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sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:36 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:36 pm
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Torchwood Season Zero: Episodes 2-4 (Monsters Arc)
0.02 Monster of the Week
Weevils are aliens, an ugly sewer-dwelling race that have somehow got a foothold in Earth, under the city of Cardiff. Unsettlingly, some of them have begun to go rogue, coming above ground to maim and murder Cardiff's civilian population. Jack and his team can keep them in check, more or less, with nightly patrols, but it's taking a toll on all of them.
Owen, Torchwood's resident medical genius, is sure that with technologist Tosh's help he can invent a device that disables the Weevils remotely, bringing an end to nasty fights with spray cans of Weevil sedative. Their first test run is a qualified success, but then Owen has to go and get...creative.
Goaded by Suzie's scoffing that he's just a patch-up man, and annoyed that Jack won't let him breed a Weevil supervirus, Owen modifies the device he and Tosh invented. His redesign should send out a pulse that keeps Weevils underground completely, but Jack won't let Owen test it. Tosh agrees to help Owen set it up, but when Owen turns it on it backfires, sending the entire Weevil population topside.
Now Tosh is angry Owen used her, Jack is angry at Tosh and Owen, Suzie is angry on general principle, and Torchwood has to find a way to drive the Weevils back underground before they spread. Which might just involve Owen, the Weevil Device, and a race through the sewers ahead of a pack of ravening aliens with giant pointy teeth.
It's three am; do you know where your Weevils are?
Episode Quotes:
Suzie: Thanks for the advice, Owen, but you should stick to stitch-ups and butterfly bandages, they're really what you're good at.
Owen: What, I can't have an opinion just because I have a medical degree?
Suzie: I'm just saying, I'm second-in-command and you're not.
Owen: You don't think I can hack this. I've been here three years, you know, that's just as long as you.
Suzie: And yet, you're not second in command.
Owen: Who wants to follow Jack around like a puppy?
Suzie: You do. It's just cute you won't admit it.
Tosh: You always meant to turn it on. You tricked me.
Owen: Oh, come off it, Tosh. You wanted to see it go just as much as I did.
Tosh: I listened when Jack said no.
Owen: Yeah, because you're just as insubordinate as I am, but you have to have someone lead the way first.
Tosh: Sometimes you make me so angry, Owen!
Owen: Then do something about it, or stop talking about it.
Tosh: [punches Owen]
Owen: You punched me!
Jack: Hi kids. Guess what? You're both grounded forever.
Jack: I said this wouldn't work!
Owen: It did work!
Jack: I'm sorry, have you looked outside at WeevilLand UK?
Suzie: It isn't Tosh's fault, you know, not really.
Jack: Yeah. I know.
Suzie: Still going to punish her?
Jack: She knows I was angry. For her, that's punishment enough.
Suzie: What about Owen?
Jack: I dunno. What do you think?
Suzie: I think you should make him wear a dress for a week.
Jack: This is why you're second-in-command.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
A Brief History Of The Weevil
by Suzie Costello
According to Torchwood records, the first known encounter with Weevils took place during the construction of the Hub. Excavators uncovered unused sewage pipes leading out to the bay which were prime nesting grounds for Weevils. Records state that an unidentified Torchwood staff member (listed only as Hire Agent H) entered the pipe and singlehandedly subdued fifteen Weevils, including two pregnant females, who are known to be especially violent.
Apparently the Weevils were not immediately killed, but executed shortly thereafter by the head of Torchwood at the time. There is a letter of protest from Hire Agent H on file.
Torchwood leadership believed the infestation to be isolated, possibly caused by Rift activity, but in the coming months as more Hub excavations were made, more Weevils were captured or killed. Some were kept as study specimens. Two more letters of protest seem to indicate that at least one Weevil was vivisected.
Once the excavation was complete nothing more was heard of them until the late 1970s, when an operative codenamed Ladykiller (like to have met him!) stumbled over the body of one during a subterranean apprehension. Two more living Weevils were, apparently, eating the dead one.
