Torchwood: Series 2, Episode 3 – “To the Last Man” (2008)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

I really like this episode. I tend to like the Tosh-centric stories anyway—and there’s not nearly enough of those—but the timey-wimey romance of this one is delicious! It’s an episode that really flexes the range of possibilities within the show’s premise.

One of the bodies in Torchwood’s cold storage is a WWI soldier named Tommy. He was put there in 1918, and ever since, Torchwood has been reviving him from cryogenic sleep once a year for safekeeping, knowing that one day he’ll be critical to saving the future. In recent years, he’s taken a liking to Tosh, and she to him. She tries to make the most of his annual unthawed day, but Tommy’s time of reckoning is coming due.

For starters, I love any and all glimpses we get of old-timey Torchwood, so it’s great to have Gerald and Harriet pop up in a flashback here. I find the premise very interesting, that these two witnessed narrowly-avoided destruction from overlapping timelines in 1918 and understood that, while Tommy was the key to stopping it, he needed to do that from the other side of the time anomaly, in the future. So he’s been on ice ever since, with a locked instruction box that will open for the present-day head of Torchwood when that future day arises.

I’m also intrigued by falling for a time-displaced man who’s only unfrozen once a year, and vice versa. We don’t see when Tosh and Tommy first met, or how they became so close, but I can buy that cryogenics lend intensity to a whirlwind romance. At most, they’ve only known each other for a handful of days, but that’s been spread out over years for Tosh. Whereas from Tommy’s perspective, he wakes up “every day” and sees her, and she’s always been waiting to see him. It makes sense that, when the world has shifted a little every time Tommy is unfrozen, he’d be drawn to Tosh’s steady, reassuring presence. And for Tosh, who’s definitely struggled where dating is concerned, there’s probably a sort of safety in condensing so much romantic feeling into a single memorable day every year.

I really like seeing Tommy’s perspective of the world. Things change at such a rapid rate for him, and he’s in the world so little that he can’t really adjust to his time displacement the way someone like Steve Rogers can. Fashions change every few days or every week—he reminisces cheekily about the miniskirt era. And it was dizzying to hear that the War to End All Wars was over the first time he was revived in 1919, but then only a few “weeks” later from his perspective, to learn that the world was at war again.

I think the episode does a great job with the emotional content here. The scenes feel earned, and the performances are excellent. No surprise that Naoki Mori delivers wonderfully as Tosh, and Anthony Lewis (brother of Matthew Lewis!) gives a strong performance as Tommy. The two of them are splendid together.

A Little TLC(w): The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre: Season 1, Episode 18 (1986)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Unsurprisingly, things are getting tangled again for Zhang Wuji. But this time around, it’s less about physical danger and more about emotional harm. His past is colliding in all kinds of surprising ways, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Despite her prickliness, Zhang Wuji’s companion Ugly (who reveals her real name to be Zhu’er) proves incredibly loyal very quickly. Wuji is rather without friends in the world at the moment, so he offers her loyalty in return. But things get complicated after a run-in with the righteous sects, still on their way to fight Ming. Now Wuji’s walking alongside important people from his past under an assumed name, unable to reveal who he is.

I appreciate learning more about Zhu’er, beyond just her name. We find out what caused her facial scar and why she’s so guarded, and it becomes easy to put the pieces together of why she’s so attached to Zhang Wuji. Once the pair encounters Ermei, she immediately gets possessive every time Wuji is pleasant to another woman, but we see how much of her jealousy is rooted in self-loathing and abandonment issues. While that doesn’t make it right, it lets me understand her actions.

Although, for Zhang Wuji, her affection is kind of a double-edged sword. Besides the jealousy, Zhu’er gets them both in big trouble pretty quickly. This leads to a hilarious moment where a martial artist from another sect whines, “Teacher, she is making fun of us. Maybe we should just kill her!” But Zhu’er is more than capable of looking after herself, and even if Wuji is too injured to fight, he has knowledge that allows him to transfer some of his newfound power to her temporarily.

It's another good episode for Zhang Wuji. He’s always been a pretty noble young man, but that’s been taken up to new level ever since he studied the secret manual. When he finds out that Zhu’er misguidedly took extreme measures for his sake, he gently pushes back on the idea that she had to get revenge on someone who wronged him. “Silly,” he tells her, “there are so many people who have harmed me,” suggesting it’d be a waste of her time to go around settling scores on his behalf. Likewise, when he pledges a vow to her and her reaction makes it clear that she’s conflating him with a man she’s still hung up on, I love how Tony Leung Chiu-wai plays Wuji’s subtle response. With just a slight change of expression, he lets you know everything Wuji is feeling in that moment.

