Peter Grimwade’s three scripts for Doctor Who are all commendably ambitious. He was always a better director than he was a writer though and it’s only really on Mawdryn Undead that this ambition actually translates into a coherent story, even if it’s only coherent relative to stories like Time-Flight, which is a bit like watching a rabbit trip over its own ears. On the whole, while never quite escaping his tendency to overreach himself, Grimwade serves up a very enjoyable story in Mawdryn Undead.

Some things are notable right from the start, such as the sheer anachronism of the school, presenting us with the kind of peculiar kids you could imagine say things like “yah” and have names like Chipper Jones and Tubby McGee. I’m not sure if they actually do wear straw boater hats or if my memory is just playing tricks on me, but it’s that sort of thing. With this and a reference to the cane, it’s easy to forget that this is supposed to take place in 1983 and I wonder if contemporary audiences found this is odd as I do. It does provide us with Turlough though, possibly the best companion of the 1980s after Romana, since Mark Strickson has the enviable talent of presenting ham in a credible manner, the kind that Anthony Ainley could only dream about. It’s amusing how the producer jettisoned portraying him being of schoolboy age more or less from the instant he leaves the school, and it’s also an innovative idea to have a companion spend three stories secretly plotting to kill the Doctor.

Without knowing anything about the character at this early stage though, the episode gets off to a rather less than likeable start with Paddy Kingsland’s ridiculous score and Peter Moffatt’s purely functional direction, but the crash soon comes along to make things more interesting – even if it is shot as a comedy scene, with the car veering off screen to an accompanying sound-effect. It introduces Valentine Dyall, who excels in more or less the only role available to him. He’s restricted as an actor since his booming voice is only really suitable for quasi-deities, but he works very well within his limited range. 

The fact that he’s here at all does raise the issue of continuity, but I can say that I saw this story years before I saw anything of season 16 and I never had a problem with it. If continuity is a problem in this story, it’s more through sheer quantity than anything else. The story certainly wears its continuity on its sleeves, with references to the previous story Snakedance (I know it only transmitted a week earlier, but is all the technobabble really necessary?), the Guardians, the Zero Room, UNIT and the Brigadier, copious ex-companions, Time Lord mythology – and of course the flashback scene, which I’ll come to in due course. It just about manages to succeed through keeping most of these references fairly unobtrusive (apart from the Brigadier, but he’s well known enough for it not to matter); it’s only in Arc Of Infinity that continuity is actually seriously detrimental at any point this season.

Episode one concerns itself with atmosphere through imagery such as the obelisk, the communicator device and the transmat capsule. With this, the large amount of location shooting and the pleasantly-designed spaceship, this is one of the better looking stories of the period. Once the TARDIS lands there the mystery starts to build, with the three-millennia journey and mysteriously missing capsule, but the enigmatic idea starts to falter as the Doctor’s investigations are largely reduced to pushing buttons and going “a-ha!”. It’s still enjoyable though, and there are plenty of gruesome ideas present about the dangers of transmat capsules. The cliffhanger to the first episode is serviceable enough, but the kind of thing that would get rather tired after three stories where writers had to continually come up with reasons for Turlough not to kill the Doctor.

The Brigadier’s amnesia serves as an excuse for the fannish-but-sweet flashbacks, and I have to acknowledge enjoying seeing clips from The Web Of Fear, Terror Of The Zygons et al for a moment. This episode is where the plot really begins to take off now, as two different strands set six years apart advance the story in tandem; it’s an awesome context and considering how complex it is there are remarkably few plot holes – apart from the infamous controversy over the dates, but it’s not so bad if you judge the episode on its own terms instead of comparing it to something said in an episode dated ten years previously, and to put things in perspective there are no disembodies heads stuck in paving stones anywhere to be seen in this story. Another feature of the plot is that it requires so much concentration that it distracts from some of the story’s slight weaknesses, such as the way the plot comes at the expense of just about everything else – the opposite problem to the new series, where it’s characterisation that takes away from the plot.

