Writer: Chris Chibnall
Director: Ashley WayCast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), James Marsters (Captain John Hart), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Naoko Mori (Toshiko Sato), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Paul Kasey (Weevil), Paul Marc Davis (Cowled Leader), Golda Rosheuvel (Dr Angela Connolly), Lachlan Nieboer (Gray), Syreeta Kumar (Nira Docherty), Tom Price (PC Andy Davidson) & Cornelius Macarthy (Charles Gaskell)
Captain John returns to terrorize the team with a campaign of terror, and Jack is finally reunited with his long-lost brother...The last episode of Torchwood's improved, yet still inconsistent second season, draws to an end with a big finale that promises plenty of fireworks with Captain John's (James Marsters) return, but becomes quite humdrum until the end. There's enough tension and surprises to make it an easy viewing experience, but I only really appreciated Exit Wounds for the brave (yet fairly inevitable?) decision to kill off half the cast...
Continuing directly from last week's cliffhanger, Captain Jack (John Barrowman) is now aware that the bomb that almost killed his team was planted by spurned lover Captain John, who also seems to have found his long-lost brother Gray (Lachlan Nieboer). After Tosh (Naoko Mori) detects abnormal Rift activity across Cardiff, Jack has his team split-up across the city to keep things safe, as he heads back to the Hub alone to tackle John. Oooh, bad idea.
At the Hub, Jack finds John acting with typically cavalier attitude and it captured after John sprays him with machine gun fire and ties him up with electrified chains. Elsewhere, Gwen (Eve Myles) and Rhys (Kai Owen) arrive at the police station, where PC Andy shows them two Weevils locked in a cell, who apparently targeted and killed four high-ranking police officers. Strangely, the fact the local cops have captured two genuine alien monsters doesn't seem to have caused much of a stir!
Tosh and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) arrive at the Central Server System, a large computer storage facility where they keep servers for the military, police, NHS and the nuclear power planet at Turnmill. Inside, they find three men dressed as Grim Reapers with long scythes, who condemn them as "blasphemers" before Tosh and Ianto coolly shoot them dead. I still have no idea what the hell these people were, so can only assume they had come through the Rift for some reason, although I don't think mediaeval people ever dressed as Death. And what is it with a "Death" figure on Torchwood this year? It’s everywhere!
St Helen's hospital has a Hoyx alien locked in a room (imagine a Weevil with an elongated head), so Owen neutralizes it by injecting it with a sedative after distracting the Hoyx with snacks and a packet of cigarettes. It was at this point that the feeling of unease descended about this episode, as none of the extraneous threats were really making much sense. But, anyway, back to Captain John – who is threatening Jack, and appears to be doing simple for childish reasons of not being made to feel more welcome! Jack takes John to the top of a nearby castle, with a great view across Cardiff, where he contacts all of Torchwood via Jack's ear-piece, before detonating 15 bombs across the city. John watches in horror as large portions of the city go up in flames... before he's dragged through the Rift by John.
27 A.D. Jack and John have materialized in Cardiff's distant past, standing in green fields before the city was built. John arrives and reveals he has a bomb molecularly bonded to his forearm – and had merely been a puppet under the control of Gray, who appears to embrace Jack... before viciously stabbing him in the stomach! Jack is thrown into a hole dug by John as punishment for allowing Gray to be caught by malevolent aliens when he was a child. Now immortal Jack will spend eternity choking to death on soil, before being resurrected and forced to die all over again.
In modern-day Cardiff, Eve coordinates the team to prevent a catastrophe, as multiple systems are knocked out by John's bombs and threaten the lives of millions of people. After giving an eye-rolling speech to local police, which Rhys practically swoons over, Tosh and Ianto come to realize that the Turnmill nuclear power planet will meltdown unless they stop it at the source.
Jack accepts his fate and lies down in the freshly-dug grave. John takes off his green ring and throws it in as a memento, before he begins filling in the hole. In the present, Gray arrives in the Hub through the Rift, where Gwen returns a little later to find Captain John. John explains how Gray has been the mastermind behind the atrocities, and how he chose to return here to help find John buried under the city once Gray let him go. At that moment, John's forearm bomb loses its cohesiveness and he rips it off, before explaining that the ring he planted underground with Jack acts as a transmitter they can trace.
Tosh searches for the transmission, but doesn't have any luck. At that moment, an ear-piercing tone deafens everyone, apparently signalling a city-wide attack by Weevils – who begin ravaging people across the city. Ianto contacts Owen about the more pressing situation at the nuclear power plant, and he leaves St. Helen's to help. As Weevils circle John and Gwen, Ianto and Tosh arrive to shoot them dead and lock them in the cells. Once they're all inside, the doors lock and Gray reveals himself – particularly disappointed that John chose to use his freedom to help Torchwood.
Owen arrives at Turnmill and persuades a scientist to leave the area and let him deal with the impending meltdown. With Tosh as his guide back at Torchwood, hopefully he can prevent total disaster by being talked through how to divert power back to Turnmill and restore the coolant system. However, Gray arrives and shoots Tosh in the stomach, before disabling the power to her computer terminals. She lies dying on the floor as he gloats, before being distracted by rhythmic banging from somewhere...
