The head-messin’ began before the programme with a BBC Two trailer interspersed with shots of what appeared to be a giant mosquito. I presume this may be something to do with next week’s episode (which anyone who watched it on BBC Three may therefore already know), and I personally would trail upcoming episodes with Martha Jones in it, so no blame there. But it is pretty darned confusing when it is the first of so many things that were being messed with. Then the opening credits had Adam in. Then Jack kept on having visions of his family. Then the voice in my head told me to set fire to the neighbours. Lesson two for Torchwood: tone down the head-messingness.
Instead we had Adam, who was into brainwashing people into doing his bidding. It involved a lot of neck grabbing, intent staring and use of the word ‘remember’ as a question, in a very ‘look into my eyes, not around my eyes’ fashion.
The loss of memory meant everyone was behaving a bit wrong. Ianto cracked a smile, before remembering he was a serial killer. Or was he…? (No.) Owen lost his rapey air and became a liver-lipped sap. Tosh became a dynamic sexpot through a combination of empassioned whispering and a delicate push-up jobby. This is a nice idea, but I didn’t entirely notice it happening for the first fifteen minutes. They aren’t strong enough characters to be trying to subvert them like this, particularly if you rely on Owen and Tosh faffing about as a sign of acting out of character, given that they do that once a week without fail (lesson four: cut the faff).
Still, we can forget all about that by taking a short-term amnesia pill – you’ll find them in a standard issue medical kit, although it is advised not to keep them in the same box as the Tic-Tacs – so everything’s back to normal. I wouldn’t want to argue with the writers. Let’s just forget about this week altogether.
Read last week’s episode review here.
