Torchwood: Dead Man Walking (Episode 207)

The time is 21:30. This is Doctor Martha Jones. Autopsy on Owen Harper, Caucasian, age 27, Torchwood officer 565. Time of death witnessed approximately 20:30. Autopsy begins.

Out of all the statement made in Martha’s opening statement, which one is clearly the most unbelievable?

Now the entire team is watching the autopsy and somehow, I don’t think that ever made it into any “team building” manual. Moments before Martha is about to cut into the dead Harper (isn’t that the name of some punk band somewhere?) Jack rushes in demanding to know who altered Owen’s personnel file to make him about seven years younger than he really is.

Well, it’s either that or he tells everyone not to do anything to the corpse until he gets back.

In a series of unbelievable events, Jack storms into an underground club/bar/rejected set from Moulin Rouge to meet the newest deus ex machina, a little girl / tarot card reader.

Jack demands to know where “it” is, and I’m wondering what “it” is. Is it Owen’s real age? Is it the location of Martha’s amazing eyebrow waxer? Is it the answer to who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? Well, whatever “it” is, it has had a church built above it, and that if Jack uses it, death will occur. Hold on, so what he’s looking for is Catholicism?

At the church, Jack plays a game of Weevil “Operation” as he gently makes his way through a pile of sleeping Janets, without waking any of them up. Carefully, he picks up a box, which wakes up all the Weevils. Thus we have now learned two important things about Weevils.

Looking like he’s died a few times over, Jack arrives back at the Hub, with another “Risen Mitten.” I would say Ianto was right, that they do come in pairs, except the two gloves don’t look that much alike. Oh yeah, and despite all the bad luck they had with Suzie, Jack still wants to use the glove to bring Owen back.

Techno-title credits.

Jack insists that he’ll be able to use it this time because there are a different set of circumstances and that he won’t give it a choice. Considering the reasoning behind the glove last time, the explanation is a little thin but not as unbelievable as Owen being 27, so I’ll go with it.

Besides not really looking like the other glove, or working like the other glove, as Jack is able to revive Owen, there is one thing that’s similar.

Actually, considering Jack uses phrases like “here my voice,” and “I’m pulling you out,” only listening to this scene as it’s so cringe worthy my eyes are shut for most of it, makes it sound that much more dirty.

Owen realizes that he’s dead and Jack has found another glove. Since they all believe they only have two minutes, Tosh confesses that she loves him but Jack asks him for the code for the alien morgue. Umm, yeah, that’s what you say to your dead co-worker? (By the way, it’s 31165, for those of you planning on any alien grave robbing.)

Jack also wants to help prepare Owen for death, but since Owen’s already been dead for a bit, that’s sort of like coaching the Patriots after the Super Bowl loss. Wait, isn’t that what happened?

There two other things that the gloves share; despite the fact the two minutes are up, Owen isn’t in the great beyond.

While everyone is busy helping Owen not be dead, the glove is realizing it’s from an entirely different show. That’ll come into play later.

Owen’s trying to listen to his own heartbeat, but, it turns out, he doesn’t have one. Martha figures that it’s wrong for Zombie!Owen to lead the investigation. I find it strange that, as Gwen pointed out, Suzie drew power from her, yet Zombie!Owen isn’t draining power from Jack. That is unless the only power one can draw from Jack is death. While that’s one from the philosophers, I’m surprised that the only power that one can draw from Jack isn’t sexual.

Now everyone’s confused, and nicely, Martha is there to allow us to have some exposition on the glove. Now we potentially have two other gloves roaming around Cardiff, as Ianto points out that the Janets’ glove isn’t the same as Suzie’s. Great, Risen Mittens are procreating like Tribbles.

Everyone heads off to investigate the causes behind Zombie!Owen and Zombie!Owen is under quarantine.

Gwen’s been in shock through most of the episode and she calls Rhys for some comfort. Considering she’s had a coworker die, then come back to life under the same sort of circumstances that nearly killed her last year, she’s having a tough day. She really needs Rhys to give her some normalcy.

