Dead Man Walking (TV story)

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Revision as of 01:19, 21 February 2021 by SarahJaneFan (talk | contribs) (It was me who removed the dates in the first place because they were all random and taken from the Ahistory book so there was barely any evidence supporting them. Despite the Aliens of London dating controversy, we do know roughly when Torchwood takes place, this issue is mainly down to when and if Series 2 actually bleeds into 2009.)
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Dead Man Walking was the seventh episode of Series 2 of Torchwood. It was written by Matt Jones and directed by Andy Goddard. It featured John Barrowman as Jack Harkness, Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper, Burn Gorman as Owen Harper, Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato, Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones.

In the same vein as They Keep Killing Suzie, it saw the resurrection of a principal cast member. The story continued almost directly on from Reset.

This episode examined the nature of the afterlife. It revealed that one place where people can end up after death is an empty netherworld of darkness, inhabited by a demonic creature that expunges all life with which it comes into contact. Another possible afterlife, Limbo, would be revealed in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?.

Synopsis

"I'm bringing Owen back."

Owen Harper has died. Jack Harkness decides to return him to life for a few minutes. No one could have guessed the consequences.

Plot

Owen Harper lies dead of a gunshot wound, about to be opened up for autopsy by Martha Jones at the Hub. Jack orders the team to do nothing until he arrives. Jack enters a strange café where a girl, that appears twelve years old, reads tarot. She tells Jack he owes her a favour and where to find what he is looking for. As he leaves, she holds the Death card.

Jack goes to St Mary's, an abandoned church where Weevils sleep and store collected bric-a-brac. He breaks into a safe and retrieves from it a box. When Jack returns to the Hub with the box, to the astonishment of the team, it holds a left-handed resurrection gauntlet. Gwen objects to what Jack is about to do, reminding him of what happened with Suzie. Jack ignores her. He hopes to bring Owen back for two minutes for everybody to say their goodbyes. He resurrects Owen, who is confused and scared. Tosh tells Owen that she loves him, and Jack — after initially upsetting Owen by asking for the morgue access code — tries to prepare Owen for death. The connection is lost, Owen stops breathing and Jack holds his hand, believing him dead. Then, Owen says that he will need his hand back.

The glove has brought Owen back from death permanently. Unlike Suzie, there is no obvious source of life energy. No energy is being drained from Jack as Suzie drained energy from Gwen, but Owen is getting energy from somewhere. Toshiko tells Owen she didn't mean it when she told him that she loved him. Owen says that this is a textbook reaction to grief, but does not want to discuss it further. He changes the subject and leaves the room.

Owen has visions of himself in a place shrouded in darkness, full of eerie whispers. He temporarily loses control of his body. During this incident, his pupils turn black and he speaks in an unknown language. Although he has been put in quarantine, Owen escapes and goes to a bar in Cardiff. He finds he can no longer get drunk or get an erection (which depends on blood flow), so he can no longer have sex as all his life processes have stopped. He is now the walking dead.

Jack catches him and they have a bar brawl. When Owen shouts that he belongs to Torchwood "special ops", Jack assumes a fake English accent and denies it. This results in them both being put in a police cell. As they bicker, Owen hears the drinks in his stomach sloshing and realises that he can no longer digest them so they'll just sit there if left. Also unable to force himself to be sick by sticking his fingers down his throat, he is forced to stand on his head until the liquid comes back through his throat allowing him to vomit, much to Jack's amused disgust. After a moment of panic, Owen and Jack bond. Jack says that he once dated Marcel Proust and that his immortality, which Owen covets in his position, is not the gift that Owen envies. They leave after Jack reveals his thoughts on immortality. Outside they encounter Weevils which chase Owen and Jack until they are cornered on a rooftop. Instead of killing them, the Weevils bow to Owen, who again temporarily loses control of his body and addresses the Weevils in the same unknown language.

Jack and Owen bond over their immortality.

At the Hub, the team learn that Owen's cells are changing slowly. When complete, something will take over Owen's body. Research shows a similar incident occurred in legend, at the town that predated Cardiff during the time of the Black Death: a little girl died, and the town priest (undoubtedly using the same resurrection gauntlet that has brought Owen back) subsequently performed a miracle to resurrect her, but Death itself came back with the revived girl. Death sought to kill thirteen victims, as doing so would allow it to enter the world permanently. But before Death could take more than twelve victims, what the story simply describes as "faith" stopped the entity.

