Review: Torchwood S2 08 A Day in the Death
That was a lovely meditation on death from a humanist perspective. Owen's dead. What happens next? Owen wonders that too.
We begin with Owen and an unknown woman sitting on a rooftop, contemplating jumping. As they think about it, Owen tells her his recent past. He's been murdered and zombified. Worse, in his opinion, the very person who zombified hm has relieved him of duty and signed him up for a series of tests.
Owen thinks Jack is being cruel, but he isn't. Not only does Jack need to asses Owen's health and state of mind, but equally importantly Owen needs time for what has happened to him to sink in mentally and emotionally. Now Owen has as much inclination towards introspection as a whale does toward tap-dancing. The only way to get him to do it is to leave him no other choice. I was reminded of an account I once read of a woman attending a week-long Festival in the woods who broke her thumb on the second day. After the nurse set it, the woman tried to jump right up and go back to the fun. The nurse ordered her to sit there with a cup of mint tea until further notice. Grumbling, the woman complied. But as she sat there, it occurred to her that with her thumb broken she couldn't do this, she would need to recruit help to do that, she would have to factor in much more time to set up her presentation than usual, and so on. When the nurse returned she found a much more somber and realistic woman than the one who came in with the broken thumb. That's what Jack is doing for Owen.
The problem is, Owen has to get bored and frustrated before he'll look at his own problems. Male super-geniuses don't tend to handle boredom and frustration very well. I've been married to one for almost 20 years, and he would have been far worse than Owen in that circumstance.
Meanwhile, the rest of Torchwood deals with the inevitable tantrums with an impressive calmness. Ianto simply chides Owen when Owen lashes out at him by asking Owen is he's going to let this thing "beat him". I thought he showed impressive restraint in not reminding Owen of the times Ianto's world has crumbled to pieces around his ears. Jack doesn't react at all when Owen lashes out at him, although he does get Owen back for one of his swipes at Ianto with the Tintin shirt. Gwen for once shows the good sense to simply keep out of his way and Martha treats him with professional courtesy while pointing out some home truths. Toshiko tries to be there for him and gets abused the worst, but she shows her strength by not lashing back at him during a time when Owen obviously isn't thinking clearly. Later, when Owen starts to come to grips with his condition, it's Toshiko he turns to for support.
But that is later. At first Owen throws a pity party. No one can possibly understand his position as far as he's concerned. He whines that Ianto and Jack have each other, Gwen has Rhys, "even Tosh had Tommy", and he's got nobody. Awww. I'd feel really sorry for him except that, as he later points out, he could have had Tosh any day in the past three years if he'd only said the word. The person who's messed up all his relationships, save with Dian, has been himself. That's one of a long list of things he's been denying about himself that it's time to face.
Meanwhile, a plot has surfaced regarding a rich, elderly alien-artifact collector who has a Mysterious Device that's flaring up with an awful lot of power, and they decide they must sneak into his mansion. Why they simply don't ring him up and send Tosh over in a short skirt is beyond me. Apparently all the alien-artifact collectors know at least something about Torchwood; we saw that in Greeks Bearing Gifts and Random Shoes. But no, they have to break-and-enter the place, and due to it's heat-sensitive security system only Owen can do that.
Owen breaks into the mansion and into the dying collector's own one-man pity party, which sounded so much like his own pity party it threw Owen's earlier words back in his face. The collector thinks the Mysterious Device is keeping him alive, but Owen deduces that it's merely keeping him entertained. The collector has a heart attack and Owen tries to save him but fails, because while he may be able to take in enough air to talk with a great big hole in his lung, he can't hold enough air to force someone else's lungs to re-inflate. And that death, more than anything else, finally convinces Owen to take his condition seriously.
And it's that lesson he tries to impart to the girl jumper, Maggie, on the roof. Peer therapy is the only form of grief counseling that works -- been there, done that, wore out the t-shirt. But before that can happen you first have to recognize that the other person truly is a peer. That's what Owen refused to do back in Captain Jack Harkness, and that's the great breakthrough he makes in this episode.
All in all Joe Lidster has penned and Ashley Way has directed a lovely story around the humanist view of death. If death is darkness and isolation, all that we can do is be there for each other while we can. For all the science fiction and horror trappings of this episode, it felt like I was listening to a service at my Unitarian Universalist church.
That said, I don't see how they can do much with Zombie!Owen before he starts to fall apart, and I can't see how they'll unzombify him without killing him. Burn says he'll be in Series 3, but in what state?