Since then there have been isolated reports of Weevils in basements, sewer systems, and various access tunnels. It is only in the past three to five years that Weevils have begun to come aboveground. It is uncertain why; theories include overpopulation underground or a shift in Rift activity that has unsettled them.
Owen has made some observations about them: they seem unable to communicate verbally, but have an excellent sense of smell and hunt in packs, so they must communicate somehow. Serrated teeth suggest that in their native environment they eat meat either as a major portion of their diet or the only ingredient. They will consume any protein they encounter, including common cannibalism. They are susceptible to a chemical mix Jack and Owen came up with, which makes them docile and confused long enough to be subdued. Subdued Weevils are examined, tagged, and re-released underground. Tagged Weevils caught a second time are euthanised.
To the best of our knowledge, four deaths have been attributed to Weevil activity in the past ten years.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -12
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 2
Alien activity: Mainly Weevils, but I'm toying with the idea that Owen has been possessed by something malevolent.
Rift activity: Negligible.
Security: Owen went against my direct orders and activated the Weevilator with Tosh's assistance. Tosh is only partly to blame for this. I know she can't resist a challenge and she thought he wasn't going to throw the switch. Suzie also goaded Owen into this. I am not terribly pleased with my team right now.
Other security issues: Tosh punched Owen. I didn't think she had it in her. Should have known better.
Staff: Suzie is complaining that we are understaffed, and it might be true. Selecting staff for Torchwood Three is a tricky business, though. I'll look into it, but I haven't made any promises.
Other Staff issues: They have so many. Where do I start?
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.03 Plague
A new disease has appeared in Cardiff, as deadly as it is contagious. Affecting only a small part of the population, for now, it is nevertheless a serious threat. Owen, monitoring hospital reports, brings the disease to Jack's attention, and nobody is happy with Jack's reaction, a mixture of fear and horror.
Jack calls the disease "Star Twelve Influenza", a bioweapon created by a religious cult in Earth's future. Owen thinks it may have passed through the Rift on its own, but Jack insists that according to research on Star Twelve Influenza there's always a carrier who also carries a cure.
With police and emergency services at a bare minimum as the disease begins to go pandemic, Cardiff is in chaos. Owen and Tosh are both struck ill, though Tosh hides her symptoms and Owen continues to work on a cure. Suzie and Jack seem immune; Jack claims he's "had his shots" against it, and that Suzie must be naturally resistant.
The search for one carrier in a city of sick people seems overwhelming, but Owen has discovered a mutation in the disease that allows Tosh and Suzie to track it backwards through a series of patients, to the original -- a young alien boy, lost and afraid, who carried the disease with him when the Rift took him away from the Star Twelve cult.
What Jack never mentioned is that the carrier has to be killed in order for the cure to be extracted. Jack wouldn't permit child-killing even if Owen could bring himself to do such a thing, but soon they may have no choice.
With time growing short, Suzie suggests a radical solution: a reprogramming of the original virus, using one of Tosh's gadgets, to search out and destroy its mutated descendants -- a copy of the cure in function if not in form. It's just in time to save Owen and Tosh, but with half the streets barricaded, Jack must struggle to spread the anti-viral virus to every center of infection in the city.
Episode Quotes:
Owen: I've never seen anything like this.
Jack: Star Twelve Influenza.
Owen: What?
Jack: It's from the future -- it was a biological agent developed by the Star Twelve cult. It's not actually the flu at all, they just called it that.
Tosh: How do you know?
Jack: Once you see Star Twelve, you never forget it.
Jack: Oh, no. Oh, no no no.
Tosh: What? We've found the carrier, we can get the cure --
Jack: Listen, I wasn't totally honest with you before.
Suzie: Jack...
Jack: Star Twelve Influenza was a religious bioweapon. They sent in a carrier to a community, the carrier affected everyone, then the carrier died to cure everyone. Evangelizing along the way.
Tosh: Very Judeo-Christian.
Owen: I really hate religion.
Suzie: But that means --
Jack: If we want the cure we have to kill him.
Owen: I'm not vivisecting a child, Jack. I don't have many standards but I draw the line at killing kiddies.
Suzie: I'm a genius.
