"Torchwood, episode 2x07: Dead Man Walking" Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen Guest staring: Freema Agyeman (WHY?!) Previously on Torchwood: Martha made a guest appearance despite the fact that she was no longer actually on "Doctor Who" by then and Charles Widmore killed Owen. So we open with Martha getting ready to start the autopsy on Owen and are therefore forced to contemplate the possibility that she will be replacing him as Torchwood’s medical officer. Seems like a giant step sideways to me. According to the figures she spits out, Owen is 27 years old (he wishes) and he was killed one hour ago, which...they couldn’t wait until the body was cold to do an autopsy? It’s not like they don’t know how he died. And then for some reason instead of a scalpel she picks up a giant saw to start the autopsy. Chrissy: Are we sure she’s a medical doctor and didn’t just learn dissection at a butcher shop? Diandra: No. Jack bursts into the room before she can start sawing away at Owen’s ribcage or whatever and orders NOBODY touch him until he gets back. He runs off to some sort of underground club. A bouncer tries to shove him back, but a little girl sitting at a table holds up a card depicting Jack in what looks like medieval armor and tells him to let Captain Jack through because she’s been looking forward to seeing him again. We cut right to Jack sitting at the table with the world’s youngest tarot card reader (apparently). He asks if she can see where “it” is. She says he’ll owe her a favor. Chrissy: Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you tickets to a One Direction concert. Whatever. She flips over a card that shows some sort of ancient temple like building. He says they hid “it” in a church? She says no, the people who found out what it could do built the church on TOP of it. He starts to run off and she calls “if I told you not to use it, would you listen?” He snotily notes that she should know the answer to that. She holds up the death card and mutters that she does and that’s the problem. So Jack goes to St. Mary’s church, which is very gothic and creepy looking, possibly in part because it’s all black and red. Chrissy: That could just be because it’s night. Diandra: Or it could be a satanic church. I prefer to think it’s that. He kicks over the sign out front and creeps into the obviously abandoned church, waving his flashlight around until he realizes that one of the little alcoves is home to at least a dozen sleeping weevils. Chrissy: Pretty sure that’s either called a chapel or an apse. Diandra: Do I look like I care? Chrissy: I just find it funny that a Jew knows more about Christian churches than you do. And by the way? Yes, it’s Christian if it’s called St. Mary. Jack creeps carefully around the sleeping weevils, one of which briefly clings to one of his legs in its sleep, and makes his way to a trunk in the middle of a pile of crap. And then he kicks over a bunch of tin cans because of course those are just laying right there where he needs to be. The weevils snort and twitch a bit, but go back to sleep. Unfortunately the trunk is full of old dolls and action figures. He pokes around the pulpit area that is serving as the weevil’s treasure stash and finds another likely, smaller chest. Except when he goes to grab for it, his hand slips and lands on the keyboard for the organ. This time the weevils wake up. We are spared from watching the possible ensuing bloodbath by cutting back to the hub. The team and Martha are all sitting around looking glum when Jack runs through the cog door, covered in blood and carrying the chest. The team follow him to his office where he sets the chest on his desk and pulls out the Resurrection Glove. Gwen immediately splutters that he can’t use that. Absolutely not. Not after what happened with Ilsa. Jack says screw that shit: he’s bringing Owen back. Okay, sure. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? Chrissy: I assume you’re ironically invoking the line used in every horror movie ever made just before everything goes to shit. Diandra: Oh, good. You noticed. Blippy credits. And yes, Burn Gorman is still in them. The team follow Jack down into the autopsy bay while Gwen yelps about how insane this plan is and that thing is DANGEROUS and the best they can hope for is two extra minutes of confused babbling before Owen dies again. Also, she points out that Jack said last time he couldn’t get the glove to work for him. He says this is a different glove, so, you know, that rule doesn’t apply anymore. He thinks he can MAKE it work this time. He puts the glove on and announces that anyone who has something to say to Owen should get ready. He touches Owen’s head and there’s an electrical sound. He makes pained faces and calls to Owen to follow the sound of his voice. Ianto, over by a bank of monitors, says there are no vital signs. And then Owen starts screaming and demanding to know where he is and what happened and OH MY GOD I’VE BEEN SHOT! Jack bends over him and orders him to listen because they don’t have much time. Owen realizes he’s in his autopsy bay and holy shit, what is that thing on Jack’s hand? Seriously? We’re doing the resurrection thing again? He asks how much time he has. Ianto says they’ve used thirty seconds so far. Jack steps back a little and says they need to say their goodbyes now, quickly. He turns to Gwen first and she splutters. Owen yells at her to hurry it up because he only has two minutes. Chrissy: Oh, well, at least death hasn’t changed you any. Tosh jumps in instead and says she’s always loved Owen and she’s going to miss him. She skitters off before he can respond to that. Jack says he needs to code to the alien morgue because Owen was the only one who knew it. And we never thought to have a backup plan for that? Really? “You brought me back for THAT?” Owen shrieks. He mumbles a string of numbers and Jack apologizes and says he needed to help Owen prepare because he more than anybody knows what death is. Owen flails for his other