Torchwood Episode 206 Recap: "Reset"

Ianto contacts Martha to announce that “Marie,” the woman at the hospital, has had some sort of seizure. Martha goes to collect Owen from the lab, where he has just finished analyzing Marie’s blood sample. The results show no indications of any infections or deficiencies of any kind; she’s got perfect cholesterol levels, ideal blood pressure, and nary a zit, wart, or mole. As Owen eloquently puts it, “She’s so normal, she’s abnormal.” Kind of like Carrie Underwood.

Hospital. Martha shines a bright light in Marie’s eyes and asks if she can hear her. Marie, in a hospital gown, with stringy hair, visible bruises, and a sort of manic temperament, has something very Courtney Love-like about her, although in Courtney’s case you’d have to say “she’s so abnormal, she’s abnormal.” Owen tells Marie that she’s got something in her blood that they don’t recognize, and wonders if there’s been anything going on with her health lately.

Cut to a room littered with drinking paraphernalia, dirty laundry, centerfold posters, and a Canadian flag. In other words, college. Gwen and Ianto interview the dead student’s roommate, who is cute in a young Hugh Jackman sort of way. Gwen wonders if the dead guy, “Barry,” was doing any drugs, and the roommate says he had to be really careful about what went into his body “because of his diabetes.” But he had recently started getting wasted all the time. In other words, college.

The roommate elaborates that Barry started drinking and doing drugs after he was “cured” of the diabetes. Because the best way to celebrate overcoming a major disease that requires you inject yourself several times a day is by injecting yourself several times a day for recreational reasons. Real genius, this Barry. Ianto argues that curing diabetes is impossible.

Ianto calls Owen at the hospital to tell him about the diabetes miracle cure. Owen then gets tough on Marie, saying she needs to level with them about her medical condition. She admits to having had HIV but says she’s been cured, thanks to a drug she refers to as “Reset.” They ask where she got it from, and she says, “The Farm,” then clarifies, “The Pharm,” a medical research facility that paid her a lot of money to be a clinical test subject and keep her mouth shut.

Suddenly, she starts convulsing, so Owen injects her with something that manages to stop the flailing about. Only downside, she starts flatlining. Then her mouth opens and she starts spewing what appear to be Rice Krispies all over the room.

Owen and Martha start running around like crazy, I’m guessing searching for bowls of milk and a banana. They put surgical masks over their faces and go cower in the corner. After swarming around them a bit, the Rice Krispies all fall to the floor. Owen picks one up, examines it closely, and sees it’s a tiny gnat-like bug. Gross.

Back at the Hub, Owen and Martha look at an image of the gnat on screen. Martha says, “It’s an alien larvae incubating in human bodies.” Well, that explains everything.

They postulate that when Marie died, the larvae left her body looking for another human host, and when it couldn’t find one, they dropped dead. I’m wondering what makes them so sure the larvae didn’t host inside one of them. True, they were wearing surgical masks but, and I’m no scientist, but aren’t there other open orifices on the human body?