Owen: We're all geniuses, that's why we're here. Tosh is a genius. I'm a genius.
Jack: I'm not a genius. I just look really good in the coat.
Suzie: Very true, but I am a genius among geniuses.
Owen: Whenever you're done, Suzie, time's a little short, I'm a dying genius.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
From: O.Harper
To: CJH
Re: The Tax Dollars You Don't Pay, At Work!
Jack,
Well, you wanted proof that the software Tosh "found" for me was useful after it crashed Mainframe?
This is our little Star Twelve bug. Pretty critter, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure I can create a permanent airborne vaccine for it. We fumigate the Earth, no more Star Twelve for at least fifty years.
-- Owen
***
Torchwood Internal Server Chat Log
Jack: Suzie!
Suzie: Jack?
Jack: Drinks.
Suzie: Done. Just waiting on one of the stacks to compile.
Jack: Dirty.
Suzie: I like you when a case goes well.
Jack: Glad one of us does. How are you holding up?
Suzie: No more cough, no more headache.
Jack: When we're good we are good.
Suzie: Do you ever think about what people would think of us if they knew?
Jack: I used to. I used to think about what we think about us.
Suzie: There's the headache coming back.
Jack: That's why Drinks!
Suzie: Are you actually going to have a drink? In celebration?
Jack: I might.
Suzie: You always say that.
Jack: Tonight I probably will.
Suzie: Aren't you glad we did well, Jack?
Jack: Sure.
Suzie: But
Jack: But I remember Star Twelve the last time it hit. Back then we didn't know it was designer. I was on the team sent to figure it out. I saw a lot of bodies.
Suzie: How many?
Jack: Put it this way: it felt like a whole planet had died.
Suzie: But that's not literally true, is it?
Jack: You're buying the first round.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -11
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 3
Alien activity: A Star Twelve Influenza carrier came through the Rift and nearly wiped out Cardiff. More temporal than alien, but he was still an alien.
Rift activity: Bordering on perilous. Throwing junk in the bay is one thing, but the Rift let through a dangerous disease carrier.
Security: Going to have to talk to the local hospitals about the Torchwood badge. It should carry more weight in situations like that than it did. Also, we should re-run our decontam protocol drills.
Other security issues: Hub's on standby tonight. I'll be offline for the next fourteen hours at least. Owen and Suzie can handle anything. At least, once Suzie gets rid of the hangover we're going to create tonight.
Staff: They're working well together as a team. Suzie can be a little obsessive, but Owen takes her out of herself. Tosh keeps Owen in check, and they both look after her. Seems to work.
Other Staff issues: Sometimes I want to tell them how I know what I know. Never going to happen, but I still want to.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.04 Till Death Do Us Part
Ever since they started shipping the remains of Torchwood London back to Cardiff, Suzie has been complaining about the lack of storage space in the Hub's archives. It's not that the Hub's not big enough to hold all they have and then some; it's that only the uppermost six levels are in use. Suzie, as de-facto archivist (nobody else wanted the job), is frustrated by the lack of storage space, but more frustrated that nobody has the time or inclination to help her. Tosh is busy building a translation program and trying to construct a rift-prediction mechanism, Owen just plain doesn't want to, and Jack has his hands full with command duties. As a matter of fact, Torchwood is feeling a little understaffed all over, especially when nobody wants to take responsibility for the broken-down water pipes and the food-ordering rota has gone to hell.
Suzie decides that her only resort and escape is to explore the lower levels, opening up rooms as she goes. While the others keep themselves distracted topside, Suzie makes harrowing and unusual discoveries. There is a room on level eight with Jack Harkness's name on it and a Victorian bedstead with the shackles still attached. There's another room full of animal skeletons, and one where the door is very firmly locked, not to mention barred over and nailed shut.
One of the rooms appears to have already been taken over as an archive, and is filled with mysterious dusty gadgets. One of them, a small handheld sphere, catches both her and Owen by surprise when Owen is sent down to fetch her for a briefing, and results in a short but passionate encounter against a file cabinet.