hand and whispers that there’s nothing: just darkness. Jack clutches his hand and tells him to be brave and Owen’s eyes flutter closed and the monitor in the background loudly flatlines again. Jack lets go of his head, but keeps hold of his other hand for a while, crying. And then Owen asks if Jack is finished because he’d like that hand back eventually. Jack looks down, startled, to find Owen’s eyes wide open. Ianto checks his stopwatch and announces that it has been two minutes and twenty seconds. Jack fumbles the glove off and yelps that he’s not even USING it anymore. “Oh, here we go again,” Ianto deadpans. Owen sits up and he and a wide-eyed, tear-stained Tosh stare at each other awkwardly. Owen babbles that maybe he wasn’t meant to die so he was able to beat the odds...somehow...or something. He notices the large hole in his chest and panics. Jack says it’s okay, he’ll get used to it. Nobody notices the glove Jack tossed aside twitching its fingers. Owen grabs a stethoscope and runs from the morgue, mostly dressed, searching for a heartbeat in vein. Excuse me, vain. Chrissy: Oh, ha ha. Is that the best you can do? Diandra: Give me a break. I’m not used to recapping something so effing morbid. I need time to adjust. Martha follows and yelps that he cannot lead this investigation because, you know, he’s the victim. Oh, and he’s dead. He asks if she’s sure about that because, you know, he feels pretty great actually and according to one of the monitors that doesn’t appear to be attached to anything at the moment there is marked electrical activity in his brain. Martha says that shouldn’t be possible and asks where it could be coming from. Gwen explains that last time this happened, Ilsa was able to keep going because she was draining Gwen’s energy. So, you know, Owen might be doing the same thing to Jack right now. Everyone looks at Jack expectantly and he says he feels fine. Jack’s office. Tosh waves some sort of device over Jack, explaining to Martha that it is called a Philemon Filter and it detects biochemical energy. It’s what alerted them to Ilsa’s demented efforts to replace Gwen. It’s not detecting anything now, so whatever is keeping Owen alive, it isn’t Jack. Owen asks – presumably rhetorically – what could be doing it then. Ianto gets the brilliant idea that because it’s a different glove than the last one, it has a different effect. Martha asks how many of these things there are exactly. Ianto points out that they tend to come in pairs, so...at least these two. Heh. And yes, the glove they were using before was the right one and this is the left one. So basically it’s kind of like the device from episode three last season. One piece sends you back in time, the other sends you forward and presumably both together give a whole lot more control to the user than they do separately. Ianto says they fished the other one out of the harbor last year. Wait, so...just before the series started? Was that supposed to be only a year ago? What happened to the months in between seasons? Chrissy: Why do you do this to yourself? You know it can only result in headaches. Martha says okay, but where did it originally come from? Jack says they have no idea. Because they just make a habit out of playing with weird stuff that comes through the rift without asking any questions. Chrissy: Well, it’s not like it’s a weapon or anything. What could possibly go wrong? Diandra: People could die. Time could unravel. Giant devil creatures could go stomping through Cardiff. Chrissy: Okay, besides that. Jack orders Tosh to do what they should probably have done a long time ago and analyze the glove. He adds that he doesn’t have to tell Owen that he is under quarantine for the foreseeable future. “You don’t and yet you still do,” Owen smart asses. Gwen goes off into a corner of the hub to call Rhys, who is fast asleep because it’s probably two in the morning or something. He lies that he was totally awake and asks what’s up. “You coming home soon? You know, tonight? Next week? In time for our wedding?” You know, his status as the most understanding spouse ever was a little shaky for a couple episodes there but it’s nice to see he’s gone right back to it. She sniffles. He says he was only teasing and she bursts into tears, babbling that it’s not him, really. He starts to get alarmed, but she just whimpers that she’s had a really rough day. Chrissy: Well, to be fair though, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve had a co-worker die and come back to life. Diandra: Yeah, although Jack has been doing it pretty regularly all along, so that probably doesn’t count. Owen is sitting on the autopsy table staring into space when Martha enters. He blurts that she’s cute when she frowns. She ignores this and announces that the energy seems to be spreading through his body and changing its composition. She straps some sort of device to his wrist so they can monitor the changes. Owen notes that she’s stopped flirting with him and he understands why, but he’s not sure it’s really necrophilia if he’s conscious. Oh, ew. Martha asks what it was like to die. Owen is pretty sure the living aren’t supposed to know that for a reason. You know, because it would change the way they live. Martha doesn’t care about that and insists he tell her. Owen seems to cave easily and rambles that he doesn’t know how to describe it exactly because it’s pretty difficult to explain, but there was this LIGHT at the end of a long corridor and he was running toward it and then suddenly there were these big pearly gates “and there was this old geezer and he said ‘you’ve been a very naughty boy’...” Martha realizes he’s just being an asshole now and goes back to whatever she was doing with a clipboard. He says no, really, there was nothing. Or at least nothing he can remember. But Ilsa said there was something beyond the darkness. His eyes suddenly roll back in his head and he collapses. And we’re in a fuzzy sort of black netherworld where Owen is thrashing around and calling for