STORY PLACEMENT

 THIS EPISODE TAKES

 PLACE BETWEEN THE TV

 EPISODES "RANDOM

 SHOES" AND "COMBAT."

 

 WRITTEN BY

 CATHERINE TREGENNA

 

 DIRECTED BY

 ALICE TROUGHTON

 

 RATINGS

 1.03 MILLION (BBC3)

 2.16 MILLION (BBC2)

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASE

 'THE COMPLETE FIRST 

 SERIES' BLU-RAY DVD

 BOX SET (BBCBD0015)

 RELEASED IN JUNE 2008.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  

 BLURB

 WHEN A PLANE FROM

 1953 MAKES AN

 UNEXPECTED LANDING IN

 PRESENT-DAY CARDIFF,

 THERE ARE PAINFUL
 CONSEQUENCES FOR ALL
 CONCERNED.

 

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Out of Time

17TH DECEMBER 2006

(50-MINUTE EPISODE)

 

 

                                                       

 

 

Catherine Tregenna’s first contribution to Torchwood is an outstanding effort in so many ways, not least of which is its unconventional nature. As Jack so aptly puts it, there is “…no puzzle to solve; no enemy to fight. Just three lost people”.

 

Tregenna’s script for Out of Time is a stunning and moving reflection on modern life and the inherent contradictions therein. It explores the themes of loneliness, death and despair with much more subtlety than, for example, They Keep Killing Suzie did, and I think that in doing so it leaves more of a mark on the viewer. The events of this episode certainly take their toll on Gwen, Jack, and especially Owen.

 

The premise behind the episode is simple: on 18th December 1953, a small plane flies into the rift and emerges in present-day Cardiff. Aboard are the pilot, the dazzling Diane Holmes; and her two civilian passengers, John and Emma. Torchwood are faced with the unenviable task of informing these three lost travellers that their world, their families, and indeed every-thing they ever knew is lost forever.

 

 

The youngest of the three, eighteen year-old Emma, quickly develops a very close bond with Gwen. After she has got over the initial shock of losing her parents, finding out that ‘Smoking Kills’, being able to buy ‘films in boxes’ and bananas, she finds herself being mothered by a distinctly broody Gwen. She has barely got her head round the mechanics of tea bags when she finds herself staring at Rhys’ morning glory – quite a shocker for a girl born circa 1935.

 

Eve Myles gives a slightly different performance here than we are used to. It’s far soapier;

after all, Out of Time is the first episode since Everything Changes to delve with any real depth into Gwen’s ever-diminishing life outside Torchwood. Olivia Hallinan (Emma) plays

off Myles superbly; there is a great scene where Gwen has to reluctantly give Emma the old ‘birds and the bees’ talk, and as Emma questions her on her sexual history and her feelings about Rhys, Myles’ face betrays completely how guilt-ridden and confused Gwen is about her love life.

 

In the end though, it is only Emma’s story that has anything approaching a happy ending. Of the three, Emma is the youngest and therefore the most malleable. Whilst Jack and Diane struggle to change and to fit in, for Emma it isn’t quite as much of a challenge. She says her goodbyes to an emotional Gwen and sets off to seek her fortune in London.

 

 

The element of Tregenna’s script that most moved me was without doubt the story of John (Mark Lewis Jones). In the early going he appears chauvinistic and domineering; perhaps even unlikeable. But he isn’t. As the episode progresses we find that John is a good man;

a family man. A man who has lost everything and everyone that he ever cared about. And

he doesn’t even have the comfort of tracing his grandchildren. His wife is long dead, and Alan (his widowed, childless son) is a permanent resident in a Nursing Home, suffering

from dementia. John squeezes his son’s hand – his son who appears to be in his eighties

or nineties – and tries to make him remember, and as his tears flow all he draws is a blank.

 

JOHN             What, did you fall through time too?

 

JACK             Yeah. You could say that. I was born in the future. I lived in your past. My time is gone too.

 

It is Jack who takes it upon himself to help John adjust, but when he finds him locked inside

a garage choking to death on exhaust fumes he knows that there is nothing that he can do for this man. He’s seen the end of his line.

 

“You can’t just throw it away… You don’t get reunited John. It just goes black.”

 

Alice Troughton directs John’s suicide / euthanasia beautifully. Jack helps him die – and I’d imagine Jack dies too, again – and then the beautiful shot of these two men breathing in the exhaust fumes, holding hands as they die is spliced with tasteful shots of Owen and Diane making love. Death and shagging. These two powerful and opposing concepts amalgamat-ed on screen, and somehow it all makes sense.

 

Which brings me to Owen and Diane (Louise Delamere). The more I see of Torchwood, the more the character of Owen Harper impresses me. The typical ‘Jack the Lad’ of Everything Changes has become so much more over the course of these first ten episodes, and as he breaks down and weeps to Diane “How have you done this to me?” we begin to see him in

a whole new light. Out of Time sees Owen fall in love. And then it sees Owen lose that love

because frankly, she loves flying more.

 

“The thing about love is that you’re always at it’s mercy.”

 

In fifty minutes the writer has taken three of our heroes and progressed them all dramatically. In fact, I’d say that watching Out of Time is just as rewarding as reading a novel as it drives the characters so far forward, but then I’d be doing a great disservice to Barrowman, Myles, Gorman, Delamere, Jones, and Hallinan who each give superlative performances.

 

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

 

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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