N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Torchwood-branded plastic bags become the latest in the line of merch on show. Well, Ianto uses one, at least, to bag Owen’s ID card.

Noticing this gave me pause to wonder, later on in the episode, when the team realise they might be able to use Owen, whether Ianto simply held on to Owen’s gun just so he could hand it back to him as and when required? Instead of, y’know, locking it away for safe-keeping?

“You get to live forever; I get to die forever.”

Owen, A Day in the Death

There’s a lot of Owen moping about in this episode. He is dead, so we can forgive him for that, but as a result I must confess not to have paid enough attention to the Richard Briers sub-plot to care too much about what was going on there, excellent though Briers is for his one scene.

Indeed, the best bit in this episode is the revelation that Maggie, whom Owen is attempting to talk down from the roof, had been “married less than an hour” before the fatal car accident that claimed her hubby. It’s the kind of awful incident that wouldn’t be out of place kicking off a Stephen King novel.

Sadly, the rest of A Day in the Death doesn’t match the horror of that idea, so while it’s not a particularly bad episode, it does end up being just a bit dull and predictable.

Plus, we also had to say goodbye to Martha. Which is a shame.