Thanks for the Memory

Torchwood: Adam

It’s often a sign of a show that’s finally cooking by gas when it decides to have a little fun with its characters. And Adam certainly does that, not to mention be clever, funny, scary, emotional and downright weird at times. Tochwood series 2 has seen the show in many ways come on leaps and bounds from its fits and starts debut year, but not till now have I been moved to write about just how good this show can be when it gets the right script with the right direction and all the regulars pulling in the same way for once. And it comes as no surprise to find one of the first series’ undoubted finds, Catherine Tregenna, with her name on the credits.

Meat was good, but with Tregenna’s name attached it felt ultimately a little disappointing. If last year’s Out of Time and Captain Jack Harkness taught us nothing else, it still highlighted how Torchwood’s major lacking in its inaugural year was believable, likeable regulars. Both of these episodes had these in spades, and Adam takes it one step further by giving us a new spin on these characters, making them familiar yet different at the same time. And before you think it, yes we have seen this sort of thing before (I mean, this is still Torchwood after all). Both The Next Generation (as Stuart hinted last week) and Red Dwarf have done these altered reality-type stories where the coda sees everyone scratching their heads at the couple of days of missing memories they have to ponder over. But that’s okay, because as we know originality died a long time ago and the most you can hope for with any television show or film is to see something familiar done in a new and likeable way.

there’s a very human undercurrent to the script which gives the whole thing a poignancy it otherwise wouldn’t have had

Right from the opening titles - altered slightly to include Adam as a regular, just as Buffy’s ‘Superstar’ included Jonathan - to the poignant ending in which Jack tries to find truth from a handful of sand, Adam is the sort of episode you just don’t want to finish. Which in itself is a pretty remarkable testament to how quickly this show has come in just half a dozen episodes. Yes, a lot of the fun to be had comes from seeing the regulars acting, um, irregularly - Tosh as confident, sexed-up boy-magnet, Owen as a repressed, nerdy techno-geek - but there’s a very human undercurrent to the script which gives the whole thing a poignancy it otherwise wouldn’t have had. And as with Tregenna’s break-out  script Out of Time, that poignancy comes from something as simple yet crucial as the memories each of us carries inside. For once Torchwood aren’t threatened by an alien that wants to steal our brains or take over our bodies; this time it wants to rob us of the very things which stay behind when the things we love are gone.

Well, I say rob. But that’s not exactly true. Tregenna avoids the obvious pitfall of depicting her alien in terms of black and white, yes or no terms of goodness and badness by having Adam behave both manipulatively yet sympathetically in turn. And the fact that Bryan Dick rises to the occasion, giving a nuanced performance that is in turns likable, sinister and heartbreakingly sad is really just the icing on  the cake. But he’s hardly alone in raising the acting stakes; Burn Gorman recreates Owen as a charming and awkward nerd, somewhere about a million miles away from his otherwise cocksure and sarcastic alter-ego. And once again Naoko Mori shows that, when she’s given the material, Tosh is arguably the most likeable and sympathetic of Team Torchwood’s members. Rather neat also is how Tregenna literally reverses the Owen and Tosh roles, making one the needy, socially inept loser and the other the sexually assertive putter-downer (the fact that Owen is now both wearing the specs and making the sandwiches is just some heavy-handed window-dressing for those who can’t keep up).

I just wish that Barrowman had the skill to tone down his big-band performances

It’s just a shame that, at times, John Barrowman isn’t singing from the same song sheet (which, considering his multifarious Saturday night engagements, is a somewhat damning irony). Yes, given reasons to look cold and steely in the face of alien infiltration, our Captain still talks the talk; but give Barrowman some heartfelt emotional stuff and you’re left chewing the cushion in pained embarrassment. Which is a shame, as Jack (as always) plays a vital role in events this week; granting us a heads-up of his old stomping ground the Boeshane Peninsula, a look at his Ma and Pa in the good old days of the 51^st Century and (not surprisingly, given James Marsters’ rather loaded parting shot at the end of week one) the revelation that Gray was in fact Jack’s younger brother, left to the mercies of the invading aliens (who sound really nasty) that first drove Jack away from his childhood home. I just wish that Barrowman had the skill to tone down his big-band performances so that it suited the more intimate locale of the television screen. The presence and the charisma are there, undoubtedly, but as always the maxim for these things should be less is more.

Which is a neat way of moving onto Andy Goddard’s superlative direction, resplendent as it is with this show’s characteristically whiplash effect camera zooms, yet full of innovative moments like Adam entering the team’s false or repressed memories; and particularly his truly disturbing depiction of Ianto as a would-be serial rapist. Which in itself raises a curious moral dilemma - are we exonerated of a crime when everyone knows we didn’t do it, but our own memories tell us otherwise? Either way this is truly chilling stuff, with Gareth David Lloyd at last casting off all ambitions to play the Comedy Club and giving a superb performance. He may not have blubbed this much since the dark days of Cyberwoman, but at least the thought of being the Cardiff strangler warrants such an emotional display.

Rhys is arguably becoming the most insightful of Torchwood’s extended gang

But what makes Adam such a resounding success is hardly new to fans of Tregenna’s previous scripts: heart. Whether it is in the tender and very real rediscovery of Gwen’s memories of Rhys (anyone else wish they’d kept this element out of the amnesia pill reboot?) or Jack’s buried past which threatens to take precedence over his present, Adam is a plain and simple treatise about the power of memory and the need for us all to be remembered. Like with Out of Time’s doomed John Ellis, life starts to unravel when all those we remember or who remember us start to fade away; quite literally in the case of Adam who now only exists in other people’s memories, faked, revived or otherwise. As Rhys - arguably becoming the most insightful of Torchwood’s extended gang - says himself, ‘Memories are all we have’. Which, considering he escapes the amnesia-drug solution to everything, could mean some interesting moments to come.

All of which leaves me just to mention the little moments that - appropriately enough - still stick in the memory: the post-hypnotic regression that Jack invokes to get the team to remember their true selves (revealing Owen’s maternal angst, Tosh’s emotional coldness and Gwen’s true feelings towards Jack), the way that Adam plays on Jack’s sympathy to get back in his head (literally rewriting his memories as a result) and of course that final shot of a handful of sand running meaninglessly through Jack’s fingers.

Simply put, Torchwood at its very, very best. And for once I don’t feel the need to temper that statement with the caveat of assuming that it’s all downhill from here.

Next Time: Calling Dr. Jones, as Martha is welcomed to the Hub and Jim from Neighbours is doing something decidedly dodgy with DNA and giant wasps. Whatever would Scott and Charlene have to say..?