"Torchwood, episode 2x13: Exit Wounds" Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd, Kai Owen Previously on Torchwood, John Hart came back and tried to blow up four members of the team for no apparent reason. He failed on all counts, but he apparently still has Jack’s brother as leverage. And we start seconds after the last episode left off. Owen notes that John took their SUV. Ianto and Tosh both have electronic doohickies now and Ianto announces that his says the SUV’s tracker is showing it back at the Hub. Tosh’s is announcing rift activity all over the city, particularly a hospital, a police station and IT headquarters. Gwen’s phone rings. It’s Andy begging her to get her ass over “here” because they need her. She says she’s on her way, hangs up and asks Jack if this is John’s doing. Jack orders Rhys to drop Owen off at the hospital like Rhys has any idea what the hell is going on here. He tells Tosh and Ianto to check the server building and Gwen to go to the station. They arrive at Rhys’ car and Jack finishes that he needs to go to Torchwood. Rhys wisely doesn’t ask who the hell that guy in the futuristic voice mail was or HOW Jack has a device like that or anything a normal person would probably be stuck on. He just asks if Jack thinks they’ll all fit in his car. Chrissy: Eh, Ianto can sit on his lap. Diandra: Wouldn’t be the first time. Tosh is like ‘wait a minute, why are we heading right for what are obviously traps John laid out?’ Jack says it’ll be fine as long as they’re careful. He’s going to the Hub to try to reason with John. Owen points out that he just tried to kill the entire team. Doesn’t that indicate he’s beyond reasoning? Jack says he’s the only one who could ever control John, which is why the Time Agency put them together. Chrissy: “Control” being code for “distract with mindblowing sex”. Diandra: Well, duh. Jack enters the Hub all by himself. “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper” is playing on the sound system. John, up on the catwalks overhead, calls at Jack to sing along because this is their song. Jack snaps that they don’t HAVE a SONG and if they did it sure as hell wouldn’t be THIS. Chrissy: It would be “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. Diandra: Or “I Don’t Know How to Quit You.” Chrissy: Sweetie, that’s not a song. It’s a line from “Brokeback Mountain”. John’s face falls and he pushes a button on his wrist strap to stop the music, grumbling that Jack is “no fun”. Then he asks what the hell took Jack so long getting back. Jack says he had to dig his team out of the rubble because, oh yeah, they all survived his totally half ass attempt to kill them. John brushes this off as he saunters down to ground level, claiming the bombs were just prototypes. By the way, how is everyone? Jack has had enough of this bullshit and asks what John wants, exactly. John says he wants Jack to know he loves him. Jack scoffs and John says no, really. He does. Then he picks up two machine guns and empties them both into Jack’s chest. Jack falls into the pool that feeds the waterfall at the center of the Hub (I guess?) and John adds that he just needed Jack to know that because this is about to get “nasty”. Chrissy: You could have just said you’re into necrophilia. Diandra: Ew. No. And for the last time because I’m pretty sure we won’t see any credit sequence for all of season 3: bleeping credits. We come back to Cardiff Police HQ (5:27 pm), which looks like the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Or, as we call it in America, a weekly random shooting. Bodies are littering the stairs and corridors and there’s blood smeared on every surface. Gwen finds Andy, who says “they” appeared out of nowhere and they weren’t human. Their four most senior officers were killed and everyone else is in shock. Rhys comes barreling along behind Gwen and Andy is like ‘woah, hold on, um...what the fuck are you doing coming into a crime scene?’ He tells Gwen this can’t get out to the general public. Rhys assures him that he’s keeping more secrets than he’d BELIEVE. Andy says oh really? Like what? And Rhys blurts that there’s a time agency based in Cardiff. Dude? Oldest trick in the book. Andy notes as much. Gwen mutters that it’s not actually BASED in Cardiff. Chrissy: Also, my boss is immortal. Diandra: And aliens are real. Or does everybody know what Torchwood is now? They’ve never really made that clear... Gwen opens a viewing window in the holding cell we saw the Roman soldier being kept in during last season’s finale. It’s full of snarling weevils, which Gwen identifies and adds that these guys “live in the sewers”. Rhys goggles and asks if she’s kidding. She tosses in some sort of aerosolized version of the drug they use to subdue them and slams the window shut as a cloud of gas erupts. She notes that Andy said they killed the four most senior officers. Andy says yeah, it’s almost like they targeted them specifically. Meanwhile, Tosh arrives at the Central Server building at 5:36 pm and reports no signs of rift activity. Then for the audience members who don’t know what the Central Server Building is, she explains to...I don’t know who that they house the computer servers for law enforcement, military and the healthcare service. Ianto, behind her, fails to say something along the lines of “duh. I live here too.” But this is just an awkward way to shoehorn in this bit of exposition: “[it] even looks after the server systems for the nuclear station at Turnmill.” Ianto says yeah, yeah, whatever, what was the problem they were contacting Torchwood about? Tosh says they reported ghosts in the server stacks. Ugh, really? A