Torchwood: Miracle Day – episode seven review

“I will rip your skin from your skull before I let you take this from me,” said Captain Jack to Gwen.

Honestly, if this is the way they talk at work, I’d hate to see what they write in birthday cards to each other. I’m guessing, “Many happy returns. I’d like to jam a lit candle in your nasal cavity”.

Yes, it was the long, dark night of the soul for the Torchwood duo, he bound in the back of a car, she rheumy-eyed at the wheel following the kidnapping of her mum, Anwen and Rhys. Once the Miracle Day malarkey has been thoroughly dealt with, I think Jack and Gwen need to go on a team-building exercise. Raft-building or quad-bike trailing, maybe.

While this was going on, we also had a prolonged flashback to 1920s prohibition-era New York that was deliberately set up to look like a massive digression but which everyone knew wasn’t.

This Gay Godfather subplot saw Jack’s love interest, Angelo, mistaking him for the Devil and confusing foreplay with attempted murder. Jack getting knifed in the guts didn’t exactly put him in the mood for a night of hot sex, but being hogtied in a butcher’s basement while a mob became consumed by blood lust definitely put the tin hat on it.

In between the bouts of carnal desire, there was a brief runaround involving the police and a packing crate in a warehouse that contained an alien gribbly. This parasite appeared able to influence history by wrapping itself around a person’s cerebral cortex in the manner of the icky mind-controlling eels from Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan that ended up down Mr Chekov’s ear.

And speaking of all things Trek, who was that emerging from the car in the closing minutes? Only Major Kira Nerys from Deep Space Nine, who looks set to be joined next week by John “Q” de Lancie. You can’t beat a canny bit of sci-fi casting, can you? Now where are those Next Generation box sets of mine…