Martha. The creepy voices whispering all around him don’t seem to even acknowledge his presence. Then, just as quickly, we’re back in the morgue where Martha is trying to keep Owen from hitting the floor and screaming for help. Jack comes running as Owen screams that he doesn’t want to die. He regains lucidity and basically repeats what Ilsa said: that there is something moving in the darkness. Martha asks what he saw, but he doesn’t know anything other than that it seems to be waiting for him. He collapses on Jack’s shoulder and cries. Conference room. Martha explains to the group that Owen’s body is...changing...somehow. Chrissy: Did we just switch to an after school special? Diandra: Only if it’s for zombies. “Your Changing Body: Understanding Your Sudden Cravings for Brains”. The upshot is that his cells aren’t dying like they’re supposed to: they’re mutating into some weird form of energy that seems to be growing. She figures right now he’s 60% dead human and 40% whatever it is. Tosh pipes up that they can assume the energy is coming from the same source as the glove, which she has determined is “not anywhere local”. Well, shut the front door. You’re saying stuff that comes through the rift isn’t from Wales? Wow, and here everything that has come through so far has been so boring and ordinary. Chrissy: Sarcasm doesn’t really work well in type, remember? Diandra: I’m just saying, I know it’s early but I say we vote that the biggest understatement of the season. Gwen asks if the energy could have come from wherever it was Owen went when he fainted earlier. Jack asks what that would be. Another dimension or a parallel universe maybe? Owen points out that he’s sitting right next to Jack and he’s starting to look really twitchy and freaked out. Jack apologizes and repeats that Owen saw something in the darkness. Owen says he didn’t exactly SEE it – he felt it. Jack asks where HE thinks he was. Owen repeats that he doesn’t know. Well, this has all been very informative. As they’re spilling back into the main part of the hub, Jack orders Ianto to check their system readings for “dimensional anomalies” in the past hour. Because he would totally recognize something that, by all indications, has never happened before. I mean, how different could that be from the usual time slips and visitors from another planet? Whatever. Tosh pulls Owen aside to talk about what she said when she thought he was dying again. Owen blurts that he IS dead, isn’t he? “I’m a headless chicken. I just haven’t stopped running around yet.” Well, no, technically you’re more like a guillotine victim who hasn’t stopped blinking yet. Shit, I’m sorry for that image. Chrissy: Well, you’re not wrong and this show is obviously going to be inescapably morbid from now on. Diandra: Yeah. Do you think alcohol would help? Chrissy: It can’t hurt. Why? Do you want some now? Diandra: If this is the episode I’m thinking of, we might need it before the end. Chrissy: Oh, goody. Something to look forward to. Tosh starts to explain again, but he cuts her off to say he knows she didn’t mean it. I mean, obviously. She never said anything before and then suddenly when he’s dying she’s declaring her love for him. “That’s not love, Tosh. That’s grief.” He says it’s normal to suddenly want something when you realize you’re losing it. Well...yes, but this IS Tosh we’re talking about here, who has a track record of forming strong attachments to temporary visitors. Chrissy: [returning with a bottle of cake flavored vodka] CAKE OR DEATH? Diandra: I love your warped brain. Sometime later...possibly...Owen sits at a table in a lab. A creepy voice whispers and Owen is plunged back into that black netherworld. He hyperventilates a little and searches frantically for the source of the deep, demonic voice chanting in some unknown language. He comes back to the room and looks around, shaken. And then the writers lose their marbles. Chrissy: That implies they had them to begin with... He turns to look directly into the camera, his eyes completely black, and repeats the demonic chant in a layered voice. Diandra: Yep. I remember this episode now. [takes a couple healthy slugs of vodka] Chrissy: You might want to pace yourself there. Or at least save some for me. Elsewhere, some device Martha is keeping an eye on starts bleating and flashing blue. She runs to Jack with it and asks where Owen is because his “energy” just went blipping off the chart. They run out of Jack’s office calling for him and run into Tosh, who says he told her he needed to use the loo. Martha points out that that would be kind of difficult since his digestive system has gone into full shutdown because, you know, he’s dead. They realize he’s no longer in the hub and Ianto just silently hands Jack his coat so he can go find him. Jack assures Martha, who is freaking out over this sudden turn, that Owen is not dangerous. She asks if he’s sure and also why the HELL he never told UNIT he had a device capable of bringing people back from the dead. Um...technically he didn’t have it until just now. He had the temporary “Pushing Daisies” version, which he doesn’t even have anymore because they destroyed it. She yells that she’s on HIS SIDE, but they have no idea what this mysterious surge of energy surrounding Owen is all about other than that it is changing every cell in his body and the 50% of him that is still human is dead. The upshot? Whatever he is, technically he’s no longer Owen. Jack just grumbles that he’ll find him and marches out the door. Owen has wandered into a club somewhere and is sucking down approximately twenty ounces of beer. A woman with some sort of ridiculous angel costume starts flirting with him. Well, I say “flirting”, but she barely says three words to him before shoving him against the bar and trying to suck his face off. She shoves her hand down his pants and stops, frowning at him like ‘are you not into women or is it just me?’ He shoves her away, mutters something about not having any blood circulation and storms off angrily. Chrissy: Oh, sure. The old “I can’t get it up because I’m technically dead” excuse. He is barely across the dance floor before he runs flat into Jack, who has had absolutely no trouble finding him since he was able to trace the monitor Martha put on his wrist. Owen decides that here in the middle of the club is a great place to pick a fight about the fact that Jack brought him back for a fucking alarm code and does he have ANY IDEA what it’s like knowing that your life is over? He throws exactly one punch, which misses wildly, before bouncers show up to throw them both out. Outside, they are passed over to some cops who, in very British fashion, try to calmly talk them down. Owen shoves at one of them, explaining that he’s with Torchwood and he’s special ops. Jack adopts a terrible British accent that sounds like a failed attempt at an impression of Eliza Doolittle and claims he has no idea what this guy is talking about. They are both shoved in squad cars. Chrissy: They're just arresting Jack for that accent. Diandra: Attempting to impersonate a Brit carries a fine of about twenty pounds and a couple hours of public mocking. Jail cell. Owen slams at the cell door and screams at the officers to call the number he gave them and speak to Gwen Cooper. He kicks the door and Jack snaps at him to stop it because if he breaks his ankle chances are it won’t heal. Owen sits down and his insides make a very loud sloshing noise. Jack looks surprised. And we cut right to Owen standing on his head at the back of the cell while he explains that he forgot all that beer he drank has nowhere to go what with his dead body not digesting it. Jack asks why he doesn’t just stick his fingers down his throat. He claims the gag reflex doesn’t work once you’re dead either, but I’m not sure about that one because it’s basically a muscle contraction and studies have shown that you can trigger an orgasm in a dead body. Chrissy: And why the hell would you want to do that? Diandra: Because scientists clearly need to get out and socialize more. No, really, it had something to do with physical response to stimuli and muscle contractions or something. Anyway. All this is basically an excuse to make Owen do an upside down Linda Blair impression, spewing all the fluid in his stomach in a mini geyser. Jack shrieks like a little girl and pulls his legs up onto the cot he’s sitting on, declaring this the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen. Owen stands up and lets out a very loud fart. He apologetically explains that THAT function in particular actually does continue for a while after death. “For god’s sake, let me out,” Jack says. Heh. Owen bemoans that this body function will eventually stop too and he’s going to miss all those lovely human things like farting and sex. Jack voices the sincere hope that his hierarchy of things he will miss puts sex ABOVE being able to blow methane from his ass. Well...honestly the relief of that can sometimes produce more pleasurable feelings. Chrissy: You are definitely doing something wrong. Owen babbles about how you only really appreciate how amazing some things are when you can feel them slipping away from you. Chrissy: Oh, tell me he did not just equate Tosh declaring her love for him to being able to let out a really good fart. Diandra: Basically. Chrissy: I swear, sometimes men and women really do seem to be from different planets. He starts running his hands all over the walls, babbling about how any minute he may no longer be able to feel them. Jack quotes Proust: “only in suffering do we recognize beauty.” Owen is surprised to find out that Jack has read Proust because – let’s face it – very few people have done that unless they have been forced to. Jack admits that he didn’t “read” Proust so much as he dated him once. Briefly. “He was really immature.” Owen grumbles that none of the other members of the team know when to take Jack seriously because he’s always saying shit like this. Jack notes that one of the advantages of living as long as he has is that he doesn’t need to make shit up. Owen seizes on the topic of Jack’s immortality for comparison. For all he knows, he only has seconds more of life and Jack is going to go on living indefinitely. Jack agrees that this doesn’t seem fair, but being able to live forever is overrated. He goes over the argument that is made in countless sci-fis of how immortality makes life dull because you never take notice of the beauty and pleasures of mortal existence. Y’all know the drill. Also, he says it has a possible side effect of making you do stupid things like send your friends into danger because you’ve forgotten that THEY can die even if you can’t. He moves to sit beside Owen. Owen asks if that’s why Jack brought him back to life: guilt. Jack says no, he just wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. He puts an arm around Owen’s shoulder and plays with his hair a little as he says he was kind of hoping for a miracle. Then he realizes this is getting dangerously close to being mushy and shoves Owen playfully. Then he goes to pound on the door, shouting his name and authorization number at the nearest guard. Um...if he could get them both out of there by doing that...why did he wait this long? Back at the hub, Gwen tells Tosh that Jack just called to say he found Owen and is bringing him in. Tosh, staring at her computer monitor, asks if he’s still himself. Gwen asks what she means by that. Tosh babbles that she was trying to figure out why Owen left or, you know, if he talked to anyone about what she said to him, and she found this on the CCTV. She spins the monitor so Gwen can see the feed from the room Owen was doing his demonic chant in. Of course, he conveniently turned toward the one camera in the room before he did it. Naturally. Martha wanders over and asks what the hell that is. So nice of her to join this episode and ask all the stupid questions everybody else gave up asking a long time ago. SERIOUSLY, WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?! Outside