While trying to find a containment box for the sphere, Suzie and a somewhat disheveled Owen come across a crate with a singular gauntlet in it, a metal glove that looks like it came straight from the middle ages. Suzie is taken with it from the first and brings it back up to the Hub with her, where Jack confirms it was hauled out of the bay decades ago and locked away when nobody was willing to put their hand in it. Suzie, thinking of the cell down below with Jack's name on it, wants to know how he knew that, but Jack's not telling.
Nobody knows what the glove does, but Suzie is determined to find out. Her fascination with the glove leads her back down to level eight, but something that lay dormant has been woken by Suzie's explorations, and now it's hungry.
Hunted by something she can't see or hear, Suzie barely makes it back in one piece to warn the others. The team must prevent the monster from below from escaping, but it's clever, and it's growing. Jack finally realises that the monster fears metal when it avoids the walkways and support posts of the upper levels. Taking a desperate gamble, he dons the glove Suzie found earlier and manages to subdue the creature, holding onto it with the glove long enough for everyone to hear its terrible death howl.
In the aftermath, Jack promises that the entire team will work on opening the lower levels, cautiously, and the next time Suzie passes by the room with his name on it, she notices the name has been sanded away.
Episode Quotes:
Jack: I am a highly trained precision military commander with a superior knowledge of alien technology and, incidentally, the ability to identify things the rest of you have never even dreamed of. Why am I the one fixing the pipes?
Suzie: You're the tallest, and Owen doesn't know which end of a screwdriver to grip.
Owen: See if I stitch you up the next time some alien nasty bites you.
Jack: Shouldn't we have people who do this for us?
Tosh: I could call a plumber.
Owen: And say what, that our secret underground base has sprung a leak?
Tosh: I'd be more subtle than that.
Suzie: Did we just...?
Owen: Have the best sex of our lives? Very possibly.
Suzie: Are you going to be weird about this?
Owen: Nah. No. Course not.
Suzie: Great, you're already weird about it.
Jack: You two look like you've been having fun.
Owen: Oh yeah, loads. Clearing out storage rooms is my idea of a good time.
Suzie: Brought you a present, Jack.
Jack: Oh yeah? Oooh. Come to papa.
Suzie: Maybe you could set it up with your hand in the jar.
Jack: Don't knock the hand.
Tosh: What's the hand for, anyway?
Jack: It has sentimental value.
Suzie: He won it in a poker game.
Tosh: So what does the glove do?
Jack: Don't know. We dredged it out of the bay in the sixties, cleaned it off, stashed it away.
Owen: "We"?
Jack: We Torchwood. I always thought it must be some kind of telekinetic device.
Tosh: You've seen it before then.
Jack: Eh, it's a glove. You want to run some tests, be my guest.
Suzie: Bags! [grabs the glove]
Tosh: So not fair.
Suzie: You can have it when I'm done waving it around to see if it makes sparkles.
Suzie: Headed home?
Owen: After that thing? No. I'm going to go drink a lot. Want to come?
Suzie: Sure you want that?
Owen: Why not? It's a good time, nobody'll get the life sucked out of them.
Suzie: Drinks at mine.
Owen: I'll get my car.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -10
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 4
Alien activity: Technology; unidentified parasite in the Hub, god knows how long it had been down there.
Rift activity: Nothing new.
Security: Better records-keeping is absolutely mandatory. Suzie agrees, but she can't do it all alone. Either Owen's going to have to step up and be trained, or I'm going to have to take on some of Tosh's work so she can help. If we'd known what was in the storage room, we wouldn't have let it get out.
Other security issues: A lot of the old understructure of the Hub needs to be locked down. Making this a priority, between violent deaths and gun battles. If Suzie had found the exam room before I had time to get my name off the door, there would have been awkward questions. Either that or she did and is ignoring it.
Staff: There's no doubt we're all overworked, but it's stupid details stuff -- cleaning, food, whose turn it is to get the SUV serviced. The rotas are a great idea but if someone doesn't do their part (OWEN) it's not going to work. Maybe I need to crack the whip a little.
