'Something Borrowed' by Phil Ford

Friday night: Gwen tracks an alien shapeshifter with a taste for human flesh through the streets of Cardiff; cornered, the creature attacks Gwen and bites her arm, only to be gunned down as Jack comes to the rescue. Ignoring her injury, Gwen rushes off to the bar where her friends are throwing her a hen night party complete with male stripper…

Saturday morning: Gwen wakes up on her wedding day nursing a grim hangover – and finds that somehow she is now very, very pregnant…

Responding to Gwen’s frantic call, Owen and Jack arrive at her flat and realise the shapeshifter has passed its egg onto her through its bite; although Gwen looks almost full-term, she is in fact carrying a non-sentient blastopheric mass. When Owen proposes a two-day treatment course back at the Hub, Gwen flatly refuses – she is getting married to Rhys in five hours, and the egg will have to wait until after the ceremony. While Gwen phones Rhys - who is recovering from his stag night with his best man, Banana Boat - to tell him her news, Jack instructs Owen to conduct an autopsy on the shapeshifter, orders Toshiko to keep an eye on Gwen, and sends Ianto shopping for a bigger wedding dress for the bride… Rhys is furious at his fiancé’s spontaneous pregnancy, blaming her predicament on Torchwood; he suggests calling off the wedding, but Gwen is adamant that they will get married that day. After breaking Gwen’s news to both sets of parents, with the aid of a few little white lies, Gwen and Rhys check in to the hotel where their wedding is being held. Back at the Hub, Owen identifies the shapeshifter as a particularly nasty alien called a Nostravite; Jack is concerned, knowing that the creature’s mate will now be looking for its offspring… Arriving at the hotel, Tosh sees off Banana’s clumsy advances and then presents Gwen with her new wedding dress. In the bar the D.J., Melvyn, has been chatting up one of the guests, a mysterious, attractive brunette; when he pins a corsage to her dress, he draws blood, but the woman shrugs off the incident and takes him back to her room. Seeing that the spilled blood is black in colour, Tosh realises that the woman is the second Nostravite, and she immediately sets off in pursuit with Banana in tow; however, Tosh is too late to prevent the creature from killing and devouring her victim; the shapeshifter easily overpowers Tosh and Banana, imprisoning them together in a sticky black web. After trying on her dress with her mother, Gwen tries telling her father about Torchwood, aliens, and her baby’s true origin, but he just puts her incredible story down to stress. Packing up the Singularity Scalpel, Owen joins Jack and Ianto as they speed to the wedding in Torchwood’s SUV. The wedding begins, and Gwen’s father escorts his daughter down the aisle, past their relatives, friends – and the Nostravite. Gwen joins Rhys before the Registrar and the ceremony begins – only to be rudely interrupted by the arrival of Jack, who stops the wedding; Rhys is furious, and is about to punch Jack when he learns of the threat of the alien stalker. Locating Tosh via the signal from her phone, Owen and Ianto release their colleague and her unwanted suitor; unfortunately, one of the bridesmaids follows them into the room, and on seeing Melvyn’s half-eaten corpse, she bursts into hysterics and rushes back to the hall to tell everyone what she has seen. As events spiral out of control, Jack and Tosh try to calm the situation, but they only make things worse when they open fire on the Nostravite; however, the alien shrugs off the attack, jumps through a glass window and escapes into the grounds. Posing as Rhy’s mother, Brenda, the shapeshifter tries taking Gwen’s mother hostage, but Gwen calmly pulls out a gun from behind her bouquet and pumps the Nostravite full of bullets, forcing it to flee. With his damaged hand preventing him from using the alien scalpel, Owen shows Rhys how to use the device. Gwen receives a visit from Jack – only to find it is the Nostravite in disguise; while Rhys leads Gwen to safety, Owen proceeds to shoot the hell out of the alien, but even after dozens of bullets, the creature still survives, and, uninterested in Owen’s dead body, it sets off in pursuit of Gwen and its baby. Locking himself and Gwen inside a barn, Owen prepares to use the scalpel as the Nostravite begins breaking down the doors; after successfully using the hazardous device to destroy the life-form inside Gwen, Rhys grabs a chainsaw and prepares to take on the Nostravite, but the device stalls; as the enraged monster closes in, Jack arrives in the nick of time blows the creature to pieces with an extremely large gun. The wedding finally takes place, and Gwen Elizabeth Cooper becomes Mrs Rhys Alun Williams, to tumultuous applause. That evening, Mr and Mrs Williams enjoy their Reception party, dancing the night away on the dance floor. Jack eventually cuts in for a dance with Gwen, telling her that he will miss her while she is on honeymoon, and that Rhys is a lucky man. As the party comes to an end, everyone except for Gwen, Rhys and Torchwood pass out – Jack has retconned the guests so that they will not remember the exact events of the day. As Gwen and Rhys head up to their honeymoon suite, Jack and his team begin a mop up operation….

Some time later, Jack returns to the Hub in a melancholic mood; pulling out an old box from his desk, he looks through some old photographs of himself – including one of him and his wife…

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), Nerys Hughes (Brenda), Sharon Morgan (Mary), William Thomas (Geraint), Robin Griffith (Barry), Collette Brown (Varrie), Danielle Henry (Megan), Ceri Ann Gregory (Tricia), Jonathan Lewis Owen (Banana Boat), Morgan Hopkins (Mervyn), Valerie Murray (Registrar), Pethrow Gooden (Shop Assistant)

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

TX (BBC3):
5th March 2008 @ 9.50 pm

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

*This story premiered on BBC 3, immediately after the transmission of the previous episode, 'A Day in the Death', on BBC2; it was then repeated in the usual timeslot on BBC2 on 12th March 2008 at 9.00 pm, and as a specially-edited pre-watershed version the next day, on BBC2 at 7.00 pm