somewhere, Jack and Owen are walking down a deserted street when they are surrounded by Weevils because WHY NOT? Jack says they’re after him because he stole the resurrection glove from them and Owen should get the hell out of there because there’s just too many of them. Owen runs down a side alley and Jack, after pausing to grin maniacally at them, follows. Some more Weevils cut them off halfway down the alley and Owen notes that they must be REALLY pissed at Jack as they run down a detour. They end up in what is probably the same parking garage they have used on this show at least three times now. They run around for a couple minutes until they wind up on the top floor, which is totally where John threw that guy off and are backed into the corner by the snarling pack. Jack pulls his gun and orders Owen to get behind him. Chrissy: Oh, like I’ve never heard THAT before. Owen says not a chance and just stands there glaring defiantly until all the Weevils suddenly get down on their knees and cower. THEN Owen’s eyes turn black and he does the demonic chant again. Instead of running away screaming like a little girl, Jack just stares at him like ‘oh, shit. Well, at least he’s not wearing a gas mask and asking if I’m his mummy.’ Chrissy: Do I want to know? Diandra: Probably not. At the Hub, the team pull some sort of alien translator device – for obvious reasons, let’s call it a Babelfish – from Jack’s vault of alien bullshit devices so they can figure out what Possessed Owen is saying on the video. The computer spits out a string of gibberish characters in text form, but the audio form hisses “I shall walk the Earth and my hunger will know no bounds.” “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” Gwen says flatly. Chrissy: I demand a recount on your understatement of the season vote. Diandra: [headdesk] Jack appears at that moment with suddenly normal Owen at his side and announces that it’s actually worse than they think. Cut to Jack taking only Owen and Martha down to the cells for some reason for a demonstration of Owen’s new power over the Weevils. He sticks his fingers in the air holes of Janet’s cell and she sniffs at him and cowers back into the corner. “So I’m King of the Weevils,” Owen mutters. “Maybe even Weevil Messiah.” Chrissy: Oh, good lord, NO! We are not going the Zombie Owen Jesus route. Diandra: [drinks] Chrissy: Give me that... [drinks enthusiastically] He says either way, it’s not good. Gwen appears with some papers clutched in her hands and says she thinks it may have happened before. She hands Jack the printout of some artwork that...doesn’t look like much of anything honestly...and says she found it in an article about the Black Death. It’s some of the first images of the Grim Reaper. According to legend, the phrase “I shall walk the Earth and my hunger will know no bounds” is usually spoken by Death himself. “But there’s no such thing,” says the woman who travelled through TIME AND SPACE IN A PHONE BOOTH WITH AN ALIEN. Owen agrees that he’s DEAD, he’s not DEATH. Gwen notes that Janet doesn’t seem to recognize the difference. Well, who ever said Janet was the brightest Weevil in the bunch? Chrissy: What do you call a bunch of Weevils anyway? Diandra: A pack? Chrissy: A gaggle? Diandra: A giggle? Chrissy: Is the vodka kicking in already? Diandra: Maybe. Conference room. Gwen says the wood carving of the Grim Reaper she was showing them in the last scene comes from the fifteenth century. One hundred years after the plague? Huh. She says it came from St. James parish, which built a wall around the town when they heard about the plague. The legend is that a little girl died anyway and then the priest performed a miracle to bring her back to life. Except she came back with Death riding shotgun. “Are we seriously going to act on something she’s Googled,” Tosh asks Jack. No, we’re going to act on something the writers Googled. Duh. Jack asks what the name of the church the priest was from was. St. Mary’s, of course. Because that’s not a common name at all. But apparently it is the exact same church and the parish would one day be the city of Cardiff. Owen asks what happened to the town when “Death walked amongst them.” They all danced and rejoiced in the streets for a week. What the hell do you think happened? Gwen says twelve people died, which brings up a little caveat we neglected to mention before: apparently he needs thirteen souls before he can take a permanent hold on the Earth. Jack asks how they managed to stop him at twelve. We’re talking about people who thought the Earth was flat, possibly carried on the back of a giant turtle with the Sun orbiting around it. They actually made the plague problem worse by killing all the black cats they could get their hands on on the superstitious assumption that they were somehow responsible, allowing the rat population to explode. The ones that didn’t die of the plague probably died from drinking the same water they were pooping in. Let’s assume that whatever happened to stop it was sheer dumb luck and they had no fucking clue how they actually did it. Or, as Gwen reads from the Wikipedia article: “it just says faith”. Martha brings up the topic of Owen’s energy transformation again and asks what if this is making him some sort of host or gateway? Um...yes, I’d say that’s a distinct possibility here. Owen says he had it all wrong. He thought something was waiting in the darkness for him to cross over, but it’s actually using him to try to get through to the living world. The monitor on his wrist beeps and Martha announces that it’s at 80%. Owen asks what happens when it reaches 100. Why are you asking her? She seems more clueless than anybody in this episode despite the fact that we took great pains to make her appear to be a genius in the last one. Owen points out that Torchwood’s job is to fight monsters. He asks what happens when one of their own turns out to BE one. Jack points out – again – that he’s already dead. So even if they had to