ghost in the machine? That didn’t sound suspiciously fake to you? Ianto asks after the arm Tosh is holding awkwardly in front of her. Tosh says Owen gave her some really heavy duty painkillers so she’s not feeling ANY pain right now. She turns a corner and stops short as she sees a couple guys dressed like the Grim Reaper, complete with enormous scythes, hovering at the end of the row. One of them starts hissing in a demonic sounding voice that they are blasphemers and heathens and will be cast out in the name of God. Chrissy: Are we sure things aren’t falling out of the rift from the Middle Ages again? Diandra: Well, they’re not speaking Spanish, but... The reapers start marching toward Tosh and Ianto. They pull their guns, shoot them and shrug like “well, that’s that then.” Heh. Owen is at St. Helen’s Hospital. It’s 5:39 pm and I’m assuming there is a reason the chyrons keep noting the time. Owen says there’s been some “activity” in the basement. We cut to a nurse, who explains that she saw something chewing on some cables when she was coming back from her “fag break”. Chrissy: Ah, British slang. Diandra: Whatever you do, don’t ask for Welsh meatballs. The best reply I ever saw to a homophobic rant went something like “well, yes, fags are pretty disgusting what with all the health hazards and risk of burning down your flat, but faggots are delicious! I mean, I’m trying to cut back, but I just can’t stop stuffing myself with them!” I may be paraphrasing that a bit. Chrissy: Okay, now I want to go into a McDonald’s, fake a British accent and ask if they have any faggots. Diandra: Hope you know some self defense because you’d probably get punched in the face whether the person is a GSA member or a bigot. Chrissy: Yeah, but it would be worth it. And you would find out just what kind of person they are IMMEDIATELY. Owen peers in through the window of the door the woman says she locked to keep the thing inside the room. Something that looks like a cross between a weevil and an overgrown piranha slams into the door and then slinks away again. Owen says the short answer is that the thing is an alien. The somewhat longer answer is that it’s called a “Hoix” and all they really know about it is that it never seems to stop eating. He prepares a syringe of what is probably the same sedative they use on the weevils and has her open the door. He asks if she has anything edible he can use to distract it, but all she has is the pack of “fags”. Of course, since it eats anything, this works. He slips inside and calls to the hoix, tossing single cigarettes in it’s direction and then dropping the rest of the pack. The hoix follows the trail and bends over the pack long enough for Owen – after noting that this species is incredibly stupid – stabs it with the needle. And we’re back to the Torchwood hub at 6:03 pm, which is weirdly specific. Jack, still wet from the pool, gasps back to life and struggles against the chains holding him suspended a good foot off the floor close to one wall. John slinks over and informs him that he took the liberty of relieving him of all his weapons and communication devices. Really? Are you sure? Because I seem to remember him managing to produce a weapon from somewhere once while he was completely naked. Although his hands were free then, so... Jack asks if maybe this is a bit extreme even for John. John is like ‘oh, come on, like you’ve ever had a problem with me tying you up before?’ Chrissy: Well, that confirms THAT then. He reaches down, seemingly to grab at Jack’s crotch, and Jack hisses at him and asks what the hell he’s doing here. John sasses that it’s always the same thing: people aren’t interested until he pulls out the bondage gear. Chrissy: Well, I find that generally IS true. He says there’s many reasons he’s doing this. The first is that Jack was “very rude” to him. In front of strangers. “You belittled me. I can’t let that go.” Also, there’s the whole ‘you’re an immortal and you still can’t find a little time to spend with me’ thing he mentioned in the last episode. Chrissy: I will not be IGNORED, Dan. I mean Jack. Jack decides to cut the bullshit and ask what John has done with Gray. John starts rambling about ripple effects and things that are beyond his control to stop. He wanders around futzing with computers and muttering some crap about “localizing rift storms” and “short, sharp shocks”. He goes to touch something on the rift manipulator and Jack yells at him to stop because seriously? Let’s not do the giant demon monster again, shall we? John pushes a button on his wrist strap and the shackles around Jack’s wrists spark with current. He says if Jack wants to keep that from happening again he should really shut up. Chrissy: No, honey, that’s not how safe words work. Have you ever done this before? Diandra: No, but he read “Fifty Shades of Gray”. Chrissy: Actually, that would explain everything. John plugs something in and the manipulator hums. Jack yells the following cliché: “whatever you’re planning, we’re going to stop you!” Chrissy: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to...wait, no. That doesn’t work. John says oh, really? He holds out his arms and invites Jack to get on with it then. Heh. Jack struggles against the chains and of course gets nowhere. John shrugs and says they should go get a “good view” then. “City Center, 6:28 PM”. I don’t know why they don’t just identify this as Cardiff Castle because that’s clearly what it is. John drags Jack to the top of the tower in the middle and shoves Jack to the ground beside the outer wall. Then he pushes a button on his wrist strap to establish that Jack is still wearing an electrified