2:11 Adrift

[Dirk Gently]

This was quite an emotional episode & quite frankly I thought it was excellent. A real tug on the heart strings & Gwen came in to her own. It showed that Torchwood can't solve everything & sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation.

Good stuff!

[Alex]

Well I really enjoyed that, it was nice to see an episode with quite a novel idea behind it which didn't centre around an alien threat or a piece of technology falling in to the wrong hands.

After weeks of Gwen annoying me I finally found her sympathetic again, and though I guessed what had happened to the missing people fairly on, it was still really fun to watch, and more importantly most of the dialogue was really strong for a change.

I've a couple of quibbles - Jonah's welsh accent was so strong that during his big speech to his mother at the end I struggled to make out what he was saying (I imagine when it goes out on the Sci-fi Channel in the US it'll have to have subtitles!), and I don't think Gwen's monologue about him staring in to a Dark Sky and going mad was particularly needed, but bar that it was really affecting stuff, especially when Jonah's mum came to terms with what had happened, and of course Jonah's haunting scream which I found really disturbing.

The series as a whole has improved a lot since the start of the run, and for me this was the strongest episode yet, so it get's a 8/10.

[Alex]

Oops, I think we were both doing a thread for this at the same time Tim! Anyway you beat me to it, so if mine could be deleted (or incorporated in to this one), it'd be appreciated.

[Wayne]

Best episode for several weeks. Since 'To the Last Man' infact!

I've thought for ages that Eve Myles acts almost everyone else off the screen. Even Barrowman. This proved it.

[Master_Rose]

Yes quite a good episode but yet AGAIN we had to have Janto or Ianto or whatever and Jack "doing it", it had nothing to do with the story and looked ridiculous. Hmmmm didn't Jonah look a little like a Sontaron ?

[SiHart]

Great stuff this one. A good mysetry for Gwen to get stuck into, and the kind of thing she was brought into Torchwood to deal with in the first place- the human factor of their work. The contrast between that and her realtyionship with Rhys was rather well done, and his anger at her seemed real!
I also liked the fact that they didn't "retcon" Jonah's mum's memories and left her to deal with the outcome of seeing her son in such pain. It wasn't an easy way out, but it was the right thing to do. Her anger at Gwen again was well played and real.

Poor old Two Teas Andy though. Unrequited love won't get him anywhere!

For a Chris Chibnall episode, this was really superb and far, far better and more mature than the season opener.

Si xx

[Rob McCow]

Yes quite a good episode but yet AGAIN we had to have Janto or Ianto or whatever and Jack "doing it", it had nothing to do with the story and looked ridiculous.

It was a bit pointless, but it wasn't as bad as the scene where it made it seem that Rhys and Gwen had gone to bed together fully clothed, had some toast and then gone back to work. Buh?

I wanted to hate this, because Chibnall's last effort was dire, but it was actually damn good. The main story was intriguing and the motivations, paticularly of Jack's cover up, very believable. Jonah's scream was brilliant and a great twist.

2 Teas Andy is a STAR! When Gwen left him on the pier I half expected him to hold up the two cups and say 'At least I've got two cups of delicious tea. She won't have those where she's going!'

Niggles-
The 'loads of people turn up to missing people meeting' scene was quite predictable.
'Bloody Torchwood' the catchphrase that only one writer uses.
I'm starting to find Rhys's moaning about Gwen not striking a work/life balance quite boring now.
The 'looked into a dark star' bollocks wasn't needed.
Lots of footage of the probably expensive boat.

A very good ep overall and almost enough to make me look forward to another Chibnall episode - but not quite

[Larry]

pretty much agree with what every body has said a another good solid episode.

glad we only have to wait untill friday for Ep 12 although I was half expecting episodes 12/13 to be shown back toi back as they were last year.

[Jason Thompson]

A good episode in terms of emotion and performance. But there were two questions I was left with.

1: Why has this boy been missing seven and a half months before Andy gets Gwen involved? He's known about Jack and Torchwood for quite some time by now. Did it take him that long to get round to reviewing the CCTV footage?

2: Why did Jack cover it all up? And why in such an obvious way? I just couldn't see his reasons for keeping such a major aspect of rift activity from the rest of the team (once again, except Ianto it seems). Did he really think, by now, that Gwen was just going to follow his orders and ignore it all?

[SiHart]

I think Andy "Two teas" is probably a quite inept police officer, and was just looking for a way to get to Gwen. Perhpas he plucked this old case out of the air as an excuse?

Si xx

[chalkie]

and way to grow some cojones for rhys, giving gwen the hard word, it's about time!

[Jason Thompson]

Speaking of 2 teas Andy, how much does he know? And why? Has Gwen been blabbig to all and sundry? She just seems to want to tell everyone about Torchwood now, to the extent that a guy she used to work with is now a reasonable source to reassure the mother of a missing person that Gwen's story about a space time rift and aliens and her son having aged 40 years is true!

