Beth to let her go because “you don’t want to do this.” Is it just me or is this script more cliché addled than normal? Beth swears she’ll kill Gwen and all of them and then “the rest of your miserable species”, but she’s barely keeping her voice level. Gwen warns that they WILL kill her (um...duh. What do you think she’s trying to do here?). She says Beth is better than that and reminds her that she helped them STOP the invasion so she is capable of humanity still. Beth says she’s not human enough, says goodbye again and wishes Gwen luck. Then she raises her arm like she’s going to stab her and the rest of the team shoot her multiple times. Jack runs up the stairs to make sure she’s staying down and Gwen yelps that she WANTED them to do that. Yes, it’s called suicide by cop, dear. Then she moans that she used her “last shred of humanity” to do this. Owen says they couldn’t take the chance and she probably knew that. Jack agrees: she wanted to make it easier for them to kill her. We pan up from Beth’s dead body, the blade broken off her terminator arm, as Gwen takes her other hand and Jack touches Gwen’s shoulder. Sometime later, Jack is sitting at his desk, examining the broken off blade (I assume) when Gwen enters. She asks if he thinks they really stopped the invasion. Jack thinks maybe they did and maybe they just delayed it and maybe next time they’ll need the Doctor to step in. Actually, he doesn’t say this last part, but LET’S ASSUME. Jack says they don’t know anything right now. Gwen argues that they know a lot actually: they know about the implant and they know how they attack and how to disable their force field now. Plus, they no longer have the element of surprise. And until they try again, Torchwood will just keep doing what they’re doing. Chrissy: Chase cluelessly after monsters and occasionally unleash a few more on the UK? Diandra: Er...yeah. Basically. Jack diffuses this ridiculously clunky nonsense by adopting what I think is supposed to be an Irish accent and saying “them be fightin’ words, Gwen!” Then he moves on to lighter territory and asks if Gwen has set a date for the wedding. Gwen groans that her mother is already nagging her practically to death about this and she doesn’t need HIM to join in. He interrupts to tell her to go home. “Keep doing what we do.” She smiles, says goodnight, and leaves. He goes back to staring at the broken sword and looking thoughtful. At least I assume that is his “thoughtful” expression. It could just be gas.