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Synopsis
A booby-trapped building explodes and knocks the Torchwood team unconscious. As each team member's life flashes before their eyes, there are a series of flashbacks for all of the main characters (except Gwen); Captain Jack was initiated into a shocked Victorian Torchwood in 1899; Toshiko went on a daring mission to trade alien technology for her mother's life; Ianto wooed Jack with coffee and a flair for alien-catching; and Owen lost his normal life to an alien inside his fiancée's brain.
Plot
The Torchwood team, minus Gwen, investigate a derelict building and are caught up in a trap as it explodes. The quartet experience flashbacks about their origins with the alien-fighting organisation.
Captain Jack is picked up by the all-female Torchwood in Victorian times once they become aware of his immortality. They torture him in order to extract information about The Doctor, to no avail, but soon decide to enlist him as an agent. After many decades pass Jack discovers that one of his colleagues has murdered everyone else in the Hub because of his fear of the new Millennium and the horrors it may hold.
Toshiko joins Torchwood after Jack finds her in a top secret prison because she leaked information from her Ministry Of Defence job to a vicious gang holding her mother captive. Jack is impressed by her ability to assemble a Sonic Modulator despite flawed instructions and ensures she is released and given a pardon once she accepts the Torchwood job.
Ianto harasses Jack for a job following the demise of Torchwood One, where he initially worked. Helping Jack fight off a Weevil and repeatedly praising his coat doesn't work at first, but the pair successfully capture a pterodactyl together - with the help of some chocolate - and Ianto is enlisted.
Owen encounters Jack when he bursts into a hospital room during brain surgery on Owen's ailing fiancée Katie. He removes an alien from her brain and knocks out all the witnesses, including Owen. Katie immediately dies and Owen wakes up to discover a massive cover up. He encounters Jack when visiting Katie's grave and, after a fight, agrees to join Torchwood as a medic.
Back in the present, Gwen and Rhys help to pull everyone from the debris in the building. However, Jack receives a hologram message from Captain John in which he claims responsibility for the bombs and claims to have taken Jack's brother Gray captive.
Cast
- Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
- Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
- Toshiko Sato - Naoko Mori
- Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
- Owen Harper - Burn Gorman
- Rhys Williams - Kai Owen
- Captain John Hart - James Marsters (uncredited)
- Weevil-Paul Kasey
- Blowfish — Paul Kasey
- Toshiko's Mother — Noriko Aida
- Alice Guppy — Amy Manson
- Emily Holroyd — Heather Craney
- Little Girl - Skye Bennett
- Alex Hopkins — Julian Lewis Jones
- Bob — Simon Shackleton
- Milton — Clare Clifford
- Katie Russell — Andrea Lowe
- Jim Garrett — Richard Lloyd-King
Production crew
to be added
References
- Jack mentions Suzie Costello during a flashback sequence as he gives orders to each team member who respond as they are mentioned. However, Suzie's response is cut off by Ianto stopping Jack's car.
- Ianto mentions the destruction of Torchwood One and the Battle of Canary Wharf.
- Toshiko constructs a sonic modulator.
- It was Ianto who found the Torchwood Pteranodon with a rift monitor.
- Jack died 1,392 times between meeting Torchwood and the explosion at the beginning of the episode, and at least 14 more times prior to the first Torchwood encounter.
- Jack took control of Torchwood 3 at the end of 1999 (or the beginning of 2000), after spending a century with the organization.
Story Notes
- The Doctor is named explicitly for the first time in the series.
- Alex's last words to Jack are a variation of the "the 21st century is when it all changes..." monologue from the start of every Torchwood episode. Jack also uttered the phrase to the Doctor in Last of the Time Lords.
Ratings
to be added
Myths
to be added
Filming Locations
- Caerwent Millitary Training Area
Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors
- Jack is "killed" by the blast, Ianto gets at least a hand injury and head wound, and Tosh breaks her arm and some ribs, yet Owen - arguably the most fragile of the group and unable to heal - somehow manages to escape completely unscathed. Martha had said in an earlier episode that Owen can't bruise, and as was revealed by him cutting his hand open in Dead Man Walking, he doesn't bleed either. If one considers this and the fact that he can't feel pain and was wearing clothes that covered most of his body, he could have suffered considerable physical trauma and he and the viewer would not be aware of it. Also, it might just be a storytelling device -- irony. Also, the explosion was down to chance. Chance doesn't decide which person is most 'fragile.'
- The depiction of UNIT as a rather malevolent organization that keeps human prisoners in stark conditions (including filthy cells with no beds) with no rights is at odds with the depiction of the organization in the 1968-89 episodes, as well as the later The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky. Jack covers this by referring to the then-current (political/security) climate; UNIT's behaviour parallels real-world criticisms of the United States and others in the War on Terror era. Also, UNIT was never thoroughly profiled; it may have had a dark side, much as Torchwood did. This is also implied in dialogue when Martha Jones tells the Doctor she wants to change the organization from the inside out in The Sontaran Strategem. Also it is not known who is in charge of UNIT at this point in time as the relationship of former UNIT head Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart -- a more benevolent character -- have not been fully established; note, for example, UNIT's involvement with the world-destroying Osterhagen Key in Journey's End.