Mawdryn’s blackened and charred body is about as graphic and grisly as Doctor Who ever got, and his make-up is also impressive; it would all count for naught if David Collings wasn’t a great actor, but as The Robots Of Death proved there’s nothing to worry about on that front. There’s a less obtrusive nod to the past having him wear Tom Baker’s coat, and the cliffhanger where we see his true form for the first time is genuinely startling.

Going into the third episode, there’s a huge amount of exposition. This isn’t necessarily a problem as generally it’s well done and interesting enough to remain engaging, although lines like “activate sequential regression” do show up the weaker elements of the script. There is a “reverse the polarity” in-joke to be found, which does add a welcome lighter touch. It has all the elements of a bad story – but the sheer imagination of the central concept elevates it to a far higher level. The concept of the two Brigadiers meeting briefly sees the Doctor and the Black Guardian working towards the same ends, which brings home the seriousness of the problem.

The concept of immortality is extremely evocative, but the cliffhanger is let down because Peter Davison struggles with high drama and because so little actually happens in this episode that there’s little to say about it. You just have to keep concentrating on it.

There’s more running about in the fourth episode, which never causes the episode to really sink – but Grimwade does fall into the usual trap of getting tangled in the complexities of what he’s writing. This is contrasted shockingly with some gruesome make-up for Tegan and Nyssa’s ageing scene, which seriously freaked me out as a kid. The Doctor is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for them, which is consistent with his characterisation; his willingness to help the innocent victims throws his refusal to help the mutants into relief. The resolution is a bit contrived, but the Doctor’s comment about the level of coincidence in events (a reference to the Black Guardian) takes the edge off it.

Considering that it’s little more than a great slab of exposition with a dollop of continuity on top, Mawdryn Undead does remarkably well for itself. As usual for Peter Grimwade there’s a feeling that it could be much more if it didn’t aim too high for its own good, but its sheer imagination and verve takes what is fundamentally an average story and elevates it.

After the flawed 'Day One', Torchwood gets back on track with 'Ghost Machine', a largely character-driven episode that manages to be mature in a way that the sex-crazed alien shenanigans of the previous episode blatantly weren't. Helen Raynor's script focuses purely on the interactions of her characters, both regular and supporting, and although we get an obligatory alien artifact in the shape of the quantum transducer, it essentially acts as a catalyst for the plot rather than being the main focus. Which is probably wise, as the technobabble explanation for how it works ("Human emotion is energy") is load of old bollocks. Nevertheless, as a means of driving the plot it fulfills its function, and Raynor puts uses it sparingly. Refreshingly, the script also managed to surprise me: usually in science fiction series, predictions of the future come true, so when the quantum transducer shows Gwen with a bloody knife in her hands, this is exactly what she ends up with, but confounding my expectations Bernie Harris' vision of himself lying dead in the street is averted when Torchwood stops Ed Morgan from killing him.

Having been portrayed largely as a self-centered misogynist in previous episodes, Burn Gorman's Owen here gets some welcome character development, as the transducer shows him the past and he feels the terror that Lizzie Lewis felt when Ed Morgan killed her. As a result, Gorman gets plenty to do here, as Owen becomes obsessed with finding Lizzie's killer in the present, and tracks him down, before putting "the fear of God into him." His confrontation with the aging Morgan in the man's living room is very intense, and Gorman conveys Owen's barely-controlled fury quite convincingly. When he gets the chance to kill Morgan at the end he resists the temptation, but for a minute it isn't clear if he's going to be able too, and this is thrown even further into question given that the audience has already been given a glimpse of the future.

Jack and Gwen also again get meaty roles here. Torchwood provides Russell T. Davies with the opportunity to have sexual tension between the main characters without alienating long-time Doctor Who fans in the way that Rose's lusting after the Doctor might, and here we get the most blatant example of this so far in the weapons-training scene. The scene crackles with sexual tension between Jack and Gwen, and although the fact that they are discharging powerful weapons together automatically robs the sequence of any subtlety, the actually dialogue skirts the issues; the closest we get to an admission of the obvious mutual attraction is when Gwen finds out that Jack lives at the Hub and doesn't sleep, to which she replies, "Doesn't it get lonely at night?" Balancing this out however is the following scene with Gwen returning home and using the quantum transducer to recall happy times with Rhys, just before he unexpectedly arrives home and they settle down together on the sofa, a rather sweet and quite touching moment that does make me hope that the series doesn't go down the obvious route of having Gwen cheat on her boyfriend with Jack.