Because while Zhang Wuji remains almost superhumanly good and his new skills/knowledge have lent him this peaceful aura, I like that we see he is still human. He has a strong sense of control over his reactions to things, but they do affect him. It’s nice work on Leung’s part, keeping Wuji grounded in small ways so he never feels too noble to be believed.

When Zhang Wuji and Zhu’er get caught up with Ermei Sect, the run-in brings them into contact with the other righteous sects, including representatives from Wudang. Suddenly, Wuji is face to face with people he hasn’t seen since he was a child, but they don’t recognize him. And though he longs to tell them who he is, he’s also cognizant of how many different sects he’s surrounded by, and he remembers the havoc and heartbreak that resulted from everyone clamoring to find out where Xie Xun and the Dragon Sabre are. So he can’t say a word—so close to everything he’s been missing for years, but so far away.

Other Doctor Lives: House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 2 – “Rhaenyra the Cruel” (2024)

*Spoilers for the end of episode 1.*

Much like last week’s premiere, the second episode of the series explores the fallout from the bungled, startling death of an innocent as a result of the escalating conflict between the Blacks and the Greens. I wonder how much of this war is going to play out that way.

Last week, in the throes of her grief over Luc’s death, the only words Rhaenyra spoke were, “I want Aemond Targaryen.” To that end, Daemon steals away to King’s Landing to hire a butcher and a rat catcher to do the deed. But when they instead kill Aegon’s young heir Jaehaerys, it lights a powder keg. Aegon is out for blood, Otto is painting Rhaenyra as a child murderer before the realm, and Rhaenyra is horrified at Daemon’s part in this.

One of the first things that strikes me about this episode is how alone everyone is in their grief. Both sides have now lost a child in a brutal way, but the demands of these rising tensions keep anyone from reaching out to one another. Even within their own camps, there’s no comfort to be found. Aegon is raging and distraught, clamoring for revenge against Otto’s advice. Queen Helaena is hardly about to find solace in her volatile brother-husband, and when she wants to mourn in peace, Alicent tells her daughter she’s needed to ride in an open carriage while her murdered child’s body is paraded through the streets on the way to the funeral. Otto is thinking only of how to press the tragedy to their advantage, winning the war of public opinion against Rhaenyra. So many of the King’s Landing characters are desperately sad here, sorrowful over the same horrific event, but none of them can help each other right now.

Then there’s Ser Criston, who’s on his guilt complex BS more than ever. We of course saw how things broke down between him and Rhaenyra last season, but he’s since mellowed on the sanctity of his Kingsguard vows, serving as Alicent’s boytoy. He was with her when Jaehaerys was murdered, and Helaena saw them together when she burst into Alicent’s room in distress. Now, Ser Criston’s festering guilt is causing him to lash out at others, blaming them because he’s so sickened by his own failings. It leads to push another Kingsguard, Ser Arryk, into a rash, dangerous gamble to get revenge.

I realized I haven’t mentioned Ser Arryk or his twin Ser Erryk yet (side note: how dare their parents.) They’re played by Luke and Elliott Tittensor, who both played Carl Gallagher on the first series of Shameless before Elliott carried on the role solo. While both knights served as Kingsguard under Viserys, Ser Erryk decided to bend the knee to Rhaenyra following the succession shit storm after Viserys’ death. The two brothers deliver the best scene of the episode.

The second-best scene, for me, is the confrontation between Rhaenyra and Daemon after the news reaches them that she’s being blamed for Jaehaerys’ murder. Emma D’Arcy and Matt Smith are just so good together here. Rhaenyra comes in hot, as she’s wont to do, and Daemon initially tries to shrug everything off before eventually matching his fiery nature with hers. Daemon insists that it was all a misunderstanding, explaining, “I was clear in my instructions: Aemond, the brother of Aegon the usurper.” He even has the gall to add that he “cannot be responsible" for what happened.

But Rhaenyra argues that 1) you can’t just “oopsie” away child murder, and 2) she doesn’t know if it was a mistake. “I cannot trust you, Daemon,” she tells him. And even more, the crux of the matter comes down to this: “Do you accept me as your queen and ruler, or do you cling even now to what you think you lost?”

Impressively, I’d say Daemon still hasn’t reached Prince Philip levels of trashness for me. That said, he definitely doth protest too much in his claims of unconditional support for Rhaenyra—he lets it slip when he refers to the need to protect “[his] brother’s throne,” prompting Rhaenyra to remind him, “My throne, Daemon! Mine!” The two of them pull no punches with each other in this scene, and it’ll be very interesting to see what happens between them next.