- The killing of the Torchwood 3 team on Dec. 31, 1999 take place on the same day as the Eighth Doctor fought the Master in San Francisco, an incident punctuated by news coverage of unusual weather and other odd events. (DW: Doctor Who: the Movie) Yet there's no mention of this at Torchwood, an organization that should know. Time zones: midnight in the UK occurred many hours before midnight in San Francisco, and most of the odd weather and other events surrounding the Master's scheme did not manifest until only a few hours prior to the New Year in San Francisco. It's possible Torchwood would have been made aware of the events "off screen", though Jack would likely have been preoccupied with the murder of his team. Also, Torchwood One is still active at this point and would more likely have handled this issue. Plus Torchwood works for the British Empire and therefore would not go to America, unlike UNIT. At around the time Torchwood Three's members are killed, the Eighth Doctor would have only been meeting Grace Holloway for the first time, long before any major events transpired. The most that Torchwood would know at this point is that a man with two hearts had died in San Francisco, if that had even been reported.
- The team think about how they came to join Torchwood while they are trapped. But how could Jack think back when he is apparently killed by the blast? Torchwood talks a lot about what happens after death; this could be one of the theories. It also could be that he has come back to life, but he has lost consciousness. In addition, it has not yet been established exactly what happens to Jack in the time between "death" and "resurrection". It's possible he's not fully dead, and therefore is capable of having some sort of dream. (It's simply a story-telling device. There's no confirmation that just because we are seeing these events on screen, they are each personally reflecting at that time as to how they joined Torchwood.)
- When Jack enters the Hub, the Doctor's hand can be seen. How did Jack already have possession of the hand prior to the events of The Christmas Invasion? We've never really heard the circumstances behind how Jack obtained the hand. It's possible an unchronicled time-travel scenario occurred (perhaps an experiment in getting his vortex manipulator to work?).
Continuity
- A Blowfish appears in a flashback; one last appeared in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. As it happens, while the Blowfish in this episode is murdered by a Torchwood agent while Jack watches, in the previous appearance it is Jack shown shooting one in the back (although in defence of others, not as murder).
- Captain John Hart is behind the bomb attack, he last appeared in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.
- Gray is seen in a hologram, he was last seen (in a flashback as a child) in Adam.
- The tarot card reading girl appears in a flashback, she was last seen in Dead Man Walking, except in the modern day. Here she predicts that "two turns of the century" will pass before Jack finally meets up with the Doctor again, an event that occurs in DW: Utopia. The nature of this girl, including why she appears in two different time periods, has yet to be revealed. One of her tarot cards includes an image of Jack.
- When Jack begins to work with Torchwood, they know of the Doctor based on events in DW: Tooth and Claw.
- The flashbacks showing Torchwood in the period 1890s-2000 depict its cold, manipulative ways as seen in DW: Army of Ghosts, et al. Jack mentions on several occasions how he wants to turn it into an organization that helps people; it is suggested that the cold-blooded killing of the blowfish by an early Torchwood operative might have been one of the inspirations for this.
- Jack, upon meeting Ianto for the second time, references his girlfriend, Lisa Hallet; to which Ianto replies deceased.
- UNIT is referenced, although it is depicted as a somewhat malevolent organization, in contrast to previous depictions in Doctor Who. Jack suggests it may be due to the current political climate of the day; a reference to the internment camp at Guantanimo Bay in DW: The Sontaran Strategem and a reference to a war in Iraq in TW: To the Last Man suggest an event or events similar to 9/11 and War on Terror occur in the Doctor Who/Torchwood universe.
- The killing of the blowfish alien parallels Jack's killing of a similar creature in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (although in the earlier case it wasn't cold-blooded).
- The events surrounding Alex's killing of the Torchwood 3 team are current with the events surrounding the "birth" of the Eighth Doctor and his battle with the Master as seen in the 1996 telefilm.
- Jack indicates that he was on Earth following the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. Unknown to Jack, however, the impact was actually caused by a freighter in a failed attempt by the Cybermen to change Earth history (DW: Earthshock)
- First appearance of UNIT soldiers or a UNIT facility in the series. In fact, since UNIT's involvement in DW: Aliens of London/World War Three and The Christmas Invasion was in the background (mostly confined to verbal references), this is actually the first major appearance of the organization since 1989's Battlefield, as it predates the organization's return in The Sontaran Strategem.
DVD releases
- This story, along with the rest of Torchwood Series 2, has been released in a complete series boxset.
See also
to be added