‘Because we are everywhere. We are
always. We are no one!’
Esther Drummond sits in
her car, outside her sister’s house, which from the outside looks a lot like a
derelict building with a Keep Out sign painted onto the boards. She has one of
those ‘should I shouldn’t I do this’ moments. One of many in this episode, and
one she may regret as the episode wears on. Esther’s older sister has many issues,
one of them being gullibility at believing everything she sees or reads in the media.
Esther loves her sister,
but even her erratic behaviour at the start of the episode is enough for Esther
to call Social services after she leaves 1032, King Sovereign Road. Whatever
her sister may be going through, Esther is torn over how best to deal with her
sister while she’s away. Will she live to regret this decision, only time will
tell.
Heading away, poor Esther
has a tail. A black car with a hired assassin, hell bent on finding Jack
Harkness, and doing away with everyone else.
The media is running with
the stories captivating the news. With health care reaching crisis point, a
sick old man learns that he no longer has a job after suffering a heart attack
in October. Theoretically he should have died, but the Miracle is causing a
major headache for health care institutions right across the board. With so
many people still hanging on, what are people to do about the ‘walking dead’?
One person with an answer
is Ellis Hartley Monroe.
It’s been a long journey
for the four travelling in an estate car to Venice Beach. Twenty-seven hundred
miles, according to ex Agent Matheson. While Rex looks for some change for the
meter, Jack, Esther and Gwen hit the beach where once again, Esther is a little
unsure about Jack’s declaration of the last time he visited the ocean.
Gwen tries to get her
bearings, and requires knowledge of the distance of Phicorp from their current
location, and Rex, finding food, takes a leaflet from a hippy declaring ‘Dead
is Dead’. Rex makes a phone call.
Vera, knowing she will
never get rid of Rex, now realises that while he’s on the run, she’s his
messenger, to run errands wherever she can, to feed back to Torchwood, through
Rex.
Ellis Hartley Monroe has
surpassed Oswald Danes in the popularity stakes, Vera explains. Monroe started
the ‘Dead is Dead’ campaign. She wants the dead to remain dead. The walking
dead should be treated no differently to those who should be dead if the
miracle hadn’t happened. That’s a lot of Dead!
In an abandoned hospital,
a large group of doctors are taken on a tour of the building by a woman called
Bisme. She sells them the idea that the overflow of ‘dead’ patients from IDU
departments in the major hospitals could be brought here. It has enough rooms
to cater for the ‘dead’. It would only be a short term measure, but as we’ve
seen with ideas like this in the past, a short term measure, is often on a long
term basis.
The team find
accommodation from a tall, tattooed, body pierced male whose mannerisms change from
a rough tough biker dude, to a softie who wouldn’t kick a kitten after he
shakes hands with Jack and gives them a quick tip on where to buy the best take
out.
Rex as usual is not
impressed. Convinced that Jack is determined to make everyone gay around him.
Esther suggests they use
the place as their delivery address, so they can order the spare server. When
Gwen’s phone rings, she takes the call outside. It’s Rhys. Gwen is a little
disappointed that she can’t say ‘hello’ to her little girl, and is most
concerned about her Dad, still in hospital. With all the news, she’s heard so
far about the ‘dead’, she is adamant that she wants Rhys to get her dad out of
the hospital as soon as possible.
Watching Gwen, a
photographer calls in that he’s located Torchwood. Of course, it doesn’t take a
Weevil long to discover just who this guy is, nor who he’s working for. But at
this stage of the game, the spinning triangle is a mystery.
Gwen returns to base to
see that Jack has the plain wall in the living area set up for the overhead computer
screen, for all to see. While Rex discusses the mission to ‘lift out the
security protocols on Kitzinger’s files, Jack is a little obsessed with Oswald
Danes. He explains his reasoning behind it to a curious Esther, quick to
dismiss Oswald as a waste of time.
‘It's never a waste of time, because our
greatest problem is that what's happened to the world is invisible. But quite
by chance Oswald's found himself right at the heart of it. George Eliot wrote
this chapter in Middlemarch. She said that if you take a piece of metal with
random scratches all over it and hold a flame up to the metal, the scratches
look like they're forming patterns circling around the light. And that's
Oswald. He's blazing away and patterns are starting to revolve around him. And
all we have to do is keep watching.’
