Suzie Costello
Susannah Costello, better known as Suzie, was headhunted by Jack Harkness to join Torchwood Three, where she became second-in-command and proved herself adept in various areas of Torchwood's work.
Taking a more pragmatic and less emotional approach to her work than some of her teammates, Suzie loved her job but ultimately became obsessed with the resurrection gauntlet and the possibility of cheating death. Upon being found responsible for a number of murders, she killed herself and was later resurrected for a time per her plans before being killed again.
Following a second resurrection, Suzie died in the arms of her lover, DCI Tom Cutler, and was damaged beyond any hope of return.
Biography
Early life
Born on 6 May 1973, (PROSE: The Torchwood Archives) Susannah Costello (AUDIO: The Last Love Song of Suzie Costello) grew up in the United Kingdom in a place that she believed was far worse than Bridlington. Her father wanted the Costellos to be a normal British family, but the family, in Suzie's words, were a mess. (AUDIO: Sync)
When Suzie was a child, her mother would sing "Soley, Soley" by Middle of the Road to her, a song that Suzie would later call "ancient". She came to hate her father, who suffered from cancer and ended up in a Welsh hospital. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie) She found herself very stressed during exams, resulting in her having to take her driver's test multiple times before she passed. (AUDIO: Moving Target)
Suzie left her home because of her family being "difficult" and did not want to return to them, believing that she had let them down. However, she would later say that she might one day go back. (AUDIO: Sync)
Joining Torchwood
Suzie was headhunted by Jack Harkness to join Torchwood Three (AUDIO: Moving Target) some time after Ben Brown (PROSE: Long Time Dead) was hired and before Sebastian Vaughan and Toshiko Sato. (AUDIO: The Vigil) Being sought out by Jack made her feel validated (AUDIO: Moving Target) and she was told by him when she joined that it was the one job that one could not quit. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie)
Suzie moved to Cardiff, a city that she never grew to like, (AUDIO: Sync) and lived some distance away from the Hub. She had a bicycle which she could use to travel to and from work. (AUDIO: Moving Target) Although she made the right jokes and said the right things to fit in with her colleagues, she told them nothing of her life or her father (AUDIO: Red Skies) and largely kept to herself, not developing any friendships with her teammates. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie)
Suzie thought when she started at Torchwood that the amount of life out in the universe would make her feel small. Instead, it was the fact that she would never see any of the wonders of the universe due to her being stuck on what she described as "a backwater in an insignificant solar system". (AUDIO: The Last Love Song of Suzie Costello) Whilst she found her job interesting, she also found it terrifying. (AUDIO: Moving Target)
Torchwood career
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Suzie was especially interested in the scientific side of things, but Jack was not forthcoming with information on alien artefacts. Because of this, she sometimes took them home, (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie; AUDIO: Moving Target) which she was not alone in doing. (TV: Everything Changes) She also rented a lock-up where she kept damaged and incomplete technology without Torchwood's knowledge. (AUDIO: Sync)
Tosh called Suzie after escaping Chelmsley Grove Psychiatric Unit and told her about the patients who had been buried in the grounds after being killed by Felicia Haynes's alien squids. (AUDIO: Suckers)
Suzie detected an Orthopteroid which had just arrived from the Rift at Penarth Pier and called a phone box on the pier, using the man who picked up, Emlyn Crook, to keep its attention there whilst she travelled to the scene armed with a beam emitter, having to use a taxi as the rest of the team was busy elsewhere. During the journey she tried to keep Emlyn from leaving the box, even as passerbys were targeted by the Orthopteroud. Upon arrival her plan nearly went awry however she was able to hit it with the beam emitter and send it back to though the Rift without killing Emlyn, though he was furious after realising how she had used him regardless. She later phoned him again to protest they’d saved many lives together and she was a good person, however Emlyn hung up on her. (AUDIO: Bad Connection [+]Loading...["Bad Connection (audio story)"])