shackle around one wrist and therefore he is still in charge. Once he stops electrocuting Jack, Jack moans that he can make things right. John says no, he can never make this right. He patches into the teams’ communications and orders them all to stop what they’re doing. Gwen asks Jack what’s going on. John says sorry, he can’t come to the phone right now. He neglects to add that he’s a little “tied up”. Chrissy: Well, technically he isn’t anymore. Gwen asks what the hell John has done to Jack. Chrissy: That’s a very long list. Would you like the Reader’s Digest version? John says actually, the right question is: “what am I about to do to you?” Ianto cuts in and orders John to put Jack on RIGHT NOW. John thinks it’s cute how Ianto is acting all bossy and powerful when he’s essentially helpless to do much of anything at the moment. He orders everybody to get to the roofs of their respective buildings. Otherwise they’ll miss all the “fun”. He ponders whether he really meant to say “fun” or “carnage” because he has a tendency to mix those up. He pulls out some sort of device and taps the screen and they all arrive at their vantage points just as at least a half a dozen bombs go off all over the city, creating massive fireballs. Car alarms and police sirens wail everywhere. John snuggles up to Jack like this is some demented cry for help, which, considering the way he’s been acting, it might very well be. He says it will all be okay now. A light starts to surround them and Jack realizes too late why John is hugging him and tries futilely to shove him away before they disappear. Chrissy: Specifically, he says “stop, get off me”, which I’m guessing is a first for him. Gwen orders Andy to go downstairs and get every officer on this. Then she starts calling to Jack. Tosh announces that she’s getting a major energy reading over the castle that is being generated by the rift manipulator in the hub. How she can see all that from wherever the hell she is I don’t know. Gwen verifies that the rest of the team is okay. For now, yes. Tosh reads on her doohickey that there were fifteen explosions set off in strategic locations to block traffic going in and out of the city. All phone signals and internet, TV and radio networks - basically every form of communication is down. Ianto, looking at one of the server banks, announces that the systems serving the nuclear plant are offline, so, you know, they’re probably even more screwed than they think. Gwen says they should make “stabilizing” that a priority. Um...yeah, we’ll get right on that. Gwen asks how things are at the hospital and Owen says the backup generators went in the explosions so EVERY machine is shut down. Gwen declares that they are going to FIX this and they are going to find Jack and they are going to make John PAY. Jack, meanwhile, wakes up in a grassy field somewhere. The camera pans up to show miles of nothing but field and trees and the chyron identifies this as Cardiff...or...some sort of Anglo Saxon/Roman territory in 27AD. John approaches and begins to say that before Jack does anything stupid, he should listen to...Jack punches him in the face and screams at him to take them back NOW. Chrissy: Or you could do that like a hotheaded idiot. Diandra: He’s American. It’s in our nature. John says they had to come this far to escape the “trigger signal” and holds up his arm. His wrist strap has been half embedded into his skin. He invites Jack to look and, while Jack gapes at it, explains for the audience that it is a “ninth generation detonator”. It includes a “surveillance circuit” that monitors everything he says and does so if he veers at all from what “he” has told him to do, he will blow up. He pouts a bit that Jack didn’t figure out the whole “bomb all of Cardiff” plan wasn’t actually his idea. He falls silent as he sees something behind Jack and tells him to run. Jack scoffs that this is the oldest trick in the book. But whatever is behind him calls his name and Jack turns to see an adult Gray sauntering toward him, spewing some mushiness about how he always KNEW they would find each other again. Jack has a few flashbacks for the audience members who don’t remember the long lost brother sideplot. They hug and Jack murmurs that he’s sorry. Gray says sorry isn’t enough and pulls a ginormous knife from his belt, stabbing Jack. Chrissy: You see? Family reunions are never a good thing. John watches as Jack slides to the ground and dies. Gray tells him to get a shovel. Chrissy: See, Jack, this is why you should have asked who the “he” John was referring to was. Diandra: Nah. That would have diminished the drama. The totally contrived and ridiculous drama. Back in the present day Cardiff, specifically at 7:39PM at police headquarters, Gwen is giving what will hopefully be a much better speech to a group of officers. She says this attack was designed to cause a panic and “usual” emergency procedures will not cut it. They’re going to need to knock on every door and reassure everyone they possible can that it is being taken care of and they are safe. Chrissy: So...lie. Diandra: Isn’t that standard procedure? She finishes this little inspirational pep talk by telling them to get out there and “do [their] jobs”. Off to the side, Rhys and Andy marvel at how awesome this take charge, bad ass version of Gwen is. At server control, Tosh and Ianto are futzing with electronics. Whatever they’re doing isn’t working and Tosh announces that they need to restart the servers for the nuclear facility. Ianto asks what happens if she can’t do that. A blinking red light appears on a screen to answer for her. It screams MELTDOWN ALERT. Ianto says