Torchwood: Epic Fail - Episode 1x8
Aug. 1st, 2008 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadydaveThis one doesn't have pictures, sorry. The one problem with Torchwood's decent episodes is that there's less to point and laugh at. But don't worry, this too shall pass.
Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project
Episode 8: "Obvious Episode Title!" aka "They Keep Killing Suzie"
Three guesses what this episode's about!
Torchwood shows up to a crime scene (in the usual formation, of course) and annoys the police. We find out why when they discover that the only thing linking three murther victims is TORCHWOOD written in their blood above their bodies. This of course makes IDing a suspect a large problem, because by this point, Torchwood has probably cheesed off everyone in the entire universe at least once, and that's the low estimate.
DNA from the killer-at-large reveals that he had been given massive doses of Retcon:
GWEN: Wait a minute. I've taken Retcon.
JACK: Then better stay away from sharp objects.
Owen, however, is absurdly happy that at any moment, one of the million kajillion people they've amnesiafied may turn into a vicious killer. Owen is messed up.
With no leads in the case, Gwen suggests using the resurrection gauntletty thing from the first episode to question the victims. You know, the one that made Suzie go nuts. However, this of course requires that they first give it a cool name, so Ianto renames it the "Risen Mitten". Technically, it is not a mitten since it has fingers, and "risen mitten" doesn't actually rhyme, but I am too amused by the fact that the word "mitten" has appeared on Torchwood to care.
All of the team fail at using it, so they give it to Gwen since she's never tried before. Ianto is ready and waiting to time the proceedings:
OWEN: Give Ianto a stopwatch, and he's happy.
IANTO: It's the button on the top.
Gwen is a natural at temporarily bringing people back from the dead with alien mittens on account of being CARING and HUMAN. They question the victims and find out they were all part of a religious/philosophical discussion group with the killer, Max, and... you guessed it, Suzie.
There's not enough information to find Max, so they decide to bring back Suzie and question her. Gwen tries, but only succeeds in getting attacked by flashbacks. They realize that Suzie always used the knife thing to kill her victims, so they stab her dead body with the newly re-christened "Life Knife," and Gwen brings her back. A little too well, actually.
Torchwood: Accidentally resurrects serial killers!
Suzie objects to being a zombie, but helps them with their investigation. She says that she used to complain about work to Max every week at meetings, and then Retcon him, accidentally overdosing him and presumably causing the murder spree. There's one more member of the debating group thing at large and presumably targetted by Max, so the team go searching for her while Suzie watches from the Hub to help identify suspects.
Meanwhile, Tosh is awesome:
SUZIE: Can't even look at me, can you? It's not like you to be so judgmental.
TOSH: Not like you to go on a murder spree. All right, so it drives us mad, this job. God knows, I've done some stupid stuff. But now, I've got to keep on working, every day, in a job that's got a bit less honor, because of you.
Tosh FTW. Dodgy as Torchwood is, it's nice to hear they have standards. They catch Max, Suzie saving Gwen's life in the process. Back at the Hub, they realize that Max is totally unresponsive until someone mentions "Torchwood", whereupon he goes totally batshit:
JACK: If that's caused by Retcon, we've got a million more problems on the way.
Maybe if your secret organization was actually a SECRET you wouldn't have to worry about triggering off killing sprees whenever you drive past in your CAREFULLY LABELED CAR.
Meanwhile, Suzie complains to Gwen about 1) her dying father, who they won't let her see, and 2) how Gwen has totally replaced her, possibly becoming the first zombie serial killer in history to have self-esteem problems. Gwen even took over sleeping with Owen from Suzie, which pretty much makes Owen the office bicycle.
Gwen gets upset at the implication that she stole Suzie's job because she has NO PERSPECTIVE, and goes to yell at Jack for giving Suzie the mitten in the first place when she had a dying father. Jack yells at her for wanting to bring Suzie back so much on account of feeling guilty. Gwen asks if he could actually kill Suzie again, because apparently she has problems remembering the whole KILLING SPREE thing and assumes Jack would feel bad. However, she is right in blaming this all on Jack, since not noticing one of his employees is kleptoing alien doo-hickeys and killing people with them is TOTALLY his fault.
Meanwhile, Owen and Tosh engage in some techno babble and filtered camera footage and realize that Suzie is being powered off Gwen's life force, and is slowly sucking it all away. They go to get them, but realize that Gwen has kleptoed Suzie to go on a roadtrip to see her dad. Just then, the entire Hub shuts down, and they are trapped. DUN DUN DUN.