We begin with Owen and an unknown woman sitting on a rooftop, contemplating jumping. As they think about it, Owen tells her his recent past. He's been murdered and zombified. Worse, in his opinion, the very person who zombified hm has relieved him of duty and signed him up for a series of tests.
Owen thinks Jack is being cruel, but he isn't. Not only does Jack need to asses Owen's health and state of mind, but equally importantly Owen needs time for what has happened to him to sink in mentally and emotionally. Now Owen has as much inclination towards introspection as a whale does toward tap-dancing. The only way to get him to do it is to leave him no other choice. I was reminded of an account I once read of a woman attending a week-long Festival in the woods who broke her thumb on the second day. After the nurse set it, the woman tried to jump right up and go back to the fun. The nurse ordered her to sit there with a cup of mint tea until further notice. Grumbling, the woman complied. But as she sat there, it occurred to her that with her thumb broken she couldn't do this, she would need to recruit help to do that, she would have to factor in much more time to set up her presentation than usual, and so on. When the nurse returned she found a much more somber and realistic woman than the one who came in with the broken thumb. That's what Jack is doing for Owen.
The problem is, Owen has to get bored and frustrated before he'll look at his own problems. Male super-geniuses don't tend to handle boredom and frustration very well. I've been married to one for almost 20 years, and he would have been far worse than Owen in that circumstance.
Meanwhile, the rest of Torchwood deals with the inevitable tantrums with an impressive calmness. Ianto simply chides Owen when Owen lashes out at him by asking Owen is he's going to let this thing "beat him". I thought he showed impressive restraint in not reminding Owen of the times Ianto's world has crumbled to pieces around his ears. Jack doesn't react at all when Owen lashes out at him, although he does get Owen back for one of his swipes at Ianto with the Tintin shirt. Gwen for once shows the good sense to simply keep out of his way and Martha treats him with professional courtesy while pointing out some home truths. Toshiko tries to be there for him and gets abused the worst, but she shows her strength by not lashing back at him during a time when Owen obviously isn't thinking clearly. Later, when Owen starts to come to grips with his condition, it's Toshiko he turns to for support.
But that is later. At first Owen throws a pity party. No one can possibly understand his position as far as he's concerned. He whines that Ianto and Jack have each other, Gwen has Rhys, "even Tosh had Tommy", and he's got nobody. Awww. I'd feel really sorry for him except that, as he later points out, he could have had Tosh any day in the past three years if he'd only said the word. The person who's messed up all his relationships, save with Dian, has been himself. That's one of a long list of things he's been denying about himself that it's time to face.
Meanwhile, a plot has surfaced regarding a rich, elderly alien-artifact collector who has a Mysterious Device that's flaring up with an awful lot of power, and they decide they must sneak into his mansion. Why they simply don't ring him up and send Tosh over in a short skirt is beyond me. Apparently all the alien-artifact collectors know at least something about Torchwood; we saw that in Greeks Bearing Gifts and Random Shoes. But no, they have to break-and-enter the place, and due to it's heat-sensitive security system only Owen can do that.
Owen breaks into the mansion and into the dying collector's own one-man pity party, which sounded so much like his own pity party it threw Owen's earlier words back in his face. The collector thinks the Mysterious Device is keeping him alive, but Owen deduces that it's merely keeping him entertained. The collector has a heart attack and Owen tries to save him but fails, because while he may be able to take in enough air to talk with a great big hole in his lung, he can't hold enough air to force someone else's lungs to re-inflate. And that death, more than anything else, finally convinces Owen to take his condition seriously.
And it's that lesson he tries to impart to the girl jumper, Maggie, on the roof. Peer therapy is the only form of grief counseling that works -- been there, done that, wore out the t-shirt. But before that can happen you first have to recognize that the other person truly is a peer. That's what Owen refused to do back in Captain Jack Harkness, and that's the great breakthrough he makes in this episode.
All in all Joe Lidster has penned and Ashley Way has directed a lovely story around the humanist view of death. If death is darkness and isolation, all that we can do is be there for each other while we can. For all the science fiction and horror trappings of this episode, it felt like I was listening to a service at my Unitarian Universalist church.
That said, I don't see how they can do much with Zombie!Owen before he starts to fall apart, and I can't see how they'll unzombify him without killing him. Burn says he'll be in Series 3, but in what state?