Torchwood Episode 210 Recap: “From Out of the Rain”

Wow! The Electro! Ma and Pa Electro arrive at the theater, surprised to hear music from the auditorium. They go in and see the piano playing by itself, an effect that’s so cheesy and unscary it might as well be the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld. Dru comes in and shines a flashlight in their faces, telling them to follow her.

Meanwhile, at Logan’s flat, Jack comes to search the place and sees it’s now empty. Logan tells Jack and Ianto that his film cans were opened. Janto, pretty much thinking and speaking as one at this point, realize that Pirelli is trying to bring others from the circus film through.

Logan also offers up that when Dru touched him it felt like celluloid, and that he smells film chemicals in the air. From this, Janto proceed on a completely La La La Hop Hop Hop line of reasoning, figuring that a) since the travelers were on film so long they’ve become film; and b) since they were trapped on film before, they can be got rid of the same way, in effect, by filming them again. To me, that’s about as logical as saying that a person who’s become fat from eating too many donuts can lose weight by eating even more donuts.

Jack grabs Logan’s camera, and he and Ianto decide that if they film the travelers and then expose the film to light, they’d blank them out. What drives me crazy about this whole thing is that it’s at best a hunch without any logical basis whatsoever, yet they take it with total conviction that it will work. They don’t even consider other options or plans of action; for all they know they could just throw a bucket of water on the travelers and they’d melt.

Outside Wow! The Electro! Logan and Janto show up to find Gwen and Owen locked out trying to get inside. Logan uses his keys, and the Hubbies rush into the auditorium to find a sucked-dry Ma and Pa Electro sitting in the audience in a catatonic state. Jack tells Gwen to get the distraught Logan out of there, and orders Owen to go up to the projection room to see who’s there.

Then the music starts, the curtain opens, and the old circus movie begins again. Ianto and Jack watch from the back row, and Jack films it as the other travelers emerge one by one from the screen and out into the auditorium. Dru welcomes them back. I hope they’re not hungry after the long trip, because they’ve had the misfortune of being brought back into an educational theater with a strict no-snacking policy. That must suck. Dru sees Jack and Ianto sneaking out the back with the camera.

Up in the projection room, Owen pounds on the door. Pirelli comes out and sticks his finger in Owen’s mouth, only to be disappointed by the fact that Owen doesn’t have a breath for him to take. I’m starting to feel bad for Owen given it seems to be a weekly pattern now for some alien or ghoul to trash him for being dead. It’s kind of sad how, around the rift, the undead are treated like second-class citizens.

Pirelli ditches Owen and starts going downstairs, where he’s spotted by Ianto who shouts to the others that Pirelli has the flask. Gwen tries to tackle him, and when he raises his arm in the air to strike her, Ianto snatches the flask from him in this awesome “Yoink!” maneuver. Then he runs. And runs and runs and runs, through the Cardiff streets and backlots, like that endless middle stretch in Forrest Gump.

He finally stops running, and Pirelli sneaks up behind him and gives him the Vulcan Death Grip. While Ianto cries in pain, Pirelli yoinks the flask back from him and starts running up a nearby fire escape, while Jack shows up and films him. Trapped at the top of the stairs, Pirelli opens the flask and flings it in the air. Everything goes slo-mo, as Ianto runs to catch the flask, like Tom Cruise with his mom’s crystal egg in Risky Business.