Torchwood Episode 208 Recap: “A Day in the Death”

We open on Owen stuck in a music video from the mid-1980s, right around when video makers realized they could jazz things up by introducing something as radical as the high-speed setting. So we see Owen standing still while all these people zoom by him in reverse, and the whole thing would be way cooler if it were set to the Pet Shop Boys instead of the ponderous “Owen’s Theme” piano music we’re subjected to at increasing decibel levels throughout this episode.

Owen (voice-over): My name is Dr. Owen Harper. And this is my life.

My name is Steven Frank. And this episode is already boring me.

It can’t be a good thing for an episode to kick off with a character we already know all-too-well introducing himself and proceeding to narrate a clip reel from the first season and a half. That’s what most shows use “Previously” montages for.

As Owen recaps the highlights of his life, we see images of such misty watercolored memories as canoodling with Diane and jabbing at hunks of alien manatee meat. Ah, good times. Noticeably absent — any moments spent in or out of bed with Gwen.

While Owen’s narration continues, I start trying to figure out what substances I can abuse to make the rest of this at all tolerable. Owen: “A life that’s full of action and violence …” Me: Maybe Oreos and milk? “Work and wonder …” Better make that alcohol. Hard alcohol. “And secrets and sex …” Starting to doze, so definitely need caffeine — triple espresso. “And love and heartbreak. And death …” Screw it. I’m clearly going to need all of the above.

It already feels like Owen’s been talking forever, and yet he’s got even more to say. He yammers on about surviving death but not really living anymore, and we see him lathering up with shaving cream and then remembering the dead don’t grow hair (but I’m pretty sure they still need to clip their nails) and then sadly examining the contents of the fridge but physically not being able to eat anything — a problem that’s not going to win him many fans from the Jenny Craig camp.

Then he notes how his coworkers, whom he watches from a distance, are preoccupied with mundane worries about aliens and weddings. Even though he acts the same, he tells us, he’s different. He’s sounding like a petulant teenager in full-out “nobody understands me” mode, like Angela Chase’s gloomier older brother. “They think I’m fine,” he says, “but they’re wrong.” To illustrate how wrong, we see an image of him screaming underwater but not drowning, and someone should really tell him that in water, no one can hear you scream.

We cut to a rooftop at night, and see that Owen is actually talking to some woman, both of them sitting side by side at the edge. Owen asks her if she’s ready to jump. And we launch into the opening credits.

Usually the pre-credits moment is a sort of mini-cliffhanger, a dramatic wallop to get us excited enough to devote another 47 minutes of our lives to watching a show where we’re supposed to take it seriously when people talk about things like “Rift Jelly” and “Anti-Weevil Spray.” So it truly doesn’t bode well that the most exciting thing they could think to show us was Owen chatting away with some depressed stranger.