Tuesday 7 August 2018

Exit Wounds - Torchwood 2.13


In which Captain John Hart is back - and he has brought Jack's long lost brother Gray with him. Tosh detects numerous spikes of Rift activity around the city, so the team splits up to investigate. She and Ianto go to the central telephone exchange, and are confronted by a group of men dressed in black monk-like cowls. They shoot them dead. At the city's hospital, meanwhile, Owen encounters a savage alien creature which seems to eat anything and everything - which he identifies as a Hoix. He manages to sedate it. Gwen and Rhys go the police station where PC Andy informs them that they have come under attack by Weevils, which have killed all the senior officers. Gwen finds herself having to take charge of the situation, with Rhys being tasked with helping Andy. Jack has gone to the Hub, where he is attacked by Captain John, who shoots him dead in a hail of machine gun fire. When he comes back to life, Jack finds himself chained up and being subjected to electric shocks. John activates the Rift Manipulator, then contacts the team members and tells them to go up to the roofs of their respective buildings. He then transports Jack to the top of Cardiff Castle's tower.
They all witness a number of explosions going off all around the city, detonating at 15 key locations.


John then takes Jack back in time to the city as it was in the year 27 AD - open fields. Gray appears, but he is not John's captive. Jack tries to tell him how sorry he is for not saving him, but Gray holds his brother responsible for the years of torment he suffered. Now he is going to take his revenge. He reveals that John is enslaved to him through his vortex manipulator, which is grafted onto his arm. Jack is forced into a grave, which John must fill. John throws a pendant into the grave before he starts covering Jack with soil - telling Gray that it is simply a memento of their past relationship. Jack is doomed to an endless cycle of suffocation and resurrection. Once the grave is filled, Gray and John return to the 21st Century. The pendant is really a homing device, and in Edwardian times the Torchwood Three team of that era identify its signal and dig Jack up. He orders them to put him on ice in the morgue, to be reawakened on the day that Gray attacked the city.
As Gray unleashes hordes of Weevils on the city, Gwen manages to get to the Hub where she finds John is prepared to help her, Jack having deactivated Gray's control over him. He tells her of Jack's burial.


The Weevils prevent Tosh and Ianto getting to the nearby nuclear power station, as it is threatened with meltdown due to power failure. However, Owen can use his influence over the creatures to get there safely. When Ianto arrives at the Hub he and John are locked in a cell by Gray. Upstairs, Tosh contacts Owen and agrees to talk him through what he needs to do to restore power. Gray suddenly appears and shoots her. After taunting her, he hears a knocking sound and goes to investigate. Hiding her agony, Tosh tells a panicking Owen what he needs to do. He manages to restore the power and prevent the meltdown, but becomes trapped in the control room. Tosh informs him that it will flood with radiation which will destroy his body. As he rages against a final death, Tosh finally lets him know exactly how she feels about him. Owen is killed. Gray finds the knocking is coming from a morgue unit, and is shocked to see Jack emerge. Jack tells his brother that he forgives him, but Gray refuses to reciprocate. Jack then uses chloroform to knock him out, and releases Ianto and John. They all go up to the main area where they find the dying Tosh, who tells them of Owen's demise. They are unable to save her, and she also dies.
The next day, Gray is consigned to the morgue. Tidying away Tosh and Owen's things they activate a pre-recorded message from Tosh - one she had arranged to be triggered in the event of her death. She tells them that she hopes she did not die in vain, and that she loves Owen. Gwen is unsure if she can continue, but Jack insists that they can rebuild, but will never forget the colleagues they have just lost...


Exit Wounds was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on 4th April, 2008. It closes the second series, and for a time was almost the last ever episode of the series as Russell T Davies intended to discontinue Torchwood. As it is, it will be the last episodic story for the series, as subsequent seasons will comprise single story arcs.
The episode sees the departure of regular characters Tosh and Owen, who are both killed off.
Davies was insistent that regular characters could never be killed on Doctor Who, as younger viewers invested so much faith in them, but the more adult format of Torchwood meant that here all bets were off.
Season 2 has had a slight story arc running through it, with Captain John appearing in the opening episode and referring to someone called Gray at the conclusion. The episode Adam then showed who this was, and what had happened to him. We also get to see a previous incarnation of Torchwood, as we had seen before in To The Last Man and in Fragments.
The main guest star is James Marsters, of Buffy and Angel fame, once again as Captain John. As the story deals very much with the fates of the regulars, the only other guest artist of substance is Lachlan Nieboer, who plays Gray. He has since appeared in the popular ITV drama Downton Abbey.
The doctor who tells Owen about the Hoix, Dr Connolly, is played by Golda Roshuevel, who had previously appeared as the same character in Dead Man Walking.


Overall, it is an excellent episode, with plenty of incident and a truly heart rending conclusion. Series 2 stands up much better than the first.
Things you might like to know:

  • The Hoix had, of course, appeared once before - in the 2006 Doctor Who story Love & Monsters. It is named on screen for the first time here.
  • Naoko Mori's previous appearance as Dr Sato in the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London is given an explanation here. Owen was supposed to have gone to London to investigate the "Space Pig", but he had a hangover and so Tosh took his place.
  • Last time, when looking at Fragments, we were able to give an accurate count of the number of deaths Jack had experienced. Here, he is buried alive in 27 AD, and not dug up again until 1901, so the figure now is uncountable.
  • Captain John dances along to the pop song I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper - claiming that it is his and Jack's song. This was released in 1978 on the back of Star Wars mania, performed by Sarah Brightman and her dance troupe Hot Gossip. It references Darth Vader, Flash Gordon and Starfleet Command and the Federation from Star Trek, as well as using musical cues from Close Encounters and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • We previously mentioned how there were two Jacks in Cardiff at the same time back in 1941 - the one who was resident there, and the one who traveled back from the 21st Century. A third might have been only a couple of hundred miles away in London, about to meet the Doctor and Rose for the first time. We now learn that there was a third in Cardiff 1941 the whole time - the one dug up in 1901 and frozen in the morgue.
  • The question has to be asked - did Jack know about his future body being in the morgue at all? He has lived and worked in the Hub for over a century, and knows every inch of it. Did he never come across his body in all that time and ask how it came to be there?
  • The next season will see the complete destruction of the Hub, so presumably the frozen Gray is killed in the explosion.

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