Ghost Machine (TV story)

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This article concerns the episode of Torchwood. For information on the actual device, see Ghost Machine.


When Gwen retrieves an alien object from a fleeing hoodie, she's haunted by a vision of a lonely young boy. As the team tracks down the object's owner, the elusive Bernie Harries, Owen experiences an even more terrifying vision and a long-buried crime resurfaces. (From BBC Programme Information.)

Synopsis

Torchwood comes into possession of a device that can tap into the hidden energy left behind by strong emotions, creating ghostly recreations of the events that left them there. When Owen accidentally uses the device at the scene of an unsolved murder, he becomes obsessed with bringing the killer to justice.


Plot

Jack, Owen and Gwen pursue a man through the Cardiff streets, while Toshiko tracks his alien energy signature through the CCTV network. Gwen is separated from the others when she chases the man through a closing shop door, catching up with him outside a train station. However, he gets away, leaving Gwen with his jacket — which is what is giving out the alien signature. Gwen retrieves a small device from the jacket. Activating it, she has a vision of the station as it was in the past, empty except for a young boy coming out, saying he is lost and wants to go home. He is wearing a tag that identifies him as Thomas Erasmus Flanagan. Gwen calls out to him, but he does not seem to hear her. The vision ends, and when Jack and Owen arrive, she tells them she has seen a ghost.

Back at the Hub, the CCTV footage just shows Gwen standing still at the scene, with other people around her but no sign of any boy. Jack orders Toshiko to search the databases for the boy's name, but Owen beats everyone to it by checking the Cardiff telephone book. Gwen and Owen go to Flanagan's home and find him an old man. Flanagan tells Gwen how he was evacuated to Cardiff when he was eight, during World War II, but due to a mix-up, there was no one to greet him at the station. He wandered for a while, lost, until someone found him. He was taken in by a couple and remained in Cardiff after the war. As they leave, Gwen receives a call from her boyfriend, Rhys, and they have a slight argument when he discovers she does not know if she is going home for dinner.

Jack identifies the man they were chasing earlier: one Sean "Bernie" Harris, a petty criminal from Splott. An analysis of the device confirms it as alien and filled with nanotechnology. Looking for Harris, however, they only find a bad reputation and bad debts. On the way back to the station to try and replicate the vision, Owen manages to activate the device under a bridge. He sees a young woman, Lizzie Lewis, dressed in 1960s-era clothes being confronted by a young man named Ed Morgan. While Owen watches helplessly, Morgan attacks Lizzie. The vision leaves Owen badly shaken.

At the Hub, the team discover that Lizzie was raped and murdered under the bridge in 1963. Her killer was never found, but Owen insists that Toshiko look up the name Ed Morgan and other records about Lizzie. Jack discovers that the device contains a quantum transducer, converting human emotion into "ghosts". As Owen gets more insistent about reopening Lizzie's murder case, Jack reminds Owen that he merely saw the echo of a moment, amplified by alien technology. Their priority is to find Harris and discover what he knows about this "ghost machine".

Jack takes Gwen to the Hub's shooting range and shows her Torchwood's collection of exotic firearms, telling her she needs to know how to use them. He teaches her the basics of shooting, and she finds herself being attracted to him, and him to her. Gwen realises the time and has to leave. She asks Jack where he sleeps, and discovers not only that he does not leave the Hub, he also does not sleep. Gwen returns home to find Rhys has gone out with friends. She uses the ghost machine and sees happy scenes from her life with Rhys. When Rhys returns home minutes later, Gwen makes up with him.

Owen, meanwhile, is being haunted by the vision of Lizzie Lewis, staying up all night to try to find her killer. He discovers that Ed Morgan was questioned concerning the murder but was released. Owen tracks Morgan down to his present-day home and confronts him. When Owen mentions Lizzie and that he knows what Morgan did, the old man demands that Owen leave, saying that he will get nothing out of him. As Owen does so, he spots "Bernie" Harris and gives chase, eventually catching him. Instead of hurting him like Bernie expects, Owen takes him to a pub instead.

