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Torchwood
Season 1 Episode 3
Ghost Machine
Back by Popular Demand. It has been requested that I go back and make captions for all of season one, so here I am. With two seasons worth of Spin. I'm not even going to pretend that this recap covers only my first viewing of this episode ever. So Big fat Giant Organic Spoilers all the way up to 2 x 12. Heed this warning, and no bitching. Like anybody reads this shiz anyway.
We will open with Tosh, who is sitting in the dark of the hub. I have come to the conclusion that it is Tosh who likes sitting in the dark, because she always seems to be working in pitch blackness when she's alone.
Anyway, Tosh is at the hub directing the rest of the team in capturing an alien device of some sort.
There's lots of running and blurriness. The short of it is, Jack and Owen got stuck behind a gate that Gwen stealthily slid under before it closed. Now she's all alone. She's managed to grab the guy she's chasing by his jacket but he slips out leaving her disappointed and breathless, holding the clothing in her hand.
Tosh on the other hand is giddily excited because Gwen has managed to get the alien tech they've been chasing after.
Gwen finds it in the pocket, and presses the button. I mean, who needs to research it's purpose first? For gods sake it could be a giant laser beam that could wipe out a whole city block in one blast, but whatev.
It's not though. The image goes all wobbly and Gwen finds herself alone in a weird blue/green world.
A little boy appears from the shadows. He's lost and scared and all alone, and he wants to go home.
Gwen tries to talk to him but he can't hear her. Helpfully, the kid is wearing a name-tag. His name is Tom Erasmus Flannigan.
Gwen comes out of the wobbly world and is looking a tiny bit frazzled when Owen and Jack finally catch up. Jack asks after her well being while Owen catches his breath in the background.
Gwen thinks she's just seen a ghost, a sad and lonely ghost that is lost, which has her empathy powers firing on all cylinders.
Back at the Hub Tosh recaps what we just saw for Gwen's benefit.
She's watching from the projector in Cold Storage with Jack and Owen...Ianto serves them coffee like the diligent barista that he is. Short story: The little boy does not appear on any of the CCTV footage.
Gwen tells them all that, nuh-uh, not only did she see the boy...she could FEEL what he FELT. I'm sure everybody is chalking this up to Gwen's superpowers.
In fact Owen thinks she was hallucinating...or possibly suffering from dementia. Gwen disagrees.
Jack has decided to leave Owen and Gwen to their metaphorical hair pulling and goes to investigate the device.
He gets a little too close to the button and the entire team yells at him not to press it. "As if!" he says, because Jack is a secretly a valley girl. Like totally.
Gwen reminds us that she saw an apparition when she pressed the button.
The boy who had the device will be a piece of cake to find, Tosh decides. As for the ghost boy, Tom Erasmus Flannigan should be easy enough with a name like that.
But before she can even get started searching all the databases Jack starts rattling off, Owen has already found him.
Phone Book!
Gwen and Owen arrive at Tom's house undercover as police. Gwen introduces herself as a higher ranking officer than Owen. haha. Serioiusly, guys, are you twelve?
And then, to add insult to injury, she tells them he's in training.
Anyway, they pretend like they're there to investigate an incident at the train station, which they are, but...
So Gwen tells Owen to go help the green shirted woman in the kitchen so she can talk to Tom herself.
He tells her about his experience during wartime when he was evacuated out to the country and got lost at the train station. He turned out alright though. They found him in the end. He never saw his parents again and ended up living in Wales for the rest of his life, but that's another sad tale for another time.
Later Gwen is trying to puzzle out the Ghost Machine because she doesn't get what it does...since Tom is quite apparently not a ghost. Meanwhile, Owen is annoyed because he got to be demoted and had to make idle chit-chat with some woman, and also he's annoyed with Gwen and her ringing phone.
And it's good old Rhys. He's trying to do laundry, but he doesn't know where the soap goes. Bless.
Gwen tells him to leave it and he wants to know if she's coming home.
She doesn't know.
And Rhys is annoyed. He doesn't care that she's a lying liarpants, but he at least wants to know if he's making dinner for two, or if he can go booze it up with his buddy Dav. He's going to go with the Dav option then hangs up on Gwen then immediately looks like he regrets it.
Owen is honking the horn like an impatient child. There's Torchwood starting to pull her in one direction and her real life in the other.
Back at the hub Jack is looking at info about the kid who had the alien tech, his name is Sean Harris a.k.a. Bernie.