Other Staff issues: Suzie and Owen. Knew all that tension had to break out somehow. If there had been an office pool, I would have won it.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
Episodes 5, 6, and 7
Weevils are aliens, an ugly sewer-dwelling race that have somehow got a foothold in Earth, under the city of Cardiff. Unsettlingly, some of them have begun to go rogue, coming above ground to maim and murder Cardiff's civilian population. Jack and his team can keep them in check, more or less, with nightly patrols, but it's taking a toll on all of them.
Owen, Torchwood's resident medical genius, is sure that with technologist Tosh's help he can invent a device that disables the Weevils remotely, bringing an end to nasty fights with spray cans of Weevil sedative. Their first test run is a qualified success, but then Owen has to go and get...creative.
Goaded by Suzie's scoffing that he's just a patch-up man, and annoyed that Jack won't let him breed a Weevil supervirus, Owen modifies the device he and Tosh invented. His redesign should send out a pulse that keeps Weevils underground completely, but Jack won't let Owen test it. Tosh agrees to help Owen set it up, but when Owen turns it on it backfires, sending the entire Weevil population topside.
Now Tosh is angry Owen used her, Jack is angry at Tosh and Owen, Suzie is angry on general principle, and Torchwood has to find a way to drive the Weevils back underground before they spread. Which might just involve Owen, the Weevil Device, and a race through the sewers ahead of a pack of ravening aliens with giant pointy teeth.
It's three am; do you know where your Weevils are?
Episode Quotes:
Suzie: Thanks for the advice, Owen, but you should stick to stitch-ups and butterfly bandages, they're really what you're good at.
Owen: What, I can't have an opinion just because I have a medical degree?
Suzie: I'm just saying, I'm second-in-command and you're not.
Owen: You don't think I can hack this. I've been here three years, you know, that's just as long as you.
Suzie: And yet, you're not second in command.
Owen: Who wants to follow Jack around like a puppy?
Suzie: You do. It's just cute you won't admit it.
Tosh: You always meant to turn it on. You tricked me.
Owen: Oh, come off it, Tosh. You wanted to see it go just as much as I did.
Tosh: I listened when Jack said no.
Owen: Yeah, because you're just as insubordinate as I am, but you have to have someone lead the way first.
Tosh: Sometimes you make me so angry, Owen!
Owen: Then do something about it, or stop talking about it.
Tosh: [punches Owen]
Owen: You punched me!
Jack: Hi kids. Guess what? You're both grounded forever.
Jack: I said this wouldn't work!
Owen: It did work!
Jack: I'm sorry, have you looked outside at WeevilLand UK?
Suzie: It isn't Tosh's fault, you know, not really.
Jack: Yeah. I know.
Suzie: Still going to punish her?
Jack: She knows I was angry. For her, that's punishment enough.
Suzie: What about Owen?
Jack: I dunno. What do you think?
Suzie: I think you should make him wear a dress for a week.
Jack: This is why you're second-in-command.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
A Brief History Of The Weevil
by Suzie Costello
According to Torchwood records, the first known encounter with Weevils took place during the construction of the Hub. Excavators uncovered unused sewage pipes leading out to the bay which were prime nesting grounds for Weevils. Records state that an unidentified Torchwood staff member (listed only as Hire Agent H) entered the pipe and singlehandedly subdued fifteen Weevils, including two pregnant females, who are known to be especially violent.
Apparently the Weevils were not immediately killed, but executed shortly thereafter by the head of Torchwood at the time. There is a letter of protest from Hire Agent H on file.
Torchwood leadership believed the infestation to be isolated, possibly caused by Rift activity, but in the coming months as more Hub excavations were made, more Weevils were captured or killed. Some were kept as study specimens. Two more letters of protest seem to indicate that at least one Weevil was vivisected.
Once the excavation was complete nothing more was heard of them until the late 1970s, when an operative codenamed Ladykiller (like to have met him!) stumbled over the body of one during a subterranean apprehension. Two more living Weevils were, apparently, eating the dead one.
Since then there have been isolated reports of Weevils in basements, sewer systems, and various access tunnels. It is only in the past three to five years that Weevils have begun to come aboveground. It is uncertain why; theories include overpopulation underground or a shift in Rift activity that has unsettled them.