Martha’s trying to figure out how the glove is changing Zombie!Owen, while he’s busy trying to hit on her. “Is it still necrophilia if I’m conscious?” He asks. You know what, not your best line there.

Zombie!Owen gives what I think to be the start of a St. Peter joke, as his description of death. Well, he may be a zombie, but at least he kept his sense of humour. In reality, he saw nothing when he was dead. Actually, he did see something; he saw Russell T. Davies’ religious persuasion.

Suddenly, Zombie!Owen stumbles and gets tossed back into the darkness. It’s like he’s having a seizure and then reemerges while being held by Jack. Zombie!Owen starts crying about there being something in the dark.

What we now know, is that Zombie!Owen is 40% something else, according to Martha. Plus, Owen knows he can’t say the dark place was “hell” as we all know that the Whoniverse is built on the pillars of atheism.

In the most awkward moment of the whole episode, Tosh finally gets a moment alone with the zombie object of her affection. Even in death, Zombie!Owen dismisses her feelings as just an emotional reaction to him dying. He heads off to the toilet, thus making me wondering if zombies need to pee.

Apparently, they don’t as it was just an excuse to get away from Tosh. Ouch. In punishment, he gets tossed back into the darkness, and spoken too in either a made up language, or spoken at by an angry Klingon.

Whatever language was being spoken in the darkness, Zombie!Owen is now speaking it in the real world.

While Zombie!Owen is afraid of what is happening to him, Martha finds out that he’s now only fifty percent zombie-human. She’s also rather pissed off that Jack had the power to resurrect and never told UNIT.

On a side not, Martha confirms that zombies don’t need to pee.

As for Zombie!Owen, he’s left the Hub and Jack’s off in search of him. Making his way to a bar, Zombie!Owen makes the worst possible discovery. Since his body no longer pumps blood, other things don’t get pumped up either. Am I a bad person for giggling at this because I’m thinking this is the world’s greatest cosmic joke on the self-admitted “prat” who would abuse alien pheromones for sex?

As he leaves the bar, Zombie!Owen runs straight into Jack, who is doing his best impression of angry-father-after-curfew. Zombie!Owen responds by behaving like the angry teenager, railing on about how Jack brought him back for an alarm code and that he can’t get it on his life is over. A fight ensues, and the pair is arrested, even though Owen tries to insist that he’s Torchwood to get out of the cuffs. Wow, who knew that in Cardiff city police training, they were warned never to listen to zombies? Either that, or Jack putting on a fake accent and denying they have anything to do with special ops, to make sure he gets put in handcuffs. Ianto should take note.

Oh, and as the cop cars drive away, two Weevils watch. I dare you to say “two Weevils watch” 10 times fast.

In the cell, Zombie!Owen is kicking at the door, and we realizing that Jack’s going along with it as it’s the only way to get Zombie!Owen to stay put long enough to talk. Reminding his formerly non-zombie underling that he is actually dead and won’t heal if he breaks his ankle kicking at the door, Zombie!Owen sits. Except, when he sits, he sloshes because of the beer he drank. Now Zombie!Owen has to get all of the stuff in his digestive system out of him, which he does standing on his head and impersonating Linda Blair. Yup, that’s all I plan to say on the subject since I’m eating while I’m recapping this.

Once his digestive system is empty, Zombie!Owen muses about things he’ll miss, like farting and sex.

“Sex more than farting, I would hope,” Jack comments, still grossed out by what I think is eighty litres of pureed beans used to simulate the contents of Zombie!Owen’s stomach. Jack tries to distract the freaked zombie by telling him about the time he dated Proust. Captain Jack: screwing his way through history.

Zombie!Owen is jealous of Jack’s immortality. Jack’s jealous of mortality. In short, everyone wants what they can’t have. As for why Jack brought him back, Jack wasn’t ready to give up on the pre-zombified Owen. So now that Jack and Zombie!Owen have made up, I make a realization.

Now that all is well (and the cell is beginning to smell) Jack calls out his Torchwood authorization to get the pair of them released.

Back at the Hub, Tosh found the CC-TV of Zombie!Owen talking like and angry Klingon (is that redundant?) and now everyone is concern as to what Jack is bringing back.

