Creepy! This episode showed me that while Torchwood often has moments of inconsistency, it’s because the show can work well as so many different things. Doctor Who, it’s parent show, does this too. Sometimes it’s a sci-fi episode, sometimes it’s action, sometimes it’s mystery or romance. Well this one was horror, and for me, it worked.

The ep focuses on a turn-of-the-century carnival that finds a way to live on past its “death” at the hands of more modern and progressive forms of entertainment – film. Ianto takes Gwen and Owen to a little movie theater to catch old films. The boy who’s supposed to have spliced the old reels together for his father’s theater says to his father that some odd things were happening with the film, but the dad forces him to just play it because he’s late.

The film features clips of old-time carnivals, including a Vincent Price-looking ringmaster, played by Julian Bleach. There is also a dancing girl named Pearl. The ringmaster keeps popping up and silently beckoning his audience to come in. Two strange things happen. One, back at HQ Jack heres carnival music whispering through the air. Second, Ianto sees Jack in some carnival footage. The footage gets mangled and as Ianto leaves, he sees shadows dash across the wall.

Somehow the ringmaster and Pearl have escaped into the real world and they approach a girl waiting for a ride by a rainy bus stop. They offer her a ticket to their traveling show but when she refuses, the ringmaster sucks something out of her and catches it in a little bottle. For the rest of the ep, it’s the Torchwood team trying to hunt down clues on where the carnival escapees have gone and stop them. Jack reveals that he once was undercover in a sideshow as “the man who couldn’t die” and there were rumors of a Carnival called The Night Travelers who came in the night and stole people’s souls. Somehow the idea of Jack in the sideshow also seemed eerie to me. I imagine him blowing his brains out and not dying for a crowd. I dunno. Sounds dark.

The evil beings continue to suck out what I suppose amounts to folks’ souls. The victims are found and brought to hospitals completely catatonic and dehydrated, showing no signs of really being alive, yet not quite dead.

Jack eventually determines that by capturing them on film and exposing it, they can destroy them. However, in the final battle, the bottle falls and almost all the souls fall out, dying instantly. Ianto catches and plugs it quickly, but they are only able to save one small boy. The show ends with someone buying cans of film at a yard sale, and when he drops one, Jack hears the same carnival music for just a second, before the film reel is picked up and closed.

The episode worked primarily off of the performances by the Night Travelers. It was very sad seeing them suck the life out of people and leave them behind, especially since Torchwood really wasn’t able to save any of them.

More hints at Jack’s enigmatic past are always cool, although I think it’s time we got some solid answers about who he is and what exactly he’s done throughout his life. One of our listeners argued that Torchwood’s music was “off” but in this episode, I was impressed. Way to go, Torchwood.

I give it a solid 3 and a half out of 5 Cardiff flags. Not perfect, but very good tv for an hour.

photo credit: Ward