Articles Ghost Machine Episode 3 Series One

Created by: Russell T Davies

Written by: Helen Raynor

Produced by: Richard Stokes

Directed by: Colin Teague

It’s a damp evening on the streets of Cardiff, two operatives are running along the pedestrian walkway towards the High Street Arcade in hot pursuit of an unidentified alien threat.  Gwen and Owen pound along the semi quiet streets dodging hoodies on push bikes and out along towards the Arcade minutes before it closes for the day.  Toshiko back in the Hub feeds them details through their ear pieces where the alien threat is heading.  Jack Harkness is driving towards the location in the SUV.  Gwen is ahead of Owen charging along the walkway leading out towards the railway ticket office and ticket gates. Her visual has been identified on the CCTV as a white male wearing a hoody.  Gwen closes in on her target.  Jack having now parked up catches up with Owen. The chase is on.  After climbing over the ticket gate and losing ground on Gwen, the hooded male struggles on through a group of pedestrians but the gap is closing and Gwen is onto him, grabbing onto his coat and refusing to give up. 

But he slips the coat and breaks for freedom. 

Out of breath Gwen is annoyed to have lost the suspect but Toshiko is convinced that what Gwen is holding has the alien artefact.  Slipping her hand inside the coat Gwen brings out a curved device with a depressed circular button in the centre of flashing orange and blue lighting.  When her impulse tells her to press with both hands, the circular button, she’s instantly catapulted into another moment in time.

The sound of steam trains hauntingly whistle on the air, footsteps across the railway platform echo in the stillness of the night.  Gwen stands hands gripped on the machine, can only stare at the silhouette walking through from the tunnel towards her.

A young boy (Christopher Greene) wearing period school uniform of grey blazer, grey cap and short trousers and black shoes walks towards her along the railway platform, clutching a teddy bear that has seen better days, and under his arm is a wrapped brown paper parcel and he carries with him a suitcase.  Around his neck is a label on a piece of string with his name written in scribbled pencil: Thomas Erasmus Flanaghan.

Gwen, her voice soft but mildly scared at the contact, asks the name of the boy, but sees his name.  He says he’s been left, nobody knows where he is, and he wants to go home. He begins to walk back towards the tunnel as Gwen calls him back. 

Jack and Owen reach her, apologising for their delay, due to the locking of the gates in the Arcade.  As Jack focuses on Gwen he can see something has shaken her, when he asks her if she’s ok, she looks at him saying: “I’ve just seen a ghost.”

At the Hub Toshiko replays the events leading up to the railway station and the capture of the alien tech.  Everything rings true to events till Jack and Owen arrive and there’s no sign of the ghost, and the time span doesn’t give enough time for the ghost to appear and reset.  Gwen can’t understand it, it felt so real, her emotions and that of the child.

Owen as usual throws in his medical expertise describing Gwen’s emotional state, hallucinations and possible dementia.  Gwen snaps at him that she was not seeing things and is not going senile.  She saw the ghost, as clear and as real as she was standing next to Jack. She described the boy, from the name tag around his neck, to his clothing, and the railway.  Jack, considered this and with an unusual middle name that might prove easier to locate, suggests Toshiko go through the usual searches, births deaths, marriages, naval and army records.  As he relays this to Toshiko, Owen yells from the autopsy room.  “Found it!  He’s in the phone book.”

Owen and Gwen rapped the knocker as they stood outside Number 74, Brynaeron Terrace, Butetown, the home of Thomas Erasmus Flanaghan (John Normington).  His daughter answered the door.  Gwen showed her ID, introducing them as DI Gwen Cooper and DS Owen Harper.  They were following up an incident at the railway station last night.  It was a ruse which worked, and after they were introduced to old Tom, Owen went to make tea with his daughter, while Gwen sat and talked with old Tom.

He confirmed that they’d not been at the railway station, that they’d been watching the Come Dancing finals on the television.  Gwen noticed his accent was far removed from Cardiff.  Tom admitted he was a barrow boy, came from London, evacuated to Cardiff during the blitz in London.  He had been packed off by his mum and sister, who packed him some sandwiches, and wrote his name on a label around his neck.  They’d both told him not to cry, but were both crying their eyes out.  It was the last time he saw his mum and sister, although at that time he didn’t know that. They’d been killed in the blitz.  He’d kept his head down so much that those who had come to allocate him a home hadn’t seen him, and he’d been left at the railway station. 