yeah, okay, he’s going to go up there then because if they can’t fix it remotely maybe there’s something he can do on site to stop another Chernobyl. Tosh hisses that that would be suicide. Chrissy: So either she or Owen should go instead. Diandra: You know, I probably made a mistake telling you they were going to die in this episode. Chrissy: Eh. YOU knew who was going to die when before it happened when you first saw the show because all of this aired years ago. I figure it’s like knowing who shot JR or that Sean Bean got whacked in the first season of Game of Thrones. Ianto asks if they’re really going to waste time standing around debating this. Tosh blinks and says FINE, but they’re both going. Chrissy: On the other hand...if I didn’t know Ianto is in a few more episodes, I would totally think it was him and Tosh dying here. Diandra: As I remember, Ianto was originally going to be the one going through the Zombie Jesus thing, but it was changed to Owen. I forget why. Chrissy: I would say I’m grateful for it, but apparently the stay of execution didn’t last long. AD27. Jack stands beside a newly dug grave while John puts shackles on his wrists and ankles. Jack is barely paying attention to him because he’s too busy moaning that he spent YEARS searching for Gray. Gray sneers and asks if he was expecting absolution or forgiveness or something. He was TORTURED by those vague, unseen alien (?) creatures for YEARS because Jack couldn’t HOLD ON TO HIS HAND. Jack says if he could switch places with him, he would. Gray says yeah, right...how long did he look before he gave up again? Jack asks what he wants from him. Chrissy: I want you to DIE! Diandra: Okay, stop with the James Bond reference already. Gray points out that they are currently in the spot where Cardiff will be built over the next couple thousand years...right over Jack’s grave. He invites Jack to think of him every time he revives and suffocates on another mouthful of dirt. John, standing nearby, suddenly comes to his senses and tries to stop Gray, but Gray has already tipped Jack over into the hole. Gray orders him to fill it. John tries to refuse and Gray reminds him that he has a bomb welded to his arm so resistance is probably not in his best interest right now. John looks at Jack and Jack nods at him. John takes a ring off his finger and tosses it onto Jack’s chest. Gray asks what the hell that’s for. John shrugs it off as just having “sentimental value” and grabs the shovel. Back in the present, Torchwood vaults, 9:07PM. Gray appears in a burst of time travel light and stares at the weevils in the holding cells. At the police station, Rhys finds Gwen huddled behind a reception desk. She says they still haven’t heard anything from Jack. Rhys says he’s sure everything will be fine. She’s like ‘yeah, and maybe the world is about to end.’ She says she’s not up to this. Rhys scoffs that of course she is. Those cops she was giving orders to earlier clearly believed in her despite the lameness of her speech. He declares her a “hero” and says she has to keep going because they all need her. Her scared look cracks a little and she asks “will you marry me again?” Chrissy: What, because it was so fun the first time around? Tosh breaks up this little moment by announcing that she’s getting a rift alert from INSIDE the hub. It looks just like the pattern she saw earlier when Jack disappeared. But she can’t verify whether it’s him or not because she has to get to the Turnmill servers and prevent a nuclear disaster. Gwen says she can’t leave the police station. Rhys says yes, she can actually. Her team needs her. He swears they’ll be fine and he’ll see her when this is all over. Chrissy: Oh, shit, don’t kill Rhys too. Diandra: No, he’ll be fine. They’re just upping the tension by making it look like anybody could die. They probably did something like they do on American shows: promise that SOMEBODY would be dying and then spend an hour teasing the audience over which two characters it would be. Chrissy: No, an American show would make it look like they had been killed already and then force the actor to go into hiding until they were ready to reveal that they had just been hiding under a dumpster for several hours. Diandra: Not that you’re thinking of any show specifically there or anything. Chrissy: Nope. Hub. Gwen enters through the cog door cautiously, gun drawn. Because despite all evidence to the contrary last season, she is not an idiot. Still, John manages to sneak up behind her. He grumbles that she took her sweet time getting here. She whirls around a screams at him to get “on [his] knees!” Chrissy: Yeah, because he’s never heard THAT before. He grumbles about everything being about SEX with these people. Gwen cocks the gun and adds “NOW.” He wisely shuts up and obeys, but grins like he’s enjoying this. She demands that he give her a reason to not just shoot him right now. He says he knows where Jack is. She says yeah, right. He explains the whole “Gray made me do it by turning me into a walking bomb” thing. He shows her the embedded wrist strap and says after Gray forced him to bury Jack, he freed him. He says he could have gone anywhere at that point, but he chose to come back here. She hesitantly asks why she should trust him. Instead of repeating that last point he JUST MADE, he rambles about how Gray was abducted when he and Jack were children and John found him “chained to the ruins of a city in the Bedlam Outlands”. The creatures had all left and he was surrounded by the corpses of the other prisoners. John has no idea how long he was there, but Gray was so thrilled to be rescued that it took him a while to realize