Torchwood Episode 211 Recap: “Adrift”

Gwen treks down to the bunker and finds a locked door with an intercom, through which a voice demands to know who she is. She provides her Torchwood ID number and says she’s with Jack Harkness. The voice says he’s supposed to warn them about visitors. Then the door opens and Gwen is greeted by a rather warm, matronly woman in hospital scrubs, who says, “But he knows we’ll always forgive him.”

The woman proceeds to lead Gwen through an underground facility that’s part One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and part Shawshank Redemption, with a bit of Hostel thrown in for atmosphere. It’s dark and dank, and patrolled by orderlies in scrubs, and there’s the sounds of screaming and sobbing. They walk past a TV lounge where there’s this young woman with a severe case of bad skin who, seeing Gwen gaping at her, scurries away in misery, like Gwen’s the Queen Bee of their clique-ridden junior high.

They continue walking past these rooms with heavy-duty locked doors bearing chalkboards with people’s names written on them. The woman kindly asks Gwen if it’s her first visit and says it’s difficult for everyone at first. Gwen questions her a bit about the number of patients and what they’re doing there, and then has another Eureka-for-her/obvious-to-the-rest-of-us epiphany where she finally figures out that the names on the doors are the people allegedly snatched by the rift.

Gwen starts to freak out, and then Jack’s suddenly there, telling the nurse, “Helen,” he’ll take it from there. Jack approaches Gwen, and she backs away like he’s going to hurt her. Yes! This is the Gwack relationship I’ve been waiting for, one rooted in enough mistrust and homicidal possibilities so that there’s no way they’ll ever end up in bed together.

Then she sees she’s right by Jonah’s door and demands that Jack open it for her. Jack tries to calm her down and explain what’s going on, but realizing there’s no reasoning with her, lets her in.

Inside, it’s even darker and danker than the hallway, and she hears this labored breathing from the corner. The guy she sees inside looks just like, depending on your particular frame of pop cultural reference, the Toxic Avenger, Sloth from The Goonies, or Murder One’s Daniel Benzali.

At first Gwen thinks she’s in the wrong room, given this guy is about 50 years old and on the deformed side. But he assures her he’s Jonah Bevin. His story is that he was walking home and then there was a light. He woke up in terrible pain on some flame-riddled landscape, and a man pulled him into what he thought was a building but turned out to be a rescue craft. From inside, he “watched the solar system burn.”

Gee, that explains everything, doesn’t it? Except for how he wound up back on earth and in the Mystery Island Facility for Rift-Related Skin Disorders. But rather than asking any of these questions, Gwen tells him she’s there because his mother has been looking for him. Jonah asks if Gwen can bring her there.

Outside the bunker, Jack and Gwen sit side by side staring out at sea. Jack says that when he took over Torchwood, there were two just like Jonah, “ravaged from falling through the rift,” kept locked away in the vaults and neglected. Jack opened this facility because he wanted them better cared for, which is a nice sentiment except he might have made a little effort to cheery up the décor a bit, don’t you think? Maybe a bright coat of paint, a few throw pillows, and a nice floral print or two? Like there’s no Pottery Barn in all of Cardiff where he could have picked up a few decent accessories?

Jack says the numbers have been increasing, and now the facility has 17 residents. The staff are told they’re experiments gone wrong. It’s pretty la la la hop hop hop that the staff have never questioned this clearly B.S. story, or that nobody’s wondered about traffic back and forth to this supposedly deserted island, or that Tosh never figured this out herself long before Gwen ever showed up at the Hub bearing pizza.

Gwen tells Jack their families deserve to know that their loved ones are there. He counters that “they’re sick in ways you could never imagine.” Given what eventually happens, I think he might have more specifically elaborated on this particular point for her, but I think he’s so tired of arguing with her that he just gives in.