Gwen has printed shit out to put on her board of relative uselessness that will remind us later that Bernie is a real human out there in the world. This time she has post-it notes. She knows he's a juvenile delinquent, but does not know what he was doing with an alien machine.
Ianto bringeth the food yet again.
Tosh tells us a story of Bernie's incompetence. PS: Tonto!
Owen...is playing a video game, and this is not conjecture. Not only is Torchwood the best supersecret organization ever, it's also the most professional.
Anyway, he wants to know if anybody who is actually working has found out anything about this alien device.
Jack admires the gorgeous nanotechnology while stuffing his piehole with Ianto provided pastries.
Gwen stares at the ghost machine. At this point I realize that weird round thing that has been in the conference room for the entire second series is actually some kind of scanner. Note to self: Pay attention!
Anyway, Owen gets snarky about them not being able to figure out what it is...then he loses.
Gwen says something about the lights...which is pretty much irrelevant as far as I can tell at this point in time. I guess when there's a ghost it "Goes Mad" That's the scientific explanation. Tosh wants to know what they do now.
Jack thinks they should go look for Bernie and find out what he knows...Although if you just went by this screen cap it looks like he's telling them that He doesn't know what they should do next. Which wouldn't surprise me.
Anyway, Bernie lives in Splott. SPLOTT!?
Ianto believes Estate agents pronounce it "Sploe"
To Slpott we go! Where nobody likes Bernie. Not even his Mom, he owes her money
Gwen thinks this is hilarious, poor Tosh looks a little stunned at this reaction.
They interview a bunch of people who hate Bernie. He's been barred from a pool hall? Bar? Whatever. He promised this kid an i-pod, didn't deliver and then smoked all his cigarrettes. Some girl wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire. Damn, Bernie.
Everybody has given up on finding Bernie. That elusive little scamp!
Jack symmetrically arrives on the scene.
And the Team is stuffing their faces again.
They tell Jack that they tried, and he is so disappointed with their lackluster effort that he just huffs at them and walks stalks away.
The guilt trip must be working, because Owen is trying to rationalize their lack of Bernie by saying that he wasn't going to do them any good anyway.
Instead of Bernie they're now going to try and replicate the Ghost back at the train station, and Jack sounds super annoyed when he reveals this plan.
Gwen tries to talk sense into Jack, and he gives her some terse answers, He throws the Ghost Machine to Owen and Owen tries Sarcasm
Jack cuts him off with some of his own brand of sarcasm. He thought they were the guys who gave up looking for a 19 year old kid. Hey! Where the hell did Tosh go?
There she is! Anyway, Jack is just kind of loud talking angrily at them at this point.
Owen clearly wants to get his ass kicked because he's still mouthing off loud enough to be heard, when the Ghost Machine lights up in his hands.
They totally walk away from him even though he's calling for their help. Way to stick together team!
Owen can't resist pressing the button.
It's now night time and he's still under the tunnel, but now a girl in a pink dress comes and cries about some "rotten Bastard" to herself. Owen asks her name...
And as luck would have it this dude has followed her and is sing-songing her name creepily. Lizzie Lewis.
And she knows he's a bad guy. Everybody says so.
But he sweet talks her.
And she's taking it all in.
Until he plants one on her.
He's not planning on letting Lizzie Lewis get away.
And there's nothing Owen can do but stand there and watch it unfold.
Owen finds himself back in the present and completely freaked out. Lizzie's emotions overwhelm him, and he's kind of sobbing without tears.
Gwen is concerned.
Back at the hub Jack and Gwen are recapping for me. First it happened to Gwen, then it happened to Owen. what could it all possibly mean?
Gwen tacks more things up to her board of brilliance...seriously who is that a picture of anyway?
Then she explains that they both (her and Owen) felt the emotions connected to the Ghost scenes they witnessed.
Owen is all shook up about this still, because he's not used to feeling emotions anymore. He's been keeping his locked up for a while now.
Even though one of Tosh's monitors is not working she's able to find out about Lizzie Lewis. She was raped and murdered under the bridge that night.
Owen wants Tosh to look up Ed Morgan since that's what Lizzie called her assailant...even though Ed Morgan is a common enough name.
And Gwen is still trying to figure out where the Ghosts have come from.
Jack has a sudden, and totally random epiphany as soon as Gwen utters something about the ghosts being like a haunting. I assume it's random since nobody else is shouting "Quantum Transducer!" in the middle of a conversation about rapists and ghosts.
