'Fragments' by Chris Chibnall

Tracking a non-human energy pattern, Jack, Owen, Toshiko and Ianto investigate a disused warehouse – only to find that the building has been booby-trapped with explosives. Before the team can react, the bombs reach the end of their countdown and explode… Meanwhile, Gwen awakes in bed to find that she has slept through a call from her teammates; picking up her voicemail, she immediately rushes off to help. Back at the warehouse, the Torchwood team regain consciousness and find themselves trapped beneath the rubble of the destroyed building; as they struggle to get free, moments from their lives flash before their eyes…

Jack relives the moment in Victorian Cardiff in 1899 when he was conscripted into Torchwood: coming back to life in an alleyway after a drunken brawl, Jack was promptly kidnapped by two women, Alice and Emily, and taken to a holding cell for experimentation using alien tech and old-fashioned guns. The two women were agents of Torchwood, interested in Jack’s apparent immortality and his talk of searching for “The Doctor”, the person their clandestine organisation was founded to deal with. Having coerced Jack into a paid assignment to bring in a rogue alien blowfish, Alice and Emily offered him a job with Torchwood, but even though he needed the money, Jack declined; however, after meeting a strange girl whose tarot reading foresaw many years would pass before he would find the Doctor, Jack decided to bite the bullet and join Torchwood. Many years later, at the end of the century, Jack returned to the Hub as the Millennium countdown began only to discover that his commander, Alex, had slaughtered every one of his teammates in cold blood. Jack was horrified at the deaths of his friends, unable to comprehend Alex’s explanation that he carried out the mercy killings to save everyone from “the coming storm”. Bequeathing command of Torchwood Three to Jack, Alex then raised his gun and blew his brains out…

Toshiko recalls the time when she was working for Lodmoor Research Facility: working late one night, she sneaked past the centre’s security guards and gained access to its records room to steal the schematics for a sonic modulator. Taking the plans home, Tosh built the alien device from her own components and then took it to an arms dealer in order to trade it for the release of her mother, who was being held hostage. Seeing a means to make a fortune, the dealer refused to let Tosh’s mother go, and was in the process of turning the device onto her victims when the building was overrun by U.N.I.T. soldiers. Tosh was arrested and taken to a U.N.I.T. facility cell, where she was held for ages – until the arrival of one Captain Jack Harkness. Impressed with Tosh’s technological prowess, Jack offered her a pardon if she came to work for him at Torchwood…

Ianto remembers when he first met Jack: after saving the enigmatic captain from an attack by a Weevil, Ianto asked Jack for a job at Torchwood. However, Jack refused, wanting nothing to do with anyone who worked for Torchwood London. Ianto continued to stalk Jack over the next few weeks, and eventually persuaded him to help bring in a pterodactyl, which he had trapped inside an old warehouse. Impressed with Ianto’s determination, his coffee and his flirting, Jack finally relented and gave him a job at Torchwood Cardiff…

Owen relives his last days with his fiancée, Katie, as they made plans for their wedding. When Katie began experiencing problems with her memory, Owen and his colleague, Doctor Jim Garrett, suspected that she had Alzheimer’s disease; however, an M.R.I. scan soon showed the real problem: a tumour had inexplicably appeared in her brain. Jim agreed to perform an operation to save Katie, but the procedure had tragic consequences: an alien creature was incubating inside Katie’s brain, and the operation triggered its self-defence mechanism, making it release a toxic gas that instantly killed everyone around it. Captain Jack appeared on the scene, chloroforming Owen before taking the creature away. When Owen came to he found himself lying in a hospital bed, and that recent events had been covered up: Katie supposedly died on the operating table, Jim was killed in a car accident, and no trace of Jack could be found on CCTV records. Believing he had suffered a mental breakdown, Owen was later vindicated when he saw Jack near Katie’s gravestone; after striking Jack down in anger, Owen accepted his offer to become Torchwood’s medical officer, to save others from alien threats.

Arriving at the warehouse, Gwen and Rhys set about freeing Jack, Ianto, Owen and Tosh from the rubble. As the team wearily emerge from the remains of the demolished building, Jack receives a message on his wrist communicator: his former partner, Captain John, is still furious at being spurned, and it was he who set the bombs to kill Jack and his team. With Jack’s long lost brother, Gray, now his prisoner, John spitefully declares that he is going to tear Jack’s world apart…

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), Amy Manson (Alice Guppy), Heather Craney (Emily Holroyd), Paul Kasey (Blowfish / Weevil), Skye Bennett (Little Girl), Julian Lewis Jones (Alex Hopkins), Simon Shakleton (Bob), Gareth Jones (Security Guard), Claire Gifford (Milton), Noriko Aida (Toshiko's Mother), Andrea Lowe (Katie Russell), Richard Lloyd-King (Doctor Jim Garrett), Catherine Morris (Nurse), Selva Rasalingham (Psychiatrist)

Directed by Jonathan Fox Bassett
Produced by Richard Stokes
Executive Producers Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC3):
21st March 2008 @ 10.30 pm

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

*Working title: 'Blast From the Past'

*First appearance of Torchwood operatives Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd, and Alex Hopkins (surname taken from the BBC's Torchwood website)

*This story premiered on BBC 3, after the transmission of the previous episode, 'Adrift', on BBC2 (on Good Friday); it was then repeated on BBC2 on 28th March 2008 at 9.00 pm, and as a specially-edited pre-watershed version the following Tuesday, on BBC2 at 7.00 pm