Torchwood Declassified (2006) s01e02 Episode Script
Bad Day at the Office
Camera.
Gwen is an incredibly exciting character for me to play.
Yes! She's feisty, she's bold, she's exciting, she's sexy.
Well, sexy-ish.
I'll sort it.
She's got feelings.
When I was with her in the cell, Carys told me she was losing.
We have a trapped girl and we have to save her.
She's instinctive, she's passionate, she's interested in people.
Gwen brings in a little bit of soul.
You are brilliant.
There's an instant connection with Gwen and Jack, from the first moment that Jack sees her spying over onto the dead body.
She's inquisitive and she's trying to find out things about the group.
That's why she spies on them.
And that's what leads Jack to think they could be part of Torchwood.
What do you think? He tells her everything about Torchwood.
He doesn't need to do any of this.
But he's doing it because he's testing her.
What does Jack do? He takes her straight down to see the Weevil.
And he's like, ''Here, can you manage this? ''Here, can you manage that?'' If Gwen had gone down and screamed and fainted, she'd never be in Torchwood.
She's so strong underneath it all.
I think the rest of us, on our first day in Torchwood, would buckle and say, ''I don't understand,'' or run away screaming.
We'd have run away screaming in Episode 1.
In Episode 2, she's got to go through a bit of pain and suffering.
She's got to know She's got to be tested, actually.
-Who the hell are you? -I'm with Torchwood.
Don't mess with me, little girl.
You're not with Torchwood.
Really, the idea behind the episode was ''Your first day from hell'', extending the metaphor of breaking the photocopier on your first day at work.
But, actually, what she does is a very tiny thing.
She throws a chisel.
-Catch.
-Don't! But then the ramifications of that and the way the story spreads out is enormous, and it's about showing that Torchwood isn't like any other job.
You make one mistake and it affects the whole city.
She's made a mistake.
She didn't run out crying about it.
She didn't think, ''Oh, God, I give up.
'' -GWEN: I'm so sorry.
-Seriously, stop saying that.
But I am.
I mean, really I mean, really, really sorry.
She apologises and she realises it's her fault.
-This has been the worst first day ever.
-We all make mistakes.
And she gets on with it and she goes on the hunt.
She comes in, she deals with the families, she deals with profiling, she deals with searching people's backgrounds.
You know, she brings all that into it.
It's a new aspect, it's a new way of working, that she brings in.
The rest of them are full of the alienness of the world, and the technology and the science and the background and the mythology of it all.
And, actually, she's there for the people.
She's the person who cares about Carys' dad.
She's the person who cares about Carys.
MAN: Here we go now.
Three, two, one, go.
Help me.
She's in this cell, trying to deal with this poor young girl.
Please get it out of me.
And then she gets her face snogged off and her boobies fondled.
Sarah Gregory and myself talked about it beforehand, and we discussed that she was Johnny Depp and I was Brad Pitt.
And it looks pretty horny, if I do say so myself.
Wow.
-We should really get her out of there.
-Yeah.
And in every episode, you'll see something new.
Something will unravel with Gwen.
And she's learning every day.
It's like she's always been there, and it's like there's nowhere else she should be.
This is exactly where she belongs, in Torchwood.
When we're launching a new adult science-fiction drama, it's kind of inevitable that you're gonna do the sex monster.
Right from the start, actually, there will be something that got down and dirty.
That's Chris Chibnall.
That's what he came up with.
A sex-gas, orgasm-eating monster.
How could you not watch that? What a brilliant bit of telly.
I genuinely have no idea where that came from.
It's one of those that you're sitting there, late at night, with a glass of wine, thinking, ''How am I gonna find an idea for this show?'' And not knowing quite what the show was.
And you think, ''What's the cheekiest, funniest idea, in a way, ''that might then give you a dramatic story?'' It's not just having a laugh with a sex monster.
It does explore exactly what we want to get into with Torchwood, which is one of my favourite scenes, is Carys, possessed, walking, daytime, down that city street, where she sees that sex is everywhere.
Every advert, a couple snogging in the streets.
But the way we're sold images and sex So it's having something to say about the world, about the Western world, what a sexualised society we are.
And to find an alien that feeds off that, actually, and finds us extraordinary for it.
Finds us worth travelling to.
And it's a nice Torchwood story, I'd say.
It has something to say about the world.
Only a few months ago, this was just an empty warehouse that we were yet to convert into a film studio.
And we saw this white cardboard model of the Hub.
One of the things that helped us to arrive at the design was to give it a big back-story, just to help us make design decisions about what should go where, the idea being that the base was originally built in the 1 9th century, sometime after the Scottish Torchwood that we saw in Doctor Who Episode 2.
