Dead. Again.

3.01 - Day One
Tx: Monday 6th July 2009

1965, Scotland. It is dark. A minibus full of children drives down a rain-swept road. A blond boy looks like a Child of the Corn. His comrades chatter. The bus stops, and they troop out in the darkness, into a bright white light.

Oh yes, bitches, it's TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH - DAY ONE!

And here is beautiful Cardiff, just as picturesque as ever, you'll be pleased to know. Gwen is at the cash machine and looks disapprovingly at parents telling their recalcitrant children off, because her judgemental bitch-ness is not at all reduced. More children stand stock-still in houses, across roads, in front of Rhys's lorry, and so on.

Then they all start moving again. All the parents (and Rhys) are relieved. One schoolgirl looks disapprovingly at Gwen, which is quite funny.

Gwen thinks she is funny by greeting Glyn by the Torchwood base with "What's occurrin'?" She is mistaken. And there's nobody in Torchwood. Well, where are they?

Cut to hospital in an emergency room, where the medics are attempting defibrillation on a body, as Captain Jack and Ianto look through the window. The doctor tells them that Mr Williams is dead of heart failure. Ianto does a very bad job of looking sad. Captain Jack looks...fatter, a bit? Squarer in the face? They ask if they can have a look at the body, and the doctor agrees, because they are his caring neighbours.

As soon as the doctor leaves them alone, they begin to unwrap the corpse to laser-saw him, and Ianto squees about being referred to as a couple. The doctor walks back in as Captain Jack rips out some alien organ (fnar), then they make a quick exit. The doctor runs after them, threatening to report them - "You're Torchwood!" "Never heard of them!" replies Captain Jack, despite the fact it's emblazoned in neon letters over his car. The doctor says that bodies are going missing from the mortuary - five of them in two months, none of them white, all of them male. Captain Jack considers taking the doctor onto the team, for they have no medical doctor IN A WHITE COAT to do doctoring at the moment, but then can't be arsed. [First time for everything. Fnar. - Steve]

Civil servants and military types mill around, in what I presume is a secret service building. Peter Capaldi seems to be in charge. A military man tells him to BEWARE OF TEH CHILDRENS.

Torchwood Three. Ianto and Jack return, and Gwen whines about them leaving her by herself when there are lots of road-traffic accidents going on, all involving children.

Cross-exposition between military man and Torchwood Three. There have been accidents all over the world, and they all list many countries. Well done, everyone, excellent geographical knowledge. At 8.40am, every child in the world STOPPED. Military man is interrupted by the new tea-girl Lois, who starts asking questions about his uniform. Subtle as a brick. Sign her up to Torchwood, you think?

Captain Jack rings Martha, but she is on her honeymoon and Gwen warns him not to disturb her. The doctor, Rupesh, is loitering outside the base - "Ask about Torchwood, and most people will point you towards the bay," says Ianto. Brilliant secret-keeping. Ianto squees a bit more about Gwen calling him and Jack a couple. Jack says he hates the word "couple" and Ianto pretends he does too. Oh, this is going to end in tears.

Gwen goes out to talk to Rupesh, who is originally from Chesterfield, and is very tempted by the money on offer at Torchwood. "What do you DO?" asks Rupesh, which is an excellent question. Rupesh expresses his concern about the growing suicide rate in the past years, which he seems to be attributing to aliens. Gwen talks about how brilliant and beautiful the universe is, and then adds on, "My life is bigger," because as we know most things have to be explained in relation to its specific effect on Gwen's life.

Then Gwen sees a little girl rooted to the spot despite her mother's protestations, and more children ACROSS THE WORLD are doing the same thing (some more successfully than others, I might add). Then they all begin to scream. I presume this is supposed to be an awful unearthly sound, but to be honest it just sounds like my Brownie pack playing stuck-in-the-mud every Friday evening.

They stop screaming and begin chanting - "WE ARE COMING!" Gwen panics. Peter Capaldi is informed of the situation and demands a child immediately. People have been put in prison for similar. At a nursing home, a man is chanting along with the children. Then they all stop chanting and he falls to his knees, wailing, "They found me!"

The Torchwood team run about; Rupesh is ordered back to A&E by bossy-boots Jack. More running about and flapping in the base of secret-service power. Lois looks shifty. Mr Decker (whoever he is) tells Peter Capaldi, "I warned you." Captain Jack is on the phone to Lois (ah, it's the Home Office) who claims to be the only person in the world not to have heard of Torchwood. She stealthily accesses the computer database beyond her menial powers and seems to be on some kind of high-security Wikipedia, reading a definition of what Torchwood is and does.

Mr Decker turns out to be some kind of extra-terrestrial tracker man, and he takes Peter Capaldi down to his lair to hear all today's recorded activity. The Torchwood team are speculating about what on earth is happening; Gwen points out that all the children are speaking English; and Captain Jack says the most stupid thing he has ever said by claiming that if you were surveying the world from the outside, you would think English was the dominant language. Ianto corrects him. Jack sneers. The inventors of Esperanto weep. Gwen finds footage of Timothy White - the man who chanted along with the children.

Rhys is looking at houses, while Gwen talks to him on speakerphone, revealing all the state secrets she can possibly manage and being a total cow when he suggests that one of the house's spare rooms could be a nursery. Rhys tells her that they ought to consider the fact that the children were chanting at 8.40am - before school starts in the UK.

Ianto and Jack muse over where they could find a child. Jack saunters off, Ianto quite reasonably asks him where he's going, and Jack snarks about being a couple again.

