1.13: End of Days

[Dave]

The Rift is violently fracturing further, and Jack realises that Torchwood is destined to be drawn into one vast battle that will leave nothing and no one at Torchwood unchanged...

I know the state of the NHS is not good, but do they really still use hospitals in Cardiff that were originally 14th Century Plague hospitals? At least I gathered that as the Roman soldier appeared on his way back to his fort that they also appeared in the same place but a different time.

Anyway this had the makings of a really good episode. First it was very ‘X-files’ like. Andy the policeman even called Gwen and Jack, Scully and Mulder.

Next Owen left, and was about to get retconned. Then they killed off boring Rhys. I thought that if they killed off whinging Gwen too, and just left Ianto, Jack and Tosh, next season was shaping up pretty well!

Then they went and spoilt it all!

First they had this huge Buffy/Manga creature appear from the Rift which is completely out of place in SciFi. A bipedal creature that large cannot physically support itself, and therefore cannot exist without the use of magical/supernatural reasons.

Next I thought they had killed Jack – it was all becoming a little too ‘Blake’s 7’ for me. Jack is the best character – how can they kill off Jack?

Finally after not mentioning “the right kind of Doctor” for eleven episodes they had to introduce it here for reasons I cannot fathom, unless they have realised that the dire need for some help to raise the series after it has floundered.

So, has Jack gone for a spin with the Doctor? Or did the Doctor just need "a hand"?

I didn't like the reset button ending

 

[Pyan]

Dictionary definition:

Team (teem) noun

A co-operatively functioning group: a group of people functioning co-operatively as a group, to the benefit of all.

Torchwood definition:

Team (teem) noun

A non-co-operative disfunctional group: a group of people acting upon their own personal agendas, regardless of consequences

 

[The Ace]

Missed it earlier, so watching the repeat, er hello, Polaroid in 1941, here's me thinking that the first prototype was produced in 1947.

 

[Pyan]

Just wait, Ace. All will become clear!

 

[Harpo]

By the way, let's have a standing ovation for Dave's 10,000th post!

*stands and applauds*

 

[Dr.Jackson]

End of Days and Arnold Schwarzenegger nowhere in sight!

I guess that Captain Jack is now mortal having had all the life giving TARDIS energy drained from him.
Time to get back to beyond the government, below Cardiff, above the need for an easy to follow plot.
But wait, what's that noise? And he's gone off galavanting with someone in a time/space ship leaving the rest of the team even more confused than they usually are, which takes some doing!

All should be resolved in the next series, hopefully!

 

[Princess Ivy]

S
P
O
I
l
e
R
S

yes, jack harkness will be in season three of doctor who, saw and interview with him and he confirmed it.
just need to ask a quick question about the episode. Bilis Manger, looks like it should be an anagram of something. any clues?

 

[sanityassassin]

S
P
O
I
l
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R
S

yes, jack harkness will be in season three of doctor who, saw and interview with him and he confirmed it.
just need to ask a quick question about the episode. Bilis Manger, looks like it should be an anagram of something. any clues?

grim lesbian?
I sign marble

there are hundreds of combinations

 

[Princess Ivy]

yes, but are any of them relevant to dr who/torchwood?

 

[HappyHippo]

Three Words:

I'VE HAD ENOUGH.

(...to expand...)

Ham acting; ham that's past it's sell-by date.
Plots obtained almost wholly from BAAAAD Christmas crackers.
Writers with not even the tiniest grasp of common science-fiction protocols. Hello? Captain JAck blithely plays with timelines and personal histories without even a thought, odds and sods of cast-off Doctor Who plots are gleefully taken up and expanded upon.... grrrrrrr!

It's car-crash tv, even more so than Deal or no Deal. I can't NOT watch, but only because, unlike Mary Whitehouse, I want to critisize it in depth!

Gwen's an annoying slut. (WHY SHOULD HER GRIEF BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYONE ELSE'S?) ...apologies for the capitals *calms down*
Tosh is barely one-dimensional.
Ditto ianto.
Owen must really be using alot of the pheromone spray from ep. 1, there's no other reason for everyone in Cardiff wanting to sleep with him!
and Jack...oh, Jack, you had so much promise in Doctor Who; what happened? (Lamenting)

incidentally, some of my prferred anagrams for Bilis Manger;

mean bi girls
maligns brie
slag bi miner

only semi-relevant one I could find was REALM BIG SIN.

ranting over, ta for listening!

 

[moistfish]

The reason you've probably all been having trouble finding an anagram is that none of you can spell! His name is Bilis Manager! *tuts*

 

[Dave]

I read it as Nilys Manger, but I didn't video it and didn't realise it was going to become so important!

Does that mean he was simply Mr Bilis, the manager?

REAL BAMI SIGN

 

[HappyHippo]

malaise bring?

alias bring me?

 

[PTeppic]

Slime bargain?
Blame raising?
Brags: I'm alien?
Beaming liars?
A gremlin bias?

Anyway, just watched it. Finally. Plenty of action that kept running and running. So long as you don't watch the plot...!