how warped he had become from his time in captivity. John trails off, screaming as a ripping sound comes from his arm. He explains that the detonator is coming unsealed from his arm and rips it off completely, along with at least three layers of skin. Okay, ew. He repeats that he didn’t actually have to come back here. Gwen steps closer and orders him to find Jack and maybe she’ll let him continue living. John says yeah, okay, and uses the detached strap to patch into comms and call Tosh. He asks her to “run a trace for an etheric particle signal NME transmitting at 200 beta-cycles.” Chrissy: And then run a transducer to isolate the subwoofer so I can triangulate the alpha waves. Diandra: Exactly. Isn’t making shit up fun? Tosh asks Gwen what this is about now and where Jack is and generally what the hell is going on NOW. John says they’ll find Jack if she just does what he says. Gwen assures Tosh that she has him “covered” and they can run that trace. Tosh pushes a few buttons on her doohickey and says she doesn’t see anything remotely like that. John says there has to be because the transmitter he placed on him was guaranteed to last for five millennia. Chrissy: Damn cheap Chinese crap. He says if they can’t find the signal Jack will stay buried forever. Everybody looks at everybody else and then something squeals loudly and John and Gwen both shriek and cover their ears. On the lower level, Gray is holding some sort of button on his wrist strap and just standing there while the holding cells pop open and weevils run out, totally bypassing him. Outside, more are crawling up from the sewers and attacking random pedestrians. Upstairs, Gwen drags John over to the computers so she can see the escaping weevils on the CCTV and asks how the HELL they managed to get out. John says it must be Gray. Oh, and did he mention that Gray vowed to destroy everything and everyone in Jack’s life? Yeah. This might have something to do with that. From an alley somewhere, Ianto and Tosh, apparently safely hidden in the shadows, report that the streets are now crawling with weevils. This somehow ensures that they cannot make it to the nuclear station to reboot the system in time. Owen suddenly rejoins the conversation to say it’s fine, HE can get there. Because, you know, he’s Zombie Jesus, the Weevil King. Chrissy: How have you not been using that name for him all season? Diandra: I don’t know. Clearly it was an oversight. I apologize. He runs out of the hospital past a pack of weevils and they all immediately clear a path and cower. Rhys and whatever cops are remaining at the police station are trying to keep another group of weevils from entering, throwing their collective weight against the door the weevils are trying to break down. They manage to slam the door shut and lock it. Rhys asks if anyone saw how many there were. “It’s like Fort Apache the Bronx,” he mutters. Andy snarks that yeah, it is. You know, except that in this case the surrounding forces are carnivorous aliens and they could all die horribly. Otherwise it’s totally the same. John has just finished bandaging his hand and Gwen is running around typing frantically on computers, saying she can’t find evidence of any sort of signal. John snaps at her to try again because it HAS to be there. But they are both distracted when the weevils reach the main level and snarl menacingly at them. There’s a brief standoff before Ianto and Tosh arrive and shoot all the weevils. Gwen sighs that she is SO happy to see them right now. Ianto just clenches his jaw and stomps over to John, waving his gun threateningly. Gwen body blocks him as John swears he’s going to make everything right. Tosh says yeah, well, he can start by getting the weevils back down into the vaults because bullets don’t stop them for very long. She puts on her glasses and calmly goes to work at one of her computers while the rest of them drag the weevils back downstairs. Ianto, Gwen and John have just gotten the weevils into their cells (Ianto taking a moment to vow that John will die a slow painful death at his hands if Jack isn’t found) when all the cell doors slam shut. Gwen tries to contact Tosh and yelps that her comm is dead. Gray appears in front of John’s cell and mocks him for choosing to come HERE after he let him go. John grumbles something about “honor”, which is interesting because all evidence up until now would suggest he wouldn’t even know the meaning of that word. Gwen tries her good cop approach, promising to help Gray with whatever if he’ll just tell them where Jack is. “His life’s mine now,” Gray non-answers, marching away as Ianto screams “what have you done with him,” at his retreating back. Turnmill Nuclear Power Station, 9:42PM. You know, I remember laughing at the strangely specific time stamps on every scene in “Black Hawk Down”, but apparently that’s not all that uncommon a thing. Zombie Jesus the Weevil King finds a woman in a lab coat fussing with some cables in a red-lit room filled with computers and monitors. She snaps at him to get out of here. He asks what the hell she’s still doing here if this place is headed for meltdown. She spews something about a soldier not leaving her post. Equally acceptable: a captain going down with her ship. Owen says okay, but he’s with Torchwood so she can leave now because they’ll handle it. She asks what the hell he would know about “nuclear containment structure”. He says well, he’s not an expert but if they’ve run out of power the containment structure is probably over pressurized and the cooling systems aren’t working and the fuel is overheating. So it will go into full meltdown pretty soon and release a