[Perry Vale]

The Chinball Wizard definitely upped his game on this one, but it still fell far short for me. I don't find any of the main characters act in a consistent way from week to week. There was a hint of "ooh, that's an interesting island/location & set of buildings, how can we write them in to a storyline..." to it, and there were still far too many helicopter shots. The complete opposite of Wayne, I find Eve Myles acting very bad.

[NorthernStar]

A moving, well acted and well written (A Chibnall script?!) that should have worked for me, and did, for the most part.

But I was left feeling vaguely cheated. The effect of the episode hinged on Jack's motivation for keeping the victims and their "hospital" secret from Gwen and there really wasn't much reason for it.

Protecting Gwen didn't ring true, as she wasn't really emotionally invested in Jonah to that degree.

I half-expected an ex-Torchwood member who the other's knew and believed dead was there and that Jack didn't want Gwen telling the Team.

[WhiteCrow]

Yes this felt a bit of a waste of an episode. Really seemed to just go nowhere. Obviously this felt like the usual "let's have a slow 'character' story as a low budgeter" a la Fear Her.

[Si Hunt]

We tuned in expecting it to be the crap Chibnall season cheapy but it was brilliant!

Go nowhere? It was a story that set up a mystery, took us with Gwen as she unravelled it, and then gave us a sound pay off explaining everything. Where else should it have gone?

I thought it was a really neat idea, the idea of 'where do all the missing people go?' was one very poignant to anyone who keeps track of the news and it was resolved in a sensitive, not too far fetched way. There was a real emotional lesson for Gwen.

2: Why did Jack cover it all up? And why in such an obvious way? I just couldn't see his reasons for keeping such a major aspect of rift activity from the rest of the team (once again, except Ianto it seems).

The key thing to note is that he mentioned these people had been turning up since he joined Torchwood (there were a couple of them "locked up" when he joined). Therefore it wasn't something he decided to set up without telling anyone, it was a secret that already existed when the others came along. It makes little sense, therefore, to one day decide to tell them all about it when (i) there's not really any reason to (ii) they might try and 'interfere' as Gwen did and risk blowing the location of the base and/or hurting the relatives as happened here. Perhaps Ianto stumbled on the secret one day while Jack was out visiting the shelter.

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

A bit of a surprise this one, and an episode that really kept us engaged and enthralled for the whole 45 minutes. Neatly done, it was nice to see a bit more of Gwen's old police chum, and get a bit of 'back story' with him. A very moving episode, beautifully-played by all concerned - the scene right at the end where the mother basically tells Gwen she did the wrong thing, was very touching and sad.

[FlyingBeastie]

Yes this felt a bit of a waste of an episode. Really seemed to just go nowhere. Obviously this felt like the usual "let's have a slow 'character' story as a low budgeter" a la Fear Her.

DEAR GOD YOU ARE ON CRACK!!! NOTHING is at all like "Fear Her". hell, I'd rather watch "Timeflight" TWICE before "Fear Her"

Anyway, I'm agreeing with all the positive reviews, this was a great episode and very heart wrenching cos' I can relate to the guest characters in this one.

I even cried

GREAT EPISODE!!!!!!

[Wayne]

DEAR GOD YOU ARE ON CRACK!!! NOTHING is at all like "Fear Her". hell, I'd rather watch "Timeflight" TWICE before "Fear Her"

I agree with FB!

[FlyingBeastie]

I agree with FB!

[Philipnet]

This was good.

A bit dark and slightly disturbing, but as it's Torchwood that's probably a given .

I could tell as soon a Gwen entered the underground hospital what the end result would be. There's only certain types of people you lock away in accommodation that bad.

[Matthew T]

I've finally got round to watching Torchwood, and have been loving it, only 2 episodes left!

I'm moved to comment on this episode though, I thought it was horrible! I've never seen anything so bleak and depressing in my life!

It had a great start and I really got drawn into the mystery but the resolution was just far too dark for me. I don't think everything should have a happy ending but I wished this had ended differently.

At least Jonah had been eating well wherever he'd been for 40 years though!

[Rob McCow]

I'm moved to comment on this episode though, I thought it was horrible! I've never seen anything so bleak and depressing in my life!

Well that's making me want to race and watch it again!

Perhaps the screaming guy was made to watch the new Robin Hood repeatedly.

[WhiteCrow]

It did seem a bit of a pointless and cheap story. The whole thing revolved around Jack being not open and honest, and just down right difficult about what was going on. It was like the character was deliberately written badly for one story "otherwise we don't have an episode".

[matthewsch]

I both loved and hated this episode. Hated, because Gwen was going around sticking her nose in where she wasn't wanted (as always), and ruining people's lives because of it. Loved it, because it exposes fully the nosy, interfering, stuck-up bitch that she is. Whenever people ask me why I detest Gwen, I point them to this episode. Similar behaviour abounds in other episodes, but never as prominently as in this one.