Danes is finding some of
the things we take for granted, fascinating. Having been incarcerated for a
long time, and made a little bit more permanent had the Miracle not happened,
finds enjoyment opening the bottles of soda in his fridge. When Jilly enters,
she steps around the bottles as if they’re skittles.
Jilly has never liked
Danes, and she cannot look at his hands knowing what they did to poor Susie
Kabina, but a job is a job, and while Ellis Hartley Monroe is competing for
centre stage, she must do all she can to keep Oswald one step ahead. But the
popularity stakes are likely to make him yesterday’s news.
Irked by his meeting with
his father, Rex violently wrenches open the boxes containing the fake servers,
while Esther recaps on the information regarding Phicorp and the secure server,
number 113, accessible only by the highest corporate brass, which is their
target. Protected by so many firewalls, their only option is to steal it and
replace it with a duplicate, that would be empty. It would be fire damaged.
Phicorp, Esther tells them, would think the information would be lost and not
stolen and wouldn’t over react.
Rex is keen to get
started. Even more so to get into the building. But on every CIA list, he’s too
hot property to get away with it. Unlike Torchwood, who thanks to Jack are off
the grid, and anonymous. Gwen will be entering the building. But first they
need to get all the ID personnel details from one person, the man who designed
the heavy duty biometrics. Nicholas Frumkin. Rex knows exactly how they’re
going to acquire everything they need.
While out in the park
walking their child in a buggy, Frumkin and his wife meet Gwen and Jack. Jack,
dressed in civilian clothes looks very casual indeed. Gwen, adopting a
Minnesotan accent, takes on the ‘aww you have a baby, awwww let me see’ role
while Jack is convinced he knows Frumkin, but can’t remember his name. Nicholas
obliges, giving them their voice recognition ID. Jack introduces himself as
John Smith, a familiar name to all Whovians out there. While Gwen rummages in
her bag to show Nicholas and wife a photo of their own child. She hands a metal
flask to Frumkin to hold, securing the palm ID. As she holds up the photo of
her child, an image that feeds back to base, secures the iris recognition ID.
Leaving Frumkin to enjoy
the rest of his day, Jack and Gwen exit quickly. Watching is our good old
photographer by day, assassin by night guy.
In the not so abandoned
hospital, the staff wear surgical masks to avoid breathing in any contamination
from those who should theoretically be dead. It’s bedlam. Two hospitals, St
Helen’s and Open Brook send all their patients at the same time, and due to there
being no electricity upstairs, they can’t even move them. Then more patients
from Coniston Drive are also sent over.
As a male nurse and Vera
discuss the state of play, a woman drops off her husband. Unable to cope with
his condition, she leaves them with his belongings of pills, his books and his
old sweater and leaves.
In a makeshift ward, where
patients are thrown together in a mishmash of beds, a young child continues to
cry. Nobody admits owning her. Nobody knows where she came from. It’s a shambles.
A sick man questions why only the medical staff get to wear masks, when any one
of the people lying two feet from him on either side could be infectious. Vera
grows increasingly frustrated when she learns that there’s no paperwork on the
baby. She calls for Sally Richter, demanding it’s an emergency.
Outside the hospital, Vera
and fellow colleagues wash up and discuss the state of play, while across the
barrier, Ellis Hartley Monroe gets on her podium about her campaign, Dead is
Dead. But admits that a hospital is hardly the best place to discuss it. She
sees the hospital as the right place for those who should be ‘dead’, stating
that behind closed doors they pose no problem to society. But she refuses to go
inside, unlike Danes, who seeing that he could be yesterday’s news, crosses the
barrier, puts on a surgical mask and walks inside. The media go crazy. Monroe
has lost her moment, and Danes is back on top.
