Live-blogging Torchwood Season Two: "Something Borrowed"

I would like a dog.

No, that has nothing to do with tonight’s episode. Why do you ask?

Tonight’s episode contains coarse language and violence, but no nudity. Dammit, Torchwood! Pick up your game!

Opening monologue.

We actually have a short flashback here to the scene where Gwen says she’s getting married to Rhys because no one else will have her. Then we flash forward to Gwen’s hen’s night, which is about as crass as they’re supposed to be.

Gwen is two hours late for her own hen’s night, because she’s been chasing something through a subway station. Something that eats people. She shoots a nice man in a conservative business suit, who turns out to be some kind of shapeshifter.

We cut forward to Gwen, at her hen’s night in a feathery cowboy hat and novelty T-shirt, being surprised by a stripper.

Then back to two hours earlier, where she’s being attacked by the shapeshifter.

Back to the hen’s night, and girly chat in the toilets.

Back to the shape shifter, who is biting her, before being shot by Jack.

Back to the hen’s night when she says it’s just a scratch.

And forward to the wedding morning, where Gwen is suddenly nine months pregnant. That’s going to be difficult to explain.

Credits.

Owen says that Gwen is nearly full term, and at Gwen’s response, Jack points out that the shapeshifter must have passed the eggs through the bite. Owen says that she’s carrying some kind of alien egg, and Jack starts waffling about immaculate conception.

Gwen freaks when she hears that the wedding will need to be postponed. “Do you know how much a wedding costs?” she asks.

Jack says that she’s not carrying the baby Jesus in there, but she says that Owen pointed out that if something had gone wrong, she would be dead, so that she’s getting married anyway, and then she can worry about things afterwards.

Back at the Hub, Owen and Jack tell Tosh and Ianto that Gwen’s getting married anyway (Tosh will act as bodyguard, while Ianto will buy a “bigger” wedding dress). Gwen is, at the same time, telling Rhys that she’s pregnant. Well, pointing to her belly, which is sufficient.

Meanwhile, in the wedding salon.

IANTO: I’m looking for a wedding dress. For a friend.
SHOP ASSISTANT: Of course you are, sir. Don’t worry. We’re quite used to people buying dresses for their . . . friends.

Rhys is quite keen on postponing the wedding, but Gwen breaks down in a rather lovely speech (which I don’t have time to recap) about how much she wants to marry Rhys.

At the Hub, Tosh is all dressed up and looking lovely—Owen, rather sweetly, tells her that she’s “drop-dead gorgeous, and I should know.” Tosh convinces him to come to the wedding, while also telling him that it’s not a date.

Gwen is telling her parents—her father, adorably, calls her “duckling”—that she’s pregnant. Of course, they’ll be a bit shocked when there’s no grandchild, but what else could she do?

Apparently, as we realise at the hotel, Gwen’s parents and Rhys’s parents don’t get on well: as Rhys’s parents arrive, Gwen legs it rather than let her see them pregnant.

Gwen confronts Rhys, who suggests that perhaps they should tell the truth. Gwen tells him not to be ridiculous, but Rhys, rather angrily, tells her that lies don’t work: she’s already tried them. And when Jack rings to say that Tosh will arrive soon, Rhys takes the phone and says that they don’t need Jack at all: he’s already done enough to ruin the day, Rhys says.

The guests begin to arrive.

RHYS’S BEST MAN: I’m Banana. I guess you can tell why?
TOSH: You come up in spots and go soft quickly?

Then she tells him that bananas make her vomit.

Tosh has brought with her the new wedding dress, which Jack has sent over. Tosh, incidentally, has very, very pretty legs. Tosh and Gwen have a conversation about how Tosh will marry one day. We’ll leave that there, I think.

Jack-Ianto flirtation. But it’s interrupted by Owen, who has found a [technobabble], which means big trouble. Oh, okay: it was a proteus gland. No, I don’t know what that means.

In the interim, Rhys’s groomsman, Mervyn, is being seduced by someone who Tosh realises—having found a spot of black blood on a cocktail napkin—is actually the shapeshifter. She’s also Jack Davenport’s ex from Ultraviolet. Tosh manages to track the shapeshifter down, but it’s too late: she’s already eaten Mervyn.

Back at the Hub, Owen explains that the problem is that the shapeshifters, which are called Nostrovites, mate for life: the male was killed, but the female is out there, looking for its baby to mature, so that she can rip the surrogate mother open and pull the baby out.

Jack, Ianto, and Owen roll out, with Owen bringing the singularity scalpel—the item that he saved Martha with, having blown up a number of other people along the way.

JACK: What is it with you? Ever since Owen died, all you do is agree with him.
IANTO: I was brought up to never speak ill of the dead.

Gwen dresses, and then breaks down in front of her mother, especially when her mother says that a baby is God’s gift and a blessing. By the time her father comes in to walk her down the aisle, she breaks down and tells him that the baby is not Rhys’s.

