Torchwood: Sleeper (Episode 202)

Jack: With a dashing hero like me on the case, how can we fail?
Ianto: He is dashing, you have to give him that…
…Owen: Let’s all have sex.
Ianto: And I thought the end of the world couldn't get any worse.

Before this episode even begins we get something new – a new tag to open the show. It’s rather like last year’s, but it still ends with Team Torchwood doing their sexy strut so everything’s all right by me.

Where everything isn’t all right is the apartment of Beth and Mike, as the couple awake to the sounds of a break in. While Mike goes to defend his home with a cricket bat, Beth calls the police.

Within seconds, everything’s gone to hell, as Mike’s unconscious on the floor, and the camera angle switches to under the bed. The lights flicker and the burglars freak out and start screaming.

As we go into the title flash, I would say this was all very suspenseful, if the solution to the mystery hadn’t been right there in the title.

The team’s arrived to find one of the burglars stabbed to death with a very large sharp object, and the other barely clinging to life after falling five stories onto a police car. This leaves me wondering, are cop cars in Cardiff made of pillows? Seriously, after five floors, hitting a hard object should require scraping and a wet-vacuum to clean him up.

Inside the flat, Tosh and Jack get the run-down on the case from Officer Exposition, who is totally sure the husband was just waiting for the chance to crack someone’s head open because he kept the bat under the bed. Jack jokes that sports equipment in the bedroom is normal and invites the officer over for a game of hockey. I’m completely taken aback as there’s something in this scene I’ve never witnessed before: Jack wasn’t hitting on Officer Exposition. In fact, Jack didn’t even have the slightest bit of chemistry with him.

As for who tossed the one criminal out the window and stabbed the other with the magically disappearing weapon, Tosh and Jack are befuddled. I guess they didn’t look at the title of this episode.

At the hospital, Beth doesn’t remember a thing, but is far more concerned about Mike’s well-being. The couple is bordering on the diabetic side of sweet together and I adore them already. It hurts to know what’s coming.

Someone also let Owen in on the title secret as he’s sure Beth’s the guilty party. Gwen uses her mad “Jessica Fletcher” skills (as Owen put it) and deduces it must be the husband. You know, it would be so much more convenient if everybody just read the title card.

Jack calls Owen and asks him to sit with the burglar and the couple. Owen passes that job off onto Gwen and while he’s borrowing a pound to buy Gwen some coffee for the long night ahead, the light outside Mike’s room shorts.

The burglar wakes up for like two seconds, only to confirm that Owen’s the one who read the episode title spoiler correctly, and then dies. Well, I hope he earned the British equivalent of a SAG card for that.

Beth’s taken to the hub and in an extremely disturbing scene, Jack terrifies her. She’ll have no lawyer or phone call. He’s vaguely threatening when he insists he hasn’t done anything to Mike, “Yet,” and all the while Gwen just stands there. Last season she would’ve jumped in and insisted Jack treats her like a human being. I know morality in Torchwood can be a little sticky and that Jack is practically infallible when it comes to picking out the baddie but did casting have to get the most sympathetic actress in the Whoniverse since Sally Sparrow to play the part?

Since I needed a reminder that there’s something far more sinister going on, the light in the interview room shorts.

Finally, Gwen remembers she’s the “carer” according to the blowfish, and sends Jack from the room, hoping to coax answers out of Beth. Well, Beth doesn’t have any to give.

Watching over the interview is Ianto, who compliments Jack on being so terrifying. Jack behaves like teenaged boy whose just been told by the girl he likes that his moves were impressive. In the midst of feeling really sorry for Beth and annoyed at Jack, I can work up a good fangirly squee. Of course, Ianto’s teasing him and I like the fact he’s the one person on the team who can totally play Jack and I mean that in all possible connotations.

Jack orders tests on Beth to find out not only how she killed the burglars but also how she managed to short out the lights. Still unable to accept her detainment, Beth still insists that she didn’t do anything wrong, but as we all know Torchwood is “outside the government, beyond the police” so the testing’s going to occur anyway.

Taken aback by the impressiveness of the Hub, Beth asks about windows. “It wouldn’t be in keeping with the whole secrecy thing.” What? Now Torchwood gives a rat’s ass about secrecy? Their name is imprinted on the TT-SUV. Little old ladies know all about “Bloody Torchwood.”

Although, if they did give tours the first rule (as according to my fictional Welsh boyfriend) is “don’t sniff the sub-etheric generator.”
Beth’s strapped down in autopsy for Owen to take her blood and I completely understand as that’s practically what nurses have to do to me to stick a needle in my arm. I wish though, I had Beth’s ability to break all the needles the second the touch the skin. She even causes a scalpel to snap. While I’m at it, I wouldn’t mind her immune system as she’s never been sick on in the hospital.

“All right Beth, you make light bulbs blow. We can’t break your skin. What planet are you from?” Jack asks. Well, he has a point, except Beth looks at him like he’s the one from another planet. Of course, she’s not entirely wrong there.

Insisting that aliens don’t exist is a big mistake as Jack introduces her to Janet the Weevil.