And the next thing we knew, this whole studio was having huge scaffolding being put up and the thing was being made.
Edward Thomas, production designer.
Welcome to the Hub.
This is the main entrance to the Hub.
As you can see, we've got 1 05 stairs that bring us down the four storeys that lead down the concrete tunnel into the Hub.
This is a lift access that the characters often use.
The big copper roll door.
''Made in Wales'', very important.
We come through the secondary security gates and we've got the main body of the Hub itself, which is supposedly deep below the Millennium Square in Cardiff.
And it's all practical.
Water runs down it.
And we're able to flood the entire base of the Hub.
We've got the emergency exit lift here, which is the hydraulic lift that the characters use to escape the Hub in case of emergency or in need of surprise.
We're in the old railway tunnel of the Hub, the railway tunnel which linked Glasgow, London and Cardiff.
So then we come into cold storage one to six, the Autopsy Room.
This is where they hold the bodies temporarily before moving them onto the morgue set that we have.
Cold storage cupboards, for where they keep the bodies.
Into Captain Jack's office.
Slightly more period in here, with Jack being from the '40s.
Down here is his living accommodation.
This is the safe, where they store all their alien technology.
Then we go through to the Interrogation Room.
This is where they bring the prisoners to talk to them and beat the information out of them.
And we've raised the walls very high so that we really get the feeling that we are very low in the set.
This is the boardroom.
This has got an art deco feel to it.
They eat in here, they talk in here, have meetings in here.
Captain Jack stands and views his empire from here.
And that's the Torchwood Hub.
Let's see if we can move off the high -So take a shot.
-54, take 1 .
It's absolutely fantastic.
It's the best set I've ever been on.
And look at it.
It's just breathtaking.
I've been on this set 1 00 times, and every time you come on, you notice something different.
I don't think you ever get fed up of it.
There's so many different angles, and every director comes on and shoots it in a different way.
As you can see, there's loads of space.
There's loads of places to be.
So I think the biggest problem we have on this set, actually, is being spoiled for choice.
There are certain wide shots, like in Episode 4, where you're like, ''Oh, God, I've never seen that before.
'' There's a lot of angles still to be discovered.
If you've only seen the first couple of episodes, you still haven't seen half of this Hub.
Episode 3 coming up.
I love Episode 3.
It's fast, it's furious and it's incredibly dark.
And it's really creepy.
Torchwood members start looking for revenge.
You never escape the things that happened 40 years ago.
No!
Gwen is an incredibly exciting character for me to play.
Yes! She's feisty, she's bold, she's exciting, she's sexy.
Well, sexy-ish.
I'll sort it.
She's got feelings.
When I was with her in the cell, Carys told me she was losing.
We have a trapped girl and we have to save her.
She's instinctive, she's passionate, she's interested in people.
Gwen brings in a little bit of soul.
You are brilliant.
There's an instant connection with Gwen and Jack, from the first moment that Jack sees her spying over onto the dead body.
She's inquisitive and she's trying to find out things about the group.
That's why she spies on them.
And that's what leads Jack to think they could be part of Torchwood.
What do you think? He tells her everything about Torchwood.
He doesn't need to do any of this.
But he's doing it because he's testing her.
What does Jack do? He takes her straight down to see the Weevil.
And he's like, ''Here, can you manage this? ''Here, can you manage that?'' If Gwen had gone down and screamed and fainted, she'd never be in Torchwood.
She's so strong underneath it all.
I think the rest of us, on our first day in Torchwood, would buckle and say, ''I don't understand,'' or run away screaming.
We'd have run away screaming in Episode 1.
In Episode 2, she's got to go through a bit of pain and suffering.
She's got to know She's got to be tested, actually.
-Who the hell are you? -I'm with Torchwood.
Don't mess with me, little girl.
You're not with Torchwood.
Really, the idea behind the episode was ''Your first day from hell'', extending the metaphor of breaking the photocopier on your first day at work.
But, actually, what she does is a very tiny thing.
She throws a chisel.
-Catch.
-Don't! But then the ramifications of that and the way the story spreads out is enormous, and it's about showing that Torchwood isn't like any other job.
You make one mistake and it affects the whole city.
She's made a mistake.
She didn't run out crying about it.
She didn't think, ''Oh, God, I give up.
'' -GWEN: I'm so sorry.
-Seriously, stop saying that.
But I am.
I mean, really I mean, really, really sorry.
She apologises and she realises it's her fault.
-This has been the worst first day ever.
-We all make mistakes.
And she gets on with it and she goes on the hunt.
She comes in, she deals with the families, she deals with profiling, she deals with searching people's backgrounds.
You know, she brings all that into it.
It's a new aspect, it's a new way of working, that she brings in.
