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Combat

24TH DECEMBER 2006

(50-MINUTE EPISODE)

Although for some time I have been aware that Noel Clarke is a writer as well as an actor, I have never really had the time to get hold of his movie Kidulthood or find out what his written work is all about. I also had the seed planted in my brain that Combat would be

a sort of ‘filler’ episode, much like Boom Town or Love & Monsters in Doctor Who. Just a cheap, character-driven piece sandwiched between the last ‘big’ episode and the season finalé.

I think I got this impression just from reading the synopsis for the episode – all that old guff

about somebody using Weevils to commit the ‘perfect murder’. Yawn. Thankfully, Combat

is nothing of the sort. It’s not only an action-packed and massively entertaining episode in

its own right, but it’s downright crucial to several of the season’s ongoing story arcs. And it’s also magnificently well-written.

“Too much disposable income, not enough meaning. That’s us.”

I love how Clarke’s plot gradually unfurls. Even with Combat as the title, the whole episode

is so well layered that the viewer is completely misdirected. The ‘perfect murder’ concept is simply Torchwood barking up the wrong tree. What really is going on is far more dangerous. Far more disturbing.

Further, Clarke manages to pull off something that a lot of television writers can’t do all that well – he doesn’t neglect any of the regular characters. Jack does a lot of investigating and sees a lot of action, and for most of this episode Ianto is right behind him. For her part, Tosh is appalled at the team’s willingness to use Weevils as bait. And Gwen is so wracked with guilt about her affair with Owen that she retcons Rhys, confesses all, and then asks him to forgive her. She may treat Rhys like absolute shit, but judging from her behaviour here she stills wants him and more than anything she needs desperately for him to forgive her. And

as for Owen, Combat sees Burn Gorman’s best performance to date by a mile. All Owen’s anger and frustration and grief is already beginning to vent, and then he meets Tyler Durden. Oh sorry, I mean Mark Lynch.

“A house, a car, a plasma screen. You’re officially successful…

There’s so much more, if you know where to look.”

The parallels between Combat and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (which is, incidentally,

one of my favourite novels and a damned good film to boot) are numerous, and I would be very surprised if Clarke didn’t have Palahniuk’s work in mind when he wrote this. In Lynch, Clarke has created a sort of ‘upmarket’ Tyler Durden; a man who has it all, yet still finds his life lacking something. Alex Hassell plays the role with a decidedly sinister edge, perhaps more reminiscent of Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman in American Psycho than Brad Pitt’s often quite goofy Tyler Durden.

Whilst Clarke can’t go the whole hog and portray Lynch as an alter ego of Owen, he does borrow heavily from Palahniuk in that he uses the character of Lynch to goad Owen in the same way that in Fight Club Tyler Durden manipulates the narrator. However, as Durden and the narrator in Fight Club are the same, the Lynch  /Owen relationship is perhaps better compared to how Palpatine manages to bring Darth Vader to the surface within Anakin in the Star Wars prequels. Either way, Lynch’s tactics work. Emotionally crippled having lost Diane, Owen buys into Lynch’s bullshit. He throws his earpod away. He even gives Lynch

his gun.

 “All we can do is reduce ourselves to the basics.”

Somewhere within him though, Owen still has a loosely moral centre and so he does try to

do what is right. Somehow though he still finds himself getting into the cage with a Weevil, reduced to “the basics”. Jack and the others make the save in time, of course, but Owen is far from grateful. The closing shots of the episode, which see Owen in the Torchwood cells growling at a Weevil, perfectly sum up his decline. He’s lost it completely.

And he used to be such a nice person.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that Lynch echoes Suzie’s words: “Something is coming”. And with the season finalé pencilled in for New Year’s Day, something is coming soon…

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

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