Believing this legend is recurring, Owen suggests he must have his neural pathways closed by embalming to stop Death from using him as a gateway. As the team are getting Owen ready for the process, the resurrection gauntlet springs to life and attacks Martha. Owen destroys the gauntlet with a gunshot, but not before it has drained Martha's life and reduced her to an old woman. Before the team can get Martha help or do anything about Owen, the cellular conversion completes, allowing Death to fully possess and then emerge from Owen.

Owen tangles with Death.

Upon manifesting, Death kills Jack, and heads to a hospital, drawn to those close to death. It begins going after patients who are helpless or alone, sucking each one dry and adding their death to its count. As Jack resurrects, the Torchwood team rush Martha to the hospital in her greatly aged state, where a nurse says that as her red blood cell count is low and as she is over eighty, her chances of survival are slim. Upon realising from the Weevils gathering outside that Death is here, the team evacuates everyone from the building, while Death, after taking twelve souls, chases after Jamie Burton, a young leukaemia patient who has been left behind.

Owen saves Jamie and helps Tosh and him escape. Ianto, who is waiting with Martha, explains to the team that according to research he's uncovered, the "faith" which defeated Death before was the resurrected child, whose name was Faith. Owen realises that he is the only one who can fight Death; he is already dead and has nothing to lose. After kissing Tosh (and stealing her alien lockpick device), Owen locks the other team members out of the hospital and begins a brawl with Death, finally consuming its energy and forcing it back into the darkness.

On returning to the Hub, Martha explains to Owen that the energy keeping him "alive" is dissipating but it could take anywhere between thirty seconds and thirty years to die out completely and end Owen's "life." Owen asks Jack to let him work again, as by doing his job as a doctor, he can try to repay the twelve lives that have been lost as a consequence of his resurrection. Toshiko and Jack discuss Owen literally fighting off Death in the hospital; Jack gravely declares, "Ah, you can never really beat Death. Never escape it. It's always in the shadows, waiting!"

Cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.
          

This episode did not have a "created by Russell T Davies" credit.


References

  • Martha asks Jack why he didn't inform UNIT about his ability to bring back the dead.
  • Jack visits a psychic fortune teller.
  • Gwen mentions the resurrection glove's last use on Suzie Costello.
  • Owen has previously shown a connection with the Weevils.
  • After escaping from the Hub, the pub Owen visits is in the midst of a costume party where a number of people are dressed as angels.
  • Acting as a drunk, Jack claims that Owen is special needs.
  • Owen calls a police officer a meathead.
  • After Owen is resurrected from the dead, he soon loses many bodily functions, including the ability to produce flatulence or enjoy sex.
  • A Shrek poster is pinned to the wall of the children's ward.
  • Owen mentions necrophilia.

Story notes

  • This episode aired 10 minutes after the BBC Two repeat of Reset at 10:00pm on BBC Three; and was repeated on BBC Two in its usual 9:00pm timeslot the next week, on Wednesday 27 February 2008.
  • A family friendly pre-watershed edit of this episode aired at 7:00pm, the following day, Thursday 28 February 2008 on BBC Two.
  • This episode continues on directly from Reset, at the end of which Owen was killed.
  • This episode, Reset and the following episode, A Day in the Death, all take place within a period of about three days (based upon dialogue in the third episode).
  • Suzie Costello's resurrection in They Keep Killing Suzie, as well as her statement about what the afterlife was like, are mentioned and referenced to several times in this episode. Her final warning to Jack before her second death also comes to fruition when the creature lurking in the darkness escapes and comes after him.
  • Jack appears to have a thing for writers. After mentioning a relationship with Christopher Isherwood in Reset, in this episode he mentions having a short-lived relationship with Marcel Proust.
  • Jack's immortality is shown to be so complete that even an entity claiming to be the embodiment of death itself cannot kill him permanently. This was previously alluded to in End of Days, when the demon Abaddon could not kill him for long.

Ratings

  • 3.3 million BBC Two viewers, with an AI of 87%
  • 1.0 million BBC Three viewers
  • 4.32 million viewers - final BARB rating[2]

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • At 41:30, while Gwen and Jack are walking during the conversation "I'm getting reports of twelve people dead", the camera can be clearly seen reflected in the glass as they approach the door.
  • When the black smoke is coming out of Owens mouth, the projection behind him can be seen flashing 95%, despite having previously shown 100%. Flashing back a couple moments later and it once again reads 100%.

Continuity

Home video releases

  • Dead Man Walking, along with the rest of Torchwood Series 2, was released in a complete series box set in 2008.
  • It was also released in the Series 1-4 boxset (Region 2 release: 14 November 2011.)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ianto mentions that the team pulled the first Resurrection gauntlet out of the harbour "last year", setting this story the year after TV: Everything Changes.
  2. ↑ BARB Ratings - April, 2008

External links

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