This is an agency that specialises in alien/sci-fi/temporal activity - do they have NO concept of reporting strange events/visions as part of protocol? It's bound to be a bad sign that needs following up, either of previous events/technology or something about to happen. Total amateurs!

As for security! If Owen's been sacked, especially under such circumstances, he should be walked from the premises, his security clearance revoked, and in this organisation, memory wiped, all before he hits the streets. In many regular organisations with security concerns you wouldn't even be allowed to clear out your desk - someone else would do it and pass on the personal effects. [Which means his iris print should also have been removed from the "open the rift" protocol... and since I'm ranting, the password (two "real" words) was woefully insecure: what about numbers and non-alphanumeric characters]

Rambling on: a power cut causes one cell door to open but not others... hmmm. It only needs to open one door but oh no - let's fiddle with half the power in the building, but not adjacent devices (the cell block door). Maybe Bilis can play with electricity/security as well as time? I suppose he could have picked up anything over his travels. But why pick on present day? Perhaps he's seen they're the weakest characters in charge of the rift manipulator! And who knows how he did all the time shifting stuff - there certainly wasn't any backstory, explanation or investigation. And where did he go?

Clear up. How the heck are they going to explain away this one. Temporal effects across half the globe, many of them on video recorded media (and that's without personal cameras), with countless dead. Several dozen as a result of the black death (oh, and I thought the latest research was deciding Bubonic Plague wasn't the Black Death) in Cardiff alone, plus any of the other places it or similar things may have appeared; goodness knows how many as a result of the Roman, civil war period musketeers and other armed/dangerous time-travellers (none from the future I noticed!), and that's without the big guy. If even in a conservative estimate a dozen were dying every second he walked about, and he was marauding for two minutes before confronting Jack, then you've got around 1500 people dead under its shadow(#) in the middle of a major Western city that will need dealing with and explaining. I would assume it would be treated as a bio-weapons attack which would mean major influx of specialists and so on... unless Torchwood has some very serious clout. How do you cover up something that big?
[# - Two continuity errors: a) it was very overcast, so no shadow anyway; b) in the first aerial shot of the shadow reaching across a crowded, bustling Cardiff, the cars kept driving normally, not veering out of control with dead drivers]

They're clearly short of money on the show: whatever the physiology of bipedal creatures 500 feet tall, The Mill gave us a computer game to watch. For me, the Racnoss on the similarly timed Dr Who's Christmas special "Runaway Bride" was entirely believable, better than the werewolf in "Tooth and Claw" or either of the two types of bat-type creatures in either "Father's Day" or "School Reunion". But this, in Torchwood - iD's Doom and Quake were chucking out better graphics in the 90s!

In terms of logic, how come an organisation that is turned to by the UNIT and all the other people that Jack referred to, only has five employees who are all a sandwich short of a picnic? They deal with aliens every day, yet the first sign of a weird vision and they're prepared to threaten the safety of the planet. Have they not heard of either sanity, protocol or trap?

As for the ending - haven't they heard about their own CCTV security system? If someone went missing in the middle of that office, and I worked there, I'd be halfway to the tape-store before that words "Where'd Jack go" stopped echoing...

Saying all of the above, I actually liked it - one of the best episodes of the season as it kept on powering on, oblivious, with plenty of action, traditional sci-fi plot, "character" "development" and emotion. Maybe it was better suited for a kids version, but hey...

 

[Coolhand]

Let me start by apologising for the lack on anagrams in this review. I'm useless at them and so I'm going to leave them to you guys. What I CAN do is sarcasm and you might want to brace yourself because this review contains a lot of it...

It’s the end of the world as we know it and, when the chips are down and it’s time to stand up and be counted, Torchwood react in exactly the way we’ve come to expect. They fall apart at the seams, start shooting each other and basically trigger Armageddon so that they can get a shag from thier dead lovers.

Bra-freaking-vo.
(Very…slow… hand…claps)

Before we start, I have to say, WHAT IS WITH RHYS’ ASS? For a show with a license to do gratuitous nudity, they could have at least given us some pert attractive flesh. We could have seen Pilot chick naked! Cyber Chick naked! Squid Sexpot naked! Jack naked! There could have been something for everyone, straight gay or bi. But what do we get?
Soggy Naked Welsh Bottoms.

Anyway, here is the plot.
Whislt trying to bring back Pilot-Babe for one last bonk, Owen has triggered the end of the world (now that’s what I call unsafe sex) and Torchwood have to run around clearing up yet another mess that its own people started. The best bit about this being the part where Jack quite rightly throws Owen’s useless, insubordinate, end-of-the-world-causing ass out of the group, and the others all tell Jack that he’s being unfair to Owen. They are right. He IS being unfair to Owen. At this point, being FAIR to Owen would involve multiple gunshot wounds. To the knees. And testicles. And then maybe some kicking.

Anyway the dead all start popping up and going “ooooh…..I’m all dead and I love you. Open the rift then we can explore my sexual inhibitions. With gusto.”