Danes pulls the doors
closed, insisting that it will keep the hospital hygienic. He goes on to tell
the patients that those outside are scared of them. He goes on to tell them
that he and them are the same, but the same sick old man earlier doesn’t buy
it. He knows who Danes is, and can’t forgive him for what he did to the 12 year
old girl. Danes accepts what he says. He doesn’t pander to it. He knows that
the window of opportunity will only shine for a short time, and he has to grab
it with both hands and claim it for his own.
Danes removes his mask.
The reporters outside witness everything.
Danes begins to preach to
his flock. He has an audience who like himself, are unable to die. He sees
himself as a Messiah. Risen with unending life.
When a sick woman asks him
to get help for the sick child, he lifts the baby girl up in his arms.
Preaching that Dead is not Dead. Life is life.
The reporters go crazy. As
Danes lifts the baby for them to see outside. Jilly smiles and calls Phicorp.
Disgusted by the changing
of events, Monroe storms back to her limo, and shouts instruction to the
waiting team. The chauffeur hands her a coffee, which she takes into the car.
It’s not a regular coffee. It has a few hidden ingredients. And before too
long, Monroe has collapsed on the back seat.
Nicholas Frumkin may have
thought nothing untoward about the strangers in the park, but when our
‘photographer’ happens to be sitting in the back seat of his car with a set of
demands, you know it’s not going to end well.
Rex and Jack set up the
fire damaged servers by using a blow torch on the hard drives.
In the van, later while
Esther monitors the Eye-5s, she makes a call to Social Services enquiring after
her sister and children. It should have come as no surprise to learn that the
family had been taken into care, and that the children were now in the system,
and her sister had been admitted for psychiatric treatment. When Esther asks
more questions regarding the family than someone would normally ask (who wasn’t
related), Veronica from social services grows suspicious. Esther hangs up.
When Rex returns to the
van, it’s all Esther can do to keep focused on the job. Her mind is working
overtime on what she had allowed to happen.
Gwen has entered Phicorp
HQ. She’s dressed in a tight black dress and high heels. Something that she
moans about to Jack later, and removes them. Her hair is tied up and with red
lipstick, she looks pretty hot!
Rex has an issue with the
words ‘Good’ and ‘Luck’ in the same sentence. He finds it childish, and typical
of Torchwood. To many fans, they find him irritating and it’s not hard to see
why.
When Esther’s phone beeps,
Rex almost bites her head off. Already in his bad books after adding her
sister’s number to her phone at the start, he will hit the roof if he discovers
what the phone call was all about.
Gwen enters the Phicorp
building and walks up to reception. The lobby guard asks for her name, when she
tells him she’s there for the training sessions. She introduces herself as Yvonne
Pallister, International Sales. She informs him that she received an email from
Lorraine in Human Resources last night and waits while the guard calls them. Of
course, we know Esther is there to intercept the call and reply on their
behalf. Gwen is allowed up to Floor Twenty-One.
In the service area of the
building, Jack arrives with the delivery and opens up the back of the truck.
The guard who greets him has nothing on his schedule, and calls Human
Resources. Again, Esther to the rescue confirming the delivery and tells him to
send Jack up.
It’s all going sweetly.
Back in the van however, things are not going as smoothly. Tears are falling
down Esther’s cheeks and Rex has noticed. Esther refuses to tell him.
In the service lift, Gwen
meets Captain Jack Harkness, looking quite fetching in his green uniform.
‘Hello, Handsome. Love the uniform.’
While Gwen moans about her
shoes, Jack prepares the fire alarm, by setting fire to his delivery note,
blowing the smoke towards the fire detector. It sounds the alarm. Gwen and Jack
wait till the coast is clear and head towards the server room. Using the ID
collected earlier from Frumkin, they gain access to the room.
‘Welcome back, Nicholas.’
Rex eventually finds out
what happened to Sarah Drummond. He suddenly feels sympathetic towards her.
While Gwen begins
dismantling the Server 113, her phone beeps. Multi tasking, Gwen talks while
dismantling the cables. Esther sees everything that Gwen sees, while she wears
the Eye-5s. Rhys informs Gwen that he can get her Dad out of the hospital. As
she puts her phone away, Jack has been able to swap the good hard drive for the
burnt one. He wishes her good luck and heads back downstairs to the service
station.
