Torchwood: Series 1, Episode 10 – “Out of Time” (2006)

The Whoniverse has introduced us to plenty of great aliens over the years—sure, Daleks can seem played out now, but think how much ingenuity it took to make those genocidal pepper pots one of the most fearsome antagonists on television. Sometimes, though, I like it when the “adversary” in a story, if you can call it that, is simply time. That’s what we get here.

The Rift has deposited all sorts of spatial-temporal flotsam and jetsam in 21^st century Cardiff: Weevils, strange artifacts, alien convicts, and more. This time around, it’s deposited, not something dangerous, but something sad. A passenger plane from 1953 flies through the Rift and lands in 2007. Unable to return to their own time, Torchwood helps Diane, John, and Emma as they try to adapt to the new century.

While the episode is short on action, which is a rarity for Torchwood, it has plenty of humor, pathos, and romance. Some of the culture shock between 1953 and 2007 is amusing, such as when Ianto takes the temporal orphans to a superstore. It’s fun to see their apprehension over automatic doors, their confusion over the concept of DVDs, and their puzzlement over the health warnings on cigarette packs. Meanwhile, Diane, the plane’s pilot, decides she’s going to need to learn computers if she wants to get her pilot’s license again in the 21^st century, and it’s slow going—she takes Owen’s direction to “move the mouse up” a bit too literally.

But while it’s exciting for these three to see the future, it’s also bewildering and isolating. John had a family back in 1953, and now his son is older than he is. Where does that leave his legacy? And even as Emma feels less restricted in 2007, with greater opportunities available for young women, she chafes against those who would hold her back, whether it’s John’s paternalistic attitude towards her or Gwen’s insistence that she’s too naïve of the modern world.

Each of them is taken under the wing of one particular Torchwood member—the whole team is there to help, but Gwen feels responsible for Emma, Own takes a special interest in Diane, and John’s situation resonates deeply with Jack. These connections allow us to explore the guest stars and their time-displaced predicament, naturally, but they give us a closer look at Gwen, Owen, and Jack as well. Gwen has knowledge and sympathy to offer, but that doesn’t mean she really understands what Emma is going through, and their interactions spur uncomfortable questions from Rhys. Owen is taken with Diane and allows himself to feel more than he has in a long time, but can he make up for everything she lost in her old time? And Jack knows the pain of watching loved ones age while he stays behind; as John feels lost and alone, so he does.

This was the first episode written by Catherine Tregenna, and it’s one of series 1’s best. (Tregenna later went on to write the Twelfth Doctor story “The Woman Who Lived,” only the second woman ever to write for new Who.) It’s a compelling human story with sympathetic and complex one-shot characters, story material for the main cast, and a deft handle on its tone and themes. Well done all around!

Relationship Spotlight: Evelyn & Joy Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

*Spoilers.*

As with most aspects of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the relationship between Evelyn and her daughter Joy is both enormously expansive and intimately specific. Because of the multiversal premise, it’s about Evelyn’s relationship with multiple Joys, even as it’s about just one. Watching it unfold over the course of the film is as uncomfortably grounded as it is mindbendingly twisty.

When we’re introduced to Evelyn and Joy, we haven’t heard their story before, but we’ve definitely heard their type of story before. Immigrant mother and her American daughter are unable to connect—Evelyn tends to express her love through “helpful” criticism,” and she brushes it off when called out on it. Joy isn’t as successful as Evelyn would like, and her disappointment has a tinge of “after everything we’ve sacrificed to give you a better life.” At the start of the film, Joy is nervously psyching herself up to introduce her girlfriend to her grandfather, a plan that Evelyn repeatedly tries to steer her away from.

Of course, when Evelyn realizes she’s the only one who can save the multiverse from the villainous Jobu Tupaki, things get a lot less unconventional, and that’s multiplied by a zillion when she discovers that Jobu is Joy. In the Alpha universe, Evelyn was the scientist who pioneered verse-jumping technology, and she pushed her daughter further and further into the multiverse until it broke her. Jobu experiences every Joy in every universe simultaneously, and she flits between universes as easily as you or I might blink. She has a creation that threatens to destroy everything—oh yeah, and she’s been traveling the multiverse killing every Evelyn she finds.

At first, Evelyn sees Jobu Tupaki as a villain who’s taken over the body of her Joy. She entreats Jobu to leave Joy alone, and when a verse-jumped version of her father urges Evelyn to kill Joy, killing Jobu in the process, Evelyn refuses. She decides that the only way to defeat Jobu is to become like her, and she proceeds to verse-jump into more and more versions of herself in the hopes of gaining similar powers.

Over the course of all this, the two of them make a discovery: while it’s true that Jobu Tupaki has been killing Evelyns, that hasn’t technically been her goal. Rather, she’s been searching the multiverse for someone who can understand her and her infinite existence, someone who can meet her at her level. And everywhere she goes, she searches for that someone in her mom.

