Torchwood Episode 207 Recap: “Dead Man Walking”

He grabs Owen’s head with the glove. At first, nothing happens. Then Jack senses something and starts crying out, “He’s coming! He’s coming!” Because just one touch from Jack is enough to bring even the dead to orgasm.

Owen gasps awake, wondering why he’s on a table in the autopsy room. Jack explains what’s happened, and as Ianto counts down the two minutes, orders the others to make their goodbyes. Gwen is at a loss for words and just shrugs. She’s got all the time in the world to offer words of comfort to a sleeper-cell-terrorist-alien-chick, but with one of her own colleagues who she was intimate with, she’s got nada.

Tosh launches right in, announcing to Owen that she loves him. From Owen’s face, I’m guessing he’s thinking something much like what Mr. Burns had to say to Smithers in a certain Simpsons episode: “Thank you for making my last moments on earth socially awkward.”

Then Jack tells Owen he needs the code to get into the alien morgue. Owen is outraged that Jack brought him back just for that. Personally, it pretty much redeems this whole sorry exercise for me. I just couldn’t get my head around Jack, knowing what he knows about the glove, risking so much for the sake of a final two minutes with Owen of all people.

But for an alarm code, I totally get that. There’s something so refreshingly ordinary about it. Yes, yes, with power comes great responsibility. But with being human comes great laziness. It just makes sense to me that, even knowing the risks, most people with a forbidden object lying around couldn’t help themselves if it somehow meant less work.

Trying to redeem himself for being such a dick, Jack takes Owen’s hand and sobs all over it, saying “Be brave.” Ianto announces that the two minutes have passed, and it seems like Owen is officially dead. Violins play. Tosh sobs. Ianto blinks with extra intensity. Then Owen pops his eyes open, all “I’m not dead yet.”

Ianto: Well, here we go again.

Heh. I’m glad somebody else said it so I don’t have to. Owen wonders if he’s being kept alive for some special purpose. As he and Jack excitedly hypothesize about what’s happening, no one notices that the fingers of the discarded glove are still moving.

Owen listens to his own chest and diagnoses himself as having no heart beat or pulse, but his brain is showing electrical activity. Which is amazing given how inactive it was back when he was alive. Of course, back then the seat of all his energy was in his crotch.

The Hubbies speculate about where this power is coming from, remembering that when Suzie used the other glove, it drained energy from Gwen. Gwen wonders if this time Owen is sucking Jack dry. Yeah, in his dreams. And mine.

Just to be sure, Tosh does some airport security scanner thing to Jack’s chest and determines he’s not an Owen power source. Ianto suggests that since this is a different glove, the first one having been thrown in the harbor, maybe it does things differently. Hearing this, Martha asks exactly how many gloves there are …

Ianto: Two … they tend to come in pairs.

Ha! Last year when he said that line, ominous. This time, absolutely hysterical. Thus proving the old maxim that Time + Repetition = Comedy Gold.