As for Captain Jack himself, he seems to be slipping further and further into the role that the Doctor fulfills in Torchwood's parent series, as he identifies the alien device as a quantum transducer to the audience and reassures Gwen that what she has seen is only "one of many possible futures.

"The supporting cast in 'Ghost Machine' is generally fine, although rather alarmingly John Normington (familiar to Doctor Who fans as Morgus from 'The Caves of Androzani') is quite dreadful as Tom Erasmus Flanagan, playing him in a manner that is reminiscent of Hugh from, The Armando Iannucci Shows as he delivers in a boring anecdote in an accented monotone that does little to advance the plot. Christopher Elson is memorably sinister as the young Ed Morgan, his high-pitched voice making the scene of Lizzie's murder all the more chilling, but it is Gareth "Blake" Thomas as the older Morgan who virtually steals the show. He's effortlessly convincing in the role of an embittered old man wracked by guilt and paranoia and conveys the wretchedness of the character perfectly, making Morgan by turns hateful, pathetic, and pitiful.

'Ghost Machine' is the first episode not directed by Brian Kelly, with Colin Teague instead handling the episode, and his style works better for me, losing the gratuitous aerial shots of Cardiff and providing some dynamic chase scenes that balance out the slower, dialogue-driven scenes quite nicely, and are completed by incidental music that just about manages to enhance what is happening on screen without distracting from it. Overall, 'Ghost Machine' works very well as an example of what this series can achieve when it isn't being puerile and in doing so hopefully sets a benchmark for future episodes.

When Torchwood was first announced, it was described as "Doctor Who for adults". On the strength of 'Cyberwoman', it's Doctor Who for adolescent boys. The admittedly ludicrous premise of 'Day One' allowed writer Chris Chibnell to just about get away with a script that married characterization of the regulars with puerile sex scenes and innuendo, but here he attempts a similar blend with a potentially more serious premise and throws horror into the mix as well. The result is an absolute mess.

The idea of a Cyberman on the loose inside Torchwood hub has enormous potential; the idea of a group of people trapped in a confined space with a lone monster on the rampage has long been a winning formula in science fiction and was handled relatively effectively in the Doctor Who episode 'Dalek'. Making the lone monster a scantily clad attractive woman in silver bondage gear is however a case of shooting oneself in the foot. There is no logical reason why a Cyberman would need tits, so why would a Cyber-conversion unit augment them into a metal bust rather than removing them? Why bother to provide a slender strip of metal to cover her crotch but leave her thigh untouched? Because it appeals to adolescent fantasies. There are moments in 'Cyberwoman' which have the potential to be enormously tense, such as Lisa's pursuit of Toshiko towards the exit, a should-be edge-of-your-seat moment made gripping by the usual unstoppable menace of a Cyberman ruined by a stupid costume that shows a woman in a silly hat and a silver thong. It doesn't even look like real metal, which doesn't help.

And this is the problem with 'Cyberwoman'; it has so much potential, but blows it by being superficial. As I've noted in the past, the advantage of Big Finish's Cybermen stories is that, unhindered a pre-watershed timeslot, they can convey the real body horror that the Cybermen represent in a way that Doctor Who on television was never able to, as they successfully did in 'Spare Parts'. Torchwood could do the same, and here there is plenty of gore on display, from Dr. Tanizaki's mutilated corpse ("His upgrade failed") to the copious amounts of blood on display and the brain transplant scene at the end. And yet whenever the tension mounts to effective levels, something puerile happens to scupper it. Trapped in a mortuary draw with a homicidal monster about to find them, Gwen and Owen kiss passionately; I can buy the last kiss idea, but as soon as Lisa is seemingly incapacitated the pair doesn't bother to, for example, go and see if Jack and Ianto are still alive, they stand around bickering about Owen's erection.

