Random Shoes
Torchwood Season 1 Episode 9
Torchwood does Love & Monsters but does it a little bit better in a pretty out there episode.
The Review
RTD keeps pulling out his jar of tricks from Doctor Who‘s first two seasons and bringing them here to Torchwood. Eugene is just like Elton from Love & Monsters, a lovable loser type who has been infatuated with the main characters. He was obsessed with this alien eye he got as a kid, and tried to talk to Gwen and Torchwood about it. However, he got hit by a car and died, and is how living as an invisible ghost getting to go around watching Gwen piece together his life story. Eugene had some memory lost, and pictures of three people’s shoes on his phone. Eventually, it turns out to be his friend Gary, Gary’s dickhead friend Josh, and the waitress at the restaurant they were at right before he ran into that car. He was putting the eye on e-bay, they jacked up the bid, and there he went, into the street. Dead. Except Eugene swallowed the eye…
Eugene now gets to see his life’s denouement, and spends a lot of it fawning over Gwen. However, things change when Gwen calls his father that left him 15 or so years ago in to go to his funeral. His father is genuinely moved and sorry, and wants to connect with the remaining son that he has. Gwen is so moved she almost gets run over but BAM Eugene becomes corporeal and saves her and then zooms into the sky as a spirit. It’s, uh, a pretty wild ending to be sure, and one I didn’t see coming. I don’t know, it’s a weird but beautiful story. Instead of ELO we get a Bowie song. I think it was alright, I was interested to see the alien the eye was from though. Eugene does get a kiss with Gwen, good for him, he seemed like a nice guy. It’s kind of a weird episode for me to review, but it was straightforward (funny enough considering the weird premise), and I liked it. It’s a lot less famous than Love & Monsters, but writer Jacquetta May does it better than RTD.
Eugene is everything Elton isn’t, and his redemption with Gwen is better than his girlfriend becoming a paving slab.
8/10. There’s a stamen waiting in the sky…
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 