When the rest of the team arrive, Bernie explains that he found the ghost machine in a biscuit tin kept in a lock up belonging to a crazy old man. The machine showed him a woman leaving her dead baby in a canal; when Bernie found the woman living nearby, she paid him not to reveal her secret. He mentions seeing Lizzie's murder, which affects Owen. As the team turns to leave, Bernie asks them if they want the "other half".

At Bernie's house, they find, in addition to the other half of the machine, a biscuit tin with alien rocks and alien money; debris that washed up through the Rift. The two halves click together easily. Bernie tells Gwen he only used the other half once, and it showed him dead, bleeding on the road outside his house, but as he is now. He is worried he will die before his next birthday. Catching up with the others, Gwen accidentally activates the machine, and sees herself holding a bloody knife. Her future self says, "I was too late… I couldn't stop it… He's dead… Owen had the knife… he wanted to kill him… I couldn't stop him."

At the Hub, Jack suggests that what Gwen saw was merely a possible future, and neither that nor Bernie's death might come to pass. In a pub, Toshiko tells Owen that she found Morgan's medical records, showing that he is claustrophobic, paranoid and depressed, with a few recorded suicide attempts. Owen tells Toshiko about his own visit, and realises that Morgan thought Owen wanted money. He then realises that Bernie had been trying to blackmail Morgan. Meanwhile, Morgan telephones Bernie.

Toshiko and Owen return to the Hub and tell Jack what they have figured out, and Jack calls Gwen. Finding out she is at Bernie's to tell him that what he saw might not be his fate, Jack and Owen rush over. Toshiko stays behind to keep an eye on the CCTV, and she sees Morgan heading for Bernie's flat.

When Bernie sees Morgan outside and rushes out of the house, Gwen realises that Bernie's vision of the future might come true, and follows him. Morgan threatens Bernie and Gwen with a knife, and is about to kill them to keep his secret when Owen and Jack arrive and disarm him. Owen gets the knife, and, still angry at the fate of Lizzie Lewis, seems about to kill Morgan before he regains his senses and gives the knife to Gwen.

Gwen is relieved that no one died, but Morgan lunges at her saying, "I knew you'd come for me." The knife in Gwen's hand plunges into Morgan's stomach, and he falls. Owen attempts CPR, but Morgan dies. Gwen, in shock, her hands bloody, tells Jack, "I was so close… I couldn't stop it…"

Back at the Hub, the others tell Gwen that Morgan was already suicidal, and that his death is not her fault. Jack notes that the problem with the machine is that it makes people want to change things, make it happen differently. They agree that it is not meant for humanity, and Ianto places the device in the secure archives.

Gwen watches the dawn over the bay, still shaken by the night's events and feeling responsible for Morgan's death. As the sun comes up on a new day, Jack tells her that the ghosts are all around, a million shadows of human emotion… they just have to learn to live with them.


Cast


Crew

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References

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Story Notes

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Ratings

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Myths

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Location Filming

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Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • When Owen and Toshiko are discussing Ed Morgan in the pub, she refers to him as "claustrophobic". But later, when Morgan is heading for Bernie's flat, she refers to him as "agoraphobic".

Continuity

  • Gwen's words after Morgan's death do not exactly mirror those in her earlier vision, perhaps indicating that Jack was correct about it merely being a possible future. Similarly, it appears that Bernie's vision of his own death has also been averted.
  • The circled "P" emblem of the Preachers from the Doctor Who episode "Rise of the Cybermen" can be seen as faded graffiti on rusty bins outside Bernie's flat.
  • As Owen flips through his various fake ID cards, one can be seen for UNIT.

An 1886 letter on the Torchwood Institute website suggests that Owen is not the first member of the Institute to feel personally involved with a case.[1]

  • An article dated 2007 on the same website provides some more background on the "crazy old man" in whose lock up the ghost machine was found. The date further confirms that Torchwood takes place in the near future.[2] This is also supported when Thomas told Gwen that he'd lived in Cardiff for 66 years after being evacuated from London in 1941, placing the episode in 2007. The fact that Bernie says that he'll be 20 years old in July places the episode anywhere between January and June of 2007.
  • The explanation Jack gives for the ghosts matches the one Sarah Jane Smith would later give in "Eye of the Gorgon" an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.


DVD Releases

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See Also

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External Links

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