They find Max reciting Emily Dickinson poetry over and over ("Because I could not stop for death", naturally) and realize that 1) the poetry has triggered a hidden Trojan horse in their security system, 2) Max has been subjected to hypnotic commands from the start, and 3) Suzie is an evil criminal mastermind. Who has escaped and will kill Gwen by stealing all her life force. OH NOES.
Ianto manages to bounce a cell phone signal off the water tower so they can call someone, which I am willing to accept because they have magical cell phones that work underground. However, there is a slight problem with this plan:
JACK: Who the hell do we phone?
Gwen and Suzie, meanwhile, are having a grand old time on their road trip, as Suzie expounds upon:
- how Gwen's conception of the afterlife is totally lame because there is nothing but DARKNESS AND DESPAIR!!!!!
- how Jack sucks big time for passing out death and judgment when he can't actually die
- how Gwen is the most awesome person in the entire universe.
Things take a turn for the creepy when they actually find Suzie's dad in the hospital, since what she really wanted to do was disconnect him from life support. Gwen, meanwhile, discovers that Suzie is getting healthier while she gets slowly shot in the head, which sucks hard core. Suzie flees and drags Gwen with her, because apparently they are now BFFs, and I am forced to call Gwen-writing FAIL because when you've reached the point where even the undead zombie serial killer is extolling her virtues, you have gone WAY TOO FAR into Mary Sue territory.
The rest of Torchwood finally give up and call the police detective they were working with. After laughing at them a lot, she agrees to help, and starts reading the entire works of Emily Dickinson to them in the hopes that this will undo the lockdown code. It doesn't, but Tosh somehow intuits that since words initiated the lockdown, numbers must undo it (?) and that is why the ISBN code unlocks the Hub (?????). In other words, FAIL. Obviously, a better solution would have been to sing "I could not stop for death" to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas".
Jack and Owen pile into the Torchwoodmobile and give chase. Jack calls Suzie and asks her to stop killing Gwen, please. Suzie cries that being dead totally sucks, and since Gwen replaced her, it's only fair that she replaces her back. Somewhere along the line she has developed a massive inferiority complex about Gwen being way better at her job than her, which is true only because Gwen does not kill people on purpose.
Suzie drags her now mostly-dead BFF towards a ferry, but Jack and Owen catch up. Suzie tells Jack he can't kill her because she's all that's left of Gwen, but as this is obviously RETARDED he shoots her. Except she doesn't die. Eventually they figure out they need to destroy the Risen Mitten to break the life-force connection, but not before Suzie quotes Walt Whitman poetry (like most zombies, she has a thing for late 19th century American poetry) and tells Jack something in the darkness is coming for him. DUN DUN DUN.
Then she dies, and we bid adieu to the series' most interesting bad guy so far. This only goes to prove the old adage that fairly competent 19-century American poetry-reading zombie serial killers WIN at TV, even if they do succumb to Gwen worship along with everyone else.
We then have a brief interlude for some musical FAIL, set to "Gorecki" by Lamb, aka "Hey, they're playing that song Meera sent me!"
APPROPRIATE/RELEVANT LYRICS:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
INAPPROPRIATE/IRRELEVANT LYRICS:
...For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
Still in my heart this moment
Or it might burst
Could we stay right here
Until the end of time until the earth stops turning
Wanna love you until the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for
I think everyone can pretty much agree that is always A BAD PLAN to play shippy-sounding songs while showing a montage of DISPOSING OF SUZIE'S DEAD BODY. EW.
Fortunately, Ianto is around to dispel the disturbing unintentional subtext by propositioning Jack with his stopwatch. This is so out of left field (a. vowing revenge four episode ago what? b. stopwatch WTF? but also FTW) that even Jack is confused for a second, but, being Jack, this passes. However, post-episode sexy time has to wait for ominous foreshadowing:
IANTO: What do you want me to say on the death certificate?
JACK: Good question.
IANTO: She had quite a few deaths in the end.
JACK: I don't know. Death by Torchwood.
IANTO: I'll put a lock on the door, just in case she goes walking again.
JACK: Nah, no chance of that. The resurrection days are over, thank God.
IANTO: Oh, I wouldn't be too sure. That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs.
DUN DUN DUN. THE END.
The Fail Scale
FAIL:
- Magical wonderful Gwen! FAIL
- ISBN WTF FAIL
- Musical FAIL
WIN:
- evil criminal mastermind Suzie!
- STOPWATCH LOL SRSLY WUT
- Tosh smacks down Suzie
- Torchwood gets locked in by Emily Dickinson
TOTAL SCORE: 1 (ANOTHER POSITIVE NUMBER!)
Death by Torchwood
5: 3 more murther victims, Suzie's dad, and Suzie. Again.
Captain's Blog: Upcoming issues: Need to requisition a new stopwatch. Old one damaged while moving a desk.