The rest of them are full of the alienness of the world, and the technology and the science and the background and the mythology of it all.
And, actually, she's there for the people.
She's the person who cares about Carys' dad.
She's the person who cares about Carys.
MAN: Here we go now.
Three, two, one, go.
Help me.
She's in this cell, trying to deal with this poor young girl.
Please get it out of me.
And then she gets her face snogged off and her boobies fondled.
Sarah Gregory and myself talked about it beforehand, and we discussed that she was Johnny Depp and I was Brad Pitt.
And it looks pretty horny, if I do say so myself.
Wow.
-We should really get her out of there.
-Yeah.
And in every episode, you'll see something new.
Something will unravel with Gwen.
And she's learning every day.
It's like she's always been there, and it's like there's nowhere else she should be.
This is exactly where she belongs, in Torchwood.
When we're launching a new adult science-fiction drama, it's kind of inevitable that you're gonna do the sex monster.
Right from the start, actually, there will be something that got down and dirty.
That's Chris Chibnall.
That's what he came up with.
A sex-gas, orgasm-eating monster.
How could you not watch that? What a brilliant bit of telly.
I genuinely have no idea where that came from.
It's one of those that you're sitting there, late at night, with a glass of wine, thinking, ''How am I gonna find an idea for this show?'' And not knowing quite what the show was.
And you think, ''What's the cheekiest, funniest idea, in a way, ''that might then give you a dramatic story?'' It's not just having a laugh with a sex monster.
It does explore exactly what we want to get into with Torchwood, which is one of my favourite scenes, is Carys, possessed, walking, daytime, down that city street, where she sees that sex is everywhere.
Every advert, a couple snogging in the streets.
But the way we're sold images and sex So it's having something to say about the world, about the Western world, what a sexualised society we are.
And to find an alien that feeds off that, actually, and finds us extraordinary for it.
Finds us worth travelling to.
And it's a nice Torchwood story, I'd say.
It has something to say about the world.
Only a few months ago, this was just an empty warehouse that we were yet to convert into a film studio.
And we saw this white cardboard model of the Hub.
One of the things that helped us to arrive at the design was to give it a big back-story, just to help us make design decisions about what should go where, the idea being that the base was originally built in the 1 9th century, sometime after the Scottish Torchwood that we saw in Doctor Who Episode 2.
And the next thing we knew, this whole studio was having huge scaffolding being put up and the thing was being made.
Edward Thomas, production designer.
Welcome to the Hub.
This is the main entrance to the Hub.
As you can see, we've got 1 05 stairs that bring us down the four storeys that lead down the concrete tunnel into the Hub.
This is a lift access that the characters often use.
The big copper roll door.
''Made in Wales'', very important.
We come through the secondary security gates and we've got the main body of the Hub itself, which is supposedly deep below the Millennium Square in Cardiff.
And it's all practical.
Water runs down it.
And we're able to flood the entire base of the Hub.
We've got the emergency exit lift here, which is the hydraulic lift that the characters use to escape the Hub in case of emergency or in need of surprise.
We're in the old railway tunnel of the Hub, the railway tunnel which linked Glasgow, London and Cardiff.
So then we come into cold storage one to six, the Autopsy Room.
This is where they hold the bodies temporarily before moving them onto the morgue set that we have.
Cold storage cupboards, for where they keep the bodies.
Into Captain Jack's office.
Slightly more period in here, with Jack being from the '40s.
Down here is his living accommodation.
This is the safe, where they store all their alien technology.
Then we go through to the Interrogation Room.
This is where they bring the prisoners to talk to them and beat the information out of them.
And we've raised the walls very high so that we really get the feeling that we are very low in the set.
This is the boardroom.
This has got an art deco feel to it.
They eat in here, they talk in here, have meetings in here.
Captain Jack stands and views his empire from here.
And that's the Torchwood Hub.
Let's see if we can move off the high -So take a shot.
-54, take 1 .
It's absolutely fantastic.
It's the best set I've ever been on.
And look at it.
It's just breathtaking.
I've been on this set 1 00 times, and every time you come on, you notice something different.
I don't think you ever get fed up of it.
There's so many different angles, and every director comes on and shoots it in a different way.
As you can see, there's loads of space.
There's loads of places to be.
So I think the biggest problem we have on this set, actually, is being spoiled for choice.
There are certain wide shots, like in Episode 4, where you're like, ''Oh, God, I've never seen that before.
'' There's a lot of angles still to be discovered.
If you've only seen the first couple of episodes, you still haven't seen half of this Hub.
Episode 3 coming up.
I love Episode 3.
It's fast, it's furious and it's incredibly dark.
And it's really creepy.
Torchwood members start looking for revenge.
You never escape the things that happened 40 years ago.
No!