It's a Wonderful Death

Torchwood: A Day in the Death

This really shouldn’t work. It’s shamelessly cheesy, has a B-plot so anaemic as to make the recently deceased Owen Harper look ruddy-cheeked and has the temerity to reduce Richard Briers to the status of a bed-bound comic relief clutching onto life with a novelty Auton sphere. But despite all this, somehow - and I’m still not sure how - it works. It’s beautiful and profound and possibly the only time I’m going to say these words in relation to an episode of Torchwood: it moved me. Though given the presence of yet another eulogy to the Hub’s former medical officer, I’m not sure I can take another forty-five minutes on the Owen farewell express.

A Day in the Death promises much with that intriguing teaser, but to be fair delivers little. As a meditative examination on the psychological reality of death it’s about as profound as reading someone’s shopping list out at a funeral eulogy; but as a piece of heart-warming sci-fi nonsense it pretty much hits the target dead centre. This is the episode that Dead Man Walking should have been: a black-humoured walk on the wild side without any need whatsoever to drag in the Grim Reaper just to up the ante in the apocalyptic stakes.

To paraphrase Freddie Mercury, ‘Who Wants to Die Forever?’ has become Owen’s eternal dilemma

And Burn Gorman is extraordinary. How someone captures the intense prick-ness of a date-raping, weevil-shagging arsehole of the afterlife with such gravitas is no mean feat. But the fact that you now sympathise with Owen while at the same time revelling in his resurrection-induced limbo is perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this character’s turnaround post-season one. Arguably the most macabre aspect of Joseph Lidster’s debut script is the idea of a suicidal dead man; one for whom neither life nor death has any real sting remaining. To paraphrase Freddie Mercury, ‘Who Wants to Die Forever?’ has become Owen’s eternal dilemma. And it’s to Lidster and Gorman’s credit that come the final reel we do actually care whether Owen lives or dies in the afterlife.

But those faults oh so very nearly have you railing at the absurdity of it all. Anyone care to write the textbook of logic on Owen’s post-death state? A man incapable of breath to save a dying man, yet somehow in peak physical condition; someone who can snap fingers like Roy Batty at an all-you-can-break finger buffet, yet can still give the vampires of the Whedonverse a run for their money in the undead poster-boy stakes. But so long as you can swallow this bullshit I guess that the aesthetics far outweigh the substance.

And I suppose that’s pretty much the key success to enjoying this episode nor not. Are you willing to forget that Freema Agyeman has been wasted for a second episode running so that you can appreciate the simple beauty of Maggie Hopper’s almost farcical dilemma: grief-stricken and suicidal with only the sneery sarcasm of a self-loathing corpse to save her. Okay, so they well overdo the schmaltz on this one (in Burn Gorman’s mouth pretty much anything tastes like tarmac on the tongue anyway) but for once we’re afforded a real insight into the outside world of Team Torchwood’s emotional angsts. Where a world of tragic post-wedding car accidents leaves a lonely, broken woman with no-one to turn to other than the local undead corpse.

Anyone care to write the textbook of logic on Owen’s post-death state?

So I pretty much got my prediction completely wrong on this one. Owen doesn’t go postal post-resurrection, just a little bit cheesed off to be reduced to making coffee and watching daytime TV while his fucked-up buddies carry on fighting the good fight in the 21st Century. Oh well, it’s nice to get surprised ever now and again. And what A Day in the Death lacks in sartorial elegance, it more than makes up for in solid characterisation and a decent emotional punch. And any episode that takes cuddly, Werther’s original-era Richard Briers and has him lying in a pool of his own piss has got to be worth some brownie points in my opinion.

Next Time: Here comes the bride. Short, fat and wide. It’s Gwen and Rhys’ big day, but it seems that a rather overcooked bun in the oven is going to spoil the special day. Perhaps the District Nurse could help..?