Live-blogging Torchwood Season One: "Countrycide"

This episode scared the living daylights out of me the first time I watched it. We’ll see how I cope with it the second time around.

Once we get past Clone, that is. I can’t say the ten minutes I’ve seen here and there have impressed me overly much.

Ah, Captain Jack standing on a building in the promo. Why does he like standing on buildings so much? And the last episode of Being Human tonight. Dammit: I’ve been loving this show.

And here’s Torchwood. It contains coarse language, horror themes, and violence this week. You have been warned.

Prologue. And slow-motion walking.

But here we are on a road: a blonde woman, in a car, driving under a lowering sky and saying she’ll be there as soon as she can, an hour and a half, tops. But there’s a body in the road. And she stops the car and leaps out, which probably makes her a braver woman than I am, though she does take a baseball bat with her.

Listen to the music here, and we see something dash across the road just before we see that the body is a dummy, with a football for a head. But in the interim, the woman’s tires have been deflated and her keys taken from the ignition. And she’s already noted that she’s lost signal on her phone.

And she’s dragged screaming out of her car.

Credits.

Same road, same lowering sky. But this is the Torchwood vehicle, with everyone crammed into it. Apparently, a number of people have gone missing over the past few months, all in this area, and the bodies never found.

Cue Owen whinging about the countryside and the smell of grass. They’re all eating burgers apart from Tosh.

NICK: Even the immortal man doesn’t want hepatitis.
ME: Especially him, I would have thought.

They’re setting up camp, and Owen is being even more of a total bastard than usual, including totally demolishing Tosh after an innocent double entendre. (And then mocking her again for the fact that he was the last person she snogged.)

Man, I hate Owen.

Of course, Gwen started this game, and Owen’s humiliated by Tosh’s admission, so he tells everyone about snogging Gwen. Then Jack asks if non-human lifeforms are included, and Ianto brings everyone down by telling them that his last snog was with his dead Cyber-girlfriend.

IANTO: Sorry you mentioned it? Or sorry you’d forgotten?
NICK: Well, it only comes up in Chris Chibnell episodes, so that’s fair enough.

Man, I hate Owen so much in this episode. (This is the Gwen and Owen in the bushes scene, by the way.)

Gwen becomes aware that someone’s watching them, and she and Owen split to circle around the person—but the person is gone, and she nearly shoots Owen. Pity she doesn’t.

Then they see what looks like a blood-soaked bundle—and, oddly, is. It’s a flayed body, maybe just a torso, from the size of it. It’s revolting, either way.

The gang debates why the body has been dumped here—and then they hear an engine, which is, of course, the Torchwood vehicle being driven away, and over the tents. It’s all Owen’s fault for leaving the keys in the ignition.

Jack realises that the body dump in the woods was a diversion, and Gwen says that means they’ve been watched since they arrived.

Ianto tracks the car to a small village, where it has been stationery for some time. Tosh says it has the hallmarks of a trap, and Jack agrees, but they all walk down to the village anyway.

NICK: Bloody hell, guys. Fan out a bit.

But no: they walk, shoulder to shoulder, up to an old building: behind its windows, someone is panting in a disturbing fashion.

The team splits into two groups here: Ianto and Tosh to find the car, and the others to head into the pub, where you would anticipate finding people. But it’s silent and dark, though there’s money in the till.

Then Gwen finds another flayed body, and vomits—which comforts me a little, because it seems such a normal reaction. She and Jack flee the room, and head into another building, guns drawn. It looks an ordinary cottage, barring the pool of blood on the floor and the presence of another body.

GWEN: Don’t you ever get scared, Jack? Huh?

But Jack just wants to check the other houses.

Meanwhile, Ianto and Tosh are heading towards where the car is, apparently, parked. Tosh’s equipment is all in the car, which helps explain her anxiety. Tosh noisily kicks some buckets over for no apparent reason, while Ianto leaves her to check around the back of the building. Strange screaming noises have Tosh on edge.

There’s no more sign of life at the back than at the front, and Tosh makes some attempt to kick a door in, but to no avail. Ianto walks up the hill a way.

NICK: Ianto, a cameraman’s behind you! Look out!

By the time he turns back, Tosh is gone. And Ianto finally—finally!—gets his gun out.

NICK: Jack, have you ever considered training your team? Because I swear to God . . .

Back with Jack and Gwen, they’re heading into another cottage, but as they kick the door open, Gwen is shot by a shotgun-wielding maniac. Well, a terrified young boy with a shotgun. Jack and Owen grab her and shove her on a kitchen table, so Owen can examine her while Jack checks upstairs. Apparently, though, the wound is in a good location.

OWEN: Right, do you want a quip about feeling a small prick?
GWEN: No, but thanks for offering.

Owen tells her he has to retrieve the pellets, so she should just lie back and think of Torchwood.