Tosh runs over and geeks out with him. Tosh explains that Transducers convert energy from one form into another for those of us who are not science geeks, or engineers, or works for engineers...yeah. Transducer!
While everybody else is talking about how the machine works: Converting quantum energy into ghosts of past events...Owen is over in his own corner still stewing about Ed Morgan getting away with murder.
Owen's all, 'forget about the damn transducers, people! What about Lizzie Lewis? What about Justice?' Tosh is wondering what exactly she's supposed to find out about Ed Morgan that hasn't already been found out by the police that would make him suddenly become arrestable after all these years.
Jack tells him that they need new evidence or a witness. Owen says he was a witness.
And then Jack yells at him that he didn't see anything but an echo of a moment amplified by alien technology. Not admissible in a court of law.
Owen does not care.
Jack yells at him some more then tells him to go home.
Then he yells at Gwen to follow him.
Gwen finds Jack at the Torchwood shooting range where the targets look like weevils.
Yay! Gwen is going to get training! At least she learns how to do something. She doesn't really want to at first...but such is the life of a Torchwood field agent.
Jack hopes she'll never have to use it. I guess he's just trying to make her feel more at ease about it, since I'm pretty sure he's aware she's going to have to eventually.
Gwen has gone into manic giggles at the thought of her handling a weapon. She doesn't even kill spiders in the bath! I do. Little 8 legged bastards, always climbing around on the ceiling. I like to point the shower head at them and watch them wash away down the drain....
Umm, yeah. Tangent?
Anway, Jack doesn't kill them either. Not with a gun. This leads me to conclude that there is indeed bathing facilities somewhere in the hub.
Then Jack tells her it's all hers and gestures helpfully at a table full of guns. Gwen has no idea what the hell to do with any of them and stands there looking at the guns then at Jack.
I guess Jack is going to stick around then. Lucky he's there to give her guidance because she'd be shooting everything except the target if she had to figure it out herself. First she points the gun at Jack then at the ceiling.
Point it at the Weevils, Gwen.
And then Jack gets all touchy touchy with her breathing down her neck. I really don't know how the hell she's supposed to concentrate with him doing that. I know my mind would be elsewhere. I'm fairly confident Gwen's is too.
Anyway, after Jack is finished feeling her up we have a montage of Gwen shooting weevil targets (and bollocks and shit).
After they're finished Gwen wonders when Jack gets to go home, and then we learn that he lives in the hub.
"The 21st Century is when..." Yeah, Yeah, he's got to be ready. We KNOW.
Then Gwen asks where he sleeps and if he gets lonely and...Okay, I'll be fair, it only seems as if she's trying to make small talk here. It doesn't seem as interrogatory or demanding as she usually is. (Edit: Or it could be Gwen's not so veiled attempt to get access to his pants, what with the 'are you lonely, where do you sleep. ' . I can never tell with Gwen, She just seems more concerned, than 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge', but that's just me.)
Jack tells her he doesn't sleep. Which is not really true as we'll find out in episode five, and as for the lonely question. He's totally not even going to answer that one. He's just gonna stare at her instead.
Since he's not talking she decides she's going to go on back home to that pesky clothes washing, dinner cooking boyfriend of hers.
And Jack watches her go back to her normal life.
Back at ranch Gwen is now bummed out because she forgot that Rhys was going to hang out with Dav that night.
Then she pulls the Ghost Machine out of her bag. Dear god, people! Do you need the rulebook stapled to your foreheads? This is the third episode in a row!
Cut to Owen who is obsessing over Lizzie Lewis's murder.
Gwen presses the button on the Ghost Machine. It's safe because they've done it before with such marvelous results.
Let's relive the happy moments of Gwen's totally normal life.
The Day Gwen Becomes a PC...
The Day she threatens to staple Rhys's fly shut and then chases him around the flat.
And there's Rhys in the doorway. (For real)
They totally make up for their little argument earlier, and Gwen slips the Ghost Machine back in her bag.
Owen looks up Ed Morgan using his phonebook tricks.
And gets drunk off his ass. Damn those pesky emotions.
The next day Owen has gone through every Ed Morgan in the phone book looking for the right guy.
He tries to gain entrance to one house, and the owner won't let him in until he bangs on the mail slot.
He poses as a dude from the gas company and then entices Morgan into the living room.
