Torchwood 2.13: Exit Wounds

[selenay]

Well, that wasn't what I expected! After last week's lovely background
episode, I was expecting that we would lose one character and I was pretty
much prepared for it being Ianto that we'd lose. Hey, I expect people to
break my heart and kill off characters that we've all got a lot of emotional
investment in!

To lose two was unexpected. For one of those characters to be Owen was even
more unexpected, somehow.

I'm not quite sure how to react to it yet. A year ago, I would have been
quite happy to for Owen to be killed off, preferably as painfully as
possible. Now I'm rather saddened by it because I had grown rather attached
to the smug, selfish bastard. It hadn't even occurred to be that Toshiko
might be the character we would lose. I loved her characer, I kept hoping
that they would let her move past Owen and give her some great stuff and
then they killed her. Bastards.

I'd had a lot of hopes for what they could do with her next season :-(

Overall, I enjoyed this episode a lot. My only tiny quibble: um, why were
Jack's clothes only slightly stained after nearly two thousand years buried
in the ground? I'm sure some archeologist friends out there can give me a
reason, but wouldn't they have rotted?

Yes, tiny quibble that one.

I completely bought into the "Captain John is an evil bastard" concept right
and assumed that he had Gray locked up somewhere to use as bait for Jack.
Right up until the 27AD scene and then it dawned on me that actually I might
have made an error. I think that is a matter of conditioning: I'm used to
seeing James Masters play that kind of evil character and the first Captain
John episode had not given me any reasons not to assume that this was
TimeAgent!Spike. I was still expecting him to burst out into a spate of evil
even at the end when he said something about sticking around to see what
Cardiff was like. Huh. Does that mean he might be a regular next year?

I am dying to know what the creatures were that kidnapped Gray. Part of me
suspects that it's the Daleks, another part suspects that it's an alien we
haven't met yet that will be sprung on us at a later date. In many ways I'd
prefer the latter because that could be an interesting story arc. Another
part of me suspects that it would be such a cool idea that the TW writers
will probably go with Daleks despite the lack of logic to it...

Overall, it was an episode worthy of being a season ender leaving us with an
absolute ton of stuff to discuss, speculate and write about over the next
nine months. I am sure that I've left out dozens of things that I wanted to
talk about in this review, but I also have DW squee to record so I shall
move on now and revist TW (multiple times) later.

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

My only tiny quibble: um, why were Jack's clothes only slightly stained after nearly two thousand years buried in the ground?

I'm frantically handwaving by pretending that John's ring surrounded Jack in some sort of stasis field so that it was drastically less time for Jack; otherwise he should have come out of that hole naked, insane, and possibly with no memories of his team (he remembers everything perfectly as if he's been gone a few hours when it's been 1900 years?)

[selenay]

*sigh* Yup, a lot of handwaving was required with that plot point. It's a shame because other than the departure of all logic for three minutes, it was a good episode.

[paranoidangel]

My only tiny quibble: um, why were Jack's clothes only slightly stained after nearly two thousand years buried in the ground?

Yes, I wondered that too. Also, he complains to the Doctor at the end of DW series 3 that he ages, and he'd only been on Earth for 100 years at that point. So how come he didn't age at all in 2000 years?

[selenay]

*handwaves* They had been doing so well with that episode, and then they hit a bubble of non-logic for three minutes and went insane. It's the only explanation. The rest of the episode was excellent though :-)

[honorh.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive the creatures aren't Daleks for three reasons:

1. Jack doesn't have the visceral reaction to the Daleks in PotW that he seems to have to the memories of the creatures. They're almost academic to him, like he knows what Daleks are and that they're a great threat, but he's never actually met them.

2. Daleks exterminate. They don't torture; they just kill. Cruel as they can be, if a non-Dalek lifeform has no use to them (like Rose in "Bad Wolf"), they'll kill it sooner rather than later.

3. Jack would've just called the creatures Daleks. No mystery about the name.

[selenay]

That is pretty much my entire logic for why it isn't the Daleks. It's just that the first time we saw Jack and Grey back in Adam I thought that I heard a Dalek exterminator gun thingy and Jack is being rather cagey about what exactly the creatures are that were his people's worst enemy.

I'm just trying to decide whether RTD and co. will use the logic you have detailed or chose the easy Dalek way out on that plot. I really hope that we're looking at a big bad nasty that are worse than anything we've seen yet because that would be a much better plot.

[wadjet-theperv.livejournal.com]

A year ago, I would have been quite happy to for Owen to be killed off, preferably as painfully as possible. Now I'm rather saddened by it because I had grown rather attached to the smug, selfish bastard. ***

To my complete astonishment, ITA. I'm going to miss him, and that must be a testament to the writers and Burn Gorman. So YAY them :o) but poopy pants to Owen being gone for good. Or at least as gone as someone can be in sci-fi. I daresay there's a way to bring him back, but they'll reaaaaallly have to stretch it.

[selenay]

I'm going to miss him, and that must be a testament to the writers and Burn Gorman.

I think it is. They created such a dislikeable character to start with and then redeemed him and made him likeable without losing his Owen-ness. Good writing and a fantastic performance from Burn Gorman.

I daresay there's a way to bring him back, but they'll reaaaaallly have to stretch it.

Yeah, but nobody ever really dies in sci-fi ;-)