WRITER: Paul Tomalin & Dan McCulloch DIRECTOR: James Strong
CAST: John Barrowman (Capt Jack Harkness), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Naoka Mori (Toshiko Sato), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Indira Varma (Suzie Costello) & Yasmine Bannerman (Det Swanson)
To solve a spate of murders, the team are forced to resurrect their ex-colleague Suzie from the dead...New concepts are in short supply on Torchwood, with most episodes just rehashing movies (Countrycide = Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Day One = Species, etc), so it was a relief to see They Keep Killing Suzie revisit the show's only original idea so far -- the "Resurrection Glove" from Everything Changes.
Said glove can bring the dead back to life for a few minutes, usually enough time for a quick interrogation (handy when dealing with this week's murder victims.) The glove macguffin eventually leads to the resurrection of the team's murderous ex-colleague Suzie (Varma), who establishes a permanent connection to this mortal coil...
Indira Varma returns as Suzie, a character whose villainy was revealed in the first episode as a surprise twist. Seven episodes later, Suzie is brought back to life as a version of 24's traitorous Nina Meyers. But, whereas Meyers' duplicitness wasn't uncovered for twenty-odd episodes, Suzie's cover was blown in the first episode, meaning there was never any shock involved. Still, the bitch is back in a mostly intelligent plot from writers Paul Tomalin and Dan McCulloch.
Indira Varma is okay as Suzie; she's believable as a Lady Lazarus, if not entirely successful as a female Moriarty. While Suzie's plan to cheat death is excellent, it's unfortunate her own silly actions in the finale leads to her undoing -- if she'd just kept on driving, she'd have been unstoppable! When will these villains learn, eh?
The story is solid throughout, with just a few glitches in logic and storytelling crutches (poetry + detective + giggling lawmen = utter tosh). The episode is fairly mundane until interest piqeues with Suzie's arrival, only to slowly spiral into another gory resolution courtesy of dandy Jack.
I don't blame the writers, really. Some mistakes are made with the writing, but overall it's an interesting use of the Glove's abilities and a good idea to give Torchwood a villain like Suzie.
No, the real disappointments comes from the style trappings Torchwood has fallen into: the awful way their black SUV pulls up at crime scenes (very 70s), the continual use of the slo-mo group shot (outdated cliche), aerial shots of Cardiff, and the frankly distasteful way gay sex is shoehorned into every script! Here, there's an almost sinister inference that Ianto and Jack are lovers! When did that happen? Before or after Jack killed Ianto's girlfriend in Cyberwoman? This revelation made no sense to me, but I guess these guys just spend too much time cooped up underground together.
Overall, They Keep Killing Suzie (hideous title aside), isn't a terrible episode, but it's half-baked and lacks surehanded direction from James Strong to ellevate things. On the whole, it falls victim to the show's eagerness to look like adult content (the number of times a character cocks a gun is ridiculous -- a drinking game must surely be on the way?)
There are also some lapses in quality, most notably when the final scene plays out in broad daylight minutes after the middle of the night! While I applaud the script's ingenuity surroundings its premise, the story is dragged down by the increasingly annoying quirks of Torchwood at large. Still, Suzie atleast informs us something sinister is coming to get Jack -- maybe it'll keep him.
