Finally, Torchwood begins to fulfill its promise. I liked the first three episodes okay (well, two of them, at least), but “Cyberwoman” brings together the more adult approach of the show with fallout from the second series of Doctor Who. This is also the first episode that treats alien technology as a real threat.
It develops that Ianto (sort of Torchwood’s caretaker) has been keeping his girlfriend Lisa in the headquarters’ basement. Back in “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday” when the main Torchwood base was attacked by Cybermen, Lisa was one of the employees grabbed and converted. But Lisa’s conversion wasn’t completed, and Ianto managed to escape with her to the new base. At the beginning of the episode Ianto smuggles an expert in cybernetics into the base to remove Lisa from the life-support equipment that keeps her alive if immobile. It technically works, but the freed Lisa begins acting like a Cyberman and tries to convert the expert into a new Cyberman. The expert ends up a corpse, and as Ianto tries to distract the other members of Torchwood, Lisa drains off enough power from the base to be a threat. Capt. Jack seals off the base and everyone is threatened with death by a wannabe Cyberman.
For reasons of spoilers I don’t want to reveal the final plan the Capt. Jack comes up with to kill Lisa. Suffice it to say that if you were to come up with a list of 100 ways to kill a Cyberman it probably wouldn’t be on it, yet it really ought to have been at the top of the list.
This episode also includes another call back to Jack’s new-found immortality, and even suggests that Capt. Jack may be able to bring other people back to life with a kiss, like the Doctor did to Rose. Either that or John Barrowman just thought the other actor was cute.
The next episode looks like it crosses Village of the Damned (1960) with the Cottingley fairies. The preview also showed some some WWII (or maybe even WWI) action with Capt. Jack, which makes me wonder if he’ll finally let the other members of Torchwood in on his time traveling.