Morgan is going on and on and on about there being no gas and his neighbor being crazy cakes.
Owen doesn't care. He proceeds to tell Morgan all about Lizzie Lewis.
This makes Morgan really nervous.
Then Owen recounts the murder in vivid detail. Like he was there. He knows what Ed Morgan did last summer...err in '63.
Anyway, Morgan eventually snaps and kicks Owen out of the house, Owen snarls. Morgan says that he will get nothing from him.
Conveniently, Bernie Harris is hanging out in a park next to Ed Morgan's house. Owen chases him down.
Bernie begs for Owen not to hurt him.
Owen's all, "Hurt you? No. I'm going to Kill you."
Owen's version of killing somebody involves enjoying a pint down at the pub. Anyway, apparently Bernie is called Bernie because he burned a shed down...I guess that actually makes it Burnie? Burney? Burneeeeee? Whatever, it's a miracle I can understand anything coming out of this guys mouth. Me and my poor American ears.
Team Torchwood shows up. Not a group to pass up drinks. Except for Jack anyway.
Bernie tells them all about how he found the Ghost Machine.
and how he saw a woman send her poor dead baby down the river and then he blackmailed her. He also saw Lizzie Lewis's murder
Owen knows all about, and nobody puts two and two together.
Turns out the Team doesn't think Bernie was useful after all so they get up and walk away...Bernie's complaining about his rights and that they can't just steal his Ghost Machine. Then he reveals that there is another half. Team Torchwood does a double take.
Back at Bernie's flat they find an old tin filled with alien money and the other half of the ghost Machine.
Will someone explain to my United Statesian brain what Owen and Tosh's deal is with the can of baked beans? Is this an Owen and Tosh inside joke that we never learn about? or am I missing the grand cultural significance of a poor kid living on baked beans?
Tosh manages to put two and two together and she's all geeked out. Why do they insist on messing with this stuff before they figure out what it does? Anyway, Jack asks Bernie if the ghost Machine was in two parts or did he split it in half.
Nobody but Gwen seems to care that Bernie split the thing in two, obviously to make more money from selling it. Tosh absconds with Bernie's alien money.
Anyway, the rest of the team runs out the door. Only Gwen stays behind when she hears Bernie's plea for them to stay. He's going to tell her all about the other half.
The other half tells the future, and Bernie has seen himself die. Out in the street, a young man. Aside to Lavena: I don't think not wearing the same clothes he sees himself in is going to help poor Bernie...apparently the only thing he has in his wardrobe is green jackets.
Jack peeps his head in and calls for Gwen, because she's totally not doing anything important by finding out how the Machine could possible work. She stays and listens to Bernie and Jack wails her name plaintively from off screen. She has to go see to him so he'll stop the damn whining.
Gwen makes it out to the street and...Oh, no. Don't press the button. Do NOT press the...she pressed the button. Apparently not only does the Ghost Machine have the ability to show someone the future and the past but it makes them press buttons against their will because there is no reasonable explanation for why they keep doing it.
What does she see in the Ghostland Observatory? It's Gwen! Her hands are covered in blood and she is holding a knife. She speaks: Somebody is dead...Owen had the knife...Gwen couldn't stop it and her ghost self is begging for help.
Back in the real world Jack is wondering what the crackers Gwen was thinking. She just stares down Owen.
Chill, he didn't do anything...YET.
Gwen tells Jack all about what we just saw.
Jack tries to make Gwen feel better about being a potential murderess by telling her that she only saw one of many possible futures.
Gwen wants them to find out for sure. Why not? They've got all this aliens stuff. If only they had something that could show them the future...Hmmmm...could they possibly have something like that somewhere around the place....Oh, yeah. They DO. She already used it.
Anyway, Jack says Sorry about your luck.
Gwen feels bad for Bernie. She wants to try the possible futures line on him to make him feel better.
Because it's clearly working for her says Jack.
And Jack's ultimate advice for her when she admits that she doesn't know what to do, is...nothing. He has no words of wisdom for this situation.
Meanwhile, Ed Morgan is trying to phone somebody but he doesn't have the cojones and hangs up.
For some bizarre reason Tosh and Owen are enjoying a friendly drink together. Tosh is trying to impress Owen with her tracking down Ed Morgan skillzzz.
Owen's all, "Been there, done that. Phonebook, remember?"
Owen is pleased with himself for putting the fear of god into Morgan. Owen wants to know what Tosh found just out of curiosity.
