"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Owen Harper (Torchwood)



Out of all the Whoniverse shows, I find it’s toughest to come up with Big Damn Hero moments for Torchwood.  The show places so much emphasis on the characters’ messed-up lives that it sometimes feels like big wins come secondary to major screw-ups or turns down dark paths.  This is particularly true of Owen, even after he starts addressing his self-destructive tendencies, but overall, I think I found some good ones (spoilers.)


Treating Gwen in the Field (“Countrycide” – Series 1, Episode 6)

My first time through series 1, this was one of the few scenes in which Owen really worked for me.  We see him drop the posturing and pretense and immediately snap to business.  When Gwen is shot, his quiet, collected skill as a doctor comes to the fore, as does a heretofore-unseen bedside manner.  He’s surprisingly gentle with Gwen, and while he still jokes, it’s to take her mind off her pain and distress rather than his usual distancing/disarming routines.


Detaching the Bomb (“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” – Series 2, Episode 1)

Hurray – nonsense science to the rescue!  John Hart has a bomb attached to his chest that’s somehow coded to his DNA (which the team mostly cares about just because he’s handcuffed himself to Gwen.)  As everyone freaks out, Owen gets the preposterous idea to “confuse” the bomb by injecting John with stored samples of the team members’ blood, thus getting it to detach so they can get it out of harm’s way.  Absolutely silly, but it works in this universe, so it counts as a smart save.  Nice job, Owen!


Saving Martha with the Extractor (“Reset” – Series 2, Episode 6)

This one’s cool mainly because of how inept Owen has been with the extractor thus far.  Since it’s a piece of found alien tech, he doesn’t actually know at this point whether it can do what he thinks it can, and he spends a chunk of the episode obliterating various objects with it.  When the chips are down, though, and Martha’s survival depends on killing the alien Mayfly growing inside her, Owen remains convinced that he can get the extractor to work and in fact saves the day, using it to zap the Mayfly without hurting Martha.


Reaching Out to Maggie (“A Day in the Death” – Series 2, Episode 8)

Owen does more technically-impressive stuff here, using his new biological situation (ie, undeadness) to get passed the heat sensors in Parker’s house and freaking out the guy’s security guards with his walking dead vibe, but personally, this is the more noteworthy achievement for me:  approaching a suicidal woman on a rooftop and trying to show her why life is still worth it.  Owen doesn’t often do empathy, and at this point in the series, when he’s had such an incredibly rough couple of episodes, he’s been pretty wrapped up in his own despair.  This makes it even cooler to see him reaching out to a stranger purely for the sake of trying to help her.


Staying at the Power Plant (“Exit Wounds” – Series 2, Episode 13)

What a beautiful moment.  Owen strides into the damaged nuclear power plant like he owns the place, telling the frantic, terrified tech to get out of there, that he’s got it under control.  He has just enough technobabble to sound confident, then waits until the tech is gone before he gets on his comms:  “Tosh, you’re going to have to help me out here.  I haven’t got a bloody clue what I’m doing.”  Would it have been smarter to hang onto the person who works there and presumably knows way more about it than Owen?  Of course, but I still love it, both because it demonstrates his absolute faith in Tosh to talk him through it and his compassion in taking all the risk on himself rather than leaving someone else in a dangerous situation.

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