Exit Wounds (TV story)

Exit Wounds was the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of Torchwood. It saw the conclusion of the "Gray story arc" and the deaths of Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper. It was the last Torchwood story in the original thirteen-episode format.

Synopsis
Captain John Hart returns to have his revenge on Torchwood and take Jack as his prisoner. Jack and his long lost brother Gray don't have a good reunion. Can the rest of the team trust John?

Plot
Following on from Fragments, Toshiko detects Rift activity in three locations across Cardiff. She and Ianto go the Central IT Server Building, where three Cowled Men with scythes approach menacingly. The agents shoot them as they get closer. Meanwhile, Owen sedates a Hoix in a hospital with a packet of cigarettes and a special mixture. Finally, Rhys drops Gwen off at the police HQ, where Weevils have killed "the four most senior officers", causing panic.

Captain Jack goes to the Hub to face John Hart, who says he loves Jack and shoots him with two machine guns. When Jack returns to life, he is chained over the ground. John is angry because he was very rude to him in front of people "that hardly knew me". After an electric shock to silence him, John tells Jack he hopes he can stop him, he really does. As the rift manipulator is activated, John tells the Torchwood gang to go to the roofs of their buildings.

They make their ways to the top of the central server building, the hospital and the police HQ. Gwen, Andy, Rhys, Toshiko, Owen and Ianto look on as John, from atop Cardiff castle, detonates explosives in fifteen key locations that cripple the city. He whisks Jack back in time to meet Gray. It turns out Gray is in control, threatening John into action. Gwen takes charge of the team and the police. She makes her way to the Hub, where she finds John has returned to help the team after being forced to bury Jack alive in Cardiff in 27 AD. Gray activates a signal and Weevils flood the streets of Cardiff. This stops Toshiko and Ianto from reaching the nuclear power station to halt a meltdown.

Owen goes to the nuclear facility, reminding his teammates that he's king of the Weevils. The others are attacked by Weevils at the Hub, but subdue them, only to be locked into cells by Gray. Owen, at the nuclear facility, tells a scientist to leave and waits for instruction from Toshiko. She tells Owen her plan, but is shot by Gray, who kicks away her device. A knocking interrupts his taunting and he heads for the morgue. In agony, Tosh makes her way down the steps to the autopsy room, gets her device back, and injects herself with a powerful pain-killer. She denies that she's hurt when Owen asks and helps him to flood the room he's in with coolant, halting the meltdown.

As this is happening, Gray discovers Jack in a cryo-chamber in the morgue, placed there by Torchwood in 1901 on his own request. He tells Gray he forgives him. Gray refuses to give him absolution, so Jack uses chloroform to put him to sleep. He frees the others from the cells and they head back to the main area.

A power surge seals Owen in the room where the coolant will soon flood. Toshiko, dying, asks Owen to calm down. He demands a reason. Tosh tearfully replies, "Because you're breaking my heart", and he is quiet. The two talk as they prepare to die. Coolant pours into the room where Owen is trapped and he accepts his fate, telling Toshiko it's okay and apologising for not having that date because they "just missed each other". Toshiko bleeds to death as she watches the screen show Owen's fading signature. Jack and the others arrive, but Toshiko dies in Jack's arms. Jack freezes Gray and says his goodbyes to John before helping Ianto and Gwen to do Owen and Toshiko's final logout. Upon finishing Toshiko's, a video appears in which she thanks Jack, admits her love for Owen and hopes she didn't die for nothing. Gwen is unsure if she can continue, but Jack tells his last two comrades that they'll start from the end.

Cast

 * Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
 * Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
 * Toshiko Sato - Naoko Mori
 * Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
 * Owen Harper - Burn Gorman
 * Rhys Williams - Kai Owen
 * Gray - Lachlan Nieboer
 * Captain John Hart - James Marsters
 * PC Andy Davidson - Tom Price
 * Alice Guppy - Amy Manson
 * Dr Angela Connolly - Golda Rosheuvel
 * Nira Docherty - Syreeta Kumar
 * Charles Gaskell - Cornelius Macarthy

Individuals

 * John Hart takes Jack back to Cardiff in 27 AD. Gray forces John Hart to bury him.
 * Jack Harkness stayed buried until 1901 when he was uncovered by the Torchwood Institute (whom Jack (past Jack that is) was already working for). He states he has "crossed my own time line" and is placed in stasis.
 * Owen dies containing Turnmill Nuclear Power Station's meltdown.
 * Owen Harper refers to himself as "King of the Weevils", an epithet he obtained after his "death experience".
 * Toshiko Sato bleeds to death after being shot by Gray.

Locations

 * John Hart mentions the Lotus Nebula, where seventeen simultaneous pleasures can be experienced.

Species

 * Torchwood have encountered a Hoix before.
 * Toshiko mentions the Space Pig.

Technology

 * John Hart uses the rift manipulator to affect various parts of Cardiff and to set off a series of explosions isolating it from the rest of the Earth.

Planets

 * John Hart found Gray chained in the Bedlam Outlands.

Story notes

 * This appears to be the final appearance of Burn Gorman as Owen Harper and Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato.
 * This is the fifth known time that Jack has been on Earth during World War II.

Ratings

 * Unofficial overnight ratings indicated Exit Wounds was the most watched programme on BBC2 all day and had a 12% audience share, the twentieth most watched programme of the day.

Myths

 * It was well known that Owen was going to die, but it remained unclear who else was going to die. Rumours were that it would be either Tosh or Ianto. Although Toshiko died in this episode, Ianto later died in Children of Earth: Day Four, only four episodes later.

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors
To be added

Continuity

 * This episode immediately follows the events of Fragments, with Tosh still nursing the broken arm suffered in the explosion.
 * The first scene of the episode, in which the team piles into Rhys' car (the SUV having been stolen), marks the last time the complete team (as of Day One) would be together.
 * Captain John Hart returns in this episode. He was last in TW: Fragments.
 * Gray returns in this episode. He was last seen properly in TW: Adam although he made a brief appearance in TW: Fragments.
 * A Hoix appears in this episode. A Hoix first appeared in DW: Love & Monsters.
 * Owen refers to himself as "King of the Weevils", a title previously coined in Dead Man Walking. The Weevils cower before Owen as they did in Combat and Dead Man Walking.
 * Toshiko first appeared in DW: Aliens of London. This episode refers to the events of that episode and establishes that Toshiko was working for Torchwood, not UNIT, at the time, and that Owen was supposed to conduct the examination of the "space pig" but was hungover, so Tosh covered for him.
 * When Jack is trying to stop Gray in the Hub, he tells him he forgives him, which is very similar to how the Tenth Doctor stops the Master in DW: Last of the Time Lords.
 * Sadistic Torchwood operative Alice Guppy (TW: Fragments) returns, and it is she who is responsible for having Jack dug up in 1901. It is stated that the younger version of Jack is on an assignment at this time, and the older Jack is put into cryo-freeze to avoid contaminating the timeline.
 * Doctor Angela Connolly previously appeared in TW: Dead Man Walking.
 * In the previous episode, it is stated that Jack had "died" and resurrected approximately fourteen hundred times since becoming immortal. Due to the nature of his imprisonment, it's now impossible to calculate times resurrection occurred for Jack between his burial in 27 AD and his eventual recovery in 1901; the number could now potentially be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Timeline

 * Exit Wounds occurs after TW: Fragments.
 * Exit Wounds occurs before TWN: Almost Perfect.

DVD releases

 * This story, along with the rest of Series 2, has been released in the Torchwood Series 2 box set and Torchwood: Complete Box set.