Torchwood – 16 Jan 2008

There’s two recordings today, but they’re both of the same programme. The first one starts with the end of Masterchef.

There’s a trail for Wonderland: The Secret Life of Norman Wisdom Aged 92 3/4

Plus a trail for Radio One.

Then there’s a custom ident for the next programme.

So now we’ve got series two of Torchwood – Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It has a great opening. A woman is waiting at a pelican crossing when a fast car comes screeching up, and stops at the lights. It’s being driven by an Alien. He indicates to her to cross, which she does. Then he screeches off when the light turns greem.

Then the Torchwood team screech up, stop and Gwen asks “‘Scuse me, have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?” The woman points in the direction he went, and they screech off. She watches them go and mutters “Bloody Torchwood.”

They catch up, but the Alien gets into a house, shoots a man and holds a woman hostage. There’s a standoff, and the Alien taunts the team because they’re working without Jack, who ran off to appear in the last series of Doctor Who. “So this is Team Torchwood. The teacher’s pets. But teacher’s gone, hasn’t he? Leaving the kiddy-kids all alone. And look at you, trying so hard to be all grown up.”

Then he’s shot in the head. It wasn’t Ianto, who looks at his gun in puzzlement. It was Jack who’s just arrived. “Hey kids. Did you miss me?”

Elsewhere, a rift opens, and out walks Spike from Buffy, James Marsters.

His first action is to stop a mugger who’s attacking another man. He dangles him over the edge of the car park they’re in, then drops him to his death.

Then he goes to a bar and starts ordering people to leave or stay depending on how much he fancies them.

The Torchwood team are sent to investigate the dead man at the car park. It’s always nice to see PC Andy there.

Jack gets a message from the mysterious stranger on his vortex manipulator. He invites him for drinks, and signs off with “Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” He even does the look to the side that Princess Leia does. Top notch nerdery.

When Jack gets there, there’s a bit of tension until they start snogging, and then beating each other up. There’s a point at which this behaviour becomes tiresome, and I’m afraid, for me, it’s about half a second into the scene.

We finally learn the stranger’s name – Captain John Hart. We learn that he and Jack were partners. “It was two weeks.” “Except that two weeks was trapped in a time loop, so we were together for five years,”

Hart explains why he’s here. “I’m working with this woman and we both get shot. And as she’s dying, she begs me. She tells me about these radiation cluster bombs she’d been working on. Three canisters, contents beyond toxic, swallowed up in a riftstorm. And ended up here. Left to their own devices, the radiation’ll break down the canisters and then infect your people and planet. They need to be neutralised.”

Back at the Hub, Gwen asks Jack why he left. During the conversation, we learn that Gwen is now engaged to Rhys. And before they all split up to find the bombs, Jack warns her about John. “One – don’t believe anything he says. Two – always keep him in front of you. And three – under no circumstances let him kiss you.”

Gwen is with John, and she finds the bomb they’re looking for, but John immediately grabs her and kisses her, which makes her collapse, as he uses paralyzing lip gloss. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Rohypnol. He leaves her shut in a container while he leaves with the bomb.

Tosh and Owen find the second bomb, and John arrives to take it, shooting Own in the process.

Jack and Ianto have to search an office. Jack talks to Ianto about his absence, and actually asks him out on a date, finally.

John finds Ianto, and puts him in the lift. “Your friends are bleeding and dying. You barely have enough time to save them. And when you get to the bottom, run. You look like a man who enjoys a challenge, see if you can save them.”

John wants Jack to come with him. “What I want, is for you to come to your senses. Join me, Jack. Back in the old routine. We’d be emperors. How can you stay tied to one planet when there’s thousands of worlds, sparkling with wonder? We should be up there, among the stars, claiming them for our own. Just like before.”

Jack doesn’t trust him. He tosses the cannister over the edge. “Whoops.” John pushes him off the roof. It’s an impressive fall stunt.

Ianto finds Tosh and Owen, who had to sew up his own bullet wound, and they all find Gwen.

John goes back to the Hub, and opens the cannisters, which aren’t bombs at all, but contain pieces of some kind of puzzle. There’s a fourth piece on the body of the fish at the start. John is putting them together when the reast of the team arrive. He’s especially surprised when Jack walks in, after he left him dead after his fall. He tells them that the dead woman had an Arcadium Diamond which is what he’s after.

Jack tells John to activate the device. It’s another hologram, of the woman he murdered. “You’ve travelled several galaxies for this. Well done.” “Thank you, gorgeous.” “Except… There’s no diamond.” “What?” “Only this.”

The device opens up and forms something which attaches itself to John’s chest. “It’s an explosive device, which will latch on to the DNA of whoever killed me. It’ll detonate in ten minutes. It can’t be removed without exploding, so don’t bother trying. Goodbye…lover. See you in hell!”

John grabs Gwen, then handcuffs himself to her. Of course he’s the type who would carry handcuffs around. “It’s hypersteel, impermeable, deadlock sealed. No way to undo them. Unless you have this key.” Which he swallows. “Now YOU had better find a solution pronto or she’ll be blown up with me!”

Ianto and Tosh head with Gwen and John to the car park where the first rift was. Owen and Jack stay behind working with blood samples.

Gwen pulls John to the rift, intending to sacrifice herself to safe the city.

But Jack and Owen arrive, and Jack plunges a syringe into John’s heart.

It confuses the DNA bomb so that it drops off, and Jack throws it into the rift.

John retrieves the handcuff key from his throat, and unlocks them. Gwen punches him in the face.

Jack tells John to leave, but just before he goes he tells Jack “Oh by the way. I found Gray.” This is clearly very important information that will be a plot thread in future episodes.

Media Centre Description: Science-fiction and crime drama created by Russell T Davies dealing with the machinations and activities of the fictional Torchwood Institute in Cardiff. The mysterious Captain John Hart is determined to wreak havoc, and needs to find something hidden on Earth. But with Gwen’s life in danger, and cluster bombs scattered across the city, whose side is Jack on?

Recorded from BBC TWO on Wednesday 16th January 2008 21:00

BBC Genome: BBC TWO Wednesday 16th January 2008 21:00

After this, there’s a trail for Messiah.

And a trail for Never Better.

Then, Huw Edwards trails the News at Ten. Does this count as the curse of the blog? It’s just a couple of days since he was found guilty. Maybe.

Then the recording stops with the start of Wonderland.

Strictly speaking, I do have a third recording here. It’s Mark Lawson talks to Russell T Davies. But I’m not going to count it as one of my recordings, because it’s actually from BBC Redux, the internal archive tool which recorded everything the BBC was transmitting, and saved it all on a searchable database. It even included subtitles, which were also searchable in a tool that I worked on for a time, called Snippets.

But since these weren’t things I recorded myself, I don’t feel that they’re really part of my collection. So I’ll usually leave them out.

The final recording starts with the end of The Baby Borrowers On Holiday.

There’s a fairly content-free trail for Lily Allen’s new series.