On top of all of this, the plot is riddled with holes. The episode establishes that the hub isn't very big, but nevertheless we're expected to believe that Ianto has kept a Cyber-conversion unit with partially converted-occupant hidden in the basement for months, and nobody has stumbled upon it. And how did he get it there, and who helped him? Later, we get Toshiko's unexplained gambit with two cheap plastic light sabers, which don't appear to do anything, but the biggest problem with the plot is Lisa's shifting motivation. Initially, she seems to want to convert people into Cybermen, but later wants to transplant her brain into Ianto's body, before finally transplanting it into the pizza delivery girl's body and then suggesting that she and Ianto should both be converted into Cybermen. Why doesn't she just try and complete her existing conversion? Or be content with her new body? And why does she conveniently stand by and let Jack and Ianto rescue Gwen from the conversion unit? Presumably, her experience has driven her insane, but the script doesn't explain this, or even suggest it, it just makes it look as though Chibnell was drunk when he wrote it and the script-editor didn't bother reading it. Speaking of which, the line "You always told me you didn't love me because of what I looked like" is unintentionally amusing, suggesting that Ianto thinks she has a face like a bag full of spanners in the middle of what is supposed to be a heart-rending tragic scene.

'Cyberwoman' does at least give Gareth David-Lloyd's Ianto some character development, and does it in a way that is presumably designed to remind us that this a dysfunctional group far removed from the "UNIT family" of seventies Doctor Who, despite the other four playing basketball and drinking together near the start. David-Lloyd spends most of the episode portraying a character wracked with grief to the point of being unreasonable and he does convey Ianto's trauma very well, turning to anger as Ianto furiously asks Jack, "I clear up your shit. No questions asked, and that's how you like it. When did you ask any questions about my life?" and begs his companions to try and help Lisa. Not surprisingly, they are more concerned with their own survival, but Ianto's behaviour does at least ring true, even if "Jack, give her a chance to surrender" when she's trying to kill them is pushing it a bit. Still, Gwen's line, "All that deception. All because he couldn't bear to live without her" nicely sums the situation up. The problem is, I rather think it goes too far; the whole episode takes the emotional aspect totally over the top in way that suggests that there is no going back; this may be a crucial point for the series that will be developed further, but it is a little hard to buy Ianto quietly returning to work and tidying up after Lisa has been dispatched.

And then there's Jack. Apparently keen to portray the character's dark side, Chibnell gives us a man totally devoid of empathy, who doesn't even begin to understand what Ianto is feeling and pointlessly orders him at gunpoint to execute his girlfriend, a task he ends up completing himself. The script takes the stance that Jack is forcing Ianto to decide where his loyalties lie, but given the circumstances all it does is make Jack look like a sadistic prick and it doesn't gel with previous characterization. Jack does get some good scenes here though, including his decision to distract Lisa by trying to get her to kill him, over and over again, and the implication at the end is that he was hoping she might succeed. This raises interesting questions about what might happen when he eventually catches up with the Doctor and perhaps finds a way of curing his anti-terminal condition.

'Cyberwoman' does benefit from James Strong's direction, which manages to maintain tension at times in the face of a facile and overwrought script, but Lisa's costume looks horribly like rubber sprayed silver, which jars in the face of the slick production values that Torchwood desperately wants to boast. Presumably most of the budget was blown on the Pterodactyl, which finally gets something useful to do, but still looks like low-budget CGI. There is a sense, throughout 'Cyberwoman', of over ambition poorly realized, of promise not delivered; the ring of stitches around the pizza delivery girl's head at the end of the episode should be horrifying, but it looks like it's been stuck on her forehead by enthusiastic by untalented drama students. Even the incidental music, with its occasional faux-nu-metal riffs, seems designed to appeal to teenagers, even though I must confess to quite liking it.

In spite of all of this, and quite incredibly, there is still something compellingly entertaining about 'Cyberwoman', but this isn't enough to carry a series. If the quality of 'Ghost Machine' can't be maintained then I suspect the series' future is rather shaky; hopefully, Sapphire and Steel creator P. J. Hammond can bring a touch of class to the proceedings?

