John Barrowman

Tons of spoilers! Don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode!

Man, this is grim. Nerd wakes up to the possibility of life outside nerdom, and dies immediately thereafter. What’s the point?

We snark about how no one ever dies in science fiction (or in comic books) but still… this is the weirdest extrapolation of that idea ever. *Torchwood* is a deeply weird show, of course, but it gets weird *and* profound in this episode.

Man, this is a bleak show. Not bleak about how the universe is out to get poor (almost) defenseless planet Earth or anything like that. Bleak about people. About how damaged we all are, even the healthiest of us, and about how hard it is to find people we can at least be comfortably damaged with.

I’m probably in the minority on this, but I like that there turned out to be no psychopathic alien influence at work here. I like that ‘Torchwood’ isn’t pretending that you have to leave the planet or import creatures from outer space in order to find terrible things.

It’s funny, but as much as I really like ‘Torchwood,’ rewatching it is not quite as much fun as rewatching ‘Doctor Who.’ I never get tired of ‘Doctor Who,’ and I constantly find new stuff to hash over in those episodes — these, not so much. They’re fun, and I’m certainly not saying that I dislike the show, but it’s not as rich in material as ‘Who’ is.