Torchwood 2.7: Dead Man Walking

[sir_guinglain]

Burn Gorman is a very, very good actor, who gives a remarkable performance. This was the scariest episode of Torchwood I've ever watched. Possession storylines have always unnerved me, child of Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes Doctor Who that I am, and this one kept its mysteries alive until late. This was understandable, as the weakest thing about the episode was that the threat was realised very late, and that its scale was impossible to depict on a Torchwood budget. (I wonder if or how the early evening repeat will cut the shrivelled corpses and walking skeletons.) Still, a hospital is a closed world of a kind, and I was reminded of Doctor Who's Horror of Fang Rock part four, where the Doctor thinks he has locked the enemy out of the lighthouse, only to find that he has locked it in... in this case, the isolation was deliberate.

In the light of developments in this episode it might have been a good idea to show us more of the sensual 'bastard Owen' of the first series in this one. Here is a man who enjoys 'sleeping, drinking and shagging' and now has no digestive system and no circulation, and no metabolism to speak of. The price for discovering love is, for Owen, high.

So - was the Grim Reaper the force in the dark mentioned by Suzie last year, or are there other horrors waiting beyond death? Will we meet the little girl in Victorian dress whom Jack consults before the credits again? Torchwood Cardiff is opening up a little. Good, though, to have Gwen phone Rhys early in the episode, so she can tell him about her awful day, except that at the same time she can't, because the details can't do what she feels justice.