After the war, there was no point returning to London, so he stayed in Cardiff, and was taken in by a couple with no children of their own and had stayed, he’d been 66 years in Cardiff.

As they left the house, Gwen couldn’t understand why she’d seen the boy, if he was alive?  Owen pissed off at the fact he’d been stuck with motormouth in the kitchen, was even more hacked off that Gwen’s phone rang.  Gwen checked her phone, it was Rhys contemplating a washing load and not sure about which drawer the washing powder went in. 

Back at the Hub Owen played a video game, Jack researched the CCTV data on Burnie Harris while Gwen, after tacking up details about the criminal mastermind listens to Toshiko reading off his list of convictions “One bottle of vodka and 3 pot noodles” they return their gaze to the alien tech that they still have no further idea as to what it is.  

The device is held in a small scale MRI looking scanner, which gives a breakdown of the device which according to Jack is amazing nanotechnology that makes NASA look like Toys R Us. 

Gwen noted that the device had flashed its lights when she’d pressed it, but as it sat in the scanner it was doing very little in the way of any activity.  As Ianto comes in with coffee and doughnuts, Jack enquires after Burnie, suggesting they pick him up, locate where he found the item and what he intended on doing with it. 

Gwen and Toshiko begin knocking on doors, but the comments regarding Bernie were less than helpful.  Nobody had a good word to say about him, from his Mam to his friends, some suggesting they ‘wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire!’

The Scarlet Pimpernel of Splott had vanished.  Owen met them along the river, at the entrance to the canal with four pasties.  As Jack arrived the three despondent operatives had little news for him. 

Exasperated Jack decided they had to return to the railway station and run another test on the ghost machine, Gwen was a little put out that she’d have to do that all again.  Jack tossed the device to Owen who flippantly said he could see some flaws with it.  Annoyed Jack turned back to face them, irked about their lack of interest, thought they wanted a bit of a challenge.  As Jack began to stride off under the canal bridge heading through to the other side, the team following, the lights flicker on the device in Owen’s hand.  He calls them back but they keep walking and as he presses the centre button he’s sent back to a gruesome scene under the canal bridge in 1963.

From daytime, Owen is flung back to nightfall, it’s raining heavily and the usual pool of water that was there in daylight has vanished.  The entire canal tunnel is accessible.  A young girl comes into view wearing a pink coat and carrying a white handbag, a hairstyle on her of the 60’s era, no more than 17 years old, petite, panda eyes from crying, cheeks moist from tears; she looks at her reflection in her powder case.  She’s evidently distressed.  Owen asks for her name, as she sobs.  As if to answer that, a male voice echoes in the tunnel, and the girl reacts, turning directly towards the tall man walking towards her.  “Lizzie!  Lizzie Lewis!”

“You’re a bad man Ed Morgan, the girls said you were a bad ‘un and they were right.”

“I’m a bad man am I?” 

Young Ed Morgan (Christopher Elson), long coat had followed Lizzie back from the dance. 

He had a way with words, and although his voice was soft as he told her she wasn’t like the other girls, didn’t run with the herd, it was evident from the way he’d followed her, that he wanted something from her.  As his advances to kiss her deepened, she pulled away.  He reacted by slapping her, all witnessed by Owen Harper. 

Ed pulled a knife, teasing it against Lizzie’s cheek, and despite her desperate plea that she had to be home by 9pm, he dragged her towards the canal wall to commit his heinous crime. At that moment the ghost machine brought Owen back to present day. 

Back in the Hub Owen began to review all that he could about Lizzie and the incident.  Toshiko had brought up the evidence of police reports on the screen.

As Toshiko looked through the details on the screen for Lizzie Lewis and Ed Morgan, Jack realised that what the device was, sitting in the scanner was a quantum transducer, an amplifier, which picked up on emotions.  Whenever you sensed something behind you in an empty room, a touch of déjà vu, it was an emotion – a ghost!

Owen still unable to drop the interest in Lizzie Lewis (Emily Evans) angered Jack to the point he was instructed to go home.  There was no case to answer to, he couldn’t go to court with the evidence they had, as an emotion and seeing ghosts wouldn’t stand up in court. Gruffly he took the folders home.

As Jack strode out of the main area of the Hub he called back “Gwen with me”

Gwen located Jack in a shooting gallery somewhere in the depths of the Hub.  Somewhere she’d not entered before.  Out on the table Jack had set out different firearms and began unclipping the magazines setting them ready for use.  Having already discovered Gwen had never used a gun before, knew that although he hoped she’d never have to use one, it was well to know how to handle one.