Owen has made some observations about them: they seem unable to communicate verbally, but have an excellent sense of smell and hunt in packs, so they must communicate somehow. Serrated teeth suggest that in their native environment they eat meat either as a major portion of their diet or the only ingredient. They will consume any protein they encounter, including common cannibalism. They are susceptible to a chemical mix Jack and Owen came up with, which makes them docile and confused long enough to be subdued. Subdued Weevils are examined, tagged, and re-released underground. Tagged Weevils caught a second time are euthanised.
To the best of our knowledge, four deaths have been attributed to Weevil activity in the past ten years.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -12
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 2
Alien activity: Mainly Weevils, but I'm toying with the idea that Owen has been possessed by something malevolent.
Rift activity: Negligible.
Security: Owen went against my direct orders and activated the Weevilator with Tosh's assistance. Tosh is only partly to blame for this. I know she can't resist a challenge and she thought he wasn't going to throw the switch. Suzie also goaded Owen into this. I am not terribly pleased with my team right now.
Other security issues: Tosh punched Owen. I didn't think she had it in her. Should have known better.
Staff: Suzie is complaining that we are understaffed, and it might be true. Selecting staff for Torchwood Three is a tricky business, though. I'll look into it, but I haven't made any promises.
Other Staff issues: They have so many. Where do I start?
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.03 Plague
A new disease has appeared in Cardiff, as deadly as it is contagious. Affecting only a small part of the population, for now, it is nevertheless a serious threat. Owen, monitoring hospital reports, brings the disease to Jack's attention, and nobody is happy with Jack's reaction, a mixture of fear and horror.
Jack calls the disease "Star Twelve Influenza", a bioweapon created by a religious cult in Earth's future. Owen thinks it may have passed through the Rift on its own, but Jack insists that according to research on Star Twelve Influenza there's always a carrier who also carries a cure.
With police and emergency services at a bare minimum as the disease begins to go pandemic, Cardiff is in chaos. Owen and Tosh are both struck ill, though Tosh hides her symptoms and Owen continues to work on a cure. Suzie and Jack seem immune; Jack claims he's "had his shots" against it, and that Suzie must be naturally resistant.
The search for one carrier in a city of sick people seems overwhelming, but Owen has discovered a mutation in the disease that allows Tosh and Suzie to track it backwards through a series of patients, to the original -- a young alien boy, lost and afraid, who carried the disease with him when the Rift took him away from the Star Twelve cult.
What Jack never mentioned is that the carrier has to be killed in order for the cure to be extracted. Jack wouldn't permit child-killing even if Owen could bring himself to do such a thing, but soon they may have no choice.
With time growing short, Suzie suggests a radical solution: a reprogramming of the original virus, using one of Tosh's gadgets, to search out and destroy its mutated descendants -- a copy of the cure in function if not in form. It's just in time to save Owen and Tosh, but with half the streets barricaded, Jack must struggle to spread the anti-viral virus to every center of infection in the city.
Episode Quotes:
Owen: I've never seen anything like this.
Jack: Star Twelve Influenza.
Owen: What?
Jack: It's from the future -- it was a biological agent developed by the Star Twelve cult. It's not actually the flu at all, they just called it that.
Tosh: How do you know?
Jack: Once you see Star Twelve, you never forget it.
Jack: Oh, no. Oh, no no no.
Tosh: What? We've found the carrier, we can get the cure --
Jack: Listen, I wasn't totally honest with you before.
Suzie: Jack...
Jack: Star Twelve Influenza was a religious bioweapon. They sent in a carrier to a community, the carrier affected everyone, then the carrier died to cure everyone. Evangelizing along the way.
Tosh: Very Judeo-Christian.
Owen: I really hate religion.
Suzie: But that means --
Jack: If we want the cure we have to kill him.
Owen: I'm not vivisecting a child, Jack. I don't have many standards but I draw the line at killing kiddies.
Suzie: I'm a genius.
Owen: We're all geniuses, that's why we're here. Tosh is a genius. I'm a genius.
