Owen Harper's Greatest Shits

Owen's chest wound leaves
Three thousand nine hundred and
Ninety nine more holes.

Torchwood: A Day In The Death

John Lennon conceived the song A Day In The Life as the rambling, introverted monologue of a man so wrapped up in the day-to-day machinations of his own private universe, that he completely fails to pay due credence to the strange, exciting or newsworthy events in the world in front of him.

Torchwood got that point entirely right, because I saw the whole thing and didn't get it.

A Day In The Death is an awkward beast to have to review. It's not a standard Torchwood escapade by any means, so comparing it to the other episodes that way is a bit of a redundant exercise. But it's not really an episode you can adequately quantify as being 'good' or 'bad' on its own terms either. It looked nice enough (the camerawork was relatively stable this week) and there were no obvious flaws in the logic besides the manner of Owen's continued functioning (and if we start going there we'll be tied up all fucking month), but honestly, it's going to be each individual viewer that determines whether the TV-dinner messages on the meaning of life worked for them or not. And frankly, I'm not really sure how much moral nutrition was actually present. At least the bad episodes throw it straight at you as a condescending lecture. Maybe A Day In The Death was incredibly clever instead and I was just too obtuse to see it beyond the visual metaphor of Owen methodically disposing of all the perishables he no longer needed. Then I thought about it a bit more and went no, this is BBC2 on a Wednesday night straight after Masterchef. Bollocks to that.

What we got instead was essentially Random Shoes, in reverse, minus the heartwarming schadenfreude. Eugene, the inner geek within us all, was a hapless but lovable loser dragged down by the pricks around him. But dead or not, Owen has still got more professional competence in his little finger (the broken one) than I have in my whole body, and the arrogant swagger that goes with it; most of his colleagues genuinely, in a utterly futile gesture, want to help; even Ianto, once he's stopped being smug at how the tables are turned over the coffee. But after five minutes' worth of brave face, Owen does nothing to earn anyone's sympathy for damn near three quarters of an hour; he's trying to prove his worthiness to himself rather than the team, he couldn't give two shits about them except as workmates, and is ruthlessly determined to make everyone miserable for as long as possible. And Jack's not having any of it; it's not so much 'been there, done that', but 'too long, didn't read'.

Jack's not having any of Owen's self-pity; it's not so much 'been there, done that', but 'too long, didn't read'

I suppose I could make an effort to extrapolate some long-winded profundity on the human condition from all of the above and elaborate on it here. But I'm not going to. That bit in Neil's living room where Tosh is talking but the words aren't getting through to Owen's expressionless face? That was my face, that was. As he tangented into yet another meandering train of thought, there was I mulling over ways Owen could creatively obliterate himself for good while pissing off as many people as possible. Walking into a nuclear reactor going "Eldrad MUST live" is too simple. Going to a sci-fi convention and loudly referring to the creator of Star Trek as 'Gene Deadandburied' earns more points. Or attending every Babylon 5 screening at the same convention, then waving his arms about and shouting 'DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!' every time Bill Mumy appears on the screen.

Ramble, ramble, ramble...

OK look, it's like this. If A Day In The Death's point is that the key to enjoying life is in appreciating the friends you have and people you know, then it fails, because Owen was only brought back from the brink by this magic alien whistle and not by any human contact at all. Plus he's still a turd. If it's telling us to grow some balls and have some self-esteem, then it fails, because that was the note they finished on last week and it didn't take the bloody hypocrite more than two days of story time to settle into a thoroughly unlikeable blind frump. And though there are probably more unkind things to say to a genuine trauma victim on the verge of suicide, I'm buggered if I can think of one off the top of my head. If it was about embracing life and enjoying it to the full, then it fails, because Richard Briers had done all that and still ended up alone and terrified on his deathbed, his own legacy meaning absolutely diddly in the end. And if it was trying to say that there's a big wide wonderful universe out there, then it fails, because the Voyager probe was an advertisement alerting the Earth's presence to the cosmos at large, on behalf of the billions of lifeforms walking upon it. So what happens? The reply comes back, and without even bothering to find out what it is, gets stuck in the hands of one reclusive old bloke for years on end. Then Torchwood comes along, goes 'ta very much, we'll have that', and it gets locked away in their vault for ever and ever. Why are they the only ones allowed to have any fun?

And if you try to strip away any deeper meanings and just go with the idea of hope, then it still fails, because of the blunt way Owen had painted Richard Briers' own hope as the curse that was prolonging his misery and suffering, rendering in advance that big speech of his at the end a complete waste of everyone's time. It comes over more like how Maggie keeps trying to tell him all the way through; what good is a meaningless catch-all term like 'hope' anyway, if nothing concrete is there to substantiate it? And how many wibbly-wobbly alien Lite-Brites are going to fall into the average depressive's hands anyway?

The guard should have splattered his brains all over the stair carpet, that being the industry-standard method of executing a walking corpse

They don't show nearly enough George A Romero movies in Cardiff either. "I'm not giving off any body heat, and you know what that means." Yes, it means that since Owen's the dangerous intruder disobeying a direct challenge, the guard should have immediately splattered his brains all over the stair carpet, that being the industry-standard method of executing a walking corpse. The sod wouldn't be so cocksure about facing down an armed opponent then. It might not have the desired permanent effect, but it wouldn't be much fun for Owen after that and might even stop his whinging self-pity for more than five minutes.

By the way, were you aware that Dead Man Walking and A Day In The Death were the first two episodes to be script-edited by Gary Russell? Yes, it all makes perfect sense now, particularly if you've read Spiral Scratch and what he did to Mel.

Next week: Farce comedy japes aplenty as Gwen becomes the surprise contestant on Preggers Plays Pop. (God, I've waited YEARS to say that joke. Sad innit?)