Of course, the pair of them may not get back, as they’re being chased through the city streets of Cardiff by a pack of Weevils. Jack tries to lead them away from Zombie!Owen but there’s just too many of them. They wind up in exactly the same parking lot where Captain John tossed that guy from the roof at the start of this season, but Jack and Zombie!Owen are too stressed out right now to reminisce about Spike.

Suddenly, the Weevils all knell as if someone said the magic phrase to stop them.

As for Zombie!Owen, he’s been possessed by the X-files alien oil again and freaks Jack out by speaking Klingon.

At the Hub, the team resorts to using something that’s never let them down before. This time around, (previously, it read books, and opened doors before) Tosh claims it’ll help them translate what Zombie!Owen was saying in Klingon. Well, I believe that it’s never let them down before but this time it is a translator. Let’s see what else it can do!

"I shall walk the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds,” is what it translates to, at which point we get a paraphrase of a famous quote from Star Wars, “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” Gwen says.

Jack couldn’t agree more, and to prove the point, Zombie!Owen is sent downstairs to intimidate the original Janet with his Weevil messiah-ness.

Speaking of Messiah, Gwen’s done some googling (no, I’m not kidding on the googling part) and found out that the translated Klingon was originally said by Death, sometime during the many rounds of the Black Plague in Europe. Apparently, in the parish of St. James, only one girl died. The priest performed a “miracle” and the girl lived. Except, the girl brought death back with her, who promptly went “om nom nom nom” on 12 souls. Just before he went to eat the 13th soul, faith stopped him. This whole story, on this atheistic show, reeks of something, but I’ll let this next screencap say it all.

“Are we really going act on something she’s googled?” Tosh asks. Yay! Someone finally gave Tosh some great snark. Either that, or Ianto forgot to say it and Tosh was covering.

What everyone’s afraid of is that when the energy changes 100% of Zombie!Owen, Death will come forward into the world. Personally, I hope the grim reaper looks a lot like Mandy Patinkin. Either that or I hope Death likes kittens and has a horse named Binky.

Zombie!Owen wants to be embalmed, to make sure Death will never come through him. Ew. All the preparations are made. Martha and Jack prepare the “embalming” fluid. Tosh looks heartbroken, probably realizing that she is the modern day version of a black widow. Gwen helps Zombie!Owen get ready and also gets his real reasoning for volunteering to die, again. He can’t sleep, drink or shag, so life isn’t worth living.

As Zombie!Owen walks towards his second death, I wonder one thing.

The team’s all there to say goodbye. Well, they’ve already done it once before so this should almost be old hat to them, saying goodbye to an already dead member of Team Torchwood.

Just as Zombie!Owen is about to die, the glove has something to say.

The glove leaps off the table and attacks Martha. Oh yeah, that TV show I mentioned earlier? Well, either the second Risen Mitten is either the metal version of the plastic hands from “Rose” or else it’s from a whole different era of television.

So Medieval Times Thing is thrown across the room and scampers off and the team’s trying to figure out where it’s hiding. But don’t worry! Ianto will save the day! He’s got the most awesome reminder of a great comment from “Sleeper.”

Although, I’m Canadian and that picture doesn’t quite look right. Let me fix it.

As for the above screencap, there’s quite a story to it.

Jack does not seem as thrilled to see Ianto with a hockey stick as I am.

Joan of Arc Thing makes a last ditch effort to survive and grabs Martha’s face. Jack pries it off and yet again, it’s King Arthur Thing’s last stand.

Eventually, Zombie!Owen manages to get a foot on Crusades Thing, and shoots it, using Jack’s gun. No, that is not a euphemism. Finally, everyone turns to look at Martha, who is doing her best impression of the Doctor at the end of “The Sound of Drums.” The life has been sucked out of her.

The only other doctor in the room, Zombie!Owen, is now 100% whatever the heck he is, and Death comes forward – literally spewing forth from Zombie!Owen’s mouth. Death doesn’t look like Mandy Patinkin or look overly fond of kittens. Damn.

