Cyberwoman (TV story)

Cyberwoman was the fourth episode in the first series of Torchwood. It was written by Chris Chibnall, directed by James Strong, and focused on Ianto Jones. It also marked the first appearance of a villain from Doctor Who in Torchwood with the appearance of a Cyberman, though they were not fully converted.

Synopsis
Ianto has a dark secret, tied to the basement of the Hub — a secret he will protect at any cost: a semi-converted Cyberwoman! Will Torchwood Three fix things in time before the Cybermen, ripe from battle with their greatest enemy, the Doctor, convert the world?

Plot
During a mundane day at Torchwood Three, the team decide to go get a drink, but Ianto politely stays behind. Once alone, he brings a Japanese doctor named Tanizaki into the Torchwood Hub and takes him to a holding cell deep below the surface. There, a partially Cyber-converted woman is strapped to a conversion unit surrounded by instruments keeping her alive. Ianto introduces her to Tanizaki as Lisa Hallett, his lover. They both worked at Torchwood One in London before its fall in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Lisa was only partially converted during the battle, and Ianto managed to get her to safety afterwards. He rigged the equipment in secret to keep her alive, hiding her in the Hub's basement in hopes of curing her. He hopes Dr Tanizaki, a cybernetics expert, can undo the conversion and make her human again.

They take her to the autopsy lab and let her breathe on her own, but soon the rest of the team return to deal with a rogue UFO. Ianto leaves Dr Tanizaki to take Lisa back to the cell while he prepares for the team's arrival. After he leaves, Lisa's Cyberman influence takes over. She attempts to "upgrade" Dr Tanizaki to repay him for his favour, killing him.

As the rest of Torchwood deal with the Arcan leisure crawler that has entered their atmosphere, there is a brief power flicker; Ianto covers it up by claiming that the generators have been acting up all day and offers to look into it. Returning to Lisa's cell, he finds Dr Tanizaki's body bloodied and mutilated after a failed cyber-conversion, with Lisa standing over him. Ianto tells Lisa to stay in the cell as he drags off the corpse to hide it from the team. Lisa re-enters the cybernetic unit and begins to drain more power from Torchwood, soon noticed by the others.

Arming themselves, Gwen and Owen head for the holding cell where the power drain is occurring, believing themselves under attack. Once there, they find the cyber-conversion unit, which Owen recognises, but are attacked by Lisa. Owen is knocked out. Gwen points her gun, and tries to reason with Lisa, who knocks the gun out of her hand and pushes her over. Gwen lands on her back on the conversion unit. Before she can sit up, Lisa straps her down. Jack tries to shoot Lisa before she can start the unit up, but Ianto tackles him, allowing Lisa to escape after starting up the machine, leaving Gwen powerless as the machine's saws and knives get closer to her head.

Gwen is terrified and yells for help. Jack tries to shut off the conversion unit but Lisa had altered the machine. He calls Tosh and tells her to shut power off to the base. Tosh does this, which unfortunately also means entering total lock-down. The team regroup in the Hub as the power is drained further by Lisa to recreate a new army of Cybermen. Jack demands that Ianto tell them everything. Ianto pleads that since he cleans up after Torchwood but is never asked about his life, they should help him restore Lisa, but Jack maintains that there is no cure. Ianto asks that he be permitted to reason with Lisa before the team attempts to attack her again.

Lisa appears in the Hub and Ianto tries to remind Lisa she is still human, but she is disgusted by her partially-human appearance. She offers to implant her brain into Ianto, believing that sharing the same life is true love, but Ianto refuses. Lisa therefore declares the two incompatible and throws him aside, knocking him unconscious and sending the rest of the team into action. Jack orders Toshiko to go to the surface with emergency power cells so they can open the weapons lockers while Gwen and Owen are to search for any weapons. He will try to delay Lisa's advance. Lisa electrocutes Jack twice, to Gwen's and Owen's shock.

Gwen and Owen are momentarily trapped by Lisa in the autopsy lab, and hide in a locker. As Lisa searches for them, Gwen and Owen kiss. Gwen's phone rings, alerting Lisa to their hiding place and Gwen and Owen to try to escape. As Lisa corners Gwen, Owen grabs a scalpel and stabs Lisa in the chest seemingly killing her. When Lisa starts to revive, they escape to the main Hub where they find Jack, very much alive. Jack sprays Lisa with a special "barbecue sauce" that helps Myfanwy identify its prey. As it attacks Lisa, the rest of the team, along with the recovered and protesting Ianto, escape through the invisible lift. Upon exiting the lift, Ianto punches Jack. Tosh runs up to them and tells Jack that she rigged the doors to open after a few minutes and Ianto runs to go back inside. At the entrance to Torchwood, Jack and the rest of the Torchwood group catch up to Ianto who pulls a gun on them and threatens to shoot them if they try to stop him. Jack knocks the gun away, pulls out his own and threatens to shoot Ianto, warning that if he fails to kill Lisa within ten minutes, he will come down and kill them both. Ianto returns to Torchwood by himself.