fight him...wait, what? I’m not following the logic here. Chrissy: It makes sense if you drink more. Diandra: No, it doesn’t. Chrissy: No, but at least you don’t care. Owen rhetorically asks what they do with the dead, then suggests they inject him with formaldehyde and effectively freeze dry his brain. “The only way to be sure,” he concludes. Sure of WHAT? Chrissy: That he doesn't try to kill them and eat their brains once he's fully zombified. I guess we’re going along with this plan because Jack and Martha disappear into the morgue to prepare injections. Gwen asks Owen if he’s sure about this. Owen babbles that the ethanol will keep him from feeling the effects of the formaldehyde and it’s not like he has to worry anymore about the fact that it’s a major carcinogen. Gwen just purses her lips and says “you know what I mean.” Owen sighs and says he can’t eat, sleep or fuck, which are basically the only things in life a guy like him cares about, so... Gwen hugs him, crying. He reassures her that he’s not really even Owen anymore – just an empty husk of Owen - and he doesn’t want to keep going like this. Chrissy: Should make this part of a living will for Torchwood employees. “No artificial life support, and in the event that I come back as a zombie I grant permission to kill me with a flamethrower.” Owen, dressed in his white surgical scrubs and sort of escorted by Gwen, does a long walk down the corridors twisting around the hub, past a grave-looking Ianto. This is obviously supposed to look like a death row inmate heading to his execution. In the morgue, Jack, Martha and Tosh are readying the more chair- like table when the monitor beeps and Martha reads that Owen’s transformation is 95% complete. Owen appears and clunkily says that they don’t have any more time to waste on goodbyes then. They do, however, have time to waste on everyone staring at him with the same look of impending doom. They strap him to the chair and Martha reaches for the first injection when the glove, which for SOME REASON is on the same operating room tray, springs to life and flies at her. Jack yells “lockdown” and we get a ridiculous moment where he and Martha play tug-of-war with a disembodied glove from a suit of armor while she pretends it is trying to attack her. As much as I hate Martha, I have to hand it to Freema that she can do crazy bullshit like this convincingly. They fling it aside and it flops around on the floor for a few seconds before crawling back toward Martha like Thing from "The Addams Family". She crawls up onto the observation deck and Jack orders everyone to “spread out” and “don’t move”. Ianto disappears and returns wielding a pipe. Jack looks at him like “really?” Ianto frowns at him. In the chaos, Steampunk Thing seems to have disappeared. Martha whimpers that she thinks it went under the cabinet in the corner. There’s a scrabbling metallic noise and they all look around frantically and then it leaps out of nowhere and attaches to Martha’s face. Jack, Gwen and Tosh run to her and Jack does the goofy looking tug-of-war thing again, flinging it away. This time, Owen stomps on Steampunk Thing and orders someone to get him a gun. Tosh yelps that if they destroy it, the connection could be broken because, you know, Ilsa. Owen doesn’t care, so Jack tosses him his gun. The glove explodes with one shot. And then Gwen thinks to check on Martha and realizes that her hair has gone gray and her skin is all wrinkly. Except the makeup isn’t as convincing on her as it was on David Tenant, so she ends up looking like a bad Halloween costume of an old lady. Jack yells at Owen to help him with Martha, but the monitor - projected on the wall for easy reading by the audience – flashes 100% and Owen just grins maniacally at him, his eyes black. And then the special effects people apparently ran out of budget because he falls to his knees and terribly CGId black smoke pours out of his mouth. It forms a vaguely humanoid shape and lunges at Jack. And we cut abruptly to Jack gasping awake in the passenger seat of a car. He looks at the hospital the car is parked in front of and just grabs his coat and runs in. So we’re just going to skip over the part where the team apparently took the time – in the middle of this whole insane crisis – to carry his dead body to the car so he could join them when he resurrected. Okay. Inside, the rest of the team (except Owen) are handing off Martha to medical personnel, saying she is a police officer. Owen is limping well behind them and Jack catches up to him first, quickly verifying that he is just Owen again before running up to the rest of the team. Gwen says that thing that came out of Owen just disappeared. Uh-huh. Is it me or is this episode more scattered and weird than usual for this show? Chrissy: I think you hit on it earlier: they ran out of special effects budget for the season. They have to make do with a puff of smoke, quick cutaways and explanations of what happened after the fact. Diandra: So the sci-fi version of terrible, suggestive joking followed by a cutaway to a train going into a tunnel? Chrissy: No, that was done to get around censors. This is lazier. Diandra: You know, most shows get around the budget limitation thing by having one very low budget, minimal set character episode. Chrissy: Where's the fun in that? Sometime later, a doctor asks how the hell these people know the patient because obviously they’re not family. Oh, what, just because she’s black and they’re not? Gwen says she’s their neighbor and they check in on her and help her with her shopping and pension collection. Yeah. Because she’s actually ninety. Totally. The doctor says her red blood cell count is seriously low and she’s dehydrated, which is all putting a serious strain on her heart. They’re doing everything they can, but at her age... Gwen tells her to just do what she can. Martha’s room. Martha is looking at her face in a mirror Jack apparently brought her and moaning that Death has stolen her life. Yeah, that’s usually how it