Torchwood 01x02 Day one

Episode Synopsis (spoilers abound)

We start out with Gwen and her boyfriend out for a night. They go bowling, and have a bite to eat. Of course their night is interrupted by a flaming UFO crashing. Gwen gets the page that she has to go to work.

The Torchwood people are rushes to the crash site before others get there, but don’t get there in time. “The amateurs got here first” The place is swarming with soldiers. Stumbling into the wrong tent, Gwen tries to tell them she is with Torchwood, they don’t believe her, but Jack rushes in to save her. He tells the soldiers to let them do the real work. The crash site is some sort of space debris. They take a lot of readings, and samples. Gwen accidentally hits it with a tool, and some sort of blue blowing stuff is seen inside. Smoke starts billowing from within, jack throws everyone a gas mask, and a large plume of purple smoke comes billowing out of the crack. It disappears into the night sky.

The purple haze falls on some woman in an alley breaking up with her boyfriend on her cellphone. It goes inside her through her mouth. The next thing we know she’s going back into the club. She kissed the bouncer to get in. When she gets in there she finds a cute guy, and throws herself at him. They sneak into the bathroom and he starts to have sex with her on the bathroom stall. At the point of climax he screams and turns into glowing gold particles, and she inhales him.

Back at Torchwood the team is berating Gwen for releasing the alien, Lanto tells them that finding the alien won’t be hard as there has been a 999 call and a death under unusual circumstances. The team rushes to the club that we saw the girl at earlier. Except now its covered in police, she stops to talk to her former partner for a minute, he’s proud that she’s special ops now. In the bathroom where the man died, Jack is talking to one of the bouncers. When asked how he knows the small pile of ash used to be a man, the bouncer admits that he had a hidden camera and was masturbating watching the sex. Torchwood watches the tape and makes a few funny comments about what happened. They don’t know the girl, or any leads. Jack tells them to pull a body close the dead man’s disfigure the face and make it look like a suicide attempt. Gwen is something shocked at this, but relents when Jack tells her that they can’t tell the family that he died screwing an alien. Gwen feels responsible.

The girl is back home with her boyfriend, who must not have gotten her message. She can’t remember what she did the previous night.

Jack is tracking the trajectory of the rock to find out where it came from. Gwen discovers that she is the only one at Torchwood that has a relationship. She asks them how they wind down, how they relax.

Toshiko is running the girls picture against all of the faces in the UK. Gwen is still a little sensitive at what they shouldn’t do. They start tracking her using the CCTV cameras on all the possible routes to the club. Coupled with a list of possible suspects. Back at the girls apartment she starts to have pain, the bell rings. It’s the mailman. She pulls him inside and starts to rip his clothes off. Just at the nick of time Torchwood bursts in and captures her. Back at the hub, they have her in one of those Hannibal lector cells. The girl, Clarice, is kind of confused, and thinks that they are MI5. Gwen tells her that she should know why she is there, and that she killed, Matt Stevens. She goes through some pain and a convulsion, and the alien personality inside comes out. She accuses Gwen of breaking her ship. Gwen starts interrogating it. Telling it not to bother enslaving humanity. The alien tells her that it lives off the energy released by sex. That humans taste so good. There is nothing up there like us. Of course Gwen starts to make out with the alien. Jack and the rest of Torchwood are watching on camera. They rush in to save her. The alien rejects Gwen because it has to be a man. Then Clarice comes back.

Gwen’s boyfriend calls her, and breaks her trance. Gwen walks out, and Owen makes fun of her. Lanto has Chinese food. Over the table they are all laughing and joking. Jack has to go to the bathroom, and as soon as he leaves they start gossiping about him. Hoping that Gwen knows more than they do. All they think they know is that Jack is gay, because period military isn’t the uniform of a straight man.

They continue studying Clarice trying to find a way to save her. Even going through her personal life. It turns out she is a walking aphrodisiac. They find Owen Naked in her cell. Clarice escapes her cell, but Jack stops her getting out of the hub. They fight for a bit, until the alien grabs the hand in a jar. Jack tells her its worthless to anyone but him. jack offers to let her go in exchange for the jar, but as soon as he opens the door she throws the jar and it smashes on the floor. Jack runs for the jar and picks up the still twitching hand. She escapes. Later Gwen berates Jack for his priorities. The hand is more important than their lives. The readings on Clarice aren’t stable, and are constantly changing. Owen has infected a rat with the gases that the alien has, the rat blows up.

Gwen goes to her ex’s place; apparently Clarice was the other woman… He is kind of a disheveled prick, and Clarice eats him. They are wondering why the alien chose her. It appears that Clarice works at a sperm bank. Torchwood rushes to the scene. She is busily making a meal of all the potential donors at the sperm bank. Torchwood corners her after she’s eaten quite a few of the men. She tells them that it’s getting weaker, and that she needs just one more. Jack volunteers, he kisses her, and she gets some of the gold from him. That’s just a kiss, imagine what the rest has. It won’t be long before Clarice explodes so Gwen volunteers her body for the alien so they can save her. Gwen says she will last longer and they might save her. Just as the alien leaves Clarice and goes for Gwen they capture it in the glowing portable cell. It starts to die in earths atmosphere. It dies in the cell, and Gwen Kisses Jack and tells him thank you. At the end Clarice goes home to her father, Jack and Gwen talk. Jack asks Gwen to keep her life, and not let the job consume her. Gwen asks Jack who he is, why he can’t die, or how he knows what the future holds. He tells her to be normal, for him.

Another good episode, enjoyed the premise, and the sexuality was really pushed to the limit in this one. If this makes it to the states they are going to edit the hell out of it. That was most defiantly the Doctors hand. The one he lost during the Christmas Invasion, it’s interesting that it still twitches.