Jack suddenly wakes up in the TT-SUV and I realize that death’s just killed him. I guess after he died, the team poured him into the car and took him, along with Martha to the hospital. Now that he’s revived, he’s off in search of the now elderly Doctor’s companion. He finds out that Death is taking a holiday in Cardiff, while the hospital is pretty sure that Martha isn’t going to last long in her current condition. Again, just like last week, I know I’m supposed to have serious anxiety over Martha’s well-being but I know they’ll never kill a companion on a spin-off.

While everyone is fussing over Martha, Gwen wants to figure out how “faith” stopped Death last time. Now they’ve got to figure out where Death went, but looking out the window to see a couple Janets, Jack realizes that the reaper would travel to where there’s a convenient collection of dying people to snack on. As if to confirm it, we see Death have an entire ward as a tasty meal.

The team evacuates the hospital and they confirm that 8 are already dead. With only five to go Jack realizes that the exact number of Team Torchwood.

They have another problem, Ianto’s been searching for the phrase “I shall walk the Earth and my hunger will know no bounds” and keeps being directed to Weight Watchers.

Zombie!Owen tells Tosh that he can feel Death. You know, there is no way to write that sentence without making it sound dirty. What they manage to find before death, is Jamie, the one lone child who was in the toilet, playing video games, while everyone else was evacuation. Unfortunately, they don’t find him until the poor kid finds the emaciated body of his nurse. Seriously, I am all for making fun of a bunch of random shit, but a kid with cancer, I couldn’t go there. I spend the next few minutes hoping he’ll outrun Death with Tosh and Zombie!Owen, which is probably exactly what Jamie’s parents are hoping too.

Despite the initial escape, Tosh, Zombie!Owen and Jamie get trapped in the lobby. Jamie’s certain he’s going to die. Either Death gets him, or the Leukemia, which isn’t responding to chemo, will.

Plus, Death is up to 12 souls but Ianto, my brilliant, wonderful fictional Welsh boyfriend, Ianto, has the solution. When Gwen initially researched the legend, she only read that “faith” stopped death. It wasn’t “faith” but “Faith,” the name of the little girl the priest brought back. What a difference a capital letter makes!

Zombie!Owen realizes the truth. Faith could stop Death because she didn’t have anything to lose, she was already dead. So, who is already dead for us?

In a really OOC moment, Owen explains to Jamie that although things seem rough, he’s going to prove to the child that it is possible to beat Death. It’s really OOC for Zombie!Owen, but from the way it’s delivered you can totally tell that Burn Gorman is a great dad.

It’s at that moment Tosh manages to get the door open, but won’t leave with Jamie, as Zombie!Owen asks. In fact, Zombie!Owen can find only one way to stop Tosh from talking.

It’s sort of sweet, but it’s got this whole necrophilia-tinge to it. Plus, it was only an excuse to shock Tosh into staying on the other side of the door while Zombie!Owen closed it on her (and he kept her electronic door-opener).

So we have a showdown in the hospital lobby, as Zombie!Owen puts it, “there’s nobody here but us dead men.” Thus Zombie!Owen wrestles with Death while Team Torchwood is stuck watching on the other side of the glass, unable to help him.

The defeat is quick and decisive, since Zombie!Owen took the advice of Blue Oyster Cult.

Ianto’s trying to find out what happened to the rest of his team, as no one is answering him. Wait, one person does!

Now that everything is back to normal, other than the zombiefication hasn’t been fixed, Martha and Zombie!Owen are back at the Hub, sitting on the Autopsy table. It’s a nice bit a parallelism to the beginning, except that both of them are conscious even though one of them is still dead. Although, due to the amount of energy Zombie!Owen sucked up, he may still be conscious for a while but no one is sure how long.

Zombie!Owen asks Jack to put him to work because, apparently, zombies still get a conscience, and he feels badly about 12 people dying because he was brought back. Jack is completely non-committal about the whole idea. Probably, he’s as uncertain what to make of Zombie!Owen as the rest of us are. As he tells Tosh, no one can ever really escape death.

That is, unless you’re Captain Jack for the next five billion years.