Torchwood - Season 2

"Have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?"
"Bloody Torchwood."

"I worked my way up through the ranks."
"I bet the ranks were very grateful."

"You're good on roofs."

"Oh that's gorgeous."
"That's a poodle."

Jack returns to his annoying team. Then another rogue Time Agent Captain John (Marsters) shows up dressed like a reject from an Adam Ant video. John's a bad bad bad bad man. Bad things happen. A bit of an underwhelming return, the tone of the show has changed.

Comments:

• The team are wondering where Jack is from.
• The Time Agency is gone.
• How long does it take Jack to revive?
• Who is Gray?

"It's all over."
"Lets all have sex."

A burglary turns into a slaughter which leads the team to a cadre of alien sleeper agents. This was mediocre, it just didn't grab me.

Highlight: Jack gets skewered.

Comments:

• Janet was scared of Beth.
• When did Ianto get a personality? Did Jack bang something loose in his brain?
• Did the wife and children get killed? Did the baby die?

Time shifts to 1918 are occurring at a hospital and Toshiko and a World War 1 soldier are the only ones who can save the day. Now this is 'Torchwood'. This was very good.

Highlights:

• The 1918 Torchwood team and their plumy accents.
• The 1918 nurse sees Gwen - creepy.
• Jack can sense time shifts?
• The Torchwood headed notepaper.

Comments:

• So Jack has worked for Torchwood for over 90 years?
• Do Aldi sell temporal locks? Because I want one.
• What happened to Jack in World War 1?
• So the Torchwood lot know Jack isn't from now but do they know what time he is from?
• The poor defrosted soldier's fate, sad.

Highlight:

• Jack's waist coat.

Comments:

• No Jack, the standoff between you and Rhys wasn't homoerotic.
• Was Jack's alien meat eating line really necessary?
• Owen killed the space whale. Burk.
• Gwen needs to get off her damn soapbox.
• John Barrowman's acting was really bad in this one.

Comments:

• The intro changes.
• The cinematography of people's fake memories of Adam.
• Adam's smug face needed a good slap.
• The mysterious box is similar to the box from 'Hellraiser'.
• So that was Jack's home. Who invaded it? What happened to Gray?

The Doctor's discarded companion Dr Martha Jones shows up for a visit. She and Jack bond and make more references to 'Doctor Who' in this episode then in all the previous Torchwood episodes combined. Martha assist the team bring down a evil professor (Dale) who is running corrupt clinical trails. In bringing down the villain o'the week, Owen is shot dead. Good thing there's another doctor around to replace him. For some reason this never aroused any interest. No wonder the writers have been making Owen nicer lately. Why did Tosh want to date him anyway? Did she know about his fondness for the date rape spray? Also this episode bore more than a passing resemble to the plot of the Torchwood novel 'Slow Decay'.

Highlights:

• The Saxon mention, you think the fact that the UK elected a murderous nutter as OM would get more attention.
• Interrogation via Weevil.

"Is it still necrophilia if I'm conscious?"

A completely cracked out episode that sees Jack raise Owen from the dead (sort of) with the help of the 2nd Risen Mitten only for the undead yob and his blue lipstick to become a conduit for Death (or one of Death's idiot cousins). It's OTT Gothic melodrama full of hot button emotional manipulation, Bergman like weirdness and idiot comedy. It's like some 'Torchwood' fanfic was filmed. It's OTT goodness.

Highlights:

• Jack on the Tarot card.
• The ridiculous beer projectile vomiting scene - so stupid and cheesy that it's kind of funny.
• Owen's 'no blood' line.
• The skeleton effect.

Comments:

• What is with the creepy fortune telling kid?
• Jack found the 2nd Risen Mitten easily enough, did they never bother looking before?
• Somewhere Suzie is laughing.
• Jack and his name dropping. And one question is answered, the team sometimes thing Jack makes his stories up.
• Since when did Torchwood answer to UNIT? Since when did Martha become the boss of Jack?
• What is with the scene where the Risen Mitten Mark 2 attacks the team? Someone watch too much 'Evil Dead 2'?
• Didn't the Death thing kill Jack? Didn't his death count as one of the 13?
• Owen fighting the skeleton effect dust cloud was a bit dumb.

Highlights:

• The old dude bought an alien translation of James Herbert's 'The Fog'. The whole concept of aliens bothering to translate such a shite schlock horror is hilarious.
• The alien probe.

Comments:

• Jack is surprisingly unsympathetic to Owen considering how he felt about being traded so badly by the Doctor after his transformation in 'The Parting of The Ways'.

On the eve of her wedding Gwen is bitten by an alien shapeshifter. Which means that on her wedding day Gwen is carrying an alien baby and being pursued by the thing's murderous mother. So Torchwood have to crash the wedding which leads to running, chasing, punch ups, gore, guns and retcon. Very good.

