Torchwood Episode 213 Recap: “Exit Wounds”

We now follow the Hubbies to their various crisis sites around the city, and each new location is introduced by a pointless screen shot announcing the place and time a la Law & Order. Which dismays me, because I don’t why a show as inventive as Torchwood should be reduced to cribbing from a franchise that’s always struck me as the equivalent of a children’s theater troupe reenacting the crime section of the newspaper.

Cardiff City Police Headquarters, 5:27 p.m. Andy ushers Gwen past blood-spattered walls and over dead bodies, talking about how non-humans appeared out of nowhere and killed off the four most senior officers. He doesn’t mention that the reason he was safe was because he was holed up in his little Gwen shrine downstairs, staring at photos taken with the camera he’s hidden in her flat, sniffing the knickers he nicked from her locker, and enjoying his Gwen blow-up doll in a quick game of “I’m under arrest, so frisk me!”

Andy’s pissed that Rhys is along, claiming he’ll blab about what he sees and launch a citywide panic …

Rhys: I’m keeping more secrets than you’d believe.
Andy: Like what?
Rhys: Like a Time Agency based in Cardiff!
Andy: Brilliant secret. I ask, you tell. Well done.

LOL! Somebody get these two a spin-off. They’re hilarious together, and they generate more convincing sexual chemistry than Gwack ever did.

Andy takes Gwen to a locked door, and she peeps through a peephole to see a bunch of snarling Weevils inexplicably filmed with this weird slow-motion camerawork, like they’re in an all-Weevil remake of Chariots of Fire.

She says she’s going to subdue them and proceeds to gas them using a canister that she appears to keep in her shoe, which is about as practical as when she slipped a Retcon pill into the back pocket of her skintight f**k-me jeans. Who knows what else she’s packing in her footwear, but it does explain why when she runs, if you listen carefully you can hear her muttering something like this: “Hey, guys! … OW! … Wait … OW! … for … OW! … me! … OWWWW!”

Central Server Building, 5:36 p.m. Tosh helpful exposits that this is the building housing the servers for the military, police, and “even the nuclear station at Turnmill,” which I’m sure she’s just observing for no particular reason and it won’t be important later on at all. She’s also in tip-top shape despite the broken arm, thanks to some “industrial strength painkillers” courtesy of Owen, and let me say now that if I’m going to be recapping season three, I’m first going to need me some of those drugs.

Just then, she and Ianto come face to face with a trio of Grim Reapers, although much less CGI-looking than the Grim Reaper who wrestled Owen a few weeks ago. This season’s special effects budget must have run dry, because these are basically three guys in robes carrying scythes, and even children at Halloween put more effort into their Death costumes, although there’s been some effort to make them scary by having them talk in a Stephen Hawking-esque mechano-rasp.

The Death Dudes ramble on about “Blasphemers! We cast you out,” and Tosh and Ianto just look at each other, shrug, and in a totally Indiana-Jones move, simply shoot the ghouls, who promptly drop. “There we are then,” Ianto says.

St. Helen’s Hospital, 5:39 p.m. Owen meets up with some white-coated woman outside the hospital basement, who explains that there’s some creature trapped inside chewing cables. Owen stares through the window, then a fanged face appears making both him and me jump in the air the way you do in a horror movie when the music and the lighting and the camera angles prepare you for a shock and it’s usually just a cat.

Owen explains that it’s a “Hoix” alien, and prepares to confront it by taking out an “all-species sedative” that — unlike Gwen who’d no doubt use her bra for syringe storage — he keeps in a handsome carrying case that looks like something veterinary students would get for graduation.

He asks the woman if she’s got anything Hoixy can eat, and she tosses Owen a pack of cigarettes, and you’ve just got to love members of the medical profession who enjoy health-threatening addictions. I guess she brought the cigs along because she left her flask of whiskey back in the O.R.

Owen goes inside the darkened basement, offering up the cigarettes like a chocolate bar to a pterodactyl. Hoixy is intrigued by the robust, cool aroma of prime-grade tobacco, and as it goes to bum a ciggie, Owen promptly syringes it in the neck, saying, “You really are quite stupid, aren’t you?”

And speaking of stupid … don’t you think that these “traps” that Spike set up for the Hubbies were handled with laughable ease? I’d say that, as a supervillain, Spike kind of sucks.