Next episode: So boring I didn't rewatch it!
The Torchwood: EPIC FAIL Project Table o' Contents!
Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project
Episode 8: "Obvious Episode Title!" aka "They Keep Killing Suzie"
Three guesses what this episode's about!
Torchwood shows up to a crime scene (in the usual formation, of course) and annoys the police. We find out why when they discover that the only thing linking three murther victims is TORCHWOOD written in their blood above their bodies. This of course makes IDing a suspect a large problem, because by this point, Torchwood has probably cheesed off everyone in the entire universe at least once, and that's the low estimate.
DNA from the killer-at-large reveals that he had been given massive doses of Retcon:
GWEN: Wait a minute. I've taken Retcon.
JACK: Then better stay away from sharp objects.
Owen, however, is absurdly happy that at any moment, one of the million kajillion people they've amnesiafied may turn into a vicious killer. Owen is messed up.
With no leads in the case, Gwen suggests using the resurrection gauntletty thing from the first episode to question the victims. You know, the one that made Suzie go nuts. However, this of course requires that they first give it a cool name, so Ianto renames it the "Risen Mitten". Technically, it is not a mitten since it has fingers, and "risen mitten" doesn't actually rhyme, but I am too amused by the fact that the word "mitten" has appeared on Torchwood to care.
All of the team fail at using it, so they give it to Gwen since she's never tried before. Ianto is ready and waiting to time the proceedings:
OWEN: Give Ianto a stopwatch, and he's happy.
IANTO: It's the button on the top.
Gwen is a natural at temporarily bringing people back from the dead with alien mittens on account of being CARING and HUMAN. They question the victims and find out they were all part of a religious/philosophical discussion group with the killer, Max, and... you guessed it, Suzie.
There's not enough information to find Max, so they decide to bring back Suzie and question her. Gwen tries, but only succeeds in getting attacked by flashbacks. They realize that Suzie always used the knife thing to kill her victims, so they stab her dead body with the newly re-christened "Life Knife," and Gwen brings her back. A little too well, actually.
Torchwood: Accidentally resurrects serial killers!
Suzie objects to being a zombie, but helps them with their investigation. She says that she used to complain about work to Max every week at meetings, and then Retcon him, accidentally overdosing him and presumably causing the murder spree. There's one more member of the debating group thing at large and presumably targetted by Max, so the team go searching for her while Suzie watches from the Hub to help identify suspects.
Meanwhile, Tosh is awesome:
SUZIE: Can't even look at me, can you? It's not like you to be so judgmental.
TOSH: Not like you to go on a murder spree. All right, so it drives us mad, this job. God knows, I've done some stupid stuff. But now, I've got to keep on working, every day, in a job that's got a bit less honor, because of you.
Tosh FTW. Dodgy as Torchwood is, it's nice to hear they have standards. They catch Max, Suzie saving Gwen's life in the process. Back at the Hub, they realize that Max is totally unresponsive until someone mentions "Torchwood", whereupon he goes totally batshit:
JACK: If that's caused by Retcon, we've got a million more problems on the way.
Maybe if your secret organization was actually a SECRET you wouldn't have to worry about triggering off killing sprees whenever you drive past in your CAREFULLY LABELED CAR.
Meanwhile, Suzie complains to Gwen about 1) her dying father, who they won't let her see, and 2) how Gwen has totally replaced her, possibly becoming the first zombie serial killer in history to have self-esteem problems. Gwen even took over sleeping with Owen from Suzie, which pretty much makes Owen the office bicycle.
Gwen gets upset at the implication that she stole Suzie's job because she has NO PERSPECTIVE, and goes to yell at Jack for giving Suzie the mitten in the first place when she had a dying father. Jack yells at her for wanting to bring Suzie back so much on account of feeling guilty. Gwen asks if he could actually kill Suzie again, because apparently she has problems remembering the whole KILLING SPREE thing and assumes Jack would feel bad. However, she is right in blaming this all on Jack, since not noticing one of his employees is kleptoing alien doo-hickeys and killing people with them is TOTALLY his fault.
Meanwhile, Owen and Tosh engage in some techno babble and filtered camera footage and realize that Suzie is being powered off Gwen's life force, and is slowly sucking it all away. They go to get them, but realize that Gwen has kleptoed Suzie to go on a roadtrip to see her dad. Just then, the entire Hub shuts down, and they are trapped. DUN DUN DUN.
They find Max reciting Emily Dickinson poetry over and over ("Because I could not stop for death", naturally) and realize that 1) the poetry has triggered a hidden Trojan horse in their security system, 2) Max has been subjected to hypnotic commands from the start, and 3) Suzie is an evil criminal mastermind. Who has escaped and will kill Gwen by stealing all her life force. OH NOES.