Obviously, with the prospect of a shag on the cards, Torchwood make a stampede for the rift controls, stopping only to “tool up” at the Durex machine in the toilets. (Quite how opening the rift is going to resurrect the dead is never explained.) Jack stops them with a loaded gun and then points out in great detail why he should have fired each and everyone one of them several episodes ago. He cites Tosh and the Squid, Ianto and the Silicon Chick, Gwen and….well just generally Gwen. And of course Owen and the whole little causing-the-end-of-the-world snafu. However, the staff wrest control of the weapon from Jack and Owen then quite rightly shoots Jack dead for being stupid enough to assemble such a team of self-centered spineless retards in the first place.

Now the rift is all theirs! Sex city here we come!

However, there is a catch. The rift can only be opened if ALL of Torchwood agree and use a retina scanner. This is actually quite clever of the machine’s designers. They obviously knew that the chances of Torchwood agreeing on anything and working as a team were so remote as to be totally negligible. Yet they overlooked the ability of the team to shoot each other (something they have done almost in almost every other ep now) and then drag the twitching carcass over to the retina scanner.

Oh, hate to be a pedant, but didn’t Owen open the rift without all this retina scanning JUST ONE F**KING EPISODE AGO???!?! WHAT KIND OF F**KED UP WRITERS CAN’T KEEP BASIC F**KING CONTINUITY INTACT FOR ONE F**KING EPISODE????
GRAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway they open the rift and before you can say “Whoops apocalypse!” a big bad demon gets loose and starts trampling downtown Cardiff. I could make all sorts of jokes here about civic improvement. And indeed I just have.

To cut a short anti-climactic story even shorter and more anti-climatic, Jack solves the problem by walking up to the bad guy and dying. The bad guy dies too and falls face first onto a big red button marked “Plot Reset Switch.” This inexplicably returns everyone to life, including Rhys who had died from TOTALLY UNRELATED STAB WOUNDS, enabling the writers to avoid dealing with any lasting drama or story arcs or things that might actually involve an iota of creative talent.

Jack comes back to life for no reason at all when Gwen kisses him. Then the torchwood crew shuffle up to Jack all sheepish and go:
“Hey Jack. Err, sorry about the whole mutiny thing, and the whole shooting you thing, and the whole single handedly causing the death of every living being on the planet and quite possibly the universe before you stepped in and did your Jesus routine. Guess we’re all fired huh? ”
To which Jack grins, ruffles their hair and replies:
“Ah, you guys. Don‘t worry about it or harbor any guilt about what your own selfishness made you do-oh you’re not. Right. Huh. Not even a little guilt? No? Well, fair enough. Back to work eh?”
“I love you man!” cries Owen and gives Jack a hug.
They all laugh and slap each other’s backs and Jack runs off with the Doctor, which is clearly the responsible thing to do now that he knows that the rift is even more unstable and that his team are even more treacherous and stupid than he previously thought.

Now, remember the previous ep and what we discovered about Torchwood’s ranking system? Yeah? Jack’s departure means that Owen is now in command of our last best hope against alien scum.

Would the last person to leave the planet please turn off the lights?

 

[PTeppic]

Let me start by apologising for the lack on anagrams in this review. I'm useless at them and so I'm going to leave them to you guys. What I CAN do is sarcasm and you might want to brace yourself because this review contains a lot of it...

I can't claim to be smart about the anagrams - for an overly long and irrelevant reason I have commercial software that does them (it's pretty neat: "Anagram Genius" if anyone's looking for some).

However, your sarcasm is superb. I haven't laughed out loud as hard since... okay since New Year's day (but that was to the swansong final episode of professional, award-winning writers on the telly-box)

Oh, hate to be a pedant, but didn’t Owen open the rift without all this retina scanning JUST ONE F**KING EPISODE AGO???!?!

Hating myself for trying to justify anything in this Swiss-cheese of an episode pairing, but I guess they're saying that Owen didn't "open" the rift to bring Tosh and Jack back, they just tweaked it a little. Like nudging the curtains to spy on the neighbours, rather than yanking them open to let the morning sunlight in (which they did in this episode to let the Apocalypse in).

 

[Dr.Jackson]

The reason you've probably all been having trouble finding an anagram is that none of you can spell! His name is Bilis Manager! *tuts*

Actually, his name IS Bilis Manger, it says so on the Torchwood site Torchwood - The Torchwood Institute System Interface

Anyhow, someone has pointed out that Bilis Manger is also an anagram of 'Grim Lesbian'. I've got: I Blame Rings, I Mangle Ribs, and Remains Glib.

 

[moistfish]

To be perfectly honest, i know there's a lot of complaints that the team is completely dysfunctional and can't do anything, but thats what makes the program interesting. If they were all perfect and everything went fine and dandy there wouldnt be much to enjoy. I think part of what makes the program 'adult' (apart from sex every episode) is the fact that it shows things don't always go right, people don't always work together well, and sometimes the people you need to rely on, you can't really rely on.

 

[HappyHippo]

that's a fact of life, but having a team of adolescent, dysfunctional, communicationally challenged, sex-obsessed TWERPS in charge of alien clean-up and rift-monitoring is just daft.

 

[Pyan]

I don't know - it works in Government!