Given that Alpha Evelyn, Jobu Tupaki’s actual mother, is the one who unwittingly created her, it might make sense for Jobu to hate Evelyn and want revenge on every version of the person who made her feel so alone in the multiverse. Some part of Jobu probably thinks that’s what she is doing, but in every universe, she’s trying to connect with her mother. And when she can’t, her rage and power take over, and she leaves destruction in her wake.

Evelyn understanding this is the key to saving the multiverse. Despite everything she’s done, Jobu Tupaki is Joy, Evelyn’s Joy and every other Joy in the multiverse, and Evelyn doesn’t have to defeat her. She has to save her. She has to love her daughter, accept her daughter, argue with her daughter that both of them have to try to be better. When Jobu is on the brink of stepping into the black hole that she herself created, Evelyn pulls her out.

In the parking lot of the laundromat, Evelyn confronts her daughter, confronts Joy, fights Jobu Tupaki’s nihilism by loving her. She reminds Joy/Jobu, “You still went looking for me through all of this noise.” And she tells her, “No matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always, always, want to be here with you.”

At this point, Evelyn and Jobu Tupaki are the most powerful beings in the multiverse. They can be anywhere, do anything. But like Waymond says to Evelyn in the kung fu universe, they both choose a life of “laundry and taxes” together in one small, dull universe. It isn’t much, but love is growing between them there, and that makes it the only universe they need.

Favorite Characters: Stede Bonnet (Our Flag Means Death)

*A few Stede-related spoilers.*

I’ve written about Stede and Blackbeard, of course, and I recently wrote about Blackbeard himself. Naturally, it’s time I write about Stede, too. Today is all about the Gentleman Pirate!

Our first look at the Revenge, its captain, and its crew is awkward. Stede is Michael Scott levels of ill-equipped for the task at hand. A lot of the crew think he’s too soft to be the captain, and they debate the merits of mutiny. Stede doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it shows. And somehow, as much as he’s flailing at sea, the flashbacks of his staid, stifled home life back in Barbados are even more awkward. We see how ill-suited he and Mary are to each other in their arranged marriage, how much Stede feels like Just Some Guy in his own house. He doesn’t have a meaningful relationship with his wife and his children, and every time he tries to break through to something real, he missteps or his ideas are shot down.

Don’t get me wrong: obviously, it’s not cool to abandon your wife and kids without warning and run off to be a pirate. But I understand why Stede felt that something had to give, and when Mary wouldn’t agree to a seafaring life, he decided to press forward on his own. Aboard the Revenge, he has no better idea of what he’s doing, but he immediately feels freer and more invigorated.

And for all his fumbles, he’s not a lost cause as a captain. The crew decides not to mutiny because they’d miss the bedtime stories he reads to them, and not just because he’s one of the only literate people on the ship—when it’s pointed out that Lucius could read to them, they shrug it off, pointing out that he couldn’t “do the voices.”

That’s reflective of the way Stede runs his ship. He knows very little about piracy, but in a way, that just frees him up to decide for himself what he wants it to look like, and his idea of piracy is very emotionally open. With his “we talk it through as a crew” motto, he encourages the crew to solve their differences with words instead of fists or swords. He institutes a contest to design the ship’s flag in part to give the crew a creative outlet, and when push comes to shove, he’d rather fly all of their flags than pick a winner.

For this reason, the crew stops viewing Stede as an aristocratic doofus to be got rid of and more like a bumbling family member to protect from himself. As he plows naively forward, they gently suggest emendations when he’s making himself look foolish to outsiders and generally try to keep him from getting himself killed. They’re hardly the terror of the seas, but they’re in this together, and that includes Stede.

When Blackbeard/Ed comes aboard, Stede is understandably swept up almost instantly. He’s glad to have someone who appreciates his lavish wardrobe and aristocratic quirks, and he treats him primarily as Ed, not as the fearsome pirate Blackbeard. I mean, sure, he’s keen to learn the ways of piracy from Ed—he takes to Blackbeard’s “art of fuckery” (instilling fear in other pirates through theatricality) with relish, although he’s less excited about learning how to survive getting stabbed. But he also just wants to sit around chatting with Ed, wants to comfort him when he’s upset, wants to give him genuine compliments about qualities that none of the other pirates value. It’s easy to see why Stede would be drawn to Ed, but by the same token, Stede demonstrates numerous times that he’s actually quite the catch. He may be foppish and prone to hiding during actual pirate skirmishes, but he’s unlike anyone Ed has met, and it doesn’t take long for either of them to fall thoroughly in love.

Technically, Stede has a hard in Ed’s grim transformation in the season finale, going full Kraken after Stede leaves him and Izzy berates him for breaking down over their breakup. But Stede doesn’t leave because he doesn’t care—rather, he leaves because Admiral Badminton gets in his head, convincing him that he’s such a screwup/sorry excuse for a captain that he’s “broken” the most notorious pirate who ever lived. Fearing that he’s bad for Ed, he leaves “for Ed’s own good” (pretty sure that has never actually been the correct move in a relationship.) It kills him to do it, and he almost instantly regrets it.

At the end of the season, Stede is full of hope as he sets off to reunite with his ship, his crew, and the man he loves, little knowing what awaits him. The drama is going to be so intense, and I can’t wait for season two!