She’s terrified and can’t explain why she gives off electromagnetic waves or why the Weevil seems to be intimidated by her. In fact, she’s so terrified, alien or not, Jack’s infallibility aside, I wouldn’t mind Gwen coming in and giving her a hug right now.

Team Torchwood has a new plan – using an alien mind-probe. The only problem is that the last time they used it, the alien’s head exploded – as Ianto points out. He even mimics what could happen. I bet that was messier than rat jam.

Poor Beth, after everything that happens she finds out that the mind probe literally drills into her subconscious; a phrase which here means it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch.

What’s more surprising is when Beth calls Jack on his apparentness, or his rudeness, Gwen makes a comment about Jack’s manners in bed. Um, yeah, Gwen, how would you know?

On the other hand, Ianto agrees with her, and he’s definitely a reliable source. As humourous as this all is, the rest of the scene isn’t. The probe is painful, and watching Beth is almost as painful for me as it looks to be for her. Eventually, after drilling so deeply into her subconscious that it looked like there may be another head explosion on the way, the truth comes out. All Beth does is repeat her name, rank and serial number, in an alien language.

Deep in her subconscious, was a buried compartment, something she couldn’t know about, because she’s a sleeper agent. As if I couldn’t feel worse for this woman, she clearly remembers nothing when she’s unplugged (and unexploded) from the mind probe. She’s in physical and mental pain, afraid of what the team found.

Jack explains that no one knows very much about the sleeper agents because no one’s ever alive to tell the tale. It’s a creepy concept and a blessing to the writers as now they don’t have to come up with a whole back-story for yet another alien race. The agents are sent in to collect information, even if they don’t know it. When the burglars broke in, her real self came through for a moment to keep her cover. She reads, to most scanners, and even to herself, as completely human. Yet stored in the implant in her arm has masses of info on the human race and on Torchwood.

What’s the most upsetting thing, according to Ianto? Beth knows more about Torchwood than he does. No one’s supposed to do that. Well, now there’s a second person (sort of) on the planet who can keep their significant cyber-other in the Hub and no one would be the wiser.

Beth is ultimately confused about her own identity, as she believes herself to be a normal person, in love with her husband, as opposed to a mass-murdering alien. It’s a bit extreme, but what she’s dealing with is something everyone has to at some point in their lives – when the perception of yourself doesn’t match up with the reality.

Gwen tries to comfort her but Jack breaks in with the cold, hard truth. There’s nothing Torchwood can do to make her human. In fact, if Beth were paying attention, she’d see that it’s clear Jack has one course of action in mind, killing her. No matter what she wants to believe, no matter what the illusion she has, the truth is that she is who she is.

Tosh has a suggestion, which eerily foreshadows next week’s episode – freeze Beth until there is a solution. If they disable the implant then she can never activate. It’s worth a try, particularly as she’s having flashes of what she did to the burglars and nuclear explosions. Hmm, nuclear explosions, like the title, not exactly subtle on the foreshadowing, are we now?

While Beth is still almost completely human, she has Jack promise to kill her, if they can’t keep her human. After Tosh disables the implant and protective force field, yet it still beeps ominously on the screen. I could really use a snarky Ianto about now as really, this is a hard episode to find the funny in.

Throughout Cardiff, the other sleepers start activating. There’s a businessman, an EMT, and a young woman with a baby. It sounds like the beginning of a “walks into a bar” joke, but sadly, it isn’t.

Beth is sent down to the vault to room next to my other favourite female guest star on this series, Suzie Costello. Although, is there some reason that Beth got vault number 007? Is she sleeping next to Daniel Craig?

After sealing the sleeper up, while Gwen and Ianto walk away, we get the rarest of incidents in a place like Torchwood.

Although, Team Torchwood should know better as anyone associate 007 isn’t going to stay down for long. Even though all the scans show that Beth is frozen, it’s just another illusion, and as the lights flicker, she breaks out of the vault.

Beth’s made her way out through the tunnels but, more importantly, she didn’t kill Team Torchwood along the way, proving that the human Beth is still in there. Unfortunately, so is the fully functioning implant, even though she’s now a stand-alone sleeper unit.

Since Beth is no longer part of the current take over the world plan, the human side has taken over. She’s gone to the hospital to say goodbye to Mike, but he begs her to stay. It’s completely heart-wrenching and totally unfunny, particularly when her sleeper-self momentarily takes over. The long sharp object that stabbed the burglar is really just an extension of her arm. In a strange moment that reminds me far too much of Edward Scissorhands, she kills him by accidentally stabbing him with her arm.

Okay, so we don’t watch him die. We have to sit through what seems like hours of her panic and screams for help first. It’s excruciating not because it’s poorly done, but because one can’t help but feel every ounce of Beth’s pain. When Jack shows up and points a gun at her, I’m convinced Beth would be happier if he’d just shoot her, putting her out of her misery.

Oh yeah, and we get a serious comment about the state of the NHS as it takes a full 37 seconds for anyone who isn’t part of Team Torchwood to come check on what the screaming is all about.

