The resident medical officer with Torchwood Three, based in Cardiff. After his entire team had been killed by his boss, who then took his own life, Captain Jack Harkness had to build a new team from scratch. Owen was engaged to be married but his fiancee was suffering from some sort of brain tumour. When surgeons operated, it was found that she was actually host to an alien parasite. It released a toxic gas as a defence mechanism which killed her and the team of surgeons. Jack saved Owen, who was initially angry with him as he had known about the parasite. He eventually talked Owen into joining the team to help combat similar alien threats.
Following the death of his fiancee, Owen's personality changed - becoming something of a womaniser. On one occasion he stole some alien pheromones from the Torchwood Hub, which made him sexually irresistible to anyone who came into contact with it. He could be argumentative with Jack, the only one of the team who would stand up to him and question his actions. Owen also liked a drink, and on one occasion he was too hungover to visit London to investigate the "space pig" which had crash-landed a spaceship in the Thames. Toshiko Sato had to cover for him, bringing her into contact with the Ninth Doctor. Tosh was secretly in love with Owen, but he never showed any signs of reciprocating, and was often cruel towards her.
He became obsessed at one point with an alien artefact which could allow its user to witness events from the past - including sensing the emotions of those involved. This led him to hunt down a murderer who had escaped justice decades ago.
When Gwen Cooper joined the team, she had a brief affair with Owen. The relationship ended when a pilot from the 1950's - Diane - arrived out of the Rift and Owen became besotted with her.
Diane had elected to risk going back into the Rift rather than stay in present day Cardiff, and this deeply affected Owen, causing him to become even more belligerent and unsettled. Going undercover he became involved in a businessman's operation to stage a fight club with the savage alien Weevils. At one point Owen almost let himself be killed by a Weevil, so depressed was he at losing Diane. He later discovered that he could exert a strange influence over the normally aggressive creatures, causing them to cower in his presence.
When Jack and Tosh became stranded in time, stuck in a World War Two dance hall, Owen decided to open the Cardiff Rift to rescue them - bringing him into conflict with Ianto Jones who advised against this. Ianto even shot and wounded him to stop him using the Rift Manipulator, but Owen proceeded anyway. This led to all manner of space / time distortions across the globe, but concentrated in Cardiff. Owen was forced to confront the consequences of his actions as people from the past materialised in the city bringing long extinct diseases with them. An argument with Jack led to Owen shooting him - and this is when the team discovered that their leader was immortal. Owen was sacked from the organisation, but Jack relented and allowed him to come back instead of wiping his memories with Retcon.
When an alien being who called himself Adam infiltrated the team, changing people's memories, he caused Owen to become the opposite of his true nature - a weak-willed, nerd.
Some time later, UNIT's Martha Jones joined the team on a temporary secondment. Investigating a pharmaceutical company which was using captured alien creatures to develop new drugs, its director shot Owen dead. Jack decided to use the Resurrection Glove to bring him back to life so the team could make their goodbyes, but somehow Owen remained alive. He was still technically dead - with no bodily functions working. He had no heartbeat, no body heat, didn't breathe, couldn't eat or drink, and his body could never heal from injury. The lack of body heat made him the perfect person to break into the home of a reclusive millionaire - Henry Parker - who was collecting alien artefacts, one of which was generating powerful energy signals. His home was protected by heat sensors. Whilst Parker was fighting to stay alive, Owen at this point only wanted to die properly. The encounter changed his perspective and he elected to make the most of his new existence, going on to save a young woman from committing suicide. When Cardiff became infested with Weevils, Owen found that his influence over them related to his new state - as though they had sensed he would change. Only he was able to confront a being which was death personified, as he couldn't be killed by it. The creature had originally gained its presence in the city through him.
When Jack's brother Gray launched an attack on the city, Owen went to stop a nearby nuclear power station from exploding. As he spoke to Tosh over the radio, talking him through what he needed to do to stop a meltdown, he finally admitted that he did love her in return - she having told him of her feelings when he was brought back to life. She was dying when she spoke to him - having been stabbed by Gray. Owen became trapped in the power station control room, which was about to be flooded by disintegrating radiation. He managed to stop the meltdown, but perished from the radiation.
Played by: Burn Gorman. First appearance: TW 1.1 Everything Changes (2006). Last appearance: TW 2.13 Exit Wounds (2008).
- Burn Hugh Winchester Gorman had appeared in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Dickens' Bleak House prior to landing the role of Owen Harper. Since his departure from the show he has gone on to regular roles in Game of Thrones, The Man in the High Castle, and The Expanse. He also featured in the two Pacific Rim movies - playing a character not unlike the nerdy version of Owen we saw in the Torchwood episode Adam.
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