Not a bad mix at all in this episode with Gwen's personal and professional life interfering with each other. Kid disappears, Gwen's old police flame asks her to help, strangeness is uncovered.
The whole episode revolves around the massive number of missing persons in Cardiff and how they might be related to negative spike rift activity. Gwen susses that they may have been wrong about the rift all along and that stuff can travel in both directions. Jack seems strangely uninterested and tries to dissuade her from investigating further.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, new hubby is getting ever more pissed off over her lack of commitment to them and her avoiding of conversations around babies. Unlike the silly Jack-Ianto nonsense, this actually comes across as authentic writing and acting.
Ianto points Gwen towards an island off Cardiff where she uncovers the truth of the missing persons. Some of those taken by the rift come back. But all are mentally destroyed and many are badly burned too. The young kid who had disappeared 7 months earlier is now a middle-aged man horribly disfigured.
Gwen insists on bringing his mum to see him with terrible consequences for both as people.
I knew I had an issue with some of the acting in Torchwood and couldn't quite put my finger on it until I watched this. Unfortunately I realised that the weakest link is Barrowman. His "musical theatre" background seems to be getting in the way of expressing emotion properly and everything is forced and over-acted. He needs to relax a little, his facial expressions don't have to reach the back of a crappy theatre.
So the see-saw of good-bad continues with Torchwood and we are coming close to the end of the series. I wonder what the series cliff-hanger will be? Gwen is a tranny maybe?
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