We get a break from the screaming and emotional anguish by seeing a family sitting down to dinner. The sleeper businessman rings the doorbell and stabs the father through the gut. So much for that nice family dinner.

As for another of the sleepers, he sets a bomb on a petrol tanker that nearly kills Gwen, Jack and Beth in the hospital. Yeah, this episode is a right laugh a minute.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff which links together, but the important part is this: businessman sleeper killed the city coordinator, the one with all the codes to everything. Although, it’s not the computer that tells them this, no, it’s Ianto because, in his words, he “knows everything.” In any other episode that would be worthy of a smirk.

I won’t bother pointing out that he actually admits he read it off the bottom of the computer screen. Nope, I’m choosing to belief my fictional Welsh boyfriend does know everything.

As for the sleeper / baby-killer, she blows up a portion of downtown Cardiff (and takes out the phone network at the same time).

Fortunately, both explosions took the two sleepers with them, so even though Beth doesn’t know what the mission is, she can use the implant to track the one remaining member of the cell.

Thus Gwen, Jack, and the most sympathetic guest star ever on Torchwood, Beth, head off in search of the sleeper-businessman.

Back at the Hub, Owen’s not comprehending that Tosh just can’t fix the phone system until Ianto gives a physical demonstration of how a phone doesn’t work.

Honestly, it’s a bit OOC, but it’s comedy in a very heavy episode, so I’ll take it. In fact, the only way it could’ve been more OOC is if he’d done it Sesame Street style.

Jack has one method of communication open to him – an old CB radio.

While Jack is sitting in the TT-SUV asking Tosh to find out about the location where sleeper-businessman is headed, I’m reminded of what Gwen said about secrecy earlier.

He’s headed towards an abandoned mineshaft where the army’s stored some excess nukes. The sleepers didn’t need to bring any weapons as humanity has enough to do the job 10 times over. So essentially, this episode is about how the personal perception of ourselves is invariably wrong and that humanity is self-destructive. Geez, after this cheery message, I’m going to go read the Sorrows of Werther while listening to some albums backward after this just to feel better.

Thus we get some hollow reassurances from Jack and some comic relief from the Hub that I strategically edited at the start of this recap. I’m pretty sure we also got about 109419482 plot bunnies from that.

Back at the mine sleeper-businessman walks through a hail of bullets, taking out every soldier in his path as the trio in the TT-SUV rush to stop him. As sleeper-businessman gains access at the nukes, Jack does the only thing he can to stop him, run him over with the TT-SUV.

Since it doesn’t kill sleeper-businessman, Jack has to keep him distracted while Gwen tries to disable the implant. It’s a skill fairly unique to Jack as no one else could survive this method.

While Gwen shuts down the implant, the sleeper-businessman ominously implies that next time, they’ll be ready for Torchwood. They’ve got more sleepers just waiting to be activated. It’s a good thing “Torchwood is ready” is the new tagline for this season.

Refusing to be taken into custody, sleeper-businessman blows himself up. Gwen, Jack and Beth make it out of range just in time.

Back at the Hub, there’s a whole sub-plot going on that completely confuses me. Jack (while putting on a shirt) orders Tosh to do what she “has to” and then ducks away when he sees Ianto approach. Forget about my conveniently edited tag for this episode – the potential explanation for this will be responsible for so many more plot bunnies than I ever could be.

Gwen tells Beth that the cryogenics will work this time but Beth has nothing left. She’s lost her husband, her identity and soon her life, as I’m confident that Jack would never let her live. He’d wait for Gwen to leave for the night and turn Beth off, claiming technical difficulties if she ever found out. Beth’s also worried about the potential what-if scenarios and if she may ever become involved with any of them.

She compares how she feels to how Gwen would feel if she hurt Rhys. Beth’s feeling 1 billion times guiltier. I think that number’s a little high considering all the crap Gwen pulled on her significant other last season. In short, Beth doesn’t want to die as a sleeper and in a last act of desperation, grabs Gwen and holds her hostage at arm-knife point.

She wants to die and despite Gwen’s protestations, the team shoots her. I know exactly what’s going to be listed as Beth’s cause of death, suicide by Torchwood. Everyone realizes that it’s what Beth wanted and that she was trying to make it easier on the team. In a harsh example of juxtaposition, for a supposedly mass-murdering alien; she’s far more human than Captain Jack Harkness.

The first time I watched this, I was upset at Beth's death. Crying was involved. The second time, I was distracted by Jack and Ianto were obviously coming from the same place, with Jack in the same state of undress he was minutes earlier.

Later, Gwen and Jack discuss the coming invasion and it’s Gwen who realizes that although they know plenty, they just have to live life until the invasion occurs. It would be a nice ending but then the whole Jack/Gwen thing had to be tacked on at the end when Jack asks her about the wedding date. He abruptly cuts her off when she starts talking about it and sends her home, looking wistfully after her.

The episode ends with Jack pondering the broken blade of Beth’s weapon, hopefully realizing that, in truth, the team just met a potentially mass-murdering alien who has more humanity than most humans.