Fragments (TV story)

Fragments was the twelfth episode in the second series of Torchwood. It is notable for its narrative structure of flashbacks joined by then-present action allowing it to establish histories for each of the principle characters.

Synopsis
A booby-trapped building explodes and knocks the Torchwood team unconscious. As each team member's life flashes before their eyes, there are a series of flashbacks for all of the main characters (except Gwen); Captain Jack was initiated into a Victorian Torchwood in 1899; Toshiko went on a mission to trade alien technology for her mother's life; Ianto wooed Jack with coffee and a flair for alien-catching; and Owen lost his normal life to an alien inside his fiancée's brain.

Plot
The Torchwood team, minus Gwen, investigate a derelict building and are caught up in a trap as it explodes. The quartet experience flashbacks about their origins with the alien-fighting organisation.

Captain Jack Harkness (1,392 deaths earlier)
Captain Jack is picked up by the all-female Torchwood in Victorian times once they become aware of his immortality. They torture him in order to extract information about the Doctor, to no avail, but soon decide to enlist him as an agent. After many decades pass, Jack discovers that one of his colleagues has murdered everyone else in the Hub because of his fear of the new Millennium and the horrors it may hold.

Toshiko Sato (5 years earlier)
Toshiko joins Torchwood after Jack finds her in a top secret prison because she leaked information from her Ministry Of Defence job to a vicious gang holding her mother captive. UNIT then raid the building and take Tosh, Milton and her henchmen off to a secret prison. Tosh is released by Jack and told that she will be kept there forever however Jack is impressed by her ability to assemble a sonic modulator despite flawed instructions and ensures she is released and given a pardon once she accepts the Torchwood job.

Ianto Jones (21 months earlier)
Ianto harasses Jack for a job following the demise of Torchwood One, where he initially worked. Helping Jack fight off a Weevil and repeatedly praising his coat doesn't work at first, but the pair successfully capture a pterodactyl together - with the help of some chocolate - and Ianto is enlisted.

Owen Harper (4 years earlier)
Owen encounters Jack when he bursts into a hospital room after an attempt of brain surgery on Owen's ailing fiancée Katie. Despite warnings from Torchwood, the surgeon tried to remove an alien from Katie's brain. When the alien lifeform was threatened, it emitted a toxic gas killing all the humans in the operational room. Jack arrived too late. After explaining the situation to Owen, Jack knocks him out. Owen wakes up to discover a massive cover up. He encounters Jack when visiting Katie's grave and, after a fight, agrees to join Torchwood as a medic.

Back in the present, Gwen and Rhys help to pull everyone from the debris in the building. However, Jack receives a hologram message from John Hart in which he claims responsibility for the bombs and claims to have taken Jack's brother Gray captive.

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
 * Alice Guppy — Amy Manson
 * Emily Holroyd — Heather Craney
 * Little Girl - Skye Bennett
 * Alex Hopkins — Julian Lewis Jones
 * Toshiko's Mother — Noriko Aida
 * Bob — Simon Shackleton
 * Milton — Clare Clifford
 * Katie Russell — Andrea Lowe
 * Jim Garrett — Richard Lloyd-King
 * Weevil - Paul Kasey
 * Blowfish — Paul Kasey
 * Captain John Hart - James Marsters (uncredited)

Story notes

 * The Doctor is named explicitly for the first time in the series.
 * Alex's last words to Jack are a variation of the "the 21st century is when everything changes..." monologue from the start of every Torchwood episode. Jack also uttered the phrase to the Tenth Doctor in DW: Last of the Time Lords.

Ratings
to be added

Myths
to be added

Filming locations

 * Caerwent Millitary Training Area

Production errors

 * In one scene of Jack's flashback the Doctor's hand jar is visible even though it is years before it is cut off. Not an error, as Jack probably had the jar for years before the Doctor's hand was cut off.

Continuity

 * A Blowfish appears in a flashback; one last appeared in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. As it happens, while the Blowfish in this episode is murdered by a Torchwood agent while Jack watches, in the previous appearance it is Jack shown shooting one (although in defence of others, not as murder).
 * Captain John Hart is behind the bomb attack, he last appeared in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.
 * Gray is seen in a hologram, he was last seen (in a flashback as a child) in Adam.
 * The tarot card reading girl appears in a flashback, she was last seen in Dead Man Walking, except in the modern day. Here she predicts that "two turns of the century" will pass before Jack finally meets up with the Doctor again, an event that occurs in DW: Utopia. The nature of this girl, including why she appears in two different time periods, has yet to be revealed. One of her tarot cards includes an image of Jack.
 * When Jack begins to work with Torchwood, they know of the Tenth Doctor based on events in DW: Tooth and Claw.
 * The flashbacks showing Torchwood in the period 1890s-2000 depict its cold, manipulative ways as seen in DW: Army of Ghosts, et al. Jack mentions on several occasions how he wants to turn it into an organization that helps people; it is suggested that the cold-blooded killing of the blowfish by an early Torchwood operative might have been one of the inspirations for this.
 * Jack, upon meeting Ianto for the second time, references his girlfriend, Lisa Hallet; to which Ianto replies deceased.
 * UNIT is referenced, although it is depicted as a somewhat malevolent organization, in contrast to previous depictions in Doctor Who. Jack suggests it may be due to the current political climate of the day; a reference to the internment camp at Guantanimo Bay in DW: The Sontaran Stratagem and a reference to a war in Iraq in TW: To the Last Man suggest an event or events similar to 9/11 and War on Terror occur in the Doctor Who/Torchwood universe.
 * The killing of the blowfish alien parallels Jack's killing of a similar creature in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (although in the latter case it wasn't cold-blooded).
 * The events surrounding Alex's killing of the Torchwood 3 team are current with the events surrounding the "birth" of the Eighth Doctor and his battle with the Master as seen in the 1996 telefilm.
 * Jack indicates that he was on Earth following the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. Unknown to Jack, however, the impact was actually caused by a freighter in a failed attempt by the Cybermen to change Earth history (DW: Earthshock)
 * First appearance of UNIT soldiers or a UNIT facility in the series. In fact, since UNIT's involvement in DW: Aliens of London/World War Three and The Christmas Invasion was in the background (mostly confined to verbal references), this is actually the first major appearance of the organization since 1989's Battlefield, as it predates the organization's return in The Sontaran Stratagem.
 * Alex says, "The 21st century Jack, everythings gonna change." This is a reference to the start of aliens getting involved in human life. The Torchwood premiere (TW: Everything Changes) is depiction to this factor when Captain Jack says "The 21st century is where everything changes, and you've got to be ready".
 * The 31 December 1999 sequences takes place contemporaneously with MA: Millennial Rites, DWM: Plastic Millenium, DW: Doctor Who (1996) and BFIW: The Panda Invasion.

DVD releases

 * This story, along with the rest of Torchwood Series 2, has been released in a complete series boxset.