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Torchwood Combat |
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| Story No. | 11 | 
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| Production Code | Series One Episode Eleven | |
| Dates | December 24, 2006 |
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With John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth
David-Lloyd.
Written by Noel Clark Directed by Andy Goddard Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner. |
| Synopsis: Somebody is kidnapping Weevils from the streets and using them for a sinister purpose... |
Grin and bear pit by John Nor 17/3/07
With this episode Torchwood find out that some other shadowy group know about the Weevils and are abducting them from the streets: but why?
Following on from Out of Time, which split screen time equally between Owen, Gwen and Jack, this episode focuses primarily on the character of Owen. This last episode to do this was Ghost Machine.
The obvious roots of this episode is the film Fight Club, with dissatisfied nihilistic young men fighting out their aggression in an underground club. At this point in the season, Owen is dissatisfied and nihilistic too, still feeling the effects of being abandoned by his lover Diane (in the previous episode). He ends his affair with Gwen with the phrase "I've had enough of your fuck-tricks" then moodily haunts the style-bars of Cardiff. (Again.)
Gwen has her own plotline in this episode which is separate really from the rest of the episode as she examines her life post-Owen. There is some great acting from Eve Myles as she pours her heart out to Rhys, and also when she goes back to an empty Hub.
As Owen delves deeper into the mystery, exploring the hidden side of Cardiff, the dark side, an idea of what the cells beneath the hub could be seen to represent became clearer to me.
In the first episode Suzie complained "How come we [we being either Earth or the programme Torchwood depending how you read the line] get all the Weevils and bollocks and shit?". Torchwood, compared to Doctor Who, is more ready to examine the more unsavoury aspects of life. The snarling Weevils locked in the cells, hidden away, can be read as a metaphor for the hidden subconscious aspects of human experience, the rage and anger.
Although Owen's episode, this story brings to the surface an underlying theme of the show that has been running through most episode: a theme that is central to the exploration of Jack's character. Whenever Torchwood have killed (Day One, Cyberwoman, Greeks Bearing Gifts, They Keep Killing Suzie) Jack steps up and makes the decision to do it. In other episodes (Small Worlds, Out of Time) he decides when he shouldn't save people. Suzie has already discussed with Gwen (in They Keep Killing Suzie) the notion of who gave Jack the right to decide, but here Owen asks him directly - who made Jack judge and jury?
There is a great ambiguous scene where you can read whatever you want in Owen's snarling grin. I think: he has his zest for life back, but drawing strength from the dark places, the buried rage, the loss and the hurt. Out of the bad can come some good.
In summary then, another excellent episode which rises above its unoriginal roots to build upon the themes of the season in a thought-provoking way.
The first rule of Combat is that you do not talk about Combat by Robert Smith? 28/4/20
"Doctor Who is a series that celebrates life. Torchwood, on the other hand, is obsessed by death."
- from my review of Out of Time.
Combat is much more impressive than it has any right to be. Written by Mickey the Idiot, no less, it should be a sub-Fight Club, punch-em-up yawner, of the kind you normally see in other science fiction series, only usually involving Klingons. What's more, taking the bog-standard Weevils - the world's least interesting alien race, so uninteresting that the pilot episode of the whole show had to apologise for them - and using them as a metaphor for violent, unknowable death is a stroke of brilliance.
Combat also sees a critical step in the Gwen/Owen relationship, which only goes to prove that this was just one phase of Gwen's descent into darkness. Her drugging Rhys is terrifying and clearly echoes Suzie's actions. They aren't a million miles apart either: both had the only spark of empathy in the group to use the glove, both were desperate for someone to talk to about their job, both had affairs with Owen, both drug people so they can confess without dealing with consequences...
Gwen's arc is quite brilliant in its intensity, because you can see every wrong move she makes, but understand why she makes them anyway. Where Rose's humanity lifted the ninth Doctor out of his darkness, allowing him to be reborn, Gwen's humanity gets slowly stripped away by the darkness of the Torchwood team. One thing that seems to get forgotten - even by people who undoubtedly saw Army of Ghosts - is that Torchwood aren't the good guys, they're the villains. An evil corporation stocked by (mostly) likeable characters is still an evil corporation.
Combat is a confronting episode, moreso when you realise you know people who live exactly these kinds of lives (well, probably without the Weevils, but I have my suspicions). The episode captures the ugliness of the patriarchy in a raw and primal way, never letting you forget just how much the rich-white-man's-burden is simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying. If there's anyone in society you don't want evolving into a pissed-off rage machine, it's the same people who've so successfully created that society to keep everyone who wasn't like them poor and disenfranchised.
I wonder how that worked out in subsquent years...?