After the overwrought silliness of 'Cyberwoman', 'Small Worlds' sees a marked improvement in Torchwood thanks largely due to a script from Sapphire and Steel creator P. J. Hammond. In contrast with previous episodes, 'Small Worlds' sees the series step back from the supposed science fiction approach of the series and roots itself more in fantasy; in common with Sapphire and Steel, the episode sees ill-defined, almost magical entities with a curious relationship with time (and a smattering of technobabble to explain their nature) menacing the heroes. Interestingly, as in Sapphire and Steel's 'Adventure Two', 'Small Worlds' also has a similarly dark ending, with the male lead sacrificing an innocent human life for the sake of the whole world in both.

This approach works rather well in Torchwood, although with Captain Jack and the team up against an unstoppable foe in the form of the faeries, it is probably for the best that we don't get this sort of thing every week, or they wouldn't last five minutes. Hammond's script thrusts the regulars into what is literally a fairy tale, and they find themselves completely out of their depth; although Jack again fulfills the role usually occupied by the Doctor in Torchwood's parent series, armed with handy foreknowledge of the faeries and providing whacking great infodumps when the plot requires, the difference here is that whereas it is hard to imagine the Doctor sacrificing a child to save the world, Jack is forced to do just that. He's obviously wracked with guilt, and the understandable anger expressed by Gwen and Owen in particular will no doubt serve to further jam the gears of this utterly dysfunctional group. What is really notable about 'Small Worlds' is that the team is utterly unable to cope from start to finish; Jack knows what's going on, but despite chasing around after the faeries and eventually identifying their "Chosen One", he's unable to stop a single death here, from Estelle, to luckless stepfather Roy.

Ah yes, the deaths. When I reviewed Sapphire and Steel, I noted that Hammond is big on atmosphere, but doesn't always have the most watertight plots and often seems to be making things up as he goes along. This is, to an extent, the case here, with things happening seemingly for no other reason than to prompt responses in the regulars; thus, there is no obvious explanation for why the faeries kill Estelle except to give John Barrowman the chance to do some emoting, nor is there any reason for them to trash Gwen's flat but not, for example, the Hub or the homes of any of the other Torchwood members, except to give Eve Myles the chance to do some shouting. And also, perhaps, to engage the audience; 'Small Worlds' is atmospheric and interesting, but it is curiously uninvolving for much of its length. When the faeries' victims include a p?dophile and a man who has just backhanded a small girl, it is difficult to really feel a great deal of sympathy, despite actors Roger Barclay and William Travis both putting in enthusiastic performances. It's an interesting characteristic of Hammond's writing that he often includes morally dubious or at least deeply flawed supporting characters (Sapphire and Steel 'Adventure Three' for example), which here juxtaposes with the fantasy aspect of the story but tends to invite the audience to sit in judgment rather than empathizing. There's also no real explanation for why the faeries don't actually kill the girls who are bullying Jasmine, although it isn't too much of a leap to assume that they generally draw the line at killing children.

That said, this is also what the regulars are for, but with Ianto, Tosh and Owen largely sidelined and Gwen playing the role of companion so that Jack can explain the plot, it is only Jack who gets any real benefit from 'Small Worlds'. Torchwood has shown us his charm and a also a ruthless streak, but 'Small Worlds' shows us his human side, and Barrowman is very good at conveying Jack's warmth and affection for Estelle, and showing his barely-controlled grief at her death. He's not quite so good however when Jack is recounting the deaths of the fifteen men in his past at the hands of the faeries, since he tends to use a monotone which is presumably meant to sound haunted but just sounds like someone talking in a monotone. Incidentally, the opening sequence of Jack having nightmares about faeries whilst tossing restlessly does rather raise the question of what script-editors actually do, since Jack announced matter-of-factly that he doesn't sleep in 'Day One'. Brian Minchin might not have noticed that, but I did and so I suspect did other viewers. More on the subject of script-editing when I review 'Countrycide'.

The guest cast is generally very good, including Adrienne O'Sullivan as Lynn, who seems genuinely distraught when her husband is choked to death in front of her eyes, Eve Pearce as the likeable Estelle, and Lara Phillipart in the timed honored role of creepy little girl. Roger Barclay makes Goodson seem utterly pathetic as he stumbles through the market vomiting rose petals, even though the natural tendency considering that he's just tried to abduct a young girl is think that it serves him bloody well right. Director James Strong does a fine job of the episode, with some very creepy sequences, especially the moment when the faerie hiding in Estelle's shrubbery opening its eyes, which actually made me jump. The faeries, when they finally appear, also work rather well, looking utterly malevolent and quite repulsive.

