And here it is. The Big Bad Climax Episode. I was expecting something a wee bit special[1], but this was better than I was hoping for.

Since the Rift was opened, strange things have been happening. A fleet of spacecraft appears over the Taj Mahal. English Civil War soldiers appear in cities. There’s a very angry Roman soldier in the police cells. And worst of all, people have turned up in a Cardiff hospital with a very contagious and very deadly disease: the Black Death.

Jack shows the team the awful truth: the Rift in time is spreading, and it all traces back to the Hub. He tells Owen that it’s all his fault…

Meanwhile, the team are seeing flashes of people…

At the plague-infested hospital, Tosh sees a vision of her mother, who tells her

It is coming..through the darkness

Gwen sees Bilis Manger who briefly appears in a Torchwood cell and tells her

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Which is, of course, the Doctor’s usual line, but Gwen wouldn’t know that…

Ianto sees his girlfriend Lisa, in her pre-Cyberwoman state. She tells him that the Rift must be opened to save the world.

Owen wants to open the Rift again. Jack tells him that this would not be a very good idea at all. Owen challenges Jack’s authority, and Jack orders him to leave. Owen’s last words to him as he leaves are

Good luck with the end of the world

Thinking that the mysterious Bilis might have some useful information, Jack and Gwen track him down to his clock shop in one of Cardiff’s arcades. He knows about the Rift, and admits that he has the ability to step between times, but can’t or won’t give anything more away. As Jack leaves, he offers to show Gwen something – a vision of the future. He takes her hands, and she sees her boyfriend Rhys lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor of their flat.

Gwen runs home, and finding that Rhys is alive and well, she decides to prevent the vision from coming true. She stuns Rhys, so she can take him away without having to explain anything…

In a bar, drowning his sorrows, Owen sees Diane, the woman he fell in love with and lost. She tells him that she’s lost, and begs him to open the Rift, as this is the only way she can return.

Back at the Hub, Gwen thanks her colleagues for helping her get Rhys there. She’s put him in one of the cells, where nothing can get him. So it’s not at all surprising that at this point a security breach occurs. Lights go off, alarms sound, cell doors open. Rhys wanders out of his cell, wanting to know what’s going on. Now at this point, I was expecting a Weevil to come along and do horrible things to him, so I was moderately surprised to see the increasingly creepy Bilis appear and stab him to death. As Rhys’s life fades away, Bilis vanishes and the lights come back on.

Things are getting desperate now. Owen returns to the Hub, determined to open the Rift and put things right. This time, everyone except Jack agrees. They’ve all seen too much, been pushed too far. When Jack tries to stop them, Owen shoots him, and Jack once again appears to die.

The Rift is opened and All Hell Breaks Loose

As Jack stands up and asks what the hell they’ve done, Rhys’s body and the various people misplaced in time disappear from the Hub. And bits fall from the ceiling in the time honoured way. Everyone leaves the Hub.

Outside, they are confronted by Bilis. He, in suitably bonkers terms announces that he is the servant of Abaddon, an ancient being that had been trapped under the Rift. Saying that his work is done, he disappears again.

And Abaddon has indeed appeared. An enormous demonic creature it towers over the city. As its shadow passes, people fall dead. It is truly the destroyer.

Jack gets Gwen to take him close to the being, thinking that if it feeds on life

I’m an all you can eat buffet

And it seems Jack is too much for Abaddon. The demon falls down dead after trying to devour Jack’s life. Unfortunately, so does Jack.

Later, Gwen goes home and finds that Rhys is alive. It’s as if the events so far had never happened. Except that Jack is lying dead and cold in the Hub. Gwen stays with the body for days, before finally accepting that this time he’s really gone. She kisses him goodbye and turns away, and then she hears his voice

Thank you

Jack is back! Obviously all it took was a kiss. The team is reunited, with hugs all round – all very nice.

Now that everyone knows that the visions were part of Bilis’s trap, Gwen asks Jack what he saw. When he says that he didn’t see any visions, she asks what would have tempted him, to which he replies in words he used back in the first episode:

The right kind of Doctor

In the final scene, Jack’s alone in the Hub. That odd hand in the jar, which we believe to be the one that was cut from the Doctor’s arm in The Christmas Invasion starts glowing. Jack looks delighted, and even more so when a sound fills the room. Papers are blown all over the place as the unmistakable sound of the Tardis is heard.

Moments later, the rest of the team come back. The place is a mess (again) and Jack is missing…

And that is the end of the series. Beautifully done, and sets things up nicely for Jack to appear towards the end of this year’s Doctor Who series before returning to Torchwood later in the year.