Ianto manages to bounce a cell phone signal off the water tower so they can call someone, which I am willing to accept because they have magical cell phones that work underground. However, there is a slight problem with this plan:
JACK: Who the hell do we phone?
Gwen and Suzie, meanwhile, are having a grand old time on their road trip, as Suzie expounds upon:
- how Gwen's conception of the afterlife is totally lame because there is nothing but DARKNESS AND DESPAIR!!!!!
- how Jack sucks big time for passing out death and judgment when he can't actually die
- how Gwen is the most awesome person in the entire universe.
Things take a turn for the creepy when they actually find Suzie's dad in the hospital, since what she really wanted to do was disconnect him from life support. Gwen, meanwhile, discovers that Suzie is getting healthier while she gets slowly shot in the head, which sucks hard core. Suzie flees and drags Gwen with her, because apparently they are now BFFs, and I am forced to call Gwen-writing FAIL because when you've reached the point where even the undead zombie serial killer is extolling her virtues, you have gone WAY TOO FAR into Mary Sue territory.
The rest of Torchwood finally give up and call the police detective they were working with. After laughing at them a lot, she agrees to help, and starts reading the entire works of Emily Dickinson to them in the hopes that this will undo the lockdown code. It doesn't, but Tosh somehow intuits that since words initiated the lockdown, numbers must undo it (?) and that is why the ISBN code unlocks the Hub (?????). In other words, FAIL. Obviously, a better solution would have been to sing "I could not stop for death" to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas".
Jack and Owen pile into the Torchwoodmobile and give chase. Jack calls Suzie and asks her to stop killing Gwen, please. Suzie cries that being dead totally sucks, and since Gwen replaced her, it's only fair that she replaces her back. Somewhere along the line she has developed a massive inferiority complex about Gwen being way better at her job than her, which is true only because Gwen does not kill people on purpose.
Suzie drags her now mostly-dead BFF towards a ferry, but Jack and Owen catch up. Suzie tells Jack he can't kill her because she's all that's left of Gwen, but as this is obviously RETARDED he shoots her. Except she doesn't die. Eventually they figure out they need to destroy the Risen Mitten to break the life-force connection, but not before Suzie quotes Walt Whitman poetry (like most zombies, she has a thing for late 19th century American poetry) and tells Jack something in the darkness is coming for him. DUN DUN DUN.
Then she dies, and we bid adieu to the series' most interesting bad guy so far. This only goes to prove the old adage that fairly competent 19-century American poetry-reading zombie serial killers WIN at TV, even if they do succumb to Gwen worship along with everyone else.
We then have a brief interlude for some musical FAIL, set to "Gorecki" by Lamb, aka "Hey, they're playing that song Meera sent me!"
APPROPRIATE/RELEVANT LYRICS:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
INAPPROPRIATE/IRRELEVANT LYRICS:
...For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
Still in my heart this moment
Or it might burst
Could we stay right here
Until the end of time until the earth stops turning
Wanna love you until the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for
I think everyone can pretty much agree that is always A BAD PLAN to play shippy-sounding songs while showing a montage of DISPOSING OF SUZIE'S DEAD BODY. EW.
Fortunately, Ianto is around to dispel the disturbing unintentional subtext by propositioning Jack with his stopwatch. This is so out of left field (a. vowing revenge four episode ago what? b. stopwatch WTF? but also FTW) that even Jack is confused for a second, but, being Jack, this passes. However, post-episode sexy time has to wait for ominous foreshadowing:
IANTO: What do you want me to say on the death certificate?
JACK: Good question.
IANTO: She had quite a few deaths in the end.
JACK: I don't know. Death by Torchwood.
IANTO: I'll put a lock on the door, just in case she goes walking again.
JACK: Nah, no chance of that. The resurrection days are over, thank God.
IANTO: Oh, I wouldn't be too sure. That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs.
DUN DUN DUN. THE END.
The Fail Scale
FAIL:
- Magical wonderful Gwen! FAIL
- ISBN WTF FAIL
- Musical FAIL
WIN:
- evil criminal mastermind Suzie!
- STOPWATCH LOL SRSLY WUT
- Tosh smacks down Suzie
- Torchwood gets locked in by Emily Dickinson
TOTAL SCORE: 1 (ANOTHER POSITIVE NUMBER!)
Death by Torchwood
5: 3 more murther victims, Suzie's dad, and Suzie. Again.
Captain's Blog: Upcoming issues: Need to requisition a new stopwatch. Old one damaged while moving a desk.
Next episode: So boring I didn't rewatch it!
The Torchwood: EPIC FAIL Project Table o' Contents!