On the whole, 'Small Worlds' isn't quite as a good as 'Ghost Machine' was, but it is a step back in the right direction. Unfortunately, the next episode doesn't just step back in the wrong direction, it actually starts running.

I don't claim to be a writer, but I would suggest that if writing drama, using bad puns for titles is inherently unwise. That is by far my least trivial criticism of 'Countrycide', which sees Torchwood meet The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the Welsh countryside and is almost unbelievably ludicrous.

Does Chris Chibnall actually know that Torchwood has other writers, or did he think that he is writing a string of consecutive episodes? This might explain why early scenes are riddled with references to 'Cyberwoman' in a way that suggests that 'Small Worlds' was just some kind of pleasant marijuana-induced dream I had about P.J. Hammond writing for the series. Suddenly, Ianto is talking about Lisa again, which would be fair enough considering the trauma he suffered in that episode had the script-editor not allowed him to be seen looking cheerful in the previous episode; here, he's as miserable as sin and keeps glowering at Jack. This is, incidentally, after the entire team (including those who are not, in fact, field agents) has driven out into the countryside to try and find a putative alien monster by camping in tents and bickering a lot. It's like Scooby fucking Doo. In the midst of all of this, we get the hitherto un-hinted at revelation that Tosh has a massive crush on Owen, who is trying to seduce Gwen, and manages to succeed as the episode progresses. Or rather, continues. Tosh thus starts bitching at Gwen and looking jealous, a piece of character development thrust deep into the bowels of the series like an unexpected dildo.

So deeply thrust is this strapped-on piece of character development that the rest of episode sees Gwen and Owen flirting and making double entendres at every single opportunities, including when Gwen is having pieces of lead shot pulled out of her side whilst Ianto and Toshiko are missing in a sinister village littered with butchered corpses, and again when they are both being roughed up by meat-hook wielding cannibals. Fortunately, Jack's on hand to shoot each cannibal in the foot with a shotgun, which is more or less what Chibnall does to himself with the plot.

Ah yes, the plot. Or rather, the plots of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostage mixed together with a nod to Night of the Living Dead, resulting in an unsavory amount of pure sadism. If you ignore the bickering and flirting of the regulars, the first half of 'Countrycide' is quite effective, as an unseen something stalks first a young woman in a car and then the members of the Torchwood team. It should be effective, as it has been done so very many times before. The revelation that the team is being stalked not by monsters but by the local villagers is a genuinely unexpected and quite powerful moment ruined almost immediately by the incredibly hammy teeth-gnashing performances of Owen Teale and Maxine Evans as Evan and Helen, respectively. What follows is quite ghastly; 'Cyberwoman' saw Chibnall put Ianto through hell for the sake of character development, a worthy aim despite the paucity of the episode; 'Countrycide' sees Chibnall put Ianto, Toshiko, Gwen and Owen through hell purely to drive Gwen into Owen's trousers, a less laudable aim further compounded by the sheer sadism of the piece. The episode is so derivative that it is hard to take seriously, but the undiluted nastiness of the premise and the admittedly well-acted terror of the regulars are so gratuitous that it just becomes distasteful. The coup de grace in this respect is Evan gleefully telling Gwen that he "harvests" people once a decade because it makes him happy, a horrible moment the sole purpose of which is to traumatize her so that she will cheat on Rhys. With, incidentally, a man whose response to being threatened with butchery by cannibals is to role his eyes and mutter, "Only in the bloody countryside". Which is obviously a great comedy moment.