Gray follows the banging sounds to the morgue, and it appears to be coming from one particular unit. He opens it, revealing Jack safe inside. A confused Gray asks how he survived, and a quick flashback shows two Victorian Torchwood team members in 1901 detecting the signal from John's ring and digging up Jack. As he's crossed his own timeline being awakened early, he asks them to store him in stasis, timed to reanimate in 2008.
Jack forgives Gray for his actions, but Gray is still blinded by hatred for his elder brother. They embrace through tears, allowing Jack to chloroform Gray. John manages to create a "recall signal" from inside his cell, meaning the Weevils all start to retreat, as Tosh manages to resume talking to Owen about keeping Turnmill contained. She injects herself with morphine for the pain and outlines a plan for Owen to contain the meltdown inside the building. Unfortunately, an unpredicted power surge instigates the lockdown early and Owen watches in horror as his only escape route seals.
Owen screams in fear and anger at having to "die again", breaking Tosh's heart. He finally gets his emotions under control and they share an touching scene of regret that they never did go on their arranged date. Owen accepts his fate as the meltdown floods the room. John frees his team from their cells and they find Tosh lying close to death on the floor. There's nothing anyone can do as Tosh slips away.
Later, Jack decides to put his brother into stasis, even though John thinks killing Gray would give him release from his torment. John decides to stick around on Earth, but kisses Jack goodbye. The remaining trio of Torchwood perform "final logouts" of Tosh and Owen from their system, with one triggering a farewell message from Tosh – recorded before her death, in case of such a tragedy. Jack hugs Gwen and Ianto close, promising "the end is where we start from"...
Exit Wounds was certainly gripping, but it was also badly let down by a few flawed ideas, unconvincing motivations, and disappointing characterisations. James Marsters is such a great villain (despite his clichéd mirroring of Jack's personality), so the episode noticeably lost its groove once he revealed he was just a pawn in a grander plan. Unfortunately, the real villain Gray was a brooding bore, and season 2 hasn't made the tragic past he shares with Jack particularly compelling. It all boiled down to Jack (as a kid) letting go of his even-younger kid brother's hand (by accident) during an alien attack, and I found it hard to get emotional over that. It would have been better if young Jack had intentionally let go of Gray's hand, to save his own skin...
Gray's method of punishment for Jack was an excellent idea, and the surprise reappearance of Jack inside Torchwood's morgue worked very well. But wasn't Jack in surprisingly good spirits (and health) for someone who has spent the past 1,874 years dying and reviving constantly?! Okay, it's just a TV show, so we'll let it go – but, honestly! He hadn't even lost any weight! And he has no mental scarring from such a prolonged torture?
Seeing as Torchwood is an ensemble show, the other characters were given mopping-up duties to perform after John's bombing, which worked quite well – although I'm still puzzled by the bizarre appearance of those three Grim Reapers, and am now officially bored by the stupid Weevils. If the people of Cardiff don't realize there are hundreds of razor-toothed aliens sleeping in churches, being locked up in prison cells, and caught on CCTV every night, then they must be crazy. The show really needs to come up with a reason for how so much supernatural activity goes uncommented on.
The first 20 minutes and the final 10 were solid and entertaining, but the middle was quite strained, disappointing and undermined with illogical plot-contrivances. Why did Gray let John go? Why didn’t John just go forward in time by a few days and dig up Jack? Why did Gray's revenge involve a bombing of Cardiff and general terrorizing of Torchwood -- particularly once he'd dealt with Jack?
Fortunately, there was enough incident and well-orchestrated surprises to gloss over the usual narrative problems and unevenness. Exit Wounds was especially memorable for killing two main characters: Tosh and Owen. Their deaths were effectively handled, although Owen's dispatch didn’t carry as much weight because he had already "died" several episodes ago. But Tosh's demise was beautifully acted, and the scene where the surviving team watch a video of Tosh certainly brought a lump to my throat. It would be nice to imagine Tosh and Owen will finally be united in the afterlife, but since Torchwood has a very downbeat attitude to death (it's nothing but eternal darkness and loneliness), even that hope is tinged with depression.
Looking ahead to season 3, where do we go from here? I'm quite glad Tosh and Owen are gone. Gorman and Mori were great (if given decent material to work with), but their characters never set the screen on fire. I was actually disappointed we couldn't get rid of Ianto, too. I'm going to predict that Martha Jones makes a permanent move to Torchwood as the resident (now female) doctor, while a man will likely replace Tosh as the geeky computer wizz.
Hopefully this injection of fresh blood will keep Torchwood buoyant for a few more years, and the show will hopefully continue to improve. Season 2 surpassed season 1 in every respect, but it was still inconsistent and never quite gelled together after a promising start. And the story arc with John/Jack/Gray was mishandled – although at least it didn't consist of buzzwords being dropped into every episode, like on Doctor Who.
Overall, Exit Wounds was fast-paced, very enjoyable, and blessed with an emotive climax -- but the mechanics of the operation was often stiff and illogical, while the use of John and Gray left me dissatisfied and occasionally bored.
4 April 2008
BBC2, 9.00 pm