Esther relays the coding
for the clips to go back into the server unit for Gwen, while Rex talks over
Sarah’s position. It’s only when Esther lets slip that she’d visited her sister
before she escaped to LA, that all Rex’s fears are confirmed.
‘You’ve compromised the security of the
entire mission!’
Back in the van, Esther
sees with her own eyes that her actions HAVE compromised the team. She sees the
assassin before the picture fades. She hears the disgust in Rex’s tone. It’s
all gone to shit, and it’s all her fault.
When Jack reaches the
bottom floor and finds the security guard, with tight ligatures around his
neck, he knows Gwen is in trouble and heads back up. Jack enters the Server
room, weapon drawn he carefully stalks across the room till he finds Gwen,
bound and gagged, she lies helplessly on the floor. He ditches the gun and
drops to his knees to help free her, when the assassin comes back into view.
Gwen tries to warn Jack but it’s too late. He’s pistol whipped around the head.
Leaping from the van, Rex
puts the blame at Esther’s door before heading upstairs. There’s a lot of
stairs to climb, and the lift is on the 33rd floor. Esther is unable
to override the elevator as the fire department have shut it down. Rex has no
other alternative but to climb the full sixty six flights of stairs, with a
ruptured chest.
Good luck!
Gwen demands to know the
assassin’s name, but he’s not about to reveal his identity to them. Jack asks
him what he wants. His answer is simple. He wants Jack Harkness dead.
‘Then why am I still alive?’
The assassin is curious
about Jack. His Holy Grail. The last real human. When the world is living
forever, Jack is the only mortal being on the planet. How can that be? He wants
to know what makes Jack so different. Jack would like to know the answer to
that question too.
Esther’s question isn’t
answered either. But again, it doesn’t take them too long to figure out that
Phicorp knows a lot of people, and can pay to have certain people erased from
history.
The assassin knows that
something was given many years ago by Jack to the people he works for. Jack, of
course, is unaware of this, because if you watched the animation Web of Lies at
the start of Miracle Day, you’d already know what he gave.
The Assassin loves to
talk. He has the floor after all. And a knife, which he threatens to use unless
Jack can give him the answers he so craves. When Gwen, eventually growls at him
for the answer of who he is and who he works for, he works himself up to tell
her, just as Rex Matheson empties his bullets into him, shooting him in the
throat, losing every possible chance of knowing just who the fudge he is.
Rex hopes for some kind of
thanks for coming upstairs to save their lives. He was expecting too much.
Oswald Danes is back on
top. He’s taking the world by storm. The new Messiah. People are eating the
crumbs from his hands. But where is Ellis Hartley Monroe?
In a scrap yard, bound and
gagged, Monroe wakes up unsure where she is. A voice comes over the phone, from
someone referred to as the Cousin, who apologises for what is about to happen.
They’re happy with Oswald Danes, and as the Cousin goes on to say, ‘certain
aspects’ of Monroe’s strategy were revealing their hand a little too soon. And
with all their careful planning, they were determined not to allow anyone to
screw it up for them.
The giant claw lifts the
car up and carries it over to the crusher. Dropping the car into the beast of a
machine, Monroe’s whole career, as her life, would be crushed. As the ‘car’ is
dropped out of the machine cubed, a frantic eye looks out at the world beyond
the hunk of metal.
Rex is still bitter about
the events of yesterday. Despite Jack thanking him for saving his ass, Esther
was on her final warning.
Esther in a bid to redeem
herself, is able to unlock some of the data from the server. She uncovers land
prices. Estimates dating back years and all linked to the construction plans
she also unearths. They’re overflow camps. All for the patients in the ICU.
Gwen’s phone rings again.
Swearing in her usual fashion, she takes the call. It’s Rhys. It’s not good
news.
Initially pleased with
himself that he’s finally able to get Gwen’s dad moved, Gwen informs him about
the overflow camps and insists he stops that from happening, but he’s too late.
The ambulance has already taken him.
Turning to Jack, Gwen is
distraught.
‘They’ve got my Dad, Jack. They’ve got my
Dad.’
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