So this is a turn up for the books. I don’t very often look at the amount of hits this blog is getting because I realise that it will be depressingly low, and that’s fine to be honest. This blog is mainly serving as proof of what I’m doing and to give a greater incentive for people to donate to MacMillan Cancer Support who may just be thinking “all he’s doing is watching television”. This blog is bloody hard work I can tell you! Anyway I’ve strayed from my point as is so often the case.
Yes, so the hit ratings of each blog entry have been displayed to me and strangely my blog entries for Torchwood have received about 5 times as many hits as my entries about Doctor Who! This makes me feel a little bad as I really didn’t put much effort into writing those entries about Torchwood season one and therefore I better pull my finger out and make a better job with season two!
First of all I’m pleased to say that this season was so much better than the first. The Torchwood team have actually become a likable group of people. Owen in particular was a complete arsehole in the first season! Gwen was a fairly unpleasant character too with all the sleeping around she did behind her boyfriend’s back.
There just seems so much more fun in this season compared to the last. Ianto is reduced to pretty much spouting one liners though. I mean they’re funny but maybe they should have been shared around amongst the cast a bit as it gets a little tiring after a while.
The first episode deals with the reintroduction of Captain Jack to his team after the events of The Last Of The Time Lords. Unfortunately for Jack, he is the only Torchwood member who has any knowledge of these events so the rest of the team are pretty annoyed that he abandoned them to go running off with the Doctor. It’s in this episode that we also meet another Time Agent in the form of Captain John, who is one of Jack's many exes and is up to no good in Cardiff in order to get Jacks attention. He's a fairly unlikable character and it's a pretty rubbish start to the series.
Episode 2 is where the series really starts to get good. Aliens have been on Earth for a while, learning all about us, disguised as every day people. Even they don't know that they are aliens until the time comes for them to activate. The story focuses on one poor woman's struggle to deny her alien nature and maintain her humanity. I really liked this one.
One thing I really liked about this series is that Gwen's long suffering boyfriend, Rhys, finds out about Torchwood and from here on he almost becomes part of the team. I loved this because he's a funny character and I always felt sorry for him due to Gwen having to mislead him all the time as to what her job entails. It also means that we can have the fantastic episode where Gwen and Rhys finally get married, despite the fact that Gwen has been impregnated by an alien and another alien is on the way to rip the baby out of her in one of the most violent births since..well..Alien, I guess.
Martha Jones pays a visit to the Torchwood team as we now find out she has begun to work for UNIT. I thought Martha was originally planned to become a full time member of the team and I think that that would have worked quite well. It's nice that Jack has someone else to confide in about his various adventures with the Doctor.
In the three episode run that Martha stars in we also have another fairly big running theme. Owen gets shot and killed. He is soon resurrected temporarily and from here on he is pretty much a zombie. He is alive and dead at the same time. Unable to heal any injuries but also able to pass through heat detectors due to being dead. These three episodes are all pretty good as Owen has to come to terms with the fact that he is now dead and cannot eat, drink or have sex ever again! Poor guy.
For me one of the most upsetting pieces of television I have ever seen is the episode in this series called Adrift. Here we find out that not only does the rift dump aliens in Cardiff, it can also take people. A woman called Nikki, loses her son Jonah to the rift. She doesn't know that this is what has happened though and we hear her heartbreaking story develop throughout the episode. She records any television events where there are crowd and then reviews all the crowd footage one frame at a time in the hope of finding her son.
The worst thing about this episode is that it really doesn't have a happy ending. Gwen discovers that people have been falling victim to the rift for years and Jack has been secretly covering it up. Some of these people eventually come back from where they have been transported to, but they come back scarred and pretty much broken. These people are housed on a remote island. Gwen finds Jonah and despite the fact that he has only been missing for 7 months, from his point of view he has missing for decades and was transported to a planet on fire. At first he seems fairly okay if a little withdrawn.
Gwen tells Nikki that she has found her son, and pretty much comes clean about the whole space/time rift that is running through Cardiff. Nikki eventually believes her and goes to visit her son. Unfortunately she visits during one of his bad periods. It turns out Jonah looked into the heart of a dying star and what he saw had driven him insane. As such he spends about 15 hours a day just screaming. And it's bloody horrible to see. Nikki is understandably completely distraught at seeing what has happened to her son and tells Gwen that she should never have revealed the truth to her. It was better to live in hope.
Another running story throughout this season is the whereabouts of Jack's long lost brother, Grey. Grey was taken from his home planet when just a child by a group of vicious aliens. Jack was placed in charge of his brother but when trying to escape he accidentally let go of his brothers hand and they have been separated ever since. Grey finds Jack on Earth but is pretty annoyed at what he sees as a betrayal from his brother and is therefore out for revenge. It is during this episode that the Torchwood team suffers two heartbreaking losses. Owen is trapped inside a nuclear reactor and Toshiko is shot by Grey. Throughout this season I was hoping that these two would get together, Toshiko's unrequited love for Owen finally recognised. For them to die together (sort of, they are talking over the communications devices) is terrible and the series really ends on a downer. I will admit to getting a little teary I'm afraid.
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