Torchwood: Dead Man Walking

(Originally written 31/10/13, modified 15/1/14)

There's a lot that happens in this episode which goes unexplained.

To start with, Owen says he knows what the creature is (duroc/hunger), but we don’t know if it’s alien or magic or from another dimension or anything – it’s pretty much just accepted as Death incarnate (leading to this cringe-worthy line from Martha: "It must be Death... because it's stolen my life!"). Similarly, we get no background on Jack’s little psychic friend, though it might be implied that she’s the girl Faith who first brought Death to Earth 500 years beforehand (hence her powers and the reason she doesn’t age between Fragments and now).

 
And finally, the Weevils’ mystical powers come to a climax – not only can they feel each other’s pain and sensitive to disturbances in time, but they’re also apparently the guardians of Death. But wait... if they’re guarding the glove is that because they don’t want people to bring back Death? But they worship Owen because he has Death inside him... unless they’re scared of it... Ugh, I don’t know. My best theory is that it saves on making new monster costumes.

Some things just don’t make sense. Jack claims he needed the alien morgue code from Owen, but wouldn’t it be better if the guy who CANNOT DIE knew all the important things? Wasn’t it pretty much established that the thing in the darkness, coming for Jack, was Abaddon and not duroc? And why the hell was Martha performing an autopsy on Owen when literally everyone saw how he died?

Some things felt familiar. Jack’s story about knowing Proust made me chuckle about how his name-dropping is like the Doctor’s, but with more sex. This was fine, but then I felt that the glove’s attack on Martha was quite a rip-off of Rose. This didn’t really achieve anything plotwise, but was rather a very convenient way to get the team to the hospital for the final showdown. A showdown which featured a bad child actor (I couldn’t tell if his character was meant to be weak from the cancer or he just couldn’t be bothered trying), and where it was established that a little girl defeated the villain 500 years beforehand. What was everyone so worried about?

Luckily, the episode was saved by Burn Gorman’s acting. Especially in his farewell scene to Gwen, I really believed in what Owen was feeling (or not feeling). This was much more convincing than his grief for Diane in Combat. Pity they didn’t mention that episode though – the dude attempted suicide last season, and now he’s dead and you don’t want to mention it?

The most disappointing thing about the episode? The fact that it's written by Matt Jones, and I adored his Doctor Who story The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.