works. Jack promises that they’ll find a way to reverse it. Gwen intercepts him as he goes to leave to go over this killed twelve people and just disappeared because “faith” history again. Jack turns to Ianto and says they “need answers”. Ianto is like ‘yessir’ and runs off to do who the hell knows what. Jack then orders Owen back to the hub where he’s safe. Owen refuses on the grounds that whatever it is is gone now and he’s of more use here. Oh, and he knows what it is now and what it wants. “It’s duroc. Hunger.” Oh, well why didn’t you just say so? It all makes perfect sense now! Chrissy: Did you ever notice that one of your stages of drunkenness is bitter sarcasm? Diandra: Really? You don’t say. Gwen asks what THAT is and how they would look for it. Jack peeks out the hospital room window and says it’s already here if the Weevils skulking around outside are any indication. Gwen peeks out too and asks why it would have followed them. Jack thinks maybe it senses those who are near death, which, you know, would make a hospital a pretty big target. Night. Er...whatever. Was it night already? A woman in another part of the hospital wakes up to find all the monitors attached to everyone in the room have suddenly flatlined. She flails for something to call a nurse, but drops it just as the smoke cloud appears over her bed. It takes the form of a skeleton and hovers over her menacingly. As they march through the halls, Jack calls somebody to evacuate the hospital. Gwen orders everyone within earshot to leave the premises by order of Torchwood. Before anyone can question just who the hell she thinks she is and what she’s talking about, the fire alarm goes off and they scramble to evacuate. We take a moment to note that one of the children in the cancer ward is missing, having snuck into the bathroom with a handheld video game. He’s wearing headphones, so he can’t hear any of the commotion outside. Jack orders Ianto to get into the hospital’s communication system. Ianto, who is now back in Martha’s room for some reason, says he’s already done it and there are multiple “code fours” in intensive care. Gwen somehow recognizes this code as meaning “heart attack”. Okay, I know I’m getting pretty drunk but...Ianto is hacking the communications and Gwen is the expert on medical terminology now? What is going on with the writers this week? Jack orders Gwen to keep track of the casualties and let him know when they get to twelve. Because I guess that's too complicated for him to do himself? Chrissy: No, but he needs to take his shoes off to count that high. Children’s ward. A nurse figures out that one kid – who she calls Jaime – is missing. She hears a noise under a bed and, assuming it’s him, goes to check. The shadow skeleton appears behind her and we cut away again. Intensive care. Jack and Gwen find the room full of bodies that seem to have been mummified. At least that’s what I’m guessing from the one we sort of see on the blurry edge of the screen. Chrissy: Oh, is the screen actually blurry? I thought that was just the vodka making it look like that. Diandra: I...I think so. But now that you mention it, I'm not completely positive. Jack announces to the team that they have seven fatalities. Gwen announces that she’s getting a report from someone in her earpiece that there was another death during a routine surgery. Jack says that leaves five and gulps when he realizes that’s exactly how many are on their team. Um...but one of you is technically already dead and another has died approximately twenty-five thousand times in the past century. But let’s not let details like that get in the way now! Owen asks if “it” has changed floors since leaving the intensive care unit. How the hell would he kn... oh, fuck this. Jack says the upper floors are mostly evacuated, so if it’s still looking for people it would probably head down. Owen says they’re headed in that direction. Tosh, trailing after him, says they still don’t know what to do when they find it. Jack tosses this to Ianto, who says he’s been searching for the phrase “I shall walk the Earth and my hunger will know no bounds”, but he keeps getting redirected to Weight Watchers’ website. I fall out of my chair laughing, possibly due in part to drunkenness. Tosh’s announcement that they’re on the seventh floor is punctuated by lights suddenly going out. Owen breaths that It is here because he can feel it. Jaime has come out of the bathroom and is wandering the suddenly eerily empty hallways. He drops his video game and, when he’s reaching for it, finds the mummified corpse of the nurse who was looking for him earlier. Something moves behind a curtain and he flees the room, running aimlessly down hallways until he runs into a locked door. “It” starts that demonic chant again and the cloud of smoke appears at the end of the hall. Jaime sinks to the floor, banging half-heartedly on the doors, like he knows he’s hopelessly screwed. The smoke forms into the skeleton and shuffles like a little old grandpa down the hall, the smoke clinging around it. It’s terrifying. If by “terrifying” you mean “hilarious”. Before Grandpa Smokey the Skeleton can reach Jaime, Owen appears from a side door and yells for the kid to come with him. Once they’re through, Tosh appears out of nowhere and all three of them run through the corridors, pursued by a bear. Chrissy: Random Shakespeare reference is random. Diandra: No it isn’t. It’s just as hilariously nonsensical as anything else that happens on this show. Elsewhere, Gwen suddenly announces that there are now twelve dead, which means Death only needs one more to...um...gain mortal form and reign all hellfire and destruction on the human race for infinity? I don’t know and I’m not sure I care anymore. This episode is bonkers. Chrissy: As compared to any other episode? Diandra: Good point. Hand me the vodka, would you? Owen, Tosh and Jaime are running down some stairs toward what may be an exit when Owen makes the mistake every idiot victim in a horror movie makes. “I think