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Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

16TH JANUARY 2008

(50-MINUTE EPISODE)

As it has been over a year since the last Torchwood episode aired, I had almost forgotten all about Captain Jack’s team back in Cardiff. Luckily the opening few minutes

of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang reminded me exactly what I have been missing.

A humanoid blowfish is speeding down the road in a sports car. He stops at the traffic lights, like a good driver, to allow an old lady to cross the road. A few moments later, Torchwood show up and ask the old lady if she has seen a blowfish driving a sports car. She says that she has. As Torchwood speed away in hot pursuit, the old lady scoffs “bloody Torchwood.”

“Hey kids, did you miss me? I came back for you. All of you.”

And before we know it Jack is back and a typically lightweight, scene-setting season opener has kicked off in style.

Chris Chibnall’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is summed up entirely by its title. We have another sexually liberal Time Agent from the future. We have a Western style showdown in a trendy Cardiff bar. We have a “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi” hologram joke. We have some gloriously chic aerial shots of Cardiff. We have that distinctive, unsettling soundtrack. We even have

a sexually charged fight choreographed to the sound of Blur’s Song 2. It’s all so stylish. So 2008. So Torchwood.

Of course, it’s not going to suit everybody, but by now Doctor Who fandom has divided itself into those that watch Torchwood and those that don’t, and lest we forget those viewers who actually just watch Torchwood and not Doctor Who. In any event, Chibnall’s season opener makes no apologies for being audaciously Torchwood. This episode wears its controversy like a badge.

“Always keep him in front of you.”

Captain John, the new Time Agent from the future, is Jack’s ex-partner in every sense of the word. He’s like Jack the con man that we first met in The Empty Child only with the volume turned up and the morality turned down. Captain John is depraved; even poodles aren’t safe from his libido. But the man sure is memorable. James Marsters clearly had a ball bringing this walking, armed double entendre to life.

Thankfully though, the regulars are neither neglected nor overshadowed. In fact, Chibnall’s story is structured in such a way that they are all given something meaningful to do. More than that though, Chibnall wonderfully manages to summarise exactly where all the regulars are at emotionally with just one or two subtle hints. The potential romance between Owen and Tosh is gently touched on by the writer as the two characters search for Gwen, whilst Ianto’s hesitant feelings towards Jack are dealt with much more explicitly in a lovely scene which sees Jack ask his former “part time shag boy” on a date.

“Tell Jack I…”

However, there is no doubt in my mind that this year’s biggest character thread is going to revolve around Gwen’s patent feelings for Jack. Way back in Ghost Machine this was very delicately explored before being left alone once Owen had come into the picture, but now with Gwen getting engaged to Reece whilst Jack was ‘away’ and Jack having sorted his feelings out over the course of the ‘year that never was’, something has got to give.

Reading this review you could be forgiven for thinking that Torchwood is quite possibly the soapiest and most emotionally contrived series out there, and that this tangled web that the regulars characters weave is just too far fetched too and complicated to have any dramatic impact. But it does work, somehow; probably in the same sort of way that in The Simpsons, Mr Burns’ body contains every disease known to man in perfect equilibrium, keeping him alive.

“By the way, I found Gray.”

And it looks like there is better to come. The trailer at the end of the episode previews not only next week’s episode, but also some much later on in the season, and there is certainly intrigue aplenty. Who is this ‘Gray’ that Captain John refers to? And Why does John come back? And how does Martha Jones fit into all this? I for one will be tuning in to find out…

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2008

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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