Torchwood Episode 203 Recap: “To the Last Man”

A man and woman, “Gerald” and “Harriet,” are rushing down some stairs at a rapid pace. She’s carrying a small clicking device she needs to crank up like a gramophone. For those of you who don’t know what a gramophone is, it’s what people used to listen to music on, between painting on cave walls and hunting for woolly mammoth.

They run into a nurse done up all Florence Nightingale-style, who jumps up in fright, saying she thought they were ghosts. Then she says she’s already seen three ghosts earlier in the day. Rather than doing what any reasonable person would do, making “drinky drinky, she so crazy” gestures behind her head, Gerald and Harriet ask where she saw these ghosts.

They follow her right into the set from the interminable middle section of Atonement. In case you couldn’t tell from the charmingly out-of-date clothes, subtitles inform us it’s 1918, and we’re in “St. Teilo’s Military Hospital.” As they walk through the ward, they talk about what a sorry lot these wounded soldiers are, although other than a bit of coughing and a few bandages, they all seem fine. It’s no worse than what you’d find in a grammar school nurse’s office.

Harriet’s Geiger-ghost-counter starts clicking like crazy, and things start rattling around while the lights flash — you know, Torchwood’s typical “Oooh, scaaary” shtick. Harriet and Gerald follow her monitor to another room where, bathed in bright light, they find a handsome dude in PJ’s huddled on the floor. And next to him? None other than Tosh, who calls him “Tommy” and urges him to tell the others what to do.

Tommy reluctantly gets up and says, “Take me! I’m there, in the ward, in 1918. You have to take me so I can be here now.” So if I’m following this correctly, this is basically the same scenario as Somewhere In Time, except instead of Christopher Reeve traveling through time to hook up with Jane Seymour, it’s this soldier guy traveling through time so he can hook up with himself. I guess he’s been to paradise but he’s never been to me.

Gerald and Harriet go back into the ward, where they find 1918 Tommy lying in bed. They tell him that he better come with them. He asks who they are, and with a great deal of drama, they say, “We’re Torchwood.” And just to give us time to change our undergarments after what is clearly meant to be a mind-blowing revelation, they cut to the opening credits.

I have to say that in the minute and a half of screen time they get, I kind of love Gerald and Harriet. I wouldn’t mind a whole Law & Order: SVU-like spin off just about them. And let me also say that Torchwood hiring standards must have become seriously lax over the years, because how else do you get from somebody as competent and assured as Harriet to whiners like Owen, sulkers like Ianto, and a quivering mass of emotions and bad decisions like Gwen?