In 2004, Suzie found Object 1 in an Ovid Industries factory in Aberfair which was making bodies for the Committee. To get it away from Torchwood Cardiff, Jack had her call Yvonne Hartman and arrange to give it to her so that it would be Torchwood One's problem. Yvonne promised to talk to her about the advancement of her career in Torchwood and Jack thanked her, telling her that he had assumed she was just a "daddy's girl". (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)
Suzie was in the Hub on 26 March 2005 when it was frozen in a time bubble for a day by Torchwood One's Rajesh Singh so that Yvonne could procure a Drahvin scanner from the Hub unhindered. (AUDIO: One Rule)
In search of Torchwood Four, Suzie took time off from her work to investigate a black spot off the coast of Iceland, borrowing an experimental submarine. She found a crashed spaceship, Orion, which used an avatar based on her romantic preferences to manipulate her into helping it open a nearby rift so it could return to the 32nd century. She eventually realised the truth and angrily saw to the ship's destruction, claiming she might have accepted its offer to go to the future with it had it not broken her heart. (AUDIO: The Last Love Song of Suzie Costello)
Suzie greatly feared death and became obsessed with the resurrection gauntlet. She placed triggers on Pilgrim member Max Tresilian for two years, using retcon to alter his behaviour and have him begin a killing spree in the event of her death so that her help would be required and Torchwood would resurrect her.
After Owen Harper joined Torchwood, Suzie began a sexual relationship with him (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie) which she sometimes felt could lead to something more. (AUDIO: Moving Target) She gave him a key to her home.
In 2006, Suzie agreed to give the Elyrians asylum in return for stolen Dorgan technology, but she betrayed them by sending warp missiles after them so that Torchwood would not learn of her secret dealings. She attempted to salvage the technology from the crashed spacecraft and became bonded to Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen by a control circuit before the craft exploded, forcing them to work together to find the pilot to be freed and avoid being killed by the missiles targeting them. They succeeded and Suzie threw the circuit bracelets into the pilot's rescue pod as he entered the Rift, saving herself and Blon, who promised to keep her secret if she protected her from Torchwood. (AUDIO: Sync)
On the day of the Cardiff Earthquake, Suzie, Tosh and Owen were instructed to remain in the Hub by Jack, who assured them that it would be "OK" as, unbeknownst to them, he was present for these events 150 years in his personal past. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets)
On 29 November 2006, the Earth was frozen by Bronkbluff Safaris Ltd so that aliens could hunt Alex, but Suzie remained active due to the effects of the time distortion generator that she had taken home from work. She was unable to get Alex into the Hub and had to fight and kill numerous aliens to protect her, which Alex believed she was only doing to make herself feel important rather than out of a desire to do good. After learning from the Referee that Alex would soon commit suicide anyway, Suzie used her last bullet to kill her and resume time, calling Jack afterwards. (AUDIO: Moving Target)
Suzie asked Sebastian Vaughan to get Tosh's report on the cortex leeches. However, he had forgotten and got Tosh to hurriedly finish the report the night before. At some point, she had Sebastian film a final message in the event of his death. (AUDIO: The Vigil)
Death
Aware that the resurrection gauntlet not only worked particularly well on the victims of violent deaths, but that it was especially so on those killed by a knife made of the same metal, Suzie committed a series of murders to improve her use of it. She stabbed three victims from behind with the knife and, when resurrecting them, positioned herself behind their head in case they were able to identify her.
When Jack suggested that Torchwood liaise with the police on the matter of the murders, Suzie found that she had been identified. (TV: Everything Changes) She wiped her records (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie) and planned to run away, taking a gun with her. Upon being confronted by PC Gwen Cooper and Jack, whom she shot and whose resurrection she witnessed, she shot and killed herself (TV: Everything Changes) in the knowledge that she would be brought back some months later.
