Live-blogging Torchwood, Season Three: "Children of Earth" Day One

Oh, I don’t think I’m ready for this. Then again, I don’t think I’d ever be ready for this.

I said to Nick, “I’ll do it, but I’m not doing it alone and I’m not doing it sober.”

So I’m quite tipsy, and also Michelle and Heather have come over to see us through the black, black nihilism that is Torchwood season three.

And here we are.

Oooh, this episode contains violence, but no sex or nudity.

HEATHER: I don’t know if I can watch it. It’s for mature audiences. I’m an Australian now.

We open in 1965, with a busload of children being driven across a green and verdant landscape—a green and pleasant land, even—and then all herded out of the bus to stand in the road.

A bright light appears, and the children all walk towards it bar one, who hesitates.

Credits.

Cardiff, present day. We see Gwen accessing an ATM, where she hears a woman nagging her son for standing there and not listening to her. She smiles and looks back.

A busy man in a suit is chattering to his wife, unaware that his children are staring straight ahead.

An attractive dark-haired woman finds her son standing catatonic in the doorway. Rhys swears at children stopping in the middle of the road. Another dark-haired woman nags her children.

Then the original dark-haired woman is back, as her son, Steven, comes back to life and continues his forward movement.

Gwen reaches the Torchwood Hub, which is completely silent and dark. Of course, there are fewer staff members now than there used to be.

And Jack and Ianto are in a hospital, listening to a young doctor tell them that “poor Mr Williams” won’t be making it after all—he’s just died.

They tell the doctor that they’re his neighbours, and the doctor says, “If only there were more like you in the world.”

Ooh, meta.

Being such good neighbours, Jack says, could they see the body?

Of course they can, says the doctor—and, after a brief discussion about whether they actually are a couple or not, Ianto hands Jack a laser saw, so they can chop the man open and remove the alien parasite living inside him.

The doctor witnesses this, and isn’t entirely thrilled by the whole process. He chases Jack and Ianto into the carpark, insisting that they’re Torchwood.

JACK: Never heard of them.
NICK: It only says it on your car, Jack.

The doctor mentions some mysterious deaths, but Ianto says that the NHS has too much red tape, and they pass on the opportunity to explore it further.

We cut to an attractive young woman in a power suit heading into an official-looking building, past the man we saw ignoring his two young daughters earlier. As he heads into his office to consult with a general—he says there’s a problem with the children—the young woman apologises for being late.

We hear the story of the children half from Gwen, who tells us about the traffic accidents involving children, and half from the general speaking to the public servant, who fleshes out the information that first Gwen and then Ianto are giving us: the problem involves the children and is occurring worldwide.

The general is from UNIT, so we know this probably involves something a bit alien.

At the Hub, Jack is complaining that Martha Jones is on holiday—and, oh, I could talk about that, but I won’t. Spoilers!—just as Ianto says that the doctor is back.

Not the Doctor, the doctor.

Gwen heads out to talk to the doctor—nominating herself “recruitment officer” and complaining that they used the same trick on her, once upon a time—while Ianto says to Jack that even Gwen is calling them a couple.

Jack asks why that’s significant, and walks off saying he hates the word “couple.”

IANTO: Me, too.

Oh, bless you, Ianto. Pretty lad like you? You don’t need to put up with Jack’s moods.

Gwen chats to the doctor about the strange details of Torchwood work and the vast paycheck—she used to buy clothes and stash them under the bed so that Rhys wouldn’t see them.

The doctor talks about the alien awareness that is gripping Earth, and how it has led to an increase in suicides. He talks about one particular woman, who had been a Christian all her life, and left a suicide note saying that it was as though science had won. She said she had seen her place in the universe, and it was tiny.

I’ll say it again: most nihilistic show on television.

But as Gwen is explaining the wonder of alien contact, she sees that the children have frozen. Again.

HEATHER: Nothing creepier than children not moving.

The children start screaming in unison, a single, high-pitched scream that goes on and on without pause for breath.

HEATHER: Okay, that’s creepier.

They stop screaming, just for a moment.

Then they start speaking in unison, saying, at first, “We . . . we . . . we” over and over again, then “We are . . . we are . . .” and finally “We are coming. We are coming.”

Over and over. All the children.

And one man. One man who seems to be in his mid-50s.

The public servant demands that someone bring him a child, but the children snap out of it, and continue playing as though they have no idea that they’ve paused in their actions.

All bar the man, who says to his carers that “They’ve found me.”

In the public servant’s office, all is chaos. His private secretary, Bridget, asks Lois, the new girl, to set up an automated e-mail for the press, and hands over her e-mail password.

A man called Decker comes to see Frobisher—the public servant—and says, “456. I warned you.”

Meanwhile, Lois answers the phone to Jack, who explains that he’s Torchwood and, when she doesn’t know what that is, asks how she can work for the Home Office and not know Torchwood.

Thankfully, she has Bridget’s password, so she can get into what Heather calls “the secret government Wikipedia page” on Torchwood, and read all about it.

Frobisher, meanwhile, is taken by Decker to Thames House—where, as Nicks says, the MIs live—where he is played a secret recording from the 456 channel. But, Decker says, the 456 channel is still open, and nothing’s come through that, only through the children.

Frobisher says that the Prime Minister will have to be told, but Decker doesn’t seem to think it’s important: he says that the 456 precede the Prime Minister anyway.

Back at the Hub, Gwen points out that all the children all over the world are speaking English, which seems odd. Jack says that if you scanned the Earth from outside, English would look like the dominant language, but Ianto says that would be Chinese—Mandarin, actually, he says.

So that’s a problem in and of itself.

