Adrift (TV story)

Adrift was the eleventh episode of Series 2 of Torchwood. It was written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Mark Everest, and featured prominent Welsh actress Ruth Jones of Gavin and Stacey fame. It was a Gwen-heavy plot that also featured a larger-than-normal role for PC Andy Davidson.

Synopsis
When a local teenager disappears, Gwen is drawn into an investigation that reveals a darker side of Torchwood. Hundreds of people have disappeared without a trace, but Jack is obstructing attempts to find them. The answer seems to lie in the rift — literally — and as Gwen follows the trail, she makes a shocking discovery.

Plot
Jonah Bevan is walking home across the Cardiff Bay Barrage when a bright light appears. Six seconds later he is gone. Seven months later, at the instigation of PC Andy Davidson, Gwen is investigating the disappearance of Jonah. Her research reveals there are more cases resembling Jonah's disappearance. Tosh discovers that these disappearances happened during a negative spike of rift activity, which were previously discarded as aftershock. Gwen then compiles a list of all missing persons and informs Jack. However, Jack tells Gwen that nothing can be done and orders her to stop the investigation, which she refuses to do.

The investigation slowly turns into an obsession and takes a toll on the relationship between Gwen and Rhys. The two have an argument when Rhys wants to discuss having kids and Gwen shuts down the subject, and he warns her that if she starts prioritising Torchwood over their personal lives then their marriage won't last very long. He tells her to deal with her work problems at work and not to bring them home. Returning to the Hub, Gwen interrupts Jack and Ianto during a sexual encounter and, after apologising, tells Jack that she wants to continue the investigation. Jack sternly refuses, but Ianto secretly gives Gwen a GPS device with coordinates to a hidden location, leading Gwen to a facility on Flat Holm. It harbours 17 of the missing people that the rift took and subsequently brought back, including Jonah, the boy she has been looking for. However, he has aged 40 years and is very deformed. Gwen also finds Jack there, and she demands access to Jonah. Jonah tells how he was stuck on a "burning planet" and how he was taken into a building that was actually a rescue craft, from which he witnessed the burning of a solar system. Afterwards, Jack reveals that he set up the facility when he first took command of Torchwood, in order to care for the victims of the rift, who had previously been locked away in the vaults.

Gwen brings Nikki, Jonah's mother, in to see him under the supervision of a facility staff member. At first she is horrified, believing it to be a cruel joke, but Jonah starts telling her things that only he would know. Nikki calms and they hug for a moment, but when Jonah tells the staff member with growing distress that he can feel "it" starting up, she urgently tells Nikki to get away from him. She resists and says that she can take care of him. However Jonah starts screaming, a scream so horrible that everyone flees. Gwen reveals that the scream lasts for 20 hours every day because he looked into the heart of a dark star, which drove him insane.

A week later, Gwen goes to see Nikki, who implores her not to show the island to anyone else. She states that it would have been better for her to have remembered her son as he was, rather than to know of his true fate. Gwen takes down her notes over the missing. Nikki packs up Jonah's room and, knowing he can never return home, breaks down into sobs. At home that night, Gwen prepares a romantic candle-lit dinner for Rhys and promises to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. Rhys however realises that she is shouldering a massive heartbreak and instead lets her cry into his chest. Going back on his earlier stance, he asks her to tell him what happened and she starts to tell him about Jonah.

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
 * PC Andy - Tom Price
 * Nikki - Ruth Jones
 * Jonah - Robert Pugh
 * Young Jonah - Oliver Ferriman
 * Helen - Lorna Gayle

Uncredited Cast

 * Flat Holm Nurse - Chester Durrant
 * Dweller - Philippa Burt

Worldbuilding

 * Positive rift emissions indicate the Cardiff rift depositing people, things, and objects in Cardiff.
 * Nikki Bevan lives at Number 14 Cliffs Rise, Penarth.
 * Big Dave is a friend of Rhys.
 * Caroline Hall was born on 16 April 1972.
 * Alice Devlin was born on 5 October 1972.
 * Saeed Taufeeq was born on 25 February 1978.
 * Jonah Bevan was born on 15 February 1993.
 * Andy quotes from Field of Dreams.