Highlights:

• Ianto in the wedding dress shop.
• Gwen's dress and veil.
• The shapeshifter as Jack.
• Rhys and the chainsaw.
• Jack and his big gun.
• Jack's comment about the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

Comments:

• The stripper. Nuff said.
• Why didn't they use the alien teleporter thing earlier? (Editor note: because it killed before?)
• Gwen's friends are total chavs.
• Was the song 'Tainted Love' playing at the reception supposed to be foreshadowing something?

An awful episode.

Comments:

• The psychic Jack hints are back.
• Jack was in a travelling show, just like the Cher song. He may have been working undercover for Torchwood.
• TPTB were aiming for 'Sapphire & Steel' creepiness with the seedy carnies but it just didn't work.

"Jonah had looked into the heart of a Dark Star. What he'd seen had driven him mad."

Andy asks Gwen to look into a missing persons case. This leads to Gwen getting up on her soapbox, burning her bridges with Andy and endangering her relationship with Rhys. Gwen realises the rift works both ways and people from Cardiff are being scattered across time and space. The few that have been returned are being cared for by Jack. Gwen reunites one rift ravaged man with his mother only for it all to go horribly wrong. Gwen gets off her soapbox in shame. Okay. But nobody other than Jack, Gwen and Tosh realised the rift works both ways? And the Jack/Ianto sex scene wasn't bad except for the fact it involved Ianto.

"The century will turn twice before you find each other again."

"Dinosaurs? Had 'em for breakfast, had to. Only source of pre-killed food protein after the asteroid crashed."

On a mission Jack, Ianto, Owen and Tosh are caught up in a bomb blast and as they lie among the wreckage, we get flashbacks that show each came to join Torchwood. Jack was forcibly recruited in Victorian London. He worked for them for decades and got to be in command of Torchwood 3 after his predecessor went mad and slaughtered his employees on New Years Eve 1999. Tosh was recruited after she had a 'V For Vendetta' experience courtesy of UNIT. Jack got her out of her prison cell and gave her a job. Ianto man-whored, literally, his way into working for Jack after the destruction of Torchwood 1. Jack at this point had gone freelance and severed all links with Torchwood 1. Owen was recruited by Jack after his fiancée Katie died after an alien grew in her brain and killed her. At the episodes end, it is revealed who set the bombs. Captain John is back along with Jack's long lost brother Gray. And they're angry. Excellent. Best episode of season 2 hands down.

Highlights:

• Jack's sideburns.
• The two scary Victorian Torchwood women.

Comments:

• Why does Captain John keep on calling Jack that name? It isn't his real name.
• Suzie is mentioned by Jack during a flashback but there is no mention of how he recruited her.
• Even the pterodactyl's recruitment is shown.
• Why did Jack's boss at TW3 go crazy and kill all his employees? Why did he say the 21st century was when everything changes?

Captain John is back. He reunites Jack with his brother Gray who is a nutter. Gray has Jack buried alive in 27AD. Then Gray causes the deaths of Tosh and Owen. After all of this, instead of killing the two baddies Jack lets John go and sticks Gray in the freezer. People cry, no doubt thinking about how the new kid friendly season 3 will lumber the show with yet more unwanted Doctor Who actors. Where to start with this one? Season 2 with all its show retooling has been wildly uneven and ends as it began, badly. This episode sets up more show retooling for season 3. This episode made me angry. Someone take RTD's crayons away from him. This was an awful bloody episode with unnecessary show retooling and the big bad Gray was played by a guy who cannot act and was the worst Torchwood villain of the season, even worse than Adam.

Comments:

• The use of 'Starship Trooper' was cute.
• Rhys yelling at the coopers to close the door on the Weevils and comparing it to a rugby scrum was funny.
• Why did Gray call Jack by that name? Is Jack his real name after all?
• Why didn't Gwen or anybody else shoot John? Why do they keep letting him go?
• Jack was buried alive from 27AD to 1901?
• 27AD looked like a meadow with some second home holiday bungalows just out of camera range.
• Tosh mentions her appearance in the 'Doctor Who episode 'Aliens of London', she pretended to be a medic to cover up for a drunk Owen.
• James Marsters can only play the one role.
• The Weevils were probably dismissed as just Gavin Henson and Charlotte Church out on the piss.
• Where the frak did they find the guy who played Gray? He is an utterly untalented actor. His big rants at Jack were awful. The episode might have been better if they'd hired someone who could actually act to play the role. This guy was worse than Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen in the 'Star Wars' prequels.
• Jack puts Gray in the freezer? Gray who killed Owen and Tosh. In season 1 Jack had no problem dispatching baddies, he sent Mary into the heart of the sun and shot Suzie full of bullets for example but here after this tragedy, he lets John walk away and puts Gray on ice. He should have fed them both to the Weevils feet first. Editor note: Gray is his brother and the only other one of his race, and John a) didn't have a choice due to to the bomb strapped to him and b) helped them when he could
• Andy knows about aliens now.
• Jack causally mentions the Time Agency.

to be continued