sir_guinglain | Torchwood 2.5: Adam

Only time for a few observations this week. The most memorable image for me was the renewal and extension of the Jack|Jesus parallels from 1.13, End of Days. The scene where Jack presided over a symbolic and literal meal with his colleagues seemed heavily Eucharistic, with amnesia pills as the host. Ianto's affinity to Jack is deep, and Jack's clasping him to his breast made me think of him as John, the disciple whom Jesus loved - though their physical relationship brings us to and beyond the territory of the young man whom Jesus raised from the dead in the Secret Gospel of Mark. Adam himself, who has 'always' been with Jack, and whose origins are in the Void - described by the Doctor as Hell - is the tempter, taking Jack to his own wilderness, his suppressed memory of the Boeshane Peninsula, and offering him a more comfortable version of his past, only to include himself in it, and thus perhaps capture Jack's soul or undermine his purpose. All that was left of Adam was his box, and that contained sand.

The Christ parallels were carried forward and broadened in the following episode, Reset, which connects them to the Doctor-as-God strand of imagery in Doctor Who - but that is a post for another day.