And Torchwood itself is nicely set up for the future. We still have the unanswered questions about Owen’s possible Weevilness, and more unanswered questions about Jack – is he still unkillable, or has the encounter with Abaddon wiped that out? And talking of Abaddon, was it in any way related to the Beast in the Pit? And have we seen the last of Bilis? And how are they going to top a mile-high demon striding over Cardiff for the end of the next series?[2] And more to the point, what the heck am I going to watch for the next three months until Doctor Who returns?

[1] Russell T Davies likes to end a series with something Big and Dramatic
[2] I’m sure RTD will think of something

And so we approach the end of the first series of Torchwood. The last two episodes were shown back-to-back, but what we have here isn’t so much as a two-parter, as two interlinked stories. And so I’ll deal with them individually.

Jack and Tosh arrive at a closed down old dancehall. There have been reports of mysterious music, and that’s just the sort of thing Torchwood has to investigate. They wander around the deserted building, finding nothing unusual until they are just about to leave. Outside, it’s gone dark. It’s also 1941. Night-time in Cardiff in 1941 is not an altogether good place to be, as bombs are likely to fall at any time. They go back into the building, to find it full of people. Not ghosts or projections. Real people. Jack and Tosh are in 1941…

Back at the hub, it seems the Rift is becoming more active. Contact has been lost with Jack and Tosh, so Gwen goes looking for them.

Back in 1941, Jack and Tosh meet an officer, who introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness. For once, Jack (that’s the Jack we know, who to avoid confusion I’ll now refer to as Torchwood Jack) is caught off guard. He invents a new name and later admits to Tosh that Jack Harkness isn’t his real name.

Tosh takes her laptop to the manager’s office to try to work out what’s happened. She needs to send a message forward in time to the Torchwood team, and uses the manager’s Polaroid camera to take a picture of her written equations. Of course, the manager shouldn’t really have a Polaroid camera in 1941, as they hadn’t actually been invented at that point. At this point, the manager, a distinctly creepy old man called Bilis Manger[1], appears and Tosh leaves the office. She hides the photograph in a services cupboard outside the building, where it quite remarkably survives intact long enough for Gwen to find in 2006.

In 2006, Gwen meets the building caretaker, who appears to be the same man we just met in 1941. There’s obviously something odd about Bilis Manger, because he doesn’t look a day older…

And that’s where it all starts to get complicated. The team find a photograph taken in 1941 which shows that Jack and Tosh have been taken back to that time. It also shows Bilis, whom Gwen recognises…

And in the Hub, there is something we haven’t seen before – a Rift Manipulator. This can, allegedly, be used to open the Rift in a controlled manner, and could be used to bring Jack and Tosh back to the present. Only there seems to be a bit missing. Owen decides to search the dancehall…

And in 1941, Tosh has realised that the photograph didn’t get all of her calculations. Down in the cellar while an air-raid goes on, she manages to write a message in her own blood and conceal it, in the hope that it will be found. And indeed it is, but not before Bilis gets to it and removes some of the details…

And Torchwood Jack is getting to know err, Real Jack, the man whose identity he took. Torchwood Jack knows that Real Jack will be killed the next day. Back when he was a conman and before he met the Doctor and Rose, Torchwood Jack adopted the name of a recently-killed officer and falsified a few records. But now he’s face to face with the man whose life he took over, and it’s clear that they’re attracted to each other[2].

At the Hub, while Gwen stays at the dancehall, Owen, having found the missing part of the Rift Manipulator and Tosh’s message in the cellar, tries to open the Rift. Ianto tries to stop him – and even shoots him, but not in time to stop the Manipulator running.

Back in 1941, the Rift opens, allowing Torchwood Jack and Tosh to return to the present. But not before Torchwood Jack gets to dance with Real Jack.

Finally, with everyone back at the Hub, Jack (we don’t need to say which Jack now…) and Tosh drink a toast to “the Captain”.

And that’s just a quick outline of one of the more complex episodes of the series, and one which leaves some questions unanswered.

• Who (or what) is Bilis? How can he be in two times?
• How did Bilis come to have the missing part of the Rift Manipulator?
• Now the Rift has been opened, will there be unforeseen consequences?

Some of these questions may be answered in the next, and final episode. In a way, it was a shame the next one followed straight on from this one. It might have been nice to be able to digest and think about this one for a while.

[1] I’m sure that’s a deliberately odd name. I may work it out one day
[2] This was a deliberate Russell T Davies bit of humour. If Jack’s going to fall in love, it would have to be with himself…