'Everything Changes' by Russell T Davies

While attending the site of a violent murder, Woman Police Constable Gwen Cooper encounters a mysterious Black Ops organisation known as Torchwood. Striding purposefully through the police presence, the four operatives dismiss the forensics team and take over the crime scene. Gwen’s interest is immediately piqued; having found a vantage point in a neighbouring multi-story car park, she looks on in amazement as one of the team uses a high-tech glove to resurrect the man’s corpse for two minutes so that her team members can question him as to the identity of his murderer. However, the victim, John Tucker, is unable to provide any information because he was stabbed in the back, and as his life ebbs away, he is comforted by the team’s leader, one “Captain Jack Harkness”. Gwen is intrigued, and cannot get the evening’s events out of her mind, even after returning home to her loving boyfriend, Rhys. The following day, Gwen and her partner, Police Constable Andy, are sent to break up a pub brawl; in the scuffle, Gwen bangs her head, and is sent to hospital for a check up; while there, she catches sight of a familiar figure running up a staircase: Jack Harkness. Setting off in pursuit, Gwen arrives at a sealed off section of the hospital, where she finds a man dressed in black leather, apparently wearing a monster mask; however, the creature is real, and it viciously attacks a hospital porter; as Jack appears and rushes Gwen to safety, the Torchwood team step in and subdue the monster. After Jack and his colleagues speed off in a black van, Gwen gives chase, following the vehicle to Cardiff’s Millennium Centre, where the Ops team apparently vanish into thin air. Gwen continues her investigations, only to learn that the murder at the hospital has been covered up, and that official records show only one Captain Jack Harkness: an American volunteer in the Royal Air Force who was declared missing, presumed dead back in 1941. Refusing to give up, Gwen returns to the Millennium Centre, and sees a motorcycle courier delivering pizza; following the lead, Gwen learns from the boy at ‘Jubilee Pizza’ that Torchwood is a regular customer, and so, with pizzas in hand, she heads for the address given, a Tourist Information centre. Inside, the receptionist shows Gwen to a hidden lift, which takes the intrepid policewoman down into a huge, underground complex known as ‘The Hub’ situated under the Millennium Centre. Amongst the high-tech equipment, strange, unearthly artefacts and a living pterodactyl, Gwen meets Captain Jack, who introduces the Torchwood team: second-in-command and hardware specialist Suzie Costello; technologist Toshiko Sato; medic Owen Harper; and receptionist-administrator Ianto Jones. Jack then shows Gwen to the cells, where the creature she saw at the hospital is being held; the monster is a ‘Weevil’, one of two hundred such aliens that infest the sewers below the city. After heading up to street level via a special platform lift equipped with a perception filter [caused when the Doctor’s TARDIS materialised on the pavement and interacted with a dimensional rift – see ‘Doctor Who’ – ‘Bad Wolf’], Jack takes Gwen to a bar, where he explains that Torchwood’s remit is to defend the Earth from alien threat, using salvaged extraterrestrial technology that has been washed up by the dimensional rift running beneath the city. Their base in Cardiff is ‘Torchwood Three’ – ‘Torchwood One’ in London was recently destroyed [see ‘Doctor Who’ – ‘Army of Ghosts’ and ‘Doomsday’], ‘Torchwood Two’ is based in Glasgow, while ‘Torchwood Four’ disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Gwen’s suspicions of Jack’s motives for revealing all are confirmed when she learns that he has spiked her drink with an amnesia pill; she immediately races home and begins typing up everything on her computer, but as her memory start to fade, Ianto remotely accesses the machine and deletes the file. That night, the rest of the Torchwood team disobey Jack’s orders and take items of alien tech home for their own use; Owen uses a pheromone spray to pull an attractive girl – and then her boyfriend; Tosh uses a scanner to transfer the entire contents of a Dickens novel to her computer in seconds; while Suzie resurrects a dead fly with her glove. The next day, Gwen awakes with no recollection of the events of the previous night; however, when she returns to work and sees the police notes on the recent murder victims, the reconstructed image of the murder weapon – an evil-looking blade – triggers a memory… Later, at home, Gwen finds that she has written “Remember” on a book about the Millennium Centre; she makes for the building, only to be met by Suzie, who pulls a gun on her. Too late, Gwen realises where she saw the knife: it was on Suzie's desk, reflected in her welding visor. It seems that Suzie has become obsessed with the alien glove, and has been deliberately killing people so that she can hone the device’s abilities; but with her illegal actions now exposed, Suzie realises that she has no option but to kill Gwen and then run. Jack arrives via the pavement lift, but Suzie sees through the perception barrier, and shoots her leader in the forehead, an action that shocks Gwen into remember everything. As Suzie prepares to shoot the policewoman, Jack rises to his feet, his wound inexplicably healing itself. Realising she has no choice, Suzie turns the gun on herself. Some time later, after Ianto has secured the glove and knife, Tosh and Owen have returned their purloined alien tech, and Suzie’s body has been placed in the morgue, Jack joins Gwen on the room of the Centre. After confiding that he can never die [see the events of ‘Doctor Who’ – ‘The Parting of the Ways’], Jack astonishes Gwen by offering her a job. Seeing the opportunity to make a difference, Gwen accepts.

John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Naoko Mori (Toshiko Sato), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Indira Varma (Suzie Costello), Guy Lews (Young Cop), Tom Price (P.C. Andy), Jason May (Solo), Rhys Swinburn (Body [John Tucker]), Olwen Medi (Yvonne), Gwyn Vaughan-Jones (Detective Inspector Jacobs), Dion Davis (Officer), Jams Thomas (Hospital Porter), Paul Kasey (Weevil), Mark Heal (Security Guard), Guy Shepheard (Pizza Lad), Gwilym Havard Davies (Man), Cathryn Davies (Woman)

Directed by Brian Kelly
Produced by Richard Stokes
Executive Producers Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC3):
Sunday 22nd October 2006 @ 9.00 pm
(BBC2 TX: Wednesday 25th October @ 9.00 pm)

Notes:
*Featuring Captain Jack Harkness and Toshiko Sato, and introducing Suzie Costello, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper

*This episode premiered on BBC 3, in a double bill with episode 2, 'Day One'; the two episodes were subsequently transmitted together on BBC 2 on Wednesday 25th October

*Only one cast list was used, at the end of 'Day One', which combined the details for both episodes

*Working title: 'Flotsam and Jetsam'