I suppose she’s lucky she’s been shot with a shotgun, instead of a rifle? But, then, I’d rather have bad luck than that kind of luck.

Owen is much less of a total bastard in this scene.

Now, finally, Jack is worrying about Ianto and Tosh. Honestly, Jack! The boy with the shotgun is hysterical, telling Jack that “they” are too strong and not human. But he rejects the suggestion that they should check on Ianto and Tosh.

Ianto and Tosh, meanwhile, are in a basement somewhere. Well, it looks like a basement. Tosh wakes up, and Ianto says that “they” took the guns.

Tosh says she never met a cell she couldn’t get out of. I’ll remember that, come season two.

Ianto’s really not comfortable. But he says to Tosh that the others all share a facial expression, that the danger excites them. Ianto’s not coping with this, at all.

Tosh notices dozens and dozens of shoes, and wonders how many people have been down there and what happened to them. But the question of what happened to them isn’t so much of a mystery after they open the fridge and see the neat piles of flesh inside. They know, then, that they’re food.

Meanwhile, the others are barricading themselves in, to protect the boy. But there are noises and movements outside the house. The boy said they’d come back, and that’s what they’re worried about—especially when the lights go off.

For some reason, they’ve let the trigger-happy teenager have the shotgun again. But they’re not worried about that, because someone is coming up from the cellar, which, apparently, they didn’t bother to check when they barricaded themselves into the house.

Promiscuous shooting.

Keiran (the hysterical teenager) is dragged away. Jack tries to stop Gwen going after him, but she insists. Jack, meanwhile, insists that whatever was in the cellar took three bullets, so he should be able to find out what it is.

Meanwhile, Tosh and Ianto are trying to get out when a woman comes in, asking to see injuries: she says she’s a nurse, but says she can’t help them. It’s the harvest, she says, and it comes once every ten years. She’s been sent to take Tosh and Ianto to “them.”

Jack, in the cellar of the other house, looks for the body of the thing he shot, which he heard fall. There’s a blood trail, but the only body is a man in an anorak, who says he’ll tell them everything if they help him.

Jack tends to combine “helping” with “threatening.”

He successfully threatens the man into telling him everything, just as Owen and Gwen (who is surely less than useless: she can’t even stand up on her own) come across a police car, complete with policeman. But beyond him, they can see the “big house” of the village, where there’s a special meeting, and they make a break for it.

Tosh and Owen, meanwhile, are in another room, where they find a slaughterhouse. Tosh asks the woman who the creatures are, and do they look like us—but a man steps in and says “How else are we going to look?” and snogs the woman.

They knock down and bind Tosh and Ianto, and the man says they’ve found the boy, as well—that’s Keiran.

Tosh asks if he’s going to put them on meathooks, but he says no: he’s holding a baseball bat, and says meat needs to be tenderised first. Ianto manages to distract him long enough for Tosh to make a break for it, but the man chases after her with a machete. She hides in the undergrowth, while he laughs and says he knows she’s here.

Sure enough, as she leaps up to run, he grabs her, and says no one’s coming for him. But she kicks him in a sensitive area and legs it.

Cut to a chase through the woods scene that’s quite hard to recap. Tosh, of course, has her hands bound behind her back this whole time, which makes it harder for her to run. But as the man grabs her and starts choking her, Owen and Gwen come up with the policeman.

Tosh tells them that they’re cannibals, and Gwen tells the policeman to arrest the man—but the policeman says that would be unlikely, wouldn’t it? And he pulls his own gun on Owen.

There’s a brief, tense stand-off, though Nick thinks, and I think he’s right, that Gwen had a pretty clear shot before the policeman even took the safety off his gun.

Either way, Gwen and Owen are caught, and Tosh recaptured. Ianto is still alive, but unconscious—though that might not be a good thing, since they plan to bleed him like veal.

Well, that’s the plan before Jack drives in, all guns blazing, and just—not to put too fine a point on it—shoots everyone.

Oh, he doesn’t shoot his own men, though it might be a close-run thing.

Jack makes a move to shoot the ringleader in the head, but Gwen begs for a chance to question him. She says if she doesn’t find out why this happens, it’s just too much for her.

Gwen’s covered in blood and she asks the man to make her understand. He doesn’t know why she cares, but she says she’s seen things he wouldn’t believe, and this is the only thing she doesn’t understand. But the man simply says, “Well, keep on wondering.”

As Jack moves to drag him out, the man whispers to Gwen, “Because it made me happy.”

Everyone in the village is turned over to the police.

But Gwen, sitting on her sofa with Rhys, can’t cope with it. She says she’s changing, and so is how she sees the world. And as the extradiegetic voiceover turns to diegetic speech, we see she’s in Owen’s apartment, wearing one of his shirts for reasons that soon become apparent.

And that’s a bit of a blow to my love for Gwen.

Next week: Tosh-heavy episode.