The medical records reveal: This guy is a mess. He's agoraphobic, paranoid, depressed and suicidal.
Tosh tries to warn Owen about Jack finding out, because if he does...he's going to What? Forgive Owen?
Owen guilts Tosh into keeping quiet. They drink in silence. My friend Blue will be happy to note that there is a Libertines song in the background. Can't stand Me Now to be specific.
Back at Morgan's den of insanity he gives Bernie a call.
The ring of the phone startles him.
At the Pub Owen explains more about his encounter with Ed Morgan and finally realizes that Bernie was also trying to blackmail him.
Jack contemplates Bernie/Gwen's situation back at the hub.
And Gwen pops 'round Bernies place for a round of empathy.
Gwen tries to console Bernie.
She was trained by the best, so she's doing just about as good a job at it as Jack did with her earlier.
Gwen's mobile rings. It's Jack. He tells her all about Owen's visit to Ed Morgan and Bernie's blackmail attempts on the poor murdering old man. Jack instructs Gwen to stay right where she is. Tosh mans the CCTV and Owen goes with Jack.
Gwen is annoyed by Bernie's blackmailing ways.
Tosh spots Ed Morgan stumbling down the street. She cannot believe this shit. He's headed for Bernies flat.
Bernie spots Ed Morgan and Jets out of the apartment. For a guy worried about being murdered out in the street, he sure is in a hurry to get there. Gwen follows him and her phone rings.
Poor phone. It's all alone on the table and I thought it was going to stay there, but Gwen actually runs back to answer it. It's the boss man again.
Gwen flashbacks and remembers that Bernie saw himself die out on the road. So she hangs up on Jack...so basicallys he might as well have not answered the phone at all.
Bernie meets up with Ed Morgan. Morgan has gone crazy, he thinks everybody's out to get him for the murder. Which is reasonably actually, because they kind of are...at least Owen and Bernie are albeit for different reasons.
He calls Gwen a bitch! Bernie is standing there frightened of the crazy old man with the knife...why the heck did he even go out there? I doubt Morgan could have broken down the door. I presume he was just expecting his pay off, not the knife.
Anyway, Jack arrives and grabs hold of Morgan and Gwen tackles Bernie safely to the ground.
The crazy meanwhile has rubbed off on Owen and he grabs the knife.
He gets all up close and personal with Morgan.
Just in case we forgot, Gwen flashbacks to her own future Ghost image and remembers that Owen had the knife.
Owen menaces, Jack yells at him.
Gwen scolds him firmly.
And Owen relinquishes the knife, see all he needed was a little heart to convince him offing Morgan was a bad idea.
Gwen's all, "I knew nobody would die! You saved us all, Jack. Yay!"
But Morgan lurches forward and impales himself on the knife which Gwen is holding out in front of her. (Next training session: How to hold pointy objects. I think I remember this lesson from first grade.)
Gwen is stunned.
Owen's Doctorin' powers kick in and he tries to save this man who he pretty much loathes.
Gwen wants Jack to help her...but what is there to do at this point? He just sighs a lot. What ever is he going to do with these kids?
I guess Gwen could take solace in the fact that Bernie's possible death didn't take place after all.
Back in Jack's office. Tosh tries to console Gwen by telling her Morgan was suicidal
Owen takes responsibility for screwing up, but he feels okay because he didn't kill anybody even though he could have.
That does not make Gwen feel any better, because she DID.
Ianto doles out the Scotchy, scotchy, scotch while Jack tries to comfort Gwen.
And what of the Ghost Machine? Nobody can leave the future well enough alone.
Alas. It was not meant for them.
Owen takes a swig.
Tosh says goodbye to the transducer.
Jack tells us the sun is nearly up. I guess boozing it up at the crack of dawn is one advantage to pulling an all-nighter.
Jack hands the Ghost Machine over to Ianto so he can lock it away in the secure archives.
And after such a harrowing night who else needs a drink in the wee hours of the morning?
Poor Sad Gwen.
It's time for the Gwen and Jack end of episode heart to heart. She laments killing Ed Morgan.
He killed himself says Jack.
then he tries to cheer her up by being cheerful about the new day about to dawn and the city awakening.
Blabla...Emotions...bla...Ghosts! We've just got to learn to live with 'em.
Cheer up Gwen! Your memories will be haunting you for the rest of your life! Yay!
Next Time
What the hell?
What the hell????
Seriously, what in the hell?
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