Outside the hotel, Rhys’s father tries to convince Rhys not to marry Gwen, to which Rhys responds furiously.

Gwen’s father is, obviously, not impressed to hear that there’s another man, and even less impressed when Gwen says she’s actually been impregnated by an alien. He really has trouble with dealing with this.

GWEN: Don’t ask me to explain. I’m pregnant. Rhys is not the father. It’s an alien. It’s an alien.

Tosh, meanwhile, is in some kind of web, strapped tightly to Banana, who begins screaming, until Tosh make use of what minimal movement she has to shut him up. (His other alternative is singing in falsetto.)

Gwen walks down the aisle in a flurry of whispers about her unexpected pregnancy. But we can hear the baby’s heartbeat strongly, and so can the Nostrovite.

Torchwood, meanwhile, are chasing the wedding down, while Jack rants about how getting married in the middle of nowhere shows an inner conflict.

Just as the minister gets to the “speak now or forever hold your peace” bit, Jack, of course, bursts into the church, to stop the wedding. Owen and Ianto track down Tosh.

Jack explains, over Rhys’s fury, that he’s trying to save Gwen’s life, because they’ve only just realised about the female Nostrovite.

Outside, the bridesmaids are speculating about the baby being Jack’s.

Gwen, inside, is saying that she’s marrying Rhys regardless, because of how much crap he’s had to put up with since she joined Torchwood. But Rhys says it’s his wedding, too, and he gets a say.

Around about then, a bridemaid finds Mervyn’s body, and runs out screaming. Jack sends Ianto after her to contain the situation.

GWEN’S MOTHER: The problem seems to be an American with no sense of timing. Or fashion.

The bridesmaid bursts in on the guests, screaming, and Ianto has to reveal that the situation is “uncontained.” But Tosh can identify the Nostrovite, which leads to some shooting and screaming, but no actual fatalities.

Inside, Owen is planning on using the singularity scalpel to remove the foetus, but Gwen is not thrilled by all this. And when Rhys’s mother comes into the room, Owen runs out after the shapeshifter.

But when he sees Jack, Jack points out that the alien is a shapeshifter, which leads to a scene in which Jack gets punched in the face by Rhys. Of course, the alien has taken the role of Rhys’s mother, but she’s outside, not inside.

The Nostrovite grabs Gwen’s mother, and Gwen approaches very slowly, until the Nostrovite calls out to its child, whereupon Gwen shoots it with the gun concealed in her bouquet.

Owen tells Rhys how to use the singularity scalpel, because, as he points out, Owen doesn’t have two working hands.

As Gwen waits inside, Jack comes to her, and Gwen talks a little about how she feels about him. But, of course, it’s the Nostrovite, and Gwen nuts him.

Good on you, Gwen.

At that point, Owen and Rhys burst in, and Owen shoots the Nostrovite while Rhys drags Gwen across the grounds. The Nostrovite goes to bite Owen, but, as a carnivore, it’s not really about roadkill.

When Real Jack and the others show up, Owen points out that their guns don’t work.

JACK: We’re going to need a bigger gun, then.

Rhys and Gwen end up in a barn, with the Nostrovite beating down the door, and Rhys trying to operate the singularity scalpel . . . successfully, as it works out.

Then the Nostrovite bursts through the door, in the guise of Rhys’s mother, and as he’s just about to go for her with a chainsaw (can anyone say Oedipal?), Jack blows her up with a really, really big gun.

Jack admires Rhys’s “Evil Dead” look, and tells him that the good guy always gets the girl, but only after giving Gwen a bit of a squeeze.

Not like that!

Then Rhys and Gwen get married, even though everyone now knows about aliens.

And, at the reception, Owen asks Tosh to dance with him, while Rhys and Gwen dance, and Jack, sitting on his own, cuts in.

JACK: Mind if I cut in?
NICK: Jack, you’re always bloody cutting in.

Jack tells Gwen to enjoy the honeymoon.

GWEN: What will you do when I’m gone?
JACK: The usual. Pizza. Ianto. Save the world a couple of times.
GWEN: Will you miss me?
JACK: Always.

Aw. Then Ianto cuts into the dance, and he and Jack dance, though Jack casts one last look over at Gwen.

Towards the end of the reception—and we can tell it’s the end, because they’re playing Soft Cell—everyone falls asleep. Because Jack has mixed level-six retconn into the champagne. Wow, I hope they don’t interact in an unfortunate way.

Jack offer the same cocktail to Rhys and Gwen, but Gwen says no: no secrets in this marriage, she says. She and Rhys head off, while Torchwood shift into clean-up mode.

IANTO: That’s what I love about Torchwood. By day, chasing the scum of the universe. Come midnight, you’re the wedding fairy.

Back at the Hub, Jack, alone, looks at a wedding photograph of himself and a woman in a fetching, nineteenth-century dress.

Well, now: that was relatively light-hearted, surely? I’m positive that won’t last.