Director: Andy Goddard
Cast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Naoko Mori (Doctor Toshiko Sato), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Richard Briers (Henry Parker) & Christine Bottomley (Maggie Hopley)
Cast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Naoko Mori (Doctor Toshiko Sato), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Richard Briers (Henry Parker) & Christine Bottomley (Maggie Hopley)
Owen struggles to adapt to life as a walking dead man, sharing his experiences with a suicidal girl..."Tosh, I'm scared. I'm scared that if I close my eyes,
I'll get trapped in the darkness."
I'll get trapped in the darkness."
-- Owen Harper (Burn Gorman)
The situation with Owen (Burn Gorman) continues for another week, with the undead team member taking centre stage in a character-based, existential musing on life and death. It's also the final part of a disappointing triptych of episodes for Doctor Who guest star Freema Agyeman...
After a flurry of flashbacks/flashforwards offering glimpses of Owen's life/death, we actually start A Day In The Death in media res -- with Owen sat atop a high-rise building with a suicidal young woman called Maggie (Christine Bottomley). Needless to say, Owen has a unique perspective on the supposed futility of existence, and attempts to persuade her to "choose life" by revealing his undead state and revealing his unique afterlife...
Flashbacks reveal Owen was relieved of duty by Jack (John Barrowman), who demands he undergo tests to determine whether he's fit for duty. Martha outlines Owen's pro's and con's: he can't age, he has to exercise to prevent rigamortis, has no sense of touch, and his body can't heal wounds – meaning a hand he accidentally slashes with a scalpel will need re-stitching every few weeks. Forever.
The episode's MacGuffin involves unexplained energy spikes the team have been picking up, leading to a rather weak investigation into Henry Parker – a man who hasn't been seen since 1986. This board room sequence was actually more interesting for the rather strained Tintin jibes (assumedly because Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat has been tapped to pen the Spielberg-produced Tintin movie.)
Anyway, Owen's sent home indefinitely – where he watches television and empties his flat of all the food he can't physically eat any more – in bizarre sequences where Gorman's blank, emotionless, depressed stare becomes one of Torchwood's most unsettling images of recent memory. Tosh (Naoko Mori) comes round to puncture the heavy atmosphere, but Owen is quick to burst her chipper attitude – claiming she's half-pleased he's been debilitated in this way, as it gives her an easier way to construct a relationship with him. Gorman's the most intense actor on the show, and his "broken" speech to Tosh certainly ranks as some of his finest work.
Indeed, Joseph Lidster's script has quite a few character exchanges and monologues that click, but it's a shame everything else is so empty and hollow. Owen tries to kill himself by jumping off a pier to drown, but after 36 minutes (being secretly watched by Jack), he resurfaces in frustration that he's still "alive".
The mysterious energy spikes are traced to a house with tight security that poses problems for the team, particularly because of its array of heat sensors. Gwen (Eve Myles) has been leading the discussion, with Jack taking a backseat for once, and it's inevitably decided that Owen is the perfect candidate for a field operation (as he doesn't emit any body heat), so he's sent in to avoid the security patrols and find the source of the energy.
After some Mission Impossible-style shenanigans with security patrols and home security measures, Owen finally gains access to a bedroom where an old man, Henry Parker (Richard Briers), is lying in a four-poster bed, surrounded by alien artefacts. He looks intrigued to find a Torchwood operative in his home, claiming he's being kept alive by an alien device called "The Pulse" (that resembles a glowing cycling helmet). After another of the many discussions about life, death and existence, Owen performs a scan of "The Pulse" and finds it's not directly keeping Parker alive. It's merely a placebo. Or hope, as Parker says.
To prevent "The Pulse" reaching dangerous levels of energy, perhaps resulting in a catastrophic explosion, Parker agrees to accept his fate by relinquishing it – immediately prompting a heart-attack that Owen is powerless to help with, as he has no breath for CPR, and Parker finally accepts death.
Disaster averted, the team say goodbye to Martha at the dock, although by this stage I was wondering why Torchwood has bothered to keep her around for 2 episodes after Reset. Her involvement has been severely limited (turned into an 80-year-old for no particular reason last week, asked to perform a few medical tests this week), with her "trilogy" of appearances only serving to weaken Martha's character, in my mind...
Back to the rooftop with Maggie (who Owen learned decided to take her own life after her husband was killed), he shows "The Pulse" to her inside his rucksack– revealing it's actually a response to the famous NASA probe that carried information and greetings from mankind. Maggie, sufficiently awed by Owen's story, bewitched by "The Pulse" itself, and probably just grateful she's not in Owen's position, seems likely to embrace the life she has now -- as "The Pulse" glows stronger, sprouting tentacles of energy out across the night...
What a morose, sloppy and confused episode. Joseph Lidster certainly has an ear for dialogue – with some neat monologues, descriptive angst, and a few amusing jokes -- while Gorman does an impressive job making Owen believably depressed and tortured. Richard Briers also did a wonderful job with a shallow, one-note character, restricted to bed and introduced very late. But everything else flapped around – lurching from tedious to mystifying, with scenes stapled to a plot that didn't develop satisfyingly.
A Day In The Death was a simple Owen-centric story that didn't make much sense, particularly because the Parker subplot was so badly integrated into the main story, and I'm still confused about what "The Pulse" actually was (beyond a dumb metaphor for "life" itself).
Lidster laudably tried to reach for something emotive, human, complex and poignant -- but it just wasn't compelling, well-structured, or very insightful. It basically played like a series of moments with Owen bouncing around between a young girl who wants to die (Maggie), a middle-aged man who can't die (Jack) and an old man who refuses to die (Parker). There was definitely an intriguing and intelligent storyline to be weaved between that threesome, given Owen's unique perspective on death, but this sadly wasn't it.
Torchwood has begun to slump with the last 3 episodes, after a solid run of episodes that opened the season, but I'm hoping it can get back on-track for the final 4. The decision to incorporate Martha onto the team for awhile has proven to be utterly pointless after her arrival, while having two back-to-back episodes focus on Owen's "death" has been a drag.
Plus, with no sign of a backtrack on Owen's condition here, I'm worried we've lost the fun-loving, cynical, sarcastic, extroverted Owen entirely – and are left with an empty-shell version. This refit might suit Gorman's pallid features, but it sucks all the pleasure out of his personality -- and hands Torchwood another paranormal presence, like Jack, to drain away tension from situations "normal people" can't deal with.
27 February 2008
BBC Three, 9.50 pm