The prime minister asks Peter Capaldi what to do. Capaldi wants "certain historical events" taken off the record so that Britain has a clean slate, and hopes that "the 4-5-6" will keep quiet. The prime minister says he will not have his name on it; he was never told; he never knew. Ooh, mysterious.

Captain Jack goes to visit people, a middle-aged lady and a little boy. "Uncle Jack! I was talking like an alien! Everyone was!" shouts the boy. Elsewhere, Ianto thrusts money into the hand of his niece and nephew, and unsuccessfully tries to convince his sister to let him take the girl to the cinema this afternoon.

Back with Captain Jack, and Barrowman doing subtle acting. The middle-aged woman he is talking to is his daughter, complaing that he looks younger than her. That'd be the Botox, love. Maybe you should try it too? Jack reckons he wants to be a proper grandad to him, and the daughter is clever enough to work out that really he wants to do some kind of experimentation on him. She tells him he's a bastard and should stay away because he's dangerous. Marvellous. I want HER to join Torchwood.

Rupesh is back at the hospital, and Jack rings him because he wants to steal a child from the children's ward. Ianto's sister quizzes him about being spotted having dinner in town With A Man - a GORGEOUS one, like a film star, or an escort [I wonder how much Barrowman paid RTD to insert that line into the script. - Steve]: "Have you gone bender?" she asks. Ianto fails to answer, and then she is sad because he never tells her anything. That elicits the following gem from Ianto: "He is VERY handsome." His sister squees. "He's nice, though, is he? Is he?" she asks, in an extremely sisterly way. Ianto tries to describe the purity of his love for Jack, while making it clear that his lust is not for men in general. Then his rowdy brother-in-law rolls in making many gay jokes, and then the alarm on the Torchwoodmobile goes off. Ianto does not understand how they broke in, when it has three deadlocks. Ah, Torchwood. High security indeed.

Gwen is in the nursery home talking about Timothy White and getting all the gossip from a nurse, before interviewing him in a very nasty stark room. She says she thinks the voices he heard came from aliens, and he tells her there is no such thing. He asks for her hand, she gives it, and he sniffs it. Apparently this is a method for ascertaining the verity of statements. He does not want to talk about what he knows while he is being observed by CCTV, and Gwen uses a magic pen to switch the filming off. He is greatly amused.

He begins to narrate his experience of aliens - he's a child from the pre-titles scene, it would seem, and tells Gwen that they took all his friends, but not him. His name before all the weirdness began was Clement Macdonald, and Gwen tries to get more information from him but then he tells her that she's three weeks' pregnant and everything goes a bit strange. The nurse interrupts them and takes him off for his medication - he bids her farewell by saying, "Congratulations," and she TURNS HER BACK and WALKS OUT without saying ANYTHING because she is a BITCH.

Gwen rings Ianto to ask him to find records of Clement Macdonald; other techie spies are logging their intercept activity; Peter Capaldi gives his most senior underling orders relating to the 4-5-6 while Lois pretends she's not watching. Oh, seriously, Home Office, does anyone actually keep their username and passwords on a post-it on their monitors? Well, in this universe they do, and that's enabling Lois to log on to the senior underling's sent items folder, and see that she has issued an Order To Kill Captain Jack. Presumably that the Crown, paying Torchwood's wages and all, would know that Captain Jack is immortal, having had him on the payroll for the last two or three centuries?

Jack is at the hospital with Rupesh, and there has been another death, this time of a Chinese man. They go to the morgue and Jack begins inspecting the corpse, talking self-importantly in a medical diagnostic way. And then Rupesh shoots Jack, which is nice. Lots of gunmen then troop in. Secret service techies says that the name Clement Macdonald hasn't been "active" for 45 years and now Torchwood have found him. Pat Kerrigan from Bad Girls says, "That's way beyond coincidence. Bring him in." Rupesh whines about The Plan being changed, because he did so much research and now he cannot infiltrate lovely Torchwood. Then surveying the deathly beauty of Jack, he asks Pat Kerrigan if she thinks it's true, "what they say about him" (ie Jack's immortality). Jack suddenly sits bolt upright, gasping for air, and Pat Kerrigan shoots him dead again. HA. "He was dead!" whinges Rupesh. "And now he's dead again. And we'll keep killing him till he's ready," replies Pat Kerrigan, who reveals that the orders changed because of the children.

Police march in to the nursing home to kidnap Timothy White, who makes a run for it out of the back door. Great security there too.

Back at the hospital, Pat Kerrigan tells Rupesh that he will not be disappearing, and then Rupesh too makes a run for it. Pat Kerrigan shoots him. Everyone leaves the morgue. Then Jack wakes up again, and sees Rupesh's corpse next to him.

Back at Torchwood Three, Ianto has traced Clement Macdonald, and is telling Gwen all about it. She is not interested.

Jack heads back to the base and is being spied upon by Pat Kerrigan and her minions.

Gwen does a weird pregnancy test via her hand.

Jack wants to find out about Rupesh being dead; Ianto asks if they killed him too, and when he is answered with the affirmative, he takes the opportunity for a quick hug. Gwen is being odd about being pregnant. Obviously Jack and Ianto are the first ones to know before she rings Rhys.

The Gwen Alert sirens go off! But she's already there! What is it? Perhaps it is a bomb! Jack tells Gwen to get the fuck out because she is PREGNANT and a GIVER OF LIFE. Then all the weird children start their chanting again. Torchwood goes into lock-down and Jack manhandles Ianto out of the building through the medium of French-kissing. [And they still have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. - Steve] "I'll come back. I always do," says Jack. Peter Capaldi shouts at his children to stop chanting. Torchwood explodes.

THE END.