we’ve lost it,” he announces. Oy. The door closes just before they reach it and he slams face first into it. “Maybe not,” he mutters. Tosh starts frantically pressing buttons on her little handheld doohickey to try to hack whatever frequency controls the door and open it again. Or something. I am thisclose to just calling that damn thing a sonic screwdriver and assuming it operates by magic. Except it's larger and clunker, so maybe not a "screwdriver"... Anyway. Meanwhile, Owen makes small talk with Jaime while he searches for...something. He introduces himself and Tosh and asks what Jaime is in the hospital for. He winces when Jaime answers “leukemia”. He says he’s in for chemo then? Jaime says they already tried that and it didn’t work, but they’re making him try again now. He’s pretty sure it won’t work this time either and it’ll just make all his hair fall out before he inevitably dies. Before I can make some failed attempt at bringing humor to that depressing little dialogue, we cut to Ianto, who has unearthed something about the priest who found out about the thirteen souls thing in 1479. He repeats that Death was stopped at twelve souls by Faith. Jack says yeah, we got that part already, but... Ianto says no, they’ve been reading it wrong. The little girl who died and came back to life was NAMED Faith. Jack asks how she stopped it. Ianto says it doesn’t say. So we’re really no closer to understanding than we were before. Awesome. Luckily, Owen is patched in to the comms and hears all this. He realizes that if Faith was anything like him, she understood that she was already dead and therefore had nothing left to lose. He herds Jaime over to a chair and takes the time to deliver a little monologue to him about how he understands that he’s scared and doesn’t want to go through the pain of chemo again when it didn’t work before, but this type of cancer is NOT a guaranteed death sentence. The key to beating it is believing that you CAN beat death. And he’s going to prove to him that it’s possible right now. Tosh gets the door open just then and Owen shoves Jaime toward her. Except instead of immediately running to safety with him, she lingers so she can try to convince Owen not to do something stupid. Waaaaaaayyy to late for that, honey. She says she’s not leaving him alone with that thing. Why? Haven’t we determined he can’t die? What’s the worst that can happen? Chrissy: You really need to stop asking that. Ironically or not. Owen shuts her up by kissing her, then shoves her through the door and closes it, waving the sonic barcode scanner he just lifted from her, presumably to keep her from trying to get back in. She bangs at the door, shouting useless pleas for him to open it, and shuts up suddenly when Grandpa Smokey appears at the top of the stairs they came down earlier. And now we have the scene that made me question my decision to watch this show. Owen asks Grandpa Skeletor Smoke Monster how long he can survive here with only twelve souls. He says it’s not going to get anything from him because his soul has already gone. Chrissy: Objection! We have no reason to suspect he ever had one in the first place! Skeletor Smokey just marches up and reaches for him and they grapple for a while in what may be the second worst fight scene ever filmed. The first being, naturally, Kirk VS the Giant Rubber Lizard Man. Tosh bangs on the door and screams and Jack and Gwen come running around a corner to “rescue” Owen or something when Smokey just sort of...crumbles and disappears. In the silence that follows, poor Ianto worriedly calls for Jack, Gwen and, finally “anyone”. A hand grabs him suddenly and he screams, turning, his scream turning to a laugh as he finds a restored gasping, confused looking Martha. Chrissy: How can you tell she’s confused? Isn’t that what she normally looks like? Diandra: Exactly. Hub. Because SCREW YOU, JAIME! Your scene is over and we've completely forgotten about you! Owen and Martha are sitting on the morgue autopsy table, looking traumatized. Owen asks if he has time to start reading “War and Peace”, which...is an interesting way to ask about how much time you have left. Chrissy: How about watching all fifty years of "Doctor Who"? Or every "Star Trek" series and movie ever? Diandra: Or reading AND watching Lord of the Rings and The Ho...no, wait. That just FELT like it took ages. Never mind. She just huffs a laugh. He apologizes for getting her hurt. She brushes it off because she’s more concerned about the fact that he soaked up such a large amount of energy that seems to be dissipating now. And since everything that’s been happening to him is a big unknown, she doesn’t know if it’ll take thirty years or thirty days for that process to finish. Or, you know, any second now. Jack happens to wander by at that moment and Owen stops him to say that people died because he decided to use that damned glove and now they both owe it to them to “even the score”. Basically, he thinks he can do that by going back to work. Jack just says “we’ll see” and leaves him to angst a bit more. Up in the main area, Tosh asks Jack if Owen really did beat Death back there. Jack spews some philosophical crap about how you can never really “beat” Death because it’s always waiting in the shadows. Tosh asks what they can do now. Jack goes to speak, then stops as Owen approaches and we suddenly cut to black. Um...to be continued? Sort of? Chrissy: Oh, please God, let’s get back to an episode we can get through without poisoning our livers. Diandra: That might be asking too much. Honestly, I’ll just be happy to get to a Martha-free episode. Chrissy: Well, you’re lucky, because apparently I’m NEVER getting my wish of an Owen-free episode now that he’s some sort of immortal zombie. Diandra: Well...um...actually...I guess now that there’s only a few episodes left in the season it’s safe to tell you he won’t be back for season three. Chrissy: Oh. Well. I’ll drink to that. Diandra: Neither will Tosh. Chrissy: Damnit. Should’ve known there’d be a catch.