Unearthly Times

Torchwood
2006-11

Random Shoes

Story
1.9

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

Random Shoes offers a different take on the afterlife from the previous week’s episode of Torchwood.

Whereas Suzie offered little but darkness to Gwen as to what death brings, Eugene’s demise is more of your white-light-ascension-to-the-heavens. I’m not saying this disparity is a bad thing — a cohesive world-view is not something I’ve come to expect of Torchwood, even though we’re only nine episodes in, but it makes for an interesting contrast at least.

“The average life is full of near misses and absolute hits, of great love and small disasters.”

Eugene, Random Shoes

I’m not sure if I’d missed it in previous episodes, but here we have the most egregious bit of branding yet: “Torchwood” emblazoned across the tube station style tiles. Maybe tiling is one of Jack’s hidden talents? He says he doesn’t sleep, after all. Or most likely, they’re decals — but still, hardly discreet, and I keep worrying — what if they need to leave a) in a hurry and b) no trace of having been there?

I’m left with the impression that Torchwood is clearly a workplace trying too hard to make its employees feel part of something “cool” — like a dot-com boom tech company.

This is also Torchwood’s Love and Monsters episode, with the bulk of the action centred on someone outside the regulars. True, Gwen has more to do here than the Doctor and Rose did in facing down the Abzorbaloff, but the rest of the Torchwood team definitely take a step back for this episode.

And with David Bowie and Antony and the Johnsons on the soundtrack, there’s even a bit of that pop music vibe Love and Monsters had, although admittedly that was more tied into the episode itself, what with Elton’s love of ELO.

It doesn’t all work: Eugene’s father singing Danny Boy at the funeral and the reconcilation with said Dad — who was five minutes away all along — are a bit much. And would Owen seriously have made Gwen do an autopsy?

But there’s more good here than bad and, for Torchwood, I’ve come to realise that’s all I can really expect at this point.

One thing, though — what’s happened to Rhys?


Aug
14
2022
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