The director milks the tension promised by the script to technically impressive effect, and there are some genuinely creepy moments, but the tone of the whole episode is so badly off that any appreciation of the direction is purely clinical. Torchwood utilizing its "adult" remit to do a proper horror story is a great idea, but this ghastly mishmash of contrived characterization and witless brutality isn't the way to do it. This is dreadful, and the fact that Chibnall has written the season finale doesn't bode well.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' is typical of Torchwood, being as it is a rather silly episode that again highlights the dysfunctional nature of the eccentrics and misfits making up the team whilst it is at it. Unlike the sadistic 'Countrycide' however, 'Greeks Bearing Gifts' manages to be enormously entertaining from the intriguing opening scene set two hundred years in the past, to the ridiculously camp showdown in the Hub.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' focuses on Toshiko, who after being scared shitless by rednecks in the previous episode, finally gets some much needed characterization. This is achieved through the dual mechanism of providing her with a MacGuffin that makes her telepathic, and partly by involving her in a lesbian love affair with a naughty but seductive alien. The former of these two devices works very well: writer Whithouse explores the issue of just how good telepathy would really be, as Tosh "hears" all of her friends thinking disparaging thoughts about her and ends up feeling lonely, miserable and vulnerable. This is an interesting tactic and refreshingly doesn't see her setting out to exploit her new ability except in order to save a woman and her son, although it does require the audience to accept the fact that everyone thinks in clear sentences (rather than say, images or emotions). The latter device is fine in principle, but this being Torchwood the lesbian love-affair in question is the sort that straight men fantasize about and therefore ends up seeming purely juvenile. The episode also shows Tosh become the second bisexual member of Torchwood, the first being Jack, and the second female member to be seduced into same-sex snogging by a manipulative alien. Somebody's either taking the piss or suffering from serious testosterone poisoning.

Anyway, Tosh gets some good scenes here, including when she excitedly talks to Mary about the letter that she found from an alien to his, her, or its family, which is quite charming. She also gets to bond with Jack both when he congratulates her on her "good save", and again at the end when he tries to restore some of her faith in human nature. She bonds with Gwen too, which given all the jealous sniping in 'Countrycide' is something of a relief, as the two of them seem to end the episode on the cusp of friendship, and Gwen tells her, "Love suited you".

This brings me neatly to the villain, with Daniela Denby-Ashe playing Mary, an arch lipstick lesbian who smokes cigarettes in a slightly filthy manner and seduces Tosh with ease. It's a camp and over-the-top performance, but it is highly entertaining, which is incidentally also true of Torchwood as a whole. She's cast as a temptress from the start, saying of the pendant, "It levels the pitch between man and God? it changes how you see people", a prospect that Tosh clearly can't refuse. By the end of the episode, she's openly gloating to the team to such an extent that she handily explains the plot, and it all gets very silly, as she sniffs Jack with an oddly gleeful expression and notes that he doesn't smell like the others before she suddenly gets whisked off to the heart of the sun by his trap.

Jack meanwhile gets another good episode, again being mysterious as Tosh fails to read his mind (and he is unable to explain why, although she does suggest that "it's as though you were dead"), and again sweeping heroically in at the end to save the day whilst casually recounting the story of his transsexual friend Vincent/Vanessa, before unapologetically killing "Mary" by reprogramming her transporter. Things are slightly spoiled earlier in the episode by the silliness of him again standing around pointlessly on rooftops, and chastising the Prime Minister down the telephone, but for the most part he works well as leading man here.

Gwen and Owen meanwhile have gone from finding comfort in each others beds at the end of 'Countrycide' to having a full-blown affair and giggling like teenagers at every opportunity. This predictably results in some comic relief as Tosh reads their thoughts and hears Owen thinking such thoughts as "I should have worn different trousers, I'm going to have to sit down until this subsides", but doesn't explain why Owen seems angry that Tosh has caught them out at the end when they have spent most of the episode openly flirting in front of her both before and after she got the pendant.

In the midst of all this silliness, the scene in which Tosh saves the mother and son from the mother's ex-husband is quite an effective dramatic moment, with actor Ravin J Ganatra making Neil both sympathetic and repellant at the same time, whilst Eiry Thomas makes Carol look absolutely terrified. The episode is generally well directed too, and the incidental music continues to just about underscore the action without swamping it, something that has resolutely failed to happen to date in the new Doctor Who. Still however, the series seems to lack proper script-editing, with minor fluctuations in characterization between episodes and lapses in logic, such as the sudden leap here from Owen's discovery of heartless corpses going back years to Jack suddenly knowing everything there is to know about the transporter and realizing that Toshiko is dating one of its occupants. Clearly it isn't just Toshiko who's telepathic then?