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Watching Torchwood is hard sometimes, the characters have never appealed to me in the slightest. Although series 2 has improved things in this department somewhat (still no Gwen death though!), the stories have still yet to really engage me. However the latest episode of Torchwood really upped the ante. Essentially the team (sans Gwen) is investigating a site with alien activity, only to find its a trap of some sort and the team actually find bombs (alien in design) quite how they each find the bombs at the same time when their about to explode is beyond me, and probably doesn’t really matter. We then get treated to each person’s entry into the Torchwood team. Jack’s is interesting, in that it really reminds you of the Angel(buffy the vampire slayer spin off) flashbacks, here he is recruited into Torchwood by two sinister, ladies after the mercilessly torture him, trying to find out information about ‘the Doctor’. This is midly entertaining, although at the end we see the old Torchwood team from 1999 get killed by the then ‘leader?’ who’s holding a necklace? Tosh’s flashback is interesting too, for some reason her mother is being held ransom by some unscrupulous people who want her to build a sonic emitter device – quite why she is chosen, is never made clear – the most interesting aspect of this, is UNIT’s treatment of her, its almost Gestapo like – which is a nice touch – Jack’s lack of sympathy in the scene where he recruits her, seems at odds with his character? Surely he reaction to the treatment of the blowfish alien at the beginning of his flashback sequence, would suggest such treatment to be aborable to him? Ianto’s flashback is about as interesting as porridge to be honest, all their innuendo is daft and the story seems to jar with rest, which are much more sad. Although it is nice to see the distressed look on Ianto’s face when he shares a tender? Moment with Jack, obviously he still loves his Cyberwoman from the first series at this point. Owen’s is the most tearful of the lot to be honest, who thought the pedantic team member would show such an emotional side, this perhaps explains his less than charismatic treatment of people. To be honest the alien explanation is a little beyond the realm of fantasy. Like the episode where Owen get’s shot, this episode has a great ending, which leads onto the next. The return of the Sinister Captain John (James Marsters as ever sinisterly evil). Overall a very good episode, but perhaps it would have been nicer to see extended scenes, playing these scenes over four episodes would have given them more depth than the 45 minute runtime of this single episode. Still something for the fans to get excited for a GOOD Torchwood episode – fairplay. Mike Jones
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