Nervous and unsure Gwen looked to Jack to guide her.  Aside from seeing cops with guns on tv, Gwen had never before handled a gun. Jack snapped the first gun and magazine together and handed it to Gwen, wearing safety goggles and ear muffs; she turned waving the gun in Jack’s face.  Quickly averting an accident, he moved to point the gun down the range. “Target’s that way.”  Gwen remembering the TV cops raised the gun aloft.  Jack again took control. “Let’s leave the roof in one piece shall we?”

Instructing her to stand sideways to the target, focus on her breathing and raise her hand with the weapon, slowly, he carefully took control and standing very close to Gwen, his hand against her upper leg, his head close to hers, it used all of her own personal restraint not to do something she may regret later.  Pulling back the bolt which pushed the first bullet into the chamber ready to fire, Gwen’s eyes were on Jack, the gun it seemed was very much secondary to her feelings.  As Jack spoke directing her attention back to the practice, she sighted on the target and pulled the trigger. 

After that, Gwen practised using different firearms, each different in the way she aimed and fired, each a different weight.  Jack continued to guide and coach throughout. 

From shooting with one hand to a gun in each, she hit the targets making it an enjoyable lesson.  Enquiring into Jack’s personal details again, where he stayed, if he slept alone, if he slept, she lingered a moment, after asking Jack if he were ever lonely at night. 

Gwen returns home after realising she’s late, to find an empty flat.  Still with the quantum transducer in her bag she lifts it out, staring at the bright lights, she presses it to pick up the energy in the room, the emotions and finds only the memories of her time in the flat with Rhys.  From the moment she joined the force to the day she and Rhys were visiting her Mam for her 60th birthday and Rhys has problems with a busted zip.  Gwen’s solution has her laughing as she chases him through the flat with the stapler.  As the flat reverts to present moment, she’s interrupted by Rhys’ return from Dav’s.  His missus had had a barney and he didn’t fancy a night on the sofa. 

Owen relives the moments of Lizzie Lewis’ death over and over in his mind as he searches for Ed Morgan from details in the phone book etc.

The following day and with a list of Morgan’s to work through, Owen sits outside 46 Pryse Avenue, Cardiff, the home of Edwin Morgan. 

Selecting the relevant ID knocks on the door.  Ed Morgan (Gareth Thomas) is in his 60’s, unkempt character, sweaty and nervous and very much hates everyone outside of the door, smokes too much, exercises too little.  Suffers from Agoraphobia!

After giving the impression he was from the gas board, Owen was let into the house, but as Edwin showed Owen around, it was evident the man hadn’t got gas, only electricity.  Owen insisted they went into the living room, where Edwin led the way and sat in the seat by the window, Owen sat opposite.  Edwin was keen to know who had reported that he had gas, and more importantly who Owen was, perhaps to report him later. Owen sat forward on the chair and began his calm but calculated recollection of the night on Penfro street where Lizzie was murdered under the canal bridge.  His words were precise but calm, although from Owen’s demeanour it’s evident that he’d like to see the man punished for his crime. 

Edwin’s reactions are physical, his nervous reactions, hands gripping the seat, knuckles clenched and unclenching, beads of sweat on his face.  He’s kept the secret for years, how can someone know what he did, but just as before, how can he make it stop.  As Owen finishes, he leaps to his feet, ordering Owen out of his house, saying “You’ll get nothing from me, I told you before, you’ll get nothing from me.”  As Owen leaves, the door slams behind him. 

Outside and on his way back to the car, around by the park Owen sees a huddled over youth smoking a cigarette, as the boy lifts his head and makes eye contact, he realises it’s the lad from the railway station.  “Burnie Harris?”  The boy runs, and a ‘Trainspotting’ like chase begins across the streets.

Giving chase through the streets, up back roads and alleyways and over terraced back gardens Burnie is cornered in a locked and barbed wired back garden.  He begs not to be hurt as he has asthma.  In a pub, seated opposite Owen, with a pint each, he tells Owen his nickname came from burning his mates shed down after having a fly fag (cigarette).  As the Torchwood team enter the pub, Burnie begins to relate how he came upon the ‘ghost machine’. 

As the team realise he doesn’t have anything to help them and begin to leave, he calls after them “So you don’t want the other half then?”

