Writer: Catherine Tregenna
Director: Colin TeagueCast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Naoko Mori (Toshiko Sato), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Colin Baxter (Policeman), Patti Clare (Ruth), Garry Lake (Vic), Gerard Carey (Greg), Matt Ryan (Dale) & Marek Oravec (Worker)
The team investigate a crashed lorry that was transporting alien meat, and Gwen's fiancée Rhys becomes involved in the mystery…"What is this; Scooby Doo?"
-- Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles)
A big part of Torchwood is its attempt to have the ordinariness of contemporary Cardiff sit alongside its outrageous sci-fi storylines. It's a show that tries to have its characters act plausibly and realistically to the otherworldly challenges they face – and doesn't accomplish this delicate balance very often.
The best example of the show's two halves are Gwen (Eve Myles) and her fiancé Rhys (Kai Owen); the former an everyday policewoman awakened to a deeper understanding of the world, and the latter a man blissfully unaware his fiancé's helping to save the world every other week. Is now a good time to nitpick about the fact Torchwood shares the same universe as Doctor Who, but in Who people regularly expect alien invasions every Christmas these days? Perhaps not...
In Meat, Rhys finally becomes involved in the "meat" of a Torchwood storyline -- as one of his haulage company’s drivers has a road accident whilst transporting alien meat somewhere. Torchwood promptly arrive at the scene in their always-conspicuous black SUV, and Rhys is bewildered when he spots fiancé Gwen amongst them…
Owen (Burn Gorman) takes samples of the meat back to the Hub and confirms it's perfectly edible, but of alien origin. Gwen is immediately unhappy this investigation is so close to home, knowing Rhys' haulage company are involved, and cringing when the team make a call to her nervous fiancée at work. On the other hand, Jack (John Barrowman) is quite happy they have an in-road with Rhys through Gwen, as it could help crack the case faster…
Arriving home after receiving a text from Rhys, Gwen does her best to act natural – despite her colleague's suspicions that Rhys might be helping traffic alien meat supplies. Rhys surreptitiously tests her with questions about her whereabouts that day, realizing she's refusing to acknowledge her presence at the crash-site he saw her at...
Rhys later decides to follow Gwen back to work, where he sees her meet-up with "another man" outside the Roald Dahl Plas (namely; dashing Jack, cheekily offering her his arm), leading him to suspect she's also having an affair on top of lying about her job…
Torchwood are soon following a lead given to them by Rhys earlier, and descend on a nearby abattoir the alien meat was transported from. Rhys secretly follows them by car… only for Gwen and Jack to later spot him loitering outside the abattoir, convincing Jack that Rhys is somehow involved in the whole operation – much to Gwen's shock and disbelief. Rhys is soon in over his head when a gang of men mistake him as an on-side contact, and he's taken with them. Inside the abattoir, Rhys manages to bluff his way into becoming their new delivery man, now that their original driver died in a road accident.
It's inside the abattoir that Rhys finally gets a sense of what's going on – when the gang show him an enormous whale-like creature with a glistening eye the size of a tractor wheel, chained to the floor. The men are ruthlessly cutting away chunks of meat from its body to sell -- as the beast is somehow able to regrow its flesh... and is actually increasing in size, very slowly…
With Gwen forced to consider the possibility her naive fiancé is part of this operation, the two lover have a blazing row back at their flat. Gwen demands to know why Rhys is acting as the middle-man for these criminals, while Rhys spits accusations at her about her lying. Eve Myles and Kai Owen do brilliant work here, as Gwen finally admits her job involves aliens – although quite why Rhys initially refuses to believe her (after witnessing a huge alien just hours earlier) is anyone's guess!
Eventually, Rhys is fully briefed about his fiancé's secret life, and is taken under the wing of Torchwood to help them stop this barbaric alien meat trade. It was particularly invigorating to see plain-speaking Rhys go toe-to-toe with alpha male Jack in the board room at this point, as I often wish more characters would have the backbone to grapple with their uppity boss. It's a role sometimes performed by Gwen on the show, but it's nice to see Jack have to deal with a more forceful man he can't disarm with charm.
That said, the second half of this episode doesn't show Gwen in a particularly good light, as she's actually quite condescending towards Rhys and her attempts to "protect" him come across as mollycoddling. It's clear she has absolutely no confidence in his abilities – even mothering him by making him take sandwiches on a dangerous mission back to the abattoir!
Yes, with Rhys the meat traders' new delivery man, Torchwood simply hide in the back of his empty van when he arrives to load up with alien meat, then slip out to prowl around the abattoir armed with stun-guns. Not before too long, the team have managed to render various subordinates unconscious and find the sentient creature – clearly in pain, possibly near death.
Naturally, the two weakest members of the team -- Rhys and promoted secretary Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) – are soon captured and held at gunpoint, flushing Gwen and Jack out into the open. In a resulting struggle, Rhys is shot and the creature becomes distressed, breaking free of its bonds and posing a threat to everyone's safety. Unfortunately, Owen -- having initially made a cocktail to sedate the creature so they can transport it back through the Rift -- is forced to euthanise the beast to protect everyone.
Later, having fed the bad guys "amnesia pills" (is it fair they didn't pay for thir crime, simply because they were made to forget it?), Jack reminds Gwen she'll have to wipe Rhys' memory in a similar fashion. Outside, with Rhys now wearing a sling after his brush with death, there's a nice scene where he describes how his mind has been expanded by the knowledge of other worlds up in the sky, and Gwen finds herself unable to take that sense of wonder away from him.
Against my expectation, things aren't brought back to the status quo at the end, as Gwen confronts Jack and tells him straight she'd rather have her own mind wiped than continue keeping secrets from the man she loves. And anyway, how would she explain that sling to Rhys after he'd popped his pill, eh?
Overall, as a character-building episode for Gwen and Rhys, I quite enjoyed Meat. Eve Myles always shines brighter when the show revolves around simple human drama, minus any technical lingo or visual effects to aide. The best scenes here are undoubtedly between her and Kai Owen as Rhys, who similarly creates sparks – despite Rhys ultimately being a bit of a buffoon. I'm also very glad writer Catherine Tregenna didn't take the easy option of reverting Rhys back to his blind fiancé role at the end, as that would have been a woeful back-step for the series...
However, while the illegal meat trade storyline was quite novel, it didn't go anywhere very interesting. One fascinating angle was how the creature could be sacrificed to effectively stop world hunger – but that "feed the world" notion was only used as the set-up to a punchline for Ianto ("we could release a single!") The villains were also very one-dimensional, nonthreatening, and their diabolical scheme was a bit too woolly for my taste.
On the positive side (beyond Myles and Owen's excellent performances), Tregenna's script sparkled in its general dialogue – with Ianto once again getting plenty of gags (just in case you thought his jocular personality transplant in Sleeper was a one-off), and the show is much steadier now that Torchwood are working as a cohesive team. Jack's jokes (even the obligatory sexual ones!) were actually pretty funny, and Toshiko (Naoko Mori) has resumed trying to woo Owen at work... although he's still comically oblivious, natch.
Funnily enough, Tosh's idea of a loving gesture was to deliver sandwiches like Gwen did for Rhys. Is sandwich-making some kind of secret code amongst women I don't know about?
So, while I applaud the performances of Myles/Owen, and the witty dialogue, the storyline was pretty limp and just didn't hold my attention very well. I think more could have been done with the unusual "meat trafficking" premise, but episode 4 worked reasonably well as a character study for Gwen and Rhys. And the less said about the shoddy CGI effects for the "alien whale" in the climax, the better…
6 February 2008
BBC2, 9.00 pm
