Island of Lost Souls
I think it Declassified has taught us anything (and it tries not to) it’s that this episode is all about… of course… PC Andy! He just wants to be on the inside with Gwen, and who wouldn’t want to be with him. He’s just so cute and cuddly! He is… Ianto, done nicely! I have to say that I prefer him to Ianto, so could we swap one for the other please? He’s proven he’s capable and tries to stand up to Gwen, which immediately gives him two points over Ianto, with the third being he’s not involved with naked man sex with Jack (which we also get to see in this episodes, at least making the fangirls happy). He also has more comic potential, which the series needs (done properly, note!)… but is in complete contrast to the rest of the episode (what a segue!).
The rest of the episode is all gloom and hopelessness as Gwen finds out that the Rift can take people (which shouldn’t be all that surprising), spit them out again, and force Jack to cover it up. Because he’s never done that before. Just like he’s never done other stuff without letting the team know. (As Gwen points out, “he’s a law unto himself”.) The episodes do vary as to who is the star of any particular episode, but the series has always struggled with the overall focus being on either Gwen or Jack. In many ways, it opts for Gwen, as the way in for the audience, but this then forces Jack into the background, making him more shadowy as he knows more than everyone else (Seventh Doctor anyone?). This does give a struggle to Jack to be his charming likable self and this dark manipulator he has to portray due to the plot point of the week, and the writers are taking to dealing with this rather bluntly. Case in point: Jack has the island (a positive for him taking care of matters), but keeps the information to himself (a negative in that it gives the team another reason not to trust him). No half-way position allowed, such as telling the rest of the team. Since I’m sure the rest of the team would have agreed with Jack that these people can’t be brought back into society, he could easily have told them, and made for a nice character point, but then we can’t be having that in this forced story clash. If nothing else, this episode shows the rest of the team getting in Jack’s way, and his way is looking to be the right way, so the writers aren’t doing too well with sowing dissent.
If it wasn’t for the direct tie-in into Torchwood activities, this episode would be another filler in yet another series of them. As it is, a lot of the problems here could easily be solved by judicious use of retcon (which would nicely deal with Nikki’s lack of hope issue). Perhaps we could all just accept that Jack does know best and move on, eh?
JE