Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Toshiko Sato (Torchwood)

Given how often techies’ main function in a genre show is to type dramatically and occasionally wave a gadget around, their contributions tend to be important but not showy.  So, it’s kind of impressive how much variety I found in Tosh’s big moments (spoilers.)

Saving a Family (Series 1, Episode 7 – “Greeks Bearing Gifts”)

At Mary’s urging, Tosh takes the pendant out for a spin, allowing her to hear other people’s thoughts, and she overhears a man planning to kill his ex-wife and children.  In swoops Tosh with a golf club for the save!  While I know it’s all part of Mary’s plan to win her over, I like that Tosh’s positive experience with the pendant involves saving multiple lives.

Leaving the Formula (Series 1, Episode 12 – “Captain Jack Harkness”)

Tosh and Jack are stuck in 1941, and their only hope of getting back is the formula to control the Rift Manipulator.  However, it’s not with Ianto and Owen, but with Tosh on her laptop (with a dying battery.)  Tosh races to copy it onto paper but, knowing it won’t last 50+ years, takes a photograph of it.  When she sees that the bottom of the photo got cut off and she can’t make another, she rewrites the rest of the formula in her own blood (since pencil would fade) before sealing it against the elements and hiding it where Gwen can find it in the present.  Go Tosh!

Encouraging Tommy (Series 2, Episode 3 – “To the Last Man”)

With Tosh’s relationships, “unlucky in love” doesn’t begin to cover it.  In this case, the WWI soldier Torchwood has been keeping on ice is finally being sent back to his own time, where Tosh already knows he’s going to be killed.  It then falls to her to convince this young man she really cares about that he has to go back, in order to heal a wound in time.  Never mind her heartbreak at losing him – she’s forced to cause him the emotional pain of returning to the war, all the while knowing he won’t make it.  It wrecks her, but she does it anyway – that’s grace.

Infiltrating the Pharm (Series 2, Episode 6 – “Reset”)

Techy, creative, slightly-morbid Tosh for the win!  The Pharm lackey they’re counting on to get them inside meets an untimely end, but Tosh has an idea.  They hide in the back of the car and put his dead body in the driver’s seat, rigging him up so he won’t slump over, with Tosh driving the car remotely via gadget.  Love it, and I love how pleased she is at having figured it out.

Trying to Stop the Meltdown (Series 2, Series 13 – “Exit Wounds”)

Here’s another example of the Tosh who soldiers on and does the job even when her heart is breaking.  Owen is at a nuclear power plant in crisis and desperately needs Tosh to talk him through how to shut it down safely and quickly.  Unbeknownst to him, Tosh is slowly dying from a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but she does absolutely everything she can.  Even though this ends badly for both Owen and Tosh, I still love this scene between them, especially her continuing to help until the very end, never letting on that she’s a goner as well.