Torchwood Episode 213 Recap: “Exit Wounds”

Gwen says she can’t leave the police station — after all, what would they do without her around to sit on her ass and pout? — but Rhys tells her that he and the others will be fine and that he’ll see her “when it’s all over.” I’m not sure if he means the city-wide crisis or their marriage.

The Hub. Gwen enters with her gun at the ready, whipping it around as she checks out different nooks and crannies, copying moves she clearly learned from Charlie’s Angels. So of course Spike — just as he did in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” despite Jack having told Gwen that rule number two of dealing with him is watching your back — sneaks up right behind her.

Startled, she turns around frantically and points the gun at him, telling him to get on his knees. He makes a joke about it being all sex all the time around TW3 (don’t I wish!). She threatens him with the gun, asking for a reason not to shoot him. “I know where Jack is,” he replies.

At first she doesn’t believe him, but then he goes into all the details of the Jack-Gray fraternal saga, culminating in when he found Gray in a ruined city surrounded by corpses, abandoned even by the Sand People, the only one left there alive for who knows how long. And he shows her the wristbomb Gray was using to control him, which at that very moment is coming unbonded, just as Gray promised it would. Spike pulls the wristbomb away, and a fair amount of his skin with it. Yuck. Somebody get that man a band-aid. We wouldn’t want him all limp-wristed.

Spike finishes off his self-defense by getting all braggy that while he could have run away, he did the right thing for once and came back to help find Jack. Gwen makes a deal, that if he can indeed find Jack, she’ll let him live. So Spike, who in his brief time with the Hubbies has easily figured out that Tosh is the only one capable of providing any useful intel, contacts Tosh via coms and asks her to trace a certain signal (presumably from the ring he threw into the grave) that will show where Jack’s buried.

At first Tosh is reluctant, but Gwen assures her that it’s all right to answer him. Tosh tries to find the signal and then announces she’s not detecting anything like what Spike described. Spike is clearly flustered at this surprising development. He must have bought that ring transmitter in the Slightly Irregular Discount Merchandise Galaxy, because even though it was guaranteed to run for five millennia, it appears to have conked out, rendering it impossible to find Jack.

Just then, in keeping with this season’s great theme of “Ouch! My eardrums!” a high-pitched, insistent ring-tone sort of sound rings out, leaving everybody bending over clutching their ears in pain.

Inside the vault, we see that Gray is creating the sound with his wristband. The cell next to him opens and the Weevils emerge, carefully avoiding Gray on their way out. Maybe he’s Prince of the Weevils?

Outside, we see hordes of Weevils responding to Gray’s signal and emerging from the sewers onto the city streets. It’s all filmed with the same slow-yet-jerky camera movements as previous Weevil scenes, as if these sequences not only feature Weevils but were also filmed and edited by them.

And something else about Weevils — and I can’t believe it’s taken me an entire season of recapping to notice this — but how is it that all Weevils have the exact same dark coveralls? Do they all go shopping at the same clothing retail store, one that caters to the ever-growing metrosexual Weevil clientele? Or is it that they all emerge from the rift dressed like that already, like Weevils are the universe’s janitors and come through the rift still dressed for custodial work?

Inside the Hub, Gwen sees on CCTV that the Weevils are free, and Spike speculates that it must be Gray, who’s intent on causing even more destruction to everything Jack holds dear. Which means that Gray’s next move will be to erase all those Ianto sex tapes in Jack’s office.

Ianto contacts Gwen and Owen on coms, letting them know that he and Tosh are stuck in an alley, unable to get to the nuclear power station because the streets are Weevil-flooded.

Owen, who has been helping out at the hospital, volunteers to go himself, reminding everybody that he’s “King of the Weevils.” Meaning that not only will the Weevils give him a free pass, they’ll personally escort him in a horse-drawn carriage, fanning him with peacock feathers and peeling grapes, all while devouring any paparazzi who might hinder his progress.

Back at the Police Station, Rhys and Owen are reenacting that scene that’s in every zombie movie ever made, you know, the one where they push the door closed on the grasping monster hands trying to claw their way in.

Rhys: Bloody hell, how many are there? It’s like Fort Apache, the Bronx in here.
Andy: Apart from the fact that the surrounding forces are savage aliens and we could all die, it’s exactly the same. Yeah.

Listening to this banter, it’s like that spin-off series I mentioned earlier has already started. This could be the biggest thing since Joanie Loves Chachi!

The Hub. Gwen and Spike are trying to figure out what’s up with Jack’s missing grave signal, when the Weevils from the vault come in and surround them.

Fortunately, Tosh and Ianto are right behind them and fire away, sending the Weevil trio falling to the ground. Ianto’s then only too happy to move onto some Spike-target-practice, but Gwen pushes his firing arm down. Spike promises Eye Candy he’ll make things right, and Tosh says he can start by helping Ianto and Gwen get the Weevils down to the vault before they revive.