shit ton of radioactive material into the atmosphere. He repeats that she should leave. Oh, and try not to get eaten by the alien monsters wandering the streets outside. He hands her a can of the aerosolized weevil sedative and explains that it’s a sort of mace. She mutters that it actually sounds more dangerous out there than in here. He neglects to point out that if they go into full meltdown the nearest “safe” area will be the Scottish Highlands or maybe France. He waits until she leaves, thanking him gratefully, and contacts Tosh to say that she’s going to have to walk him through this because he doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s doing. Chrissy: Oh, like that’s the first time? Tosh pulls something up on her computer screen and semi-calmly tells him not to panic but the reactor has already hit critical. He says so it’s already going into meltdown and he’s at ground zero. Can she fix it? She smiles and says fuck yeah, she can because she’s a goddamn genius. She babbles about diverting power from auxiliary sources and restoring the cooling system. She picks up her doohickey and says “right...now...” aaaaand that’s when there’s a gunshot and she doubles over. Chrissy: DAMNIT! She blinks at Gray, who has just appeared on the main floor, grabs at the gushing wound in her abdomen and falls over. Owen keeps calling to her, apparently unable to hear her soft gasps of “help me”. Gray starts pulling cords around the computers and menaces that people say “death is such a waste”, but he thinks it’s probably more accurately described as “a relief.” Okay, well...that would make sense coming from your brother, but YOU would have no reason to be immortal, so... Chrissy: Wait...how did Jack become immortal again? Diandra: Rose absorbed the space-time energy from the TARDIS and became magic for a scene or two, bringing him back to life after Daleks killed him. The immortality part may have been an accident because she neglected to make that a one-time thing. Chrissy: So...how did Gray know about it? Diandra: I assume John told him, but fuck if I know. He squats beside Tosh, tossing her doohickey aside, and asks what it feels like. And he stresses that she should feel free to give him plenty of details because the battle is over so, you know, there’s no point fighting anymore. He is distracted by a loud banging noise coming from somewhere in the Hub. He wanders off to figure out what it is. Gwen, Ianto and John can hear the banging too and John announces that he has an idea. Chrissy: Okay, but Ianto is two cells down, so I doubt it will work. Diandra: What makes you think it was something dirty? Wait...sorry, I forgot who we were talking about for a second there. Apparently Gray neglected to take that device he was using to set off the bombs earlier from him because he pulls out some sort of metal pick and starts working on the back casing. Owen is still calling frantically for Tosh, who is crawling slowly toward the doohickey that landed almost all the way down the stairs to Owen’s autopsy bay. She is leaving an alarming trail of blood behind her. Gray locates the source of the banging: one of the drawers in the morgue which is emanating a soft yellow light. He yanks it out to find Jack, who whispers “I forgive you”. Gray asks how the HELL he ended up here. Actually, I’m assuming that’s what he meant because he actually says “how did you survive” but he obviously knows Jack is immortal so... that doesn’t make sense. Chrissy: What? The monkeys wrote something inconsistent? Diandra: Yeah, yeah... By way of explanation, we flash back to Torchwood 1901, where the team before Gerald and Harriet discover a signal that has been repeating for three days. The woman says she can track it to a location and drags the man out to the spot that is luckily still an open field, but Jack is now twenty feet down instead of just six. And I would like to point out that the dainty belle of a white woman proceeds to stand aside while the black man does all the physical labor of actually digging Jack up. Chrissy: Yeah, it was the early 1900s. What did you expect? And we cut right to a only somewhat dirty Jack sitting in the hub, begging them to stop asking all these questions. The woman scoffs that they found him in a twenty foot grave STILL ALIVE. The man, who is holding the transmitter ring John tossed in, notes that he’s supposed to be out working for THEM right now. Jack says he is: he has crossed his own timeline. He says they need to protect the future by making sure he doesn’t meet himself. Chrissy: Like there hasn’t been repeated risk of this happening before? Diandra: Yeah, that’s another inconsistency, but I think that MIGHT be because of the change in show runner. Under Stephen Moffat, the Doctor and most of the companions are crossing their own timelines all the time, which is why David Tenant and Matt Smith were both in the 50th anniversary special. But Rose crossed her own timeline ONCE under Russell Davis and everything went to hell and pterodactyl-like creatures descended on London. Chrissy: [monkey noises] Diandra: Sigh. Yeah. He tells them to put him in one of the morgue cryo tanks and set the timer to defrost in 107 years. Cut back to the present where Jack hauls himself from the pod, repeats that he forgives Gray and stalks away far too casually for someone who has been frozen for a century. Gray chases him, shouting “don’t you walk away from me!” Jack clenches his jaw and, after a fourth attempt from Gray to make him turn, whirls around and screams that he forgave him so he should be willing to do the same. Gray rants about the things the creatures that took him did and how