Unbeknownst to the team, a pizza delivery girl, using Torchwood's other entrance to bring some pizzas ordered earlier by Ianto, finds the pterodactyl on the floor. Then Lisa is suddenly behind her. As Ianto makes his way to the holding cell, he finds Lisa's body has died. The delivery girl appears, calling for Ianto. She has a large cut across her forehead, and claims that she is Lisa; she took the girl's body so they could be together. She begs Ianto to hold her. Crying, Ianto hugs her, then pushes her away and holds her at gunpoint. Lisa tries to explain she did this for Ianto. He cries and fails to shoot. She promises they can be upgraded together. However the rest of the Torchwood team arrive just in time to hear that, and open fire on the girl, killing her and leaving Ianto to mourn over Lisa's body.

The next day, Ianto enters the Hub. Jack and Gwen watch him cleaning up and they discuss how Ianto couldn't bear to live without Lisa. Gwen asks Jack if he would have shot her if she had stood by Ianto. Jack simply states that she didn't. When she asks, he refuses to tell Gwen that he'd ever loved anyone to the extent that Ianto loved Lisa. They continue to watch in silence.

Cast

 * Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
 * Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
 * Owen Harper - Burn Gorman
 * Toshiko Sato - Naoko Mori
 * Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
 * Rhys Williams - Kai Owen
 * Lisa - Caroline Chikezie
 * Dr Tanizaki - Togo Igawa
 * Annie - Bethan Walker

Individuals

 * Lisa is a partially converted Cyberman. She was being converted by the Cybus Industries Cybermen of Pete's World.
 * Ianto and Lisa once went camping in Brittany.
 * Jack references the Cybermen of N-Space when he confronts Ianto.

Species

 * The Torchwood pteranodon attacks Lisa.
 * Torchwood sends a request to the Arkan leisure crawlers, asking them to stop flying over Cardigan Bay.

Food and drink

 * Torchwood receives a pizza delivery from Jubilee Pizza.

Story notes

 * Chris Chibnall went through numerous working titles, including The Trouble with Lisa and The Long Night of Ianto. Cyberwoman was ultimately chosen because the title "says it all."
 * The episode was repeated on BBC Two, three days later at 9:00pm on Wednesday 8 November 2006.
 * This is the first Cyberman episode where a Cyberman uses both the electrocution ability and the wrist-mounted blaster.
 * Lisa mentions how the Hub would make a good Cyberman factory. The Hub set was redressed as a Cyberman factory in TV: The Next Doctor.
 * The idea behind the episode came from Russell T Davies, who realised there was a story "begging to be told" after Army of Ghosts/Doomsday.
 * When Chris Chibnall was appointed head writer, Russell T Davies asked him to write an episode about a cyber girl in the basement of the Hub.
 * Chris Chibnall wanted to include a base description of what a Cyberman is for any viewer who had not seen Doctor Who.
 * Chris Chibnall originally intended for the episode to become the sixth or seventh in the series, but was brought forward to the fourth because some of the other scripts were not yet completed. It also became one of Chibnall's harder episodes to write.
 * In writing the beginning, Chris Chibnall envisaged Ianto meeting Tanizaki at an airport and then escorting him to a hotel before entering the Hub, however that was cut from the final draft as it would be an expensive sequence to film.
 * Chris Chibnall wanted the episode to take place several weeks after Ghost Machine, as to show Gwen knowing all the protocols and how to handle weapons, where as in the last episode, Gwen was still considered a rookie.
 * Despite the episode being about stopping Lisa, Chris Chibnall still wanted the beginning to be a love story between her and Ianto, and show the audience that a half-converted Lisa is still human and the girlfriend Ianto loves. Also, because Ianto is "fundamentally wrong" about thinking Lisa can be saved, Chibnall wanted the audience to sympathise with the character and his motives.
 * The idea of having Lisa fight the pterodactyl, named Myfanwy by the producers, made them laugh, and felt they had to include it.
 * The line where Ianto calls Jack the "biggest monster" was intended to be cut out, but Chris Chibnall decided to keep it because of its impact to the audience.
 * The scene where the team lines up to execute Lisa towards the end was the first scene Chris Chibnall had in mind for the episode, though in the first draft, it was Ianto who killed her.
 * After the episode was written and filmed, Chris Chibnall discovered two main plot holes in the story. The first is that he did not make clear that everything about Lisa, including the scene where she acted human was all part of her plan for her Cyberman-influence to take over, and reflected to adding at least two lines of dialogue to explain her motives clearly. The second was Jack having a cut lip in the end, even though he is immortal and all his wounds would have healed quickly. In the audio commentary for the episode, both Chibnall and Gareth David-Lloyd stated the reasoning behind the cut being there is because Jack's immortal powers would only deal with life-threatening wounds and not minor injuries.
 * Before filming took place, Gareth David-Lloyd met with Caroline Chikezie and got to know each other to help give their respective characters their chemistry.
 * The episode was filmed as part of the third production block of the first series, along with They Keep Killing Suzie.
 * James Strong wanted to film the episode in a sort of real time format.
 * The scene where Jack threatens to kill Ianto if he does not kill Lisa was the first scene to be shot.
 * The flashback scene where Ianto finds a half-converted Lisa in Canary Wharf took a full day to film; it was originally supposed to take only a few hours, but the camera failed to record the scene. It was replaced, but the second camera failed to record also.
 * Eve Myles and Burn Gorman were both trained how to handle guns and a torch like a "secret agent." James Strong noted that they both held the gun and torch in each hand like professionals.
 * Filming the scenes at Roald Dahl Plass took place during the middle of the night, and was disrupted by hooligans.
 * The original ending to the episode is where Tosh hands Ianto coffee while he is cleaning the Hub. However, after it was filmed, James Strong decided to cut that scene out, as he felt the overhead shot of the Hub before that scene would have made a more suitable ending.
 * Because it was filmed in only a handful of locations, mostly in the Hub set, and there were only a few guest cast members, this was considered one of the cheapest episodes in the first series.
 * The producers noted there were a history of "sexy, pneumatic, hydraulic women" in science fiction, and wanted to "tap into that."
 * To make the cyberwoman costume, the props department wanted to make it as "sexy" as they can. James Strong wanted to make the costume look "amazing," but threatening and scary as well.
 * There were discussions about which parts of Lisa would be human, and which parts would be cyborg.
 * The Cyberwoman was made out of rubber and was custom made to fit Caroline Chikezie as much as possible. It took an entire day for her to get her body cast. After the costume was completed, it would take an hour to apply each morning, and an hour to remove by lunch break. Chikezie found it difficult to hear anything from the helmet while shooting scenes. It was also uncomfortable for her, but the producers noted she remained stoic throughout filming.
 * The fight scene between Lisa and Myfanwy was difficult to shoot, as Caroline Chikezie had to interact with a visual effect creature that would not be added until post-production. The producers added a plastic green beak stuck on the end of a stick to be used as a guide.
 * The scene where the team go up on the invisible lift was made by making the platform stationary, but the camera below it would descend, giving the illusion the platform is ascending.
 * The visual effect of the tools used to create Cybermen were reused from The Age of Steel, while the UFO footage when the Torchwood team return from the drinks was a tin foil-covered frisbee on a fishing line.
 * Jane Tranter and the producers regard the episode as one of their favourites from the first series.
 * Chris Chibnall reportedly hated the Cyberwoman costume, having envisaged something more body horror-inspired, but there was no time to change it and the production was stuck with it.