Story notes

 * This episode aired 10 minutes after the BBC Two repeat of From Out of the Rain at 10:00pm on BBC Three; and was repeated on BBC Two in its usual 9:00pm timeslot two days later, on Good Friday 21 March 2008.
 * A family friendly pre-watershed edit of this episode aired at 7:00pm, four days later, on Tuesday 25 March 2008 on BBC Two.
 * Jonah Bevan is mentioned as being fifteen years old and born on 15 February 1993, placing the story in 2008 or 2009. The first meeting of the missing persons support group Searchlight is on a Monday 27th. The only Monday 27th before Jonah's 16th birthday is on 27 October 2008. This clashes with and contradicts dates given in several other stories.
 * The episode took up Block Seven of season two. Filming was "double banked" with Block Five, which consisted of From Out of the Rain and Fragments. This accounted for the lack of availability of some of the regular cast members.
 * Discussing the premise of the story, Chris Chibnall states that "the issue of loss" is what drives the narrative and that he had "always wanted to write a story about people who go missing".
 * Mark Everest noted that "people go missing all the time" and that to tackle this theme was "a brave thing to do".
 * Russell T Davies felt it provided good drama to have a story that would also examine elements of "paranoia" and "fear" and "mistrust" between Gwen and Jack as result of her realising she does not know the full extent of his work within Torchwood.
 * Russell T Davies later stated in The Writer's Tale that this was one of the scripts that "paved the way" for Torchwood: Children of Earth; his intention being to write Torchwood characters as "real people" with "families, feuds, aches and pains".
 * The episode underwent less rewriting than any other script from the first two series with the final version being essentially a second draft.
 * Gwen was initially referred to by her husband's surname, Williams, but Eve Myles vetoed this idea as she believed that an independent professional woman would want to keep her maiden name.
 * A change made in the editing of the episode was the cutting of a short scene hinting at a possible romance between Nikki and Andy. This scene is included in the deleted scenes included in the series two boxset
 * Ruth Jones stated that she was both "excited" and "scared" to appear in the series as it was "a very serious role" and comedy had previously been her "comfort zone".
 * Richard Stokes estimated that Robert Pugh had to spend between two and two and a half hours in make-up in addition to a twelve-hour filming day to have prosthetics applied to create the appearance of scarring. Ruth Jones found the prosthetics to be "absolutely fantastic" and "very gruesome".
 * The reveal of Jonah's Scream was initially going to be a wholly alien effect with Robert Pugh just miming on set. However, Pugh was keen to give the scream a go. Mark Everest states that in the final dub the scream was "tweaked" and "layers were added" although stated that the fundamental basis of it was Pugh "screaming his lungs out".
 * Discussing the return of Andy, Richard Stokes stated that it was always the plan for the production team to give the character greater focus in an episode due to his "comic value", whilst Eve Myles had joked it was her "personal mission" to get the character back.
 * As Flat Holm Island does not allow vehicular access, the production team were restricted in the filming equipment they could take on to the island.

Ratings

 * 2.5 million BBC Two viewers, with an AI of 87%
 * 0.972 million BBC Three viewers
 * 3.49 million viewers

Filming locations

 * The Island seen in this episode is Flat Holm (Ynys Echni), 5 miles off the coast of Cardiff. Although the facility seen in Adrift is, of course, fictional, Flat Holm was for some years in fact the site of a similar "isolation hospital".
 * Llwyn Passat, Penarth Marina

Myths

 * The rift took Jonah into the Last Great Time War, and the man who saved him was the Doctor with the TARDIS acting as a rescue craft. This was never confirmed in the dialogue.

Production errors
to be added

Continuity

 * Gwen asks Andy why he missed her wedding to Rhys. (TV: Something Borrowed)
 * Andy says that Gwen was different before she joined Torchwood. (TV: Everything Changes)
 * Gwen asks Jack if he would take the chance to reconnect with a lost loved one. (TV: Adam)

Home video releases

 * , along with the rest of series 2, was released in a complete series box set in 2008.
 * It was also released in the Series 1-4 boxset (Region 2 release: 14 November 2011.)