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Something

Borrowed

5TH MARCH 2008

(50-MINUTE EPISODE)

After what amounted to the most grim and cheerless trilogy of episodes that I've ever come across in any series, Something Borrowed comes as a welcome change of tone. Phil Ford’s script is light and funny, and Andy Goddard’s direction is atypically bright for the show. The sun is shining, the shape-shifters are shape-shifting, and Torchwood’s own Gwen Cooper is finally getting married. Yes, there’s blood and gore and even chainsaws and the like, but what else would you expect from a Torchwood wedding?

The opening of the episode reminded me a lot of the first few minutes of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It’s Gwen’s hen night but she can’t go out on the piss until she has captured and / or neutralised the shape-shifting Nostrovite. It takes her a while, but she eventually puts paid

to the monster, sustaining only a slight bite in the fracas. Gwen’s pursuit of the Nostrovite is intercut beautifully with shots of her drunken friends waiting for her in a nightclub. It’s such a stylish yet comic sequence; never taking itself too seriously, but never playing anything just for laughs. Gwen’s friends are all so relatable; so real. Yet Gwen’s life is so fantastic; so incredible. The exchange “what you done to your arm?” / “just a scratch” speaks volumes.

Of course, little did Gwen know that her bite mark constituted some bizarre form of alien fertilisation, and so imagine her surprise when, on the morning of her wedding, she wakes up looking like she is about to give birth at any moment! But, realising that the long-suffering Rhys will not be able to take much more of the shit that she regularly dolls out to him, Gwen will not cancel the wedding. The show must go on!

And it gets worse for the bride to be. The Nostrovite that Gwen killed was one of a pair, and the female – the mother - is still out there, desperate to free its offspring from the ‘incubator’ that is her womb.

The ensuing mêlée is deliciously grotesque.

JACK             Get back you ugly bitch!

RHYS             What the hell d’you think you’re doing, that’s my mother!

GWEN            Jack, does the shape-shifter copy smells too? It’s Brenda, Jack.

There is just so much engaging stuff crammed in here. We have a gun-toting Jack, running down the aisle and stopping the wedding; bridesmaids screaming blue murder; automatic weapons hidden under wedding dresses; heck, Rhys even punches Jack in the face and tackles the Nostrovite with a chainsaw!

“I love him, but not in the way I love you.”

Somehow though, the writer still manages to make this rich and vibrant romp work as a piece of affecting drama. The Jack / Gwen / Rhys love triangle is handled with great care

by Ford, exploring Gwen’s uncertainty in such a way as to leave the viewer every bit as irresolute as she is. The look on Jack’s face as Gwen and Rhys say their vows is unsettling in the extreme, and the look on Jack’s face as Ianto cuts in on his dance with the bride is even worse. And, just when you think it’s all sewn up, Jack pulls out and dusts down an old sepia photograph of his own wedding day (Estelle, perhaps?), decades earlier…

Nevertheless, the most praise should go to the cast. Not only are all the regulars all on top form – John Barrowman, Eve Myles and Kai Owen especially so – but the likes of Doctor

Who: Kinda’s Nerys Hughes and William Thomas (the only man to have appeared in the classic series of Doctor Who, the new series of Doctor Who, and Torchwood) are also on hand to provide top-drawer performances. Hughes is particularly good, pulling a double-header as both Rhys’ Mum Brenda and the Nostrovite. Jonathan Lewis Owen and Morgan Hopkins also deserve an honourable mention as ‘Banana Boat’ and Mervyn, Rhys’ riotous best friends.

All told, Something Borrowed is a enormously enjoyable episode with a hell of a lot of

spirit. It may well be a great big melting pot of genre plagiarism, but it works and works spectacularly. My only disappointment with it was that it came down to Jack and his big

gun to save the day – when Rhys had that chainsaw in his hand, I had hoped that it was

time for him to really become a hero!

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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