Small Worlds (TV story)

Small Worlds is an episode of Torchwood, broadcast on 12 November 2006.

Synopsis
A withdrawn but intelligent child has her suppressed anger taken advantage of; Jack must encounter his past to defeat those responsible: fairies at the bottom of her garden.

Plot
An elderly woman, Estelle Cole, walks through Roundstone Woods, heading for a circle of standing stones. There, to her delight, she finds what she was searching for: brightly glowing Fairies laughing and fluttering around the stones. She takes a few photographs and turns away, not seeing the tiny fairies transform into larger, more monstrous forms…

At the Torchwood Hub, Jack wakes from a nightmare of dead soldiers in a train carriage, rose petals spilling out of their mouths. He enters his office where he finds a single red petal sitting on his desk. Ianto is working late, and reports spotting odd weather patterns. Jack looks even more disturbed when he hears this.

A young girl, Jasmine Pierce, waits for her stepfather Roy to pick her up from school. However, Roy is running late, and Jasmine decides to walk home alone. She is followed by a man, Goodson, who drives up alongside her, trying to persuade her to get in his car. When she refuses, Goodson grabs her, but suddenly a wind kicks up, knocking him away. Jasmine watches, amused, as Goodson seeks refuge inside his car amid giggling and unearthly, ethereal voices. She skips away happily.

Jack takes Gwen to see an old friend who is giving a talk on fairies. It turns out to be Estelle, who shows first the famous Cottingley Fairies photographs, and then the out-of-focus photographs she took the previous night. Gwen scoffs, but Jack watches intently. After the talk, Jack greets Estelle warmly, and asks her about the photographs. The two disagree about the nature of fairies — Estelle believes there are good ones, while Jack thinks they are all evil. Gwen ventures that someone's good might be some else's evil and Estelle remarks that Jack's "father" used to say the same thing. The three go back to Estelle's house to see the rest of her photographs.

Meanwhile, Goodson wanders into Cardiff Market, haunted by laughter and the fluttering of wings. Something invisible attacks him, and he finds himself choking on rose petals. He runs to a nearby police officer, seeking help, and when he tries to force his way into her vehicle, she arrests him.

At Estelle's, Jack examines her photographs while Estelle puts her cat, Moses, out. Gwen spots a faded black and white picture of Jack, in uniform, on the mantle. Jack dismisses it as a picture of his father, who was involved with Estelle during World War II before they lost touch. Gwen appears sceptical, however, and asks Estelle about Jack and his father, finding out that she has never met Jack and his father together, and that Jack contacted her just a few years before. Estelle remarks that Jack looks and acts exactly like his father. Jack comes out and asks Estelle to contact them immediately the next time she sees the creatures. He hugs her and gives her a kiss before he and Gwen leave.

Jack tells Gwen that the "fairies" do not really have a proper name. They are creatures from the dawn of time, not alien, but part of their world. Mankind has ascribed positive attributes to them, but they are dangerous, part myth, part spirit, part real all jumbled together, unbound by linear time.

Jasmine is back at home, and although Lynn, her mother, scolds her about walking home alone, Jasmine says that nothing can harm her. She goes to the bottom of the garden, among the trees, where she plays with her fairy friends.

At the hub, the team discuss fairies and the Cottingley Fairies pictures. Gwen is still sceptical, and points out that the Cottingley pictures were admitted hoaxes. Owen notes that Roundstone Woods has been considered bad luck for centuries, and Toshiko says she has had no reports of any sightings. Jack points out, however, that no technology of theirs can detect the creatures, but they play tricks with the weather. He asks Tosh to set up a programme to look for anomalous weather patterns.

Goodson is brought to the police station, ranting about something trying to kill him, and confesses to being a paedophile and demands to be locked up. He is placed in a cell. That evening, a monstrous fairy attacks him in his cell. He convulses and falls dead. When Tosh, Jack and Gwen arrive, they discover that Goodson died from asphyxiation, and Gwen pulls out rose petals from his throat.

Jack explains that the petals are the creatures' idea of fun, a warning to others that they protect their own: the Chosen Ones. They have to figure out who the fairies want, and he further adds they have control of the elements. At her house, Estelle hears a fluttering sound, and when she goes and checks, something stares at her from the bushes and her kitchen window shatters. She calls Jack on the telephone, but when she goes to find Moses, she finds herself locked out of her house. A sudden rainstorm occurs, pouring down at her exact position and nowhere else. By the time the Torchwood team arrive, Estelle has drowned, although the area around her is dry.

Seeing Jack's reaction to Estelle's death, Gwen deduces that it was not his father, but Jack himself who had a relationship with the old woman. Back at the Hub, Jack tells Gwen the story of how they met during the war. He also tells Gwen that he has seen the petals before, in Lahore in 1909. He had been in charge of a squad of men on a troop train. When they entered a tunnel, there was a fluttering of wings and everything went silent. When they emerged, only Jack was left alive, the others having choked on flower petals. A week before, some of the men had drunkenly run down a child in a village — a Chosen One.

Gwen returns home to find her flat ransacked, the floor strewn with branches, small stones arranged in a circle, and flower petals. Frightened, she calls Jack and demands to know what the Chosen Ones are. He tells her that the fairies were children once, taken from different points in time over millennia. They are now here to take their next Chosen One.

Jasmine goes to school, and is bullied by two girls. A sudden gale picks up, and sends the children running in a panic. The odd weather ends as quickly as it began, but is detected by Torchwood, and when they arrive, the children have been sent home. However, a teacher identifies Jasmine as the only girl who was unaffected by the wind.

Roy and Lynn are having their fifth anniversary party when Jasmine finds that Roy has erected a fence to keep her out of the back garden. When Jasmine protests, Roy tries to restrain her and gets bitten. He slaps her in response, and walks back to the party and Lynn. Roy is announcing their plans to have children of their own to the guests when there is a rumble in the heavens. This time, when the wind blows, the fairies show themselves in their monstrous forms, crashing through the fence and leaping down to attack Roy as Jasmine watches, smiling. The team arrives and rushes everyone else out. One fairy leaps on Roy, shoving its arm down his throat, drawing out his breath; another one attacks Jack, but Gwen shoves him aside and the fairy relents. The fairies return to the back garden, Jasmine following, as Roy lies dead, his mouth stuffed with petals.

Gwen and Jack follow Jasmine into the back garden. They try to persuade her to stay, and Jack tells the fairies to find someone else. The fairies reply that it is too late: the child belongs with them. If the humans force her to stay, many more people, potentially every living thing, will die. Jack realises that they mean to carry out this threat, and to Gwen's horror, seeks assurance that Jasmine will not be harmed. When the fairies confirm this, Jack agrees to let the fairies take Jasmine to save the world. Speaking with a fairy's voice, Jasmine thanks them and hops away, vanishing in the glow of her fairy friends. Lynn cries out as she sees her daughter leave and falls on Jack, weeping and beating his chest. Jack does not defend himself, but holds on to her and sorrowfully apologises. As the team leaves, they look at Jack accusingly. He asks them what else he could have done.

Back at the Hub, Gwen is sorting through the pictures in the case when a Cottingley Fairy photograph from 1917 appears on the board room monitor. Spotting something, she zooms in on the photograph until the face on one of the fairies becomes clearly visible. It is Jasmine, smiling out of the picture, frozen in mid-dance. As Gwen leaves, a fairy voice whispers:


 * ''"Come away, O human child!
 * ''To the waters and the wild
 * ''With a faery, hand in hand,
 * For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
 * (excerpt from "The Stolen Child", a poem by W. B. Yeats)