he prayed for death and it was ALL JACK’S FAULT. “The favorite son. The one who lived. Who will always live.” Chrissy: Are we talking about Jack or Harry Potter here? Diandra: You caught that too, huh? Basically, the only thing that kept Gray going for a long time was his burning hatred of Jack. Jack tearfully explains that he didn’t KNOW what was happening until it was too late. Gray continues ranting about how it was all Jack’s fault and he will never forgive him and he wants to see him SUFFER. Diandra: Is it bad that I’m getting flashbacks of my dad and his brother? Chrissy: Oh, so you do understand what I mean when I say family reunions are never a good thing. Diandra: Well, not really because we don’t even attempt them. Jack hugs Gray, crying and muttering that he’s sorry. Both for that and the cloth full of chloroform he shoves over Gray’s face right now. Was he keeping that in the pockets of his coat for the century he was frozen or something? Where did it come from? Chrissy: [monkey noises] In the cells, John announces that he’s finished whatever the hell he’s doing with his device. A shrill alarm blares and Gwen winces and asks what the hell he’s doing. He says it’s a “recall signal” that will bring all the “pets” home. This being an explanation for what’s about to happen, we cut to the streets outside where all the weevils are running for the nearest sewer entrance and disappearing. Rhys and Andy look down from the roof of the police precinct and wonder what the hell just happened. Owen is still waiting for instructions from Tosh. She is crouched over her doohickey on the floor of the autopsy bay, pushing buttons. The lights in the nuclear facility turn on and Owen announces that she did it and he has power restored. Then his head clears a little and he asks if she’s okay. She gasps that she’s fine. This clearly being not even close to true, he asks what’s going on. She drags a tray of medical supplies down to the floor and grunts that it was just a machine malfunction. Owen says yeah, um...you’re obviously hurt. Tosh, trying to uncap a needle with her one good hand, scoffs that it’s just her arm and she’s working on another painkiller right now. She jabs herself in the leg, then grabs the doohickey and gets back to work. The diagnostics from the nuclear station helpfully appear on the wall of the autopsy room and Tosh moans that it’s too late to stop the meltdown. Owen says there has to be SOMETHING they can do. She says all they can do is “vent the flow channels internally”. In other words, redirect the radioactive toxins into the containment building which he is right in the middle of and seal it. So he needs to set up some sort of time delay thing. She says she can open the mainframe or whatever from the hub and he just needs to “authorize” it. He thanks her and she says “that’s what I’m here for” and looks pointedly at her bleeding wound. Chrissy: Ugh. Even knowing where this is headed, it’s agonizing to watch. Diandra: Yep. Jack finds everybody in the cells and pushes a button on his wrist strap to open all the doors. Considering there are weevils in there, this hardly seems safe, but luckily only the humans come out. Gwen runs right into Jack’s arms, babbling ohgodohgodohthankgodthankyou. Ianto comes over to hug him too, moaning that he feared he’d really lost him that time. And then John stands awkwardly in front of them while Jack praises his radio signal ring idea and thanks him. John demurs and redirects to the more pressing issue of Gray still being in the hub. Jack says yeah, he already took care of that. Chrissy: Yeah, but TOO LATE. Owen successfully redirects the flow of radioactive fallout and cheers excitedly. This lasts about two seconds as Tosh looks at the projection on the autopsy wall and orders him to get out of there NOW because there’s a power surge and it will trigger an emergency lockdown any second now. Owen waits until the red lights come on and the words “emergency lockdown” actually appear on the screen before running for the door, which of course slams shut in his face. He goes into a full rant about how he’s not ready to die again and certainly doesn’t want to go like THIS and begs her to get him out of this. Tosh, crying, begs him to calm down. Owen says fuck that, he’s going to do some serious raging against the dying of the light here. He starts screaming repeatedly and Tosh begs him to stop because “you’re breaking my heart.” Her voice breaks and tears spill down her cheeks and it’s awful. It really is. Owen hears her crying and comes back down to a simmer. She says this is her fault. Owen apologizes and says no, it isn’t and she can’t blame herself. Then, morbidly, he asks what, exactly, is going to happen to him. She whimpers that she can’t, but he insists that he needs to know. Chrissy: Is this supposed to calm her down? Explaining how, exactly, the man she has repeatedly said she loves is going to die a horrible death? Diandra: Yes? Tosh says the chamber will fill with irradiated coolant. Owen concludes that his body will basically decompose while he watches. The good news is he won’t be able to feel it. The bad news is that this is the stuff nightmares are made of and fuck you, Russell. You’re a bastard. Tosh repeats that she should have been able to stop it. Owen says she couldn’t have anticipated the power spike. Chrissy: Or that you would be so goddamn slow to run. Diandra: Right? He reminds her that she’s saved his ass MANY times over the course of their time together at Torchwood. She smiles through tears and remembers how she had to pretend to be a medic the second week because he was too hung over to come in to work. Chrissy: And yet you didn’t fire him? Owen laughs and says yeah, that was the space pig thing, right? Yes, for the “Doctor Who” fans in the audience: Russell just realized that Naoko Mori was in that one episode back in season one and has this obsession with continuity that compelled him to explain why a character who was in maybe one scene happened to look exactly like Tosh even though that could totally have been written off as a coincidence. Chrissy: Wait...space pig? Diandra: Yes, it was as stupid as it sounds. Also, that episode came well before Jack was introduced, so I’m not sure how she could have been working for Torchwood unless the Jack they met was coming from earlier in his own timeline, which is possible, I guess since they met him in 1941. Chrissy: I...do you even know what you’re talking about anymore? Diandra: Not really. Time travel stories are a bitch. Owen circles back to the fact that they never did go on that date. Which is totally his fault because he didn’t “notice until it was too late”. Ugh. Didn’t you do a WHOLE EPISODE about this? And you still managed to screw it up? And then the computer bleats and the message changes from “lockdown” to “coolant venting in progress”. Chrissy: Because it’s important to have the machines still announcing to what you hope is an empty room what is about to happen. Sad, heroic music swells as he announces that it’s okay and goes to stand in the middle of the room so he can face his impending horrific death head on. Tosh just sadly calls his name as the room is filled with white light. And that’s when Jack arrives on the main floor to find the trail of blood Tosh left. He shouts for Gwen to help him and they both run to Tosh’s side. Ianto and John hang back, noting that the projection on the wall is showing the status of the nuclear plant where Owen is. Tosh gives an abbreviated description of the change of plans that turned it into a suicide mission. She smiles up at Jack before going still, a tear midway down her cheek. And we pan away as Gwen clutches her hand and Jack cradles her body, both of them crying. We flash forward to Gwen and Rhys numbly watching news reports of the aftermath of the explosions on the couch in their flat. Back at the hub, Jack is putting Gray into a compartment in the morgue, bemoaning to John that he spent all that time searching for him and now he’s going to lose him again. John asks what the plan is here: cryo freeze him for a hundred years and then...what? He suggests killing him would be kinder. Jack awkwardly says no, there’s been enough death. Chrissy: I’ll take bad action hero lines for $1,000, Alex. John notes that Jack didn’t struggle when he buried him. You know, like he was actually willing to suffer two thousand years of repeatedly choking to death on dirt. Jack calls it a “penance”. John says yeah, but it wasn’t actually his fault though. Jack just blinks at him, kisses Gray’s forehead and seals him in the cryotomb. He goes to walk past John and John stops him and kisses him on the cheek and says he’s sorry for his loss. Chrissy: Well, aren’t YOU basically to blame for that? Diandra: Well, um...I guess Gray is, but...why did Gray use John to get to Jack? Couldn’t he have just done all that shit himself? Chrissy: The writers needed an excuse to bring John back. Diandra: Yeah, it’s probably that. Sad little montage where Jack packs Owen’s things, Gwen packs Tosh’s things and Ianto updates their personnel files with death dates and inactivates their accounts. All of them are crying. And then after Ianto pushes the final button to inactivate Tosh’s account, a video of her launches and they all gravitate to the computer to watch. The video is one of those “if you’re reading/watching this it means I’m dead” deals dramas do to wring out a few extra tears. Tosh expresses the hope that however she died, it wasn’t something lame like randomly getting hit by a bus or electrocuted by a toaster. “It’s okay,” she says. “It really is. Jack, you saved me. You showed me all the wonders of the universe, all those possibilities, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Thank you.” Jack makes a half ass attempt to not cry even more than he already is and turns into a snotty mess. Then Tosh addresses Owen because of course she would assume he was still alive. “You never knew,” she says. Chrissy: Um, yes. Everybody knew. Diandra: Except him apparently because he was incredibly dense. “I love you,” she says, then quickly adds “I love all of you. And I hope I did good.” She turns off the recording and the window disappears. Jack channels his inner cheesy war movie character and says they need to “carry on” now. This clunky moment is made even worse when Gwen sniffles that she doesn’t think she can and Jack draws her and Ianto into his arms and spews some more trite bullshit. Then he finishes with “the end is where we start from,” which...what? And the camera slowly pans back away from them and then away from Cardiff in general and we go to the end credits. Chrissy: You were right. Even though I never cared for Owen, that was painful. Diandra: Well, I’m guessing they kind of applied the same rule as “Lost”. If you’re going to kill a character that the audience maybe doesn’t care that much about, make sure you also kill a character the audience loves so you can still get a reaction out of them. Chrissy: Ana and Libby? Diandra: Ana and Libby. Chrissy: So should I start preparing myself right now for Ianto’s death? Diandra: Probably. But before we get to next season, we have another crossover with “Doctor Who” that is quite possibly crazier than the last one. Chrissy: Oh, goody. I’ll get the alcohol.