Torchwood Slow Decay
Gwen has made a dinner date with Rhys, but Jack advises her to keep her mobile on, as Toshiko is tracking an alien energy signature somewhere in Cardiff and the team may be called into action at any moment. Gwen is irritated both by the thought that her date might be interrupted, and by the fact that Owen stands rather too close when they take the invisible lift up out of the Hub. She is thus in a bad enough mood when she arrives at the Indian Summer restaurant to find Rhys chatting with a beautiful young woman who turns out to be his co-worker Lucy. It takes Gwen a moment to recognise Lucy, who has lost a great deal of weight since they last met — and although Rhys claims that Lucy just needed cheering up as she’s going through a rough patch with her boyfriend, Gwen notices with some unease that Lucy is quite obviously flirting with Rhys.
As Gwen feared, her mobile goes off, forcing her to leave the restaurant early to investigate a fight at a nightclub. Five young men have killed each other for no apparent reason, and one of them is clutching a weird device made of a lavender-coloured metal. The police are irritated, as always, when Torchwood swans in, confiscates potential evidence and swans right back out again. Having done all she can at the scene, Gwen returns to the Indian Summer to find Rhys and Lucy apparently holding hands. Lucy explains that Rhys was just comforting her while she unloaded her boyfriend troubles, and leaves, assuring Gwen that she’s lucky to have Rhys. Rhys admits that he was allowing Lucy to flirt with him, but insists that Gwen is the only woman for him. Gwen accepts that she’s probably overreacting, but then Rhys tells her that Lucy might need a place to stay for a while…
Back at the Hub, Toshiko tries to analyse the device from the nightclub, but is distracted by a weird, mournful whistling. She eventually spots a pattern inside the device, and when she overlays the results of several different scans, she discovers that the circuitry has been arranged in the shape of an alien but humanoid face. She invites Owen to see for himself, and theorises that the device may have been built by a species for whom artistic design was more important than functional efficiency. She also asks Owen to stop whistling, but he tells her that he thought she was the one who was whistling. Puzzled, they trace the sound to the cells, where they discover that it’s actually coming from the captive Weevil.
The next morning, Rhys takes a look at himself in the mirror and concludes that he’s really let himself go. Fearing that this might be why the spark has gone out of his relationship with Gwen, he considers starting a diet and exercise routine, but this sounds like too much hard work and he instead decides to check out the diet clinic that has obviously worked wonders for Lucy. At the Scotus Clinic, located in an upscale area of Cardiff, Rhys undergoes a battery of tests before meeting Dr Scotus, a tall, thin man with fine blond hair. Scotus takes careful note of Rhys’ home and work addresses before giving Rhys a blister pack containing two pills, one marked “Start” and the other “Stop.” Scotus tells Rhys that the pills contain esters derived from a new breed of orchid he found in the Zambesi, he shows Rhys a photograph of his expedition, and it’s obvious that Scotus has lost a great deal of weight since the photo was taken. Rhys accepts the pills, but he doesn’t take the Start pill immediately, as something about Scotus has unnerved him, possibly Scotus’ concern that Lucy’s address and contact information is up to date, or possibly the way his hair waves in the air even though there’s no breeze…
Torchwood investigates the death of a young Weevil in the warehouse district, and determine that it was attacked by something that chewed off its face. Owen and Tosh realise that their captive somehow sensed this Weevil’s death and was in mourning. Weevils begin to cluster about the warehouse, and the team take photographs of the body and retreat, leaving the Weevils to their grief. Back at the Hub, Owen examines the photographs and concludes that the attacker severed a major blood vessel and drank the Weevil’s blood before eating its flesh. Jack orders the others to keep an eye on the situation in case the predator moves on to humans, but Owen reveals that the tooth marks in the Weevil’s flesh appear to belong to an ordinary human…
- 3 CD’s
- Released 02/04/07
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