Torchwood Series 2 Episode 2
Sleeper by James Moran -author of Severence- Reviewed
John Barrowman as Captain Jack interrogates Nikki Amuka-Bird in an alien invasion story in Russell T. Davies's Doctor Who spin-off that takes another look at Human Nature
This is a review of the second episode of the second series of Torchwood, the spin-off television series from the BBC's massively successful Doctor Who revival. Torchwood was created by Russell T. Davies, the man credited with much of the success of the new Doctor Who.
Sleeper
Beth and her husband Mike wake to the sound of burgulars downstairs. He tackles the intruders, but is flattened. They then advance menacingly on her....
...when she awakes in hospital, one of the burgulars is dead, the other semi-comatose. When he awakes in another hospital room, the second man cries, "Keep her away from me!"
"Who?" Gwen asks.
"The wife," the burgular says.
"Those were his dying words," Captain Jack says. "Now, why would he say something like that? is it Mike? Are you covering for him?"
At the moment she shakes her head, the lights dim.
Alien Invasion
Jack and the Torchwood team have taken Beth to their headquarters --the Hub-- where they interrogate her and learn that their suspect is a sleeper, a woman whose core identity is buried so deep that she doesn't even know who --or what-- she is. She's one of the advance guard for an alien invasion. But when they activate her, the Torchwood team find that she isn't their only problem...
Captain Jack
After all too often being consigned to the sidelines, Captain Jack Harkness moves centre stage with an interview technique that reveals an unexpectedly aggressive side. So aggressive that for prime-team television, his tactics verge on torture. With good reason; he's seen other worlds fall to these aliens, and knows that to break through to the alien, he has to strip away the veneer. But this veneer is self-aware, and believes that its the real thing. John Barrowman is allowed to stretch his range, and its a pleasure to see a slightly harsher side to an actor who all too often seems to be in the story solely for his looks and fluffy good-nature.
James Moran
After the frenetic unevenness of the first episode, Sleeper is a quieter episode, although that's not to say that pace flags -- far from it. The core of the episode is a race against time as carnage ensues in Cardiff. But it's the quieter, yet darker side of the story that book-ends the standard alien-invasion stuff that makes it such a thought-provoking piece of television. The theme of the alien overlaid by an artificially-created personality has been touched on in Doctor Who, but in Human Nature, 'John Smith' was pressured by events and by those he loved into relinquishing his humanity.
Here, in James Moran's outstanding debut TV script (although he did write Severence for the big screen), Nikki Amuka-Bird gives an assured performance as the innocent Beth, caught up in events beyond her understanding, fighting to hang onto her humanity, even as the alien tide washes over her, taking her away from all that she's ever loved, and gives Torchwood a human dimension that it rarely achieves.
