Torchwood Episode 207 Recap: “Dead Man Walking”

They bring Owen down to see Janet, who’s pretty much become their canary in the mines in terms of existing solely to help them assess danger levels. Janet cowers before Owen, leading him to sigh, “I’m King of the Weevils.” Heh. I hope he’s got the hots for Ann Coulter, because I hear she’s the reigning Weevil Queen.

Gwen announces that she thinks this has happened before, and shows them some sketches that, even after studying at length with the TiVO on pause, I can’t see the slightest similarity to what’s going on in this episode. We’ll have to take her word for it on this one.

Gwen says she found the sketch in an article on the Black Death, which contained early images of the Grim Reaper, who reportedly said the same line as Owen about walking the earth. Oh dear. Are they seriously making the Big Bad this week something as clichéd and cheesy as the Grim Reaper? Like they can’t come up with enough interesting/scary aliens in the entire blooming galaxy? What’s next week? “Torchwood faces their sneakiest adversary yet … the Tooth Fairy.”

TW Conference Room. Gwen continues her Exposition Lecture with more useless sketches. Legend has it that, in plague times, in the small parish of St. James, a little girl died but a priest performed a miracle and brought her back. However, she wasn’t alone and brought Death back with her.

Hey, I saw that movie! Death is played by Brad Pitt! And the movie is so long and boring that you feel like you died while watching it. Much like this scene. Tosh has her issues with it as well …

Tosh: Are we seriously going to act on something she Googled?

I love that line because it’s one of the only moments I can think of where we get a little hint of Tosh’s true feelings about Gwen. You can just hear in her voice how much she bitterly resents having this nitwit/boyfriend-stealer for a co-worker but is too classy to go running to Jack to complain.

Turns out that the name of the plague priest’s church was St. Mary’s, the same as where Jack found the glove. And of course the town of St. James is now Cardiff. Owen wonders what happened to the original town, and Gwen says 12 people died, like it was this horrible massacre, when I’m thinking they got off easy given it was the time of the freaking bubonic plague. Like Death really needed to go to all this trouble to walk the earth when people were dying all over the place to begin with from, what was it called again? Oh, right. The Black Death.

Oh, and the crucial plot contrivance for this episode is that Death needed 13 souls to have a “permanent hold” on the earth, but the town was able to stop it at 12. The Hubbies wonder how. And Gwen says the only answer she could find was it had something to do with “Faith.” Excuse me while I go drink a few beers so I have something in my stomach available to spew.

Owen, meanwhile, seems to think this explains his present condition …

Owen: I’ve been thinking there’s something in the darkness waiting for me to finally pass over. But I got it wrong. It’s the other way around. It’s trying to get here. Through me … You know we fight monsters. What happens when we turn out to be the monsters?

I know people get upset when I miss every nuance of Ianto’s reactions and the subtle ways backstories are alluded to. So let me make it clear. Yes, I saw it; I saw how Ianto gave a “look” at the mention of turning into “monsters,” and I know he was thinking about Lisa and his own recent serial-killer issues. I saw it, and I hereby pointed it out. But I’d be much happier missing stuff like this if it meant Ianto and Jack were actually doing the kinds of stuff that would be impossible to miss.

Martha helpfully points out that Owen is now 80% not human, and Owen insists that the only way to put a stop to it is by doing what you always do with dead guys. Embalming.