Jack: I'm not a genius. I just look really good in the coat.
Suzie: Very true, but I am a genius among geniuses.
Owen: Whenever you're done, Suzie, time's a little short, I'm a dying genius.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
From: O.Harper
To: CJH
Re: The Tax Dollars You Don't Pay, At Work!
Jack,
Well, you wanted proof that the software Tosh "found" for me was useful after it crashed Mainframe?
This is our little Star Twelve bug. Pretty critter, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure I can create a permanent airborne vaccine for it. We fumigate the Earth, no more Star Twelve for at least fifty years.
-- Owen
***
Torchwood Internal Server Chat Log
Jack: Suzie!
Suzie: Jack?
Jack: Drinks.
Suzie: Done. Just waiting on one of the stacks to compile.
Jack: Dirty.
Suzie: I like you when a case goes well.
Jack: Glad one of us does. How are you holding up?
Suzie: No more cough, no more headache.
Jack: When we're good we are good.
Suzie: Do you ever think about what people would think of us if they knew?
Jack: I used to. I used to think about what we think about us.
Suzie: There's the headache coming back.
Jack: That's why Drinks!
Suzie: Are you actually going to have a drink? In celebration?
Jack: I might.
Suzie: You always say that.
Jack: Tonight I probably will.
Suzie: Aren't you glad we did well, Jack?
Jack: Sure.
Suzie: But
Jack: But I remember Star Twelve the last time it hit. Back then we didn't know it was designer. I was on the team sent to figure it out. I saw a lot of bodies.
Suzie: How many?
Jack: Put it this way: it felt like a whole planet had died.
Suzie: But that's not literally true, is it?
Jack: You're buying the first round.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -11
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 3
Alien activity: A Star Twelve Influenza carrier came through the Rift and nearly wiped out Cardiff. More temporal than alien, but he was still an alien.
Rift activity: Bordering on perilous. Throwing junk in the bay is one thing, but the Rift let through a dangerous disease carrier.
Security: Going to have to talk to the local hospitals about the Torchwood badge. It should carry more weight in situations like that than it did. Also, we should re-run our decontam protocol drills.
Other security issues: Hub's on standby tonight. I'll be offline for the next fourteen hours at least. Owen and Suzie can handle anything. At least, once Suzie gets rid of the hangover we're going to create tonight.
Staff: They're working well together as a team. Suzie can be a little obsessive, but Owen takes her out of herself. Tosh keeps Owen in check, and they both look after her. Seems to work.
Other Staff issues: Sometimes I want to tell them how I know what I know. Never going to happen, but I still want to.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.04 Till Death Do Us Part
Ever since they started shipping the remains of Torchwood London back to Cardiff, Suzie has been complaining about the lack of storage space in the Hub's archives. It's not that the Hub's not big enough to hold all they have and then some; it's that only the uppermost six levels are in use. Suzie, as de-facto archivist (nobody else wanted the job), is frustrated by the lack of storage space, but more frustrated that nobody has the time or inclination to help her. Tosh is busy building a translation program and trying to construct a rift-prediction mechanism, Owen just plain doesn't want to, and Jack has his hands full with command duties. As a matter of fact, Torchwood is feeling a little understaffed all over, especially when nobody wants to take responsibility for the broken-down water pipes and the food-ordering rota has gone to hell.
Suzie decides that her only resort and escape is to explore the lower levels, opening up rooms as she goes. While the others keep themselves distracted topside, Suzie makes harrowing and unusual discoveries. There is a room on level eight with Jack Harkness's name on it and a Victorian bedstead with the shackles still attached. There's another room full of animal skeletons, and one where the door is very firmly locked, not to mention barred over and nailed shut.
One of the rooms appears to have already been taken over as an archive, and is filled with mysterious dusty gadgets. One of them, a small handheld sphere, catches both her and Owen by surprise when Owen is sent down to fetch her for a briefing, and results in a short but passionate encounter against a file cabinet.