Suzie's body was placed in the Torchwood cryo-chambers and her worldly possessions collected and placed into storage, as was common practice for deceased Torchwood operatives. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie)
Resurrections
Three months after Suzie's death, Max killed three people in the space of a day, marking the walls in blood with the word "Torchwood" to draw Torchwood's attention. After discovering her involvement with Pilgrim, Torchwood decided to revive Suzie, ironically with the very resurrection gauntlet that Suzie had killed for earlier. Gwen wielded the glove this time, but rather than reviving Suzie for only a few minutes as usual, the glove revived her apparently permanently. This left Torchwood in a quandary since they now had a dead person who had come back to life, yet among other things still had a severe head injury caused by the suicide bullet. Unknown to the team, Suzie had foreseen this and through a mental link in the glove, Gwen was forced to transfer part of her essence, which Suzie used to heal her injury, an action which slowly killed Gwen. She also visited her father and murdered him.
Seeing the effects on Gwen, Jack asked Suzie to give up her restored life. She refused. Faced with Gwen's imminent death, Jack shot Suzie down in cold blood. However the link via the gauntlet prevented Suzie from dying. Only after Jack ordered Toshiko Sato to destroy the gauntlet did Suzie die again. Her body was returned to the cryo-chamber. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie)
Following the destruction of the Hub in 2009, (TV: Children of Earth: Day One) a piece of alien technology concealed within her body was activated, enabling Suzie to be resurrected for a third time. After murdering one young worker at the site, she fled the area, undertaking the alias Sue Costa. A series of brutal murders followed until Suzie was finally tracked down before then being enticed back to the Hub. There she met DCI Tom Cutler with whom she shared an intimate relationship. Tom attempted to negotiate with Suzie before the Hub was destroyed a second time. Half an hour later the two were locked in each others arms before the explosion took both their lives. The remains of both Tom and Suzie were later discovered by a tearful PC Andy Davidson. (PROSE: Long Time Dead)
Legacy
Gwen mentioned how Suzie was resurrected by the glove when Martha Jones asked how they obtained the gloves after Jack resurrected Owen using one. (TV: Dead Man Walking)
After the 456 incident, Jack revealed that he felt responsible for Suzie's death, along with those of all the other Torchwood operatives who died under his command. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Five)
Jack regretted never having taken Suzie out to get her drunk and ask her about her life and her father. (AUDIO: Red Skies)
Personality
Suzie felt that she was "messed up" and thus did not fit her father's idyllic vision of his family. (AUDIO: Sync) She loved her work at Torchwood (TV: Everything Changes) and felt that it made her important, (AUDIO: Moving Target) but came to believe that Earth was dirty as it seemed to only warrant the arrival of Weevils and other examples of what she saw as alien "filth". (TV: Everything Changes)
Suzie was highly organised. (PROSE: Long Time Dead) She was skilled with computers and, according to Tosh, was good at everything. Despite this, she had low self-confidence and believed that Gwen was better than her in every way and that she herself only ever managed to do wrong. Following her first death, she realised that life was all that there was and was willing to do anything to remain alive, including allowing Gwen to die for her. It gave her great pleasure to send her father into the darkness that she had experienced.
Whilst working at Torchwood, Suzie kept herself to herself and did not develop much of a relationship with her teammates. Despite having a sexual relationship with Owen and working with Tosh and Jack for years, none of them felt as though they knew her. (TV: They Keep Killing Suzie)
Appearance
Suzie was a tall, beautiful woman with thick, dark hair, brown eyes and full lips. She had long, slim limbs, clear features and could move with a cat-like elegance. John Blackman believed that she was "absolutely stunning". (PROSE: Long Time Dead)
Behind the scenes
- In order to catch viewers unaware with the twist ending of Everything Changes, the first episode of Torchwood credited actress Indira Varma as a regular cast member. She was featured in pre-broadcast publicity for the series.
- In his book The Writer's Tale, Russell T Davies reveals that he planned at one point to bring Suzie back for an episode of Torchwood series 2 but Varma was unable to commit due to being pregnant at the time.
Footnotes
- ↑ Suzie would later be revived with the resurrection gauntlet and die again in the 2000s at Hedley Point, once the gauntlet was destroyed. She would once again be resurrected in 2009, by alien technology within her body, and would be killed in an explosion at the Hub.
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