STORY PLACEMENT

 THIS EPISODE TAKES

 PLACE IMMEDIATELY
 AFTER THE TV EPISODE

 "DEAD MAN WALKING"
 AND PRIOR TO THE TV
 EPISODE "SOMETHING
 BORROWED."

 

 WRITTEN BY

 JOSEPH LIDSTER

 

 DIRECTED BY

 ANDY GODDARD

 

 RATINGS

 1.18 MILLION (BBC3)

 3.08 MILLION (BBC2)

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASE

 'THE COMPLETE SECOND 

 SERIES' BLU-RAY DVD

 BOX SET (BBCBD0040)

 RELEASED IN JUNE 2008.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  

 BLURB

 A victim of his

 newfound

 circumstances, Owen

 Harper believes he

 needs absolution.

 Will the lonely girl

 on the rooftop help

 him, or will it be a

 mission to the

 retrieve an alien

 device that is proving

 more lethal by the

 second? And how far

 will Toshiko go to

 help him?

 

 PREVIOUS                                                                                  NEXT

 

A Day in the Death

27TH FEBRUARY 2008

(50-MINUTE EPISODE, PART 3 OF 3)

 

 

                                                       

 

 

Many of my favourite Doctor Who audio plays have come from the pen of Joseph Lidster; his incredible ability to fuse the mundane with the fantastic really sets him apart from his peers. I’ve long thought that his penchant for writing gritty, contemporary dramas like The Rapture and The Gathering would make him an ideal candidate to write for Torchwood and, through his wonderful script for A Day In The Death, it seems that Mr Lidster has proved me right.

 

 

“I’m not real. Three days ago I died, and they think I’m fine. But they’re wrong.”

 

In fairness though, on the back of the last two episodes Lidster was in poll position to really hit the ground running. What better brief could one hope for than having to deal with Owen Harper’s painful adjustment to life after death? Relieved of his duties by Jack and relegated to making the coffee, Owen has not only been pushed off the mortal coil but also pushed out of the Torchwood team. Everywhere he looks he sees someone like Martha or Ianto poised to usurp his position, and every time that he closes his eyes he finds himself staring into the abyss.

 

“You get to live forever. I get to die forever. It’s funny that.”

 

I’m impressed that the production team haven’t copped out by bringing Owen back to life ‘fully’. Having him trapped between life and death is absolutely gripping to watch, not to mention terrifying. Last week Dead Man Walking focused quite heavily on the despair

that Owen feels thanks to his knowledge that after death, there is nothing but darkness.

This week though, Lidster also takes time to focus on the horrifying physical ‘side effects’

of being deadalive. Owen may well be able to stop his muscles from atrophying by lifting weights, but he still can’t feel anything. When he cuts himself, he will not heal. He is well

and truly broken; like a leper, only worse. He cannot eat or drink, and there is certainly no “stiffening” going on anywhere. I found the scene in Owen’s flat where he clears out all his food and toiletries particularly disturbing; such a simple scene, but so very powerful. No wonder Owen wanted to end it all - I think I’d throw myself into Cardiff bay if I couldn’t eat

or have sex, and an attractive young woman came round to my flat and ate pizza in front of me.

 

“Heat sensors. I’m literally too cool for school”.

 

The trailer for this episode that aired at the end of Dead Man Walking was a bit misleading. I expected A Day In The Death to be a Combat-style Owen-off-the-rails kind of adventure, when in truth it is the exact opposite – it is a story about Owen getting back on the rails. His epiphany comes through his mission to recover an unstable alien energy pulse from a dying collector of alien ephemera, Henry Parker (Richard Briers). Parker believes that he is being kept alive by this ‘pulse’, but upon closer examination it becomes clear to Owen that the pulse is nothing more than an exotic placebo – it’s Parker’s hope that is keeping him alive. As Parker dies because Owen can’t give him mouth-to-mouth – he has no breath – Owen realises that, if nothing else, he has hope. Just as the pulse is about to detonate and destroy Cardiff, Owen throws himself upon it and absorbs its energy. He can still do good.

 

Lidster’s structure for this episode also has to be commended. Having Owen recount his recent exploits to the suicidal young widow on the rooftop is a great way of telling the story, but it is doubly effective when we are misdirected so completely by the writer. Right up until the end of the episode I thought that Owen had reached the end of his tether and that he was going to jump too, when in actual fact the opposite was true. He had come up to the roof to talk the young widow down; to save her.

 

 

Furthermore, the performances of the cast are all top-drawer here; Briers and Burn Gorman are like emotional dynamite together on screen. Briers’ haunting performance is light years away from his appalling outing as the Chief Caretaker in the Doctor Who calamity Paradise Towers. Freema Agyeman also sees Martha off in style by planting a smacker on Captain Jack because “everybody else had a go”, leaving Owen in a position to resume his duties

as Torchwood’s medical officer. Torchwood’s dead medical officer, that is...

 

It surely can’t be long now until Russell T Davies snatches up Lidster to write a television script for Doctor Who. A Day In The Death is certainly a wonderful induction to the world

of television scriptwriting for Lidster, and it also has the virtue of being the latest in what is becoming a very long line of outstanding Torchwood episodes.

 

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.

Unless otherwise stated, all images on this site are copyrighted to the BBC and are used solely for promotional purposes.

‘Torchwood’ is copyright © by the BBC. No copyright infringement is intended.