While trying to find a containment box for the sphere, Suzie and a somewhat disheveled Owen come across a crate with a singular gauntlet in it, a metal glove that looks like it came straight from the middle ages. Suzie is taken with it from the first and brings it back up to the Hub with her, where Jack confirms it was hauled out of the bay decades ago and locked away when nobody was willing to put their hand in it. Suzie, thinking of the cell down below with Jack's name on it, wants to know how he knew that, but Jack's not telling.
Nobody knows what the glove does, but Suzie is determined to find out. Her fascination with the glove leads her back down to level eight, but something that lay dormant has been woken by Suzie's explorations, and now it's hungry.
Hunted by something she can't see or hear, Suzie barely makes it back in one piece to warn the others. The team must prevent the monster from below from escaping, but it's clever, and it's growing. Jack finally realises that the monster fears metal when it avoids the walkways and support posts of the upper levels. Taking a desperate gamble, he dons the glove Suzie found earlier and manages to subdue the creature, holding onto it with the glove long enough for everyone to hear its terrible death howl.
In the aftermath, Jack promises that the entire team will work on opening the lower levels, cautiously, and the next time Suzie passes by the room with his name on it, she notices the name has been sanded away.
Episode Quotes:
Jack: I am a highly trained precision military commander with a superior knowledge of alien technology and, incidentally, the ability to identify things the rest of you have never even dreamed of. Why am I the one fixing the pipes?
Suzie: You're the tallest, and Owen doesn't know which end of a screwdriver to grip.
Owen: See if I stitch you up the next time some alien nasty bites you.
Jack: Shouldn't we have people who do this for us?
Tosh: I could call a plumber.
Owen: And say what, that our secret underground base has sprung a leak?
Tosh: I'd be more subtle than that.
Suzie: Did we just...?
Owen: Have the best sex of our lives? Very possibly.
Suzie: Are you going to be weird about this?
Owen: Nah. No. Course not.
Suzie: Great, you're already weird about it.
Jack: You two look like you've been having fun.
Owen: Oh yeah, loads. Clearing out storage rooms is my idea of a good time.
Suzie: Brought you a present, Jack.
Jack: Oh yeah? Oooh. Come to papa.
Suzie: Maybe you could set it up with your hand in the jar.
Jack: Don't knock the hand.
Tosh: What's the hand for, anyway?
Jack: It has sentimental value.
Suzie: He won it in a poker game.
Tosh: So what does the glove do?
Jack: Don't know. We dredged it out of the bay in the sixties, cleaned it off, stashed it away.
Owen: "We"?
Jack: We Torchwood. I always thought it must be some kind of telekinetic device.
Tosh: You've seen it before then.
Jack: Eh, it's a glove. You want to run some tests, be my guest.
Suzie: Bags! [grabs the glove]
Tosh: So not fair.
Suzie: You can have it when I'm done waving it around to see if it makes sparkles.
Suzie: Headed home?
Owen: After that thing? No. I'm going to go drink a lot. Want to come?
Suzie: Sure you want that?
Owen: Why not? It's a good time, nobody'll get the life sucked out of them.
Suzie: Drinks at mine.
Owen: I'll get my car.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -10
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 4
Alien activity: Technology; unidentified parasite in the Hub, god knows how long it had been down there.
Rift activity: Nothing new.
Security: Better records-keeping is absolutely mandatory. Suzie agrees, but she can't do it all alone. Either Owen's going to have to step up and be trained, or I'm going to have to take on some of Tosh's work so she can help. If we'd known what was in the storage room, we wouldn't have let it get out.
Other security issues: A lot of the old understructure of the Hub needs to be locked down. Making this a priority, between violent deaths and gun battles. If Suzie had found the exam room before I had time to get my name off the door, there would have been awkward questions. Either that or she did and is ignoring it.
Staff: There's no doubt we're all overworked, but it's stupid details stuff -- cleaning, food, whose turn it is to get the SUV serviced. The rotas are a great idea but if someone doesn't do their part (OWEN) it's not going to work. Maybe I need to crack the whip a little.
Other Staff issues: Suzie and Owen. Knew all that tension had to break out somehow. If there had been an office pool, I would have won it.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
Episodes 5, 6, and 7