But Gwen is distracted by the footage of Timothy, the man who spoke in unison with the children. She heads off to speak to him, over in England. On route, she talks to Rhys, who is looking at a house for sale they planned to view. And Rhys points out that if the second event was planned around recess, when most children would be out in the playground, that implies that whoever is responsible is looking directly at the U.K. It’s worldwide, he says, but aimed at the U.K.

Jack, talking to Ianto, says they need a child. Ianto asks where they’ll find a child, but Jack walks off, saying he’ll see Ianto later.

In the Prime Minister’s office, Frobisher listens to the PM talk about how it was much easier when the only threat was reds under the bed. Frobisher says that they’ll need to issue a blank sheet, but the PM says that he won’t be involved with this at all: the blank sheet needs to rest with Frobisher.

Jack turns up at the house of the attractive dark-haired woman we saw earlier, where her son Steven greets him as “Uncle Jack.”

And Ianto heads to see his sister, the other dark-haired woman we saw earlier, asking to take his niece out to Mcdonald’s or to the films this afternoon. The sister says no: her daughter’s not leaving her sight, not while the alien weirdness is going on.

Jack sits and drinks tea with Alice, asking how Steven is going and her ex-husband. She mentions that Jack doesn’t visit much, and he says that was her decision: “I just can’t stand it, Dad,” she says.

Jack makes the same suggestion that Ianto did, that he could spend time with his grandson, but Alice knows her father, and calls him a bastard: “You’re not experimenting on that child, Dad,” she says. That’s why she wants him to stay away: because he’s dangerous.

Ianto’s sister, meanwhile, is asking about Jack. A friend of hers saw him out with Jack, and says Jack was film-star handsome. He remains a little aloof, until he’s prompted to say, “He is very handsome.”

He tells his sister that it’s not men: it’s just Jack. And he doesn’t quite know what it is, so he doesn’t talk about it. His sister says she won’t talk about it, just as her husband comes in and greets Ianto (albeit affectionately) as “gayboy.”

To Ianto’s comparative relief, the Torchwoodmobile is stolen at that point.

Gwen, meanwhile, is in England—she has already told Rhys “farewell forever” and told him that she’s had her shots—talking to Timothy White, which she knows (through a culturally specific reference that escapes me) is a fake name. Timothy was found sleeping rough on the streets at age eleven, and still had a Scottish accent then. The staff know nothing of his history.

Gwen, in an interview room with him, says she thinks it’s aliens speaking through Timothy. Timothy says there’s no such thing as aliens, but Gwen says those days are past: she’s seen aliens, she says. Timothy grabs her hand and sniffs it deeply, finally declaring in surprise that she’s telling the truth.

When Gwen turns off the security camera in the room with her “gizmo,” Timothy—still refusing to tell her his real name—tells her the story we saw part of at the beginning of the episode, with much stuttering and hesitation. He says that the children on the bus were all from children’s homes, and they disappeared into a white light: all but him.

Gwen says she can help him, but she needs to know his real name: he says, hesitatingly, that it’s Clem, Clement Macdonald.

But as Gwen pushes him for more information about his background, Clem sniffs deeply and says, “You’re pregnant.”

“No,” says Gwen. “No, I don’t think so.”

And the nurse breaks into the room at that point, saying that the security cameras went down, but that Gwen has spent enough time with Clem anyway.

Gwen asks Ianto to check up the name Clement Madonald, and someone in the Home Office intercepts the search.

Frobisher tells Bridget he has some work for her: he gives her a blank sheet of paper.

NICK: God. You’d need to be careful with your stationary re-supplying, wouldn’t you?

Sure enough, the blank page is an order to kill, with Lois realises when she sees Bridget’s distress and promptly checks Bridget’s e-mails.

And Captain Jack, checking out a report from the young doctor from earlier, is shot from behind. A woman in dark fatigues comes in, as the doctor complains that he was supposed to infiltrate Torchwood. She asks him if he killed the patient he used to lure Jack in, and, when he admits he did, tells him to get off his high horse.

The doctor asks is they think it’s true about Jack and, as Jack comes to life, the woman shoots him again. So, that’s a yes, then.

Then she cuts Jack open with his own laser scalpel.

At the home, Clem, somehow aware that the Home Office is sending its police after him, legs it across the grounds.

The woman in fatigues shoots the doctor in the back as he tries to flee, and the mysterious men (and women) in black walk unhurriedly down the corridor as Jack comes back to life.

Jack and Gwen both head back to the Hub, where Gwen’s first action is to check that she is pregnant with the medical scanner.

Jack comes into the Hub after her, and tells Ianto they need clean-up on one body at the hospital. Ianto asks if they killed Jack, too, and, when Jack says yes, gives him a hug.

Jack follows Gwen into the medical centre, where he sees that Gwen is pregnant—which Ianto takes as a good opportunity to point out that he lost the car.

Gwen asks what she’ll do about her job, but Jack says they’ll cope: he puts his hand over hers on the medical scanner.

Which promptly reveals that he has a bomb embedded in his abdomen.

He tells Gwen and Ianto to run. Gwen won’t, until Jack reminds her that she’s pregnant.

The children start chanting again.

Ianto says that there’ll be nothing left of Jack, but Jack says he can survive anything: he puts Ianto on the elevator after one last kiss, and Ianto rises up to the roof.

The children continue to chant “We are coming” as Frobisher shrieks at his daughters to stop.

The Hub explodes.

So that’s Jack’s brother, Suzie, Tosh—every secret hidden in the Hub, gone. Including Jack?

And the children chant, “We are coming. We are coming. We are coming. Back.”

End.