In Burnie’s flat, they find the other half of the device, that fits together like Lego to the other one.  There’s also the biscuit tin Burnie mentions with the alien money and alien rock.  Gwen turns on Burnie saying he separated it himself.  As the team leave he calls Gwen back, begging her to stay, telling her he only used the other half once, and it showed him how he would die. So paranoid was he that he’d never used it again but worried whether he’d live to see his birthday or would he die before then.  Gwen assures him she would return and goes after Jack and the others as they make their way across the derelict car park towards their vehicles.  As she calls Jack, the device lights up and Gwen presses it.  Jack unsure what the device would do is too late to stop her.

Gwen is thrown into a night time situation, still in the same familiar car park but this time she is holding the knife and her hands are bloody.  But she defends that it was Owen that had the knife and that she couldn’t stop it. Snapping back to the present moment, Jack takes the item off her, shocked by her lack of control.  “Christ Gwen what were you thinking?”

At the Hub Gwen sits in Jack’s office going over what she’d seen with the device and what Burnie had told her in the flat. Jack proffered that it was one of many possible futures, there was no guarantee that what she’d seen would come true.  It didn’t make her feel any better however. 

Edwin picks up the phone dialling a number scribbled on a piece of paper then hangs up.  He dials the number again, Burnie is staring out of the window of his flat as his phone rings.

Owen and Toshiko are in a bar discussing Ed Morgan, Toshiko pleased that she’s managed to locate him, disappointed that Owen beat her to it, more so the fact that he’d paid the man a visit putting the fear of God into him. 

“What if Jack finds out.”

“He won’t will he?”

Edwin has episodes of paranoia, depression and agoraphobia and a few cases of attempted suicide that had him in a psychiatric hospital.  As Owen recounted what Edwin had told him in the house, he began to realise that he wasn’t the first person to have told Edwin about Lizzie since that night.

Jack phones Gwen, relaying the information from Toshiko that Owen had paid Edwin a visit and put the frighteners on him.  He’d also discovered that Burnie had been blackmailing Edwin.  Discovering that Gwen was currently at Burnie’s flat, instructed her to wait there, him and Owen were on their way.

While Toshiko began checking the data on Edwin the CCTV picked up the image of Morgan finally stepping foot outside of his house, knife in hand, heading towards Evelyn Street.  When Gwen doesn’t respond, Jack begins to worry. The car speeds towards the flat.

Out in the car park Burnie faces Edwin coming slowly towards him, knife drawn. 

“I knew you’d come for me, I’ve been waiting years for this to happen.  Been years.”  Ed squints making out another.  “You come for me too?”  Burnie turns to see Gwen coming towards them.  “I used to see it in people’s faces when they looked at me. They knew.  Tried to hide but...THEY KNEW.  I haven’t been outside for so long. Little bitch, you’re all the same, blame me, make me the bad one.  I’ve wasted my life for you.” 

Jack and Owen are closing in on foot, behind Edwin, Gwen keeps her eyes on Edwin and the knife, asking him to put down the knife.  But he doesn’t listen, he has to end what he started.  As Jack catches hold of Edwin, Owen takes the knife.  “I’ve got the knife Edwin.”  He taunts the man with it, pressing the knife against his cheek, the same as Ed had done to poor Lizzie, despite Jack’s caution.  Eventually, Owen lowers the knife and holds it back for Gwen, who takes it, and is relieved that all is fine and the future plan was averted. 

But....

Grateful that Owen hadn’t killed Ed, is suddenly shocked as the man comes towards her, pleased in some way, walking straight into the knife, killing him almost instantly.  Shock, stunned, Gwen is left standing with blood on her hands just like the vision showed. 

Back at the Hub, wrapped in a blanket for shock, Ianto pouring a stiff drink for everyone, Toshiko states that Edwin wanted to die.  Owen recounts what he did but stated that he didn’t kill him, and Gwen knows it wasn’t at Owen’s hands, as she killed Ed Morgan herself, but Jack feels that this isn’t Gwen’s fault, it would have happened sooner or later, the man wanted to die.

Looking at the device on Jack’s desk Toshiko asked what to do about it.  Jack looked down at the metal arched device, coupled together with the other and studied it on the desk, then in his hand. “The trouble with seeing the future is you can’t just sit and look at it, try and change it, make it different. It’s not meant for us. All these ghosts.”  He sighed heavily  “The suns nearly up.”  Holding the item out to his right.  “Ianto?” 

“Secure Archives!”  Ianto declared. Jack nodded. 

Jack and Gwen stood outside against the railings facing the Bay and the buildings across the water.  Still in shock from the events with Ed Morgan, it would take a lot more than Jack’s words of comfort to get over what had happened.