Ratings

 * 1.39 million viewers

Myths and rumours

 * Ianto was reportedly supposed to die in this episode, but fan reaction to the character in early episodes resulted in his death being postponed to the show's third series. (This is a myth that was put about on Tumblr following the character's death in Children of Earth, supposedly to suggest that fans had "saved" the character before and could do so again. However, as with almost all televised Doctor Who productions, Torchwood's first season was written and shot long before it was broadcast, meaning fans would not have had any influence over the direction of the show.)

Filming locations

 * Harbour Drive, Cardiff Bay
 * Tredegar House (basement), Newport
 * Ba Orient (restaurant and bar), Mermaid Quay

Production errors

 * In the scene where Dr Tanizaki fondles Lisa's armature and "bare flesh", the metal bends in a way that shows it to be made of rubber. This happens when she speaks, as well.
 * In all shots where the CG Cyberconversion machinery descends from the ceiling, the joints are visibly seen to clip through the centre of the machinery.

Continuity

 * The "New mayor, new Cardiff" newspaper article appears at Torchwood's front desk. (TV: Boom Town)
 * Owen tells Gwen that the Cybermen brought down Torchwood One, while Ianto was present at the Battle of Canary Wharf. (TV: Doomsday)
 * Jack notes that the form of Cyberman faced by Torchwood originated in a parallel world. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
 * Lisa describes herself as "Human.2", the same designation the Cybermen give themselves on Pete's World. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
 * Jack Harkness's aggression towards Ianto and his insistence on Lisa's death because she is a Cyberman mirrors the Ninth Doctor's fury when he meets the Metaltron Dalek during the its massacre inside the Vault. (TV: Dalek)

DVD releases

 * This episode, with four others, was first released on a DVD entitled Torchwood: Series 1, part 1 on 26 December 2006.
 * It was later released in Torchwood: The Complete First Series on 19 November 2007.
 * It was also released in the Series 1-4 boxset (Region 2 release: 14 November 2011.)

Blu-ray releases

 * Released in the US with the rest of Series 1 as a Complete First Season set on 16 September 2008.


 * It was released in the Series 1-3 Blu-ray boxset on 26 October 2009 in the UK. The US release was on 19 July 2011.
 * It was also released in the Series 1-4 Blu-ray boxset. (Region 2 release: 14 November 2011)