Torchwood Declassified (2006) s02e07 Episode Script
Death Defying
Episode seven picks up literally within an hour of where episode six ended.
Owen is shot dead.
That's what I knew was going to happen at the beginning of my episode.
It's about Jack's decision to bring Owen back from the dead.
See, you thought Owen was dead, but he's not.
If you're gonna resurrect a character using a resurrection glove, it had to have consequences.
You've got this corpse walking around.
He's not alive, he's dead.
They don't know whether he's able to be a Torchwood operative any more.
The most awful thing for Owen is it's not a near-death experience, it's the end of his life.
Why is it so important for Jack to bring Owen back? He says it in a line in the prison cell.
''I was not ready to give up on you.
'' MAN: 4099, take seven, pick up.
Shooting and set.
Action.
Is that why you pulled me back then? No, that's not why.
You see the two men getting closer than they ever have been before because they're now an extraordinary couple.
There's Jack who will live forever and Owen who's dead forever.
You've got forever.
I could have seconds.
Hardly seems fair.
It takes quite a bit for those two men to say what they feel to each other.
And they do open up to each other.
If you've got forever, you don't notice the flecks in the concrete or bother to touch the bricks.
The sequence was quite a touching one because you really saw their little relationship together.
And I have this thing where I slap him on the head after I've been really sentimental with him.
And it's the kind of thing that typically the guys would do 'cause guys don't get mushy with each other.
You're my knight in shining armour and don't you ever forget it.
I like that scene.
I like the fact that, okay, it's, you know, talking about the meaning of life and eternity and everything but also you've got farts and puking.
It was fun to do.
MAN 1 : 41 07, take three.
MAN 2: Thank you.
Shooting.
And MAN 3: Set.
MAN 2: Action.
Ah! That is the single most disgusting thing I have ever seen! And I know disgusting.
Cut.
He's become a specimen.
He's become a subject of study.
It's quite dark, actually.
But a great story.
That scene stunk.
Bless Burn, when he stood on his head the first time, it went all up in his nose and in his face.
It fell through the rift about 40 years ago.
There is an episode in series one which is all about the resurrection glove, that we first see in episode one of series one.
And there was a lovely line towards the end of the episode That's the thing about gloves, sir.
They come in pairs.
So we always knew we wanted to do another story involving a resurrection glove.
I knew in this script the glove was gonna be a lot more agile.
It was gonna be physically attacking people.
It was just sort of irresistible, actually, to take the second glove to say it has new properties, and to have much more fun with it.
There were a couple of ways we went about doing the glove when it attacked Martha.
I wanted something that was quite dexterous and quite spider-like.
We had an animatronic glove on a green pole that we could paint out.
For some jumping scenes, we've got a moveable green screen rod which makes the fingers move as well.
So when he flies through frame, I'll be getting little bit of movement.
(SCREAMING) GODDARD: We also had Ruari and his green suit, would wear the glove.
Today I've been doing the glove bit, so I've had all green and had the glove on.
So I can move the glove all around and they can then chroma me out.
'Cause I'm all dressed in green, so it makes the glove look like it's animated on its own.
MAN: Thank you.
Nice and quiet, please.
And action.
(SCREAMING) Ruari crawls across the floor with the glove.
We then showed a clean plate shot.
When the two shots are put together, they'll basically erase Ruari out of the picture.
So what you're left with is just the glove moving along.
(ALARM BLARING) (SCREAMING) MAN 1 : Cut.
MAN 2: Thank you.
Cut it.
(BELL RINGING) GODDARD: It was Ruari we used more often than not.
'Cause we just had the most motion control out of it.
And it just did exactly what we wanted.
Thanks.
MAN: 4605, take one.
Action.
(SCREAMING) Then Jack throws it back out into the room.
Give me the gun.
I'm gonna need the gun now.
Jack, give me the gun.
Jack throws him the gun.
And boom.
Cut there, please.
Okay, good.
Let's just pick in the middle of the action.
This is a copy of the real gauntlet.
It's hollow inside.
In there I've got a selection of detonators.
Squibs, basically, that will blow the fingers away, the main body of this and the wrist apart.
All in one.
Just one big bang.
And then Owen shoots it.
Lovely, people.
Listen up, please.
We will shoot the exploding glove.
Okay, can I have the stunt hand, please? The foam hand, folks.
The autopsy room doesn't immediately lend itself to what's basically an action sequence.
It is a very small, tight space.
Especially when you've got every single member of Torchwood plus Martha Jones plus me and the rest of the crew.
It's very tight.
It was long, long days in the autopsy room.
I left part of my soul in the autopsy room, I think.
Clear out, please.
It was quite exciting to have the idea of lots of Weevils running down the street.
A nest of Weevils in a church.
What I really love about the Weevils is they're terrifying.
And if you're alone with a Weevil and you've not got a gun, you're probably dead.
That's been very well set up in the previous series, how dangerous the Weevils are, and how much you don't want to be around them.
Take four.
Here we go.
Shooting and action.
So the idea that our heroes would get trapped with a horde of Weevils coming at them, I just thought was brilliant jeopardy.
We have five Weevil heads and we can only use four at any one time because two of the Weevil heads only fit one actor.
So the first job was for the second AD to go and find a supporting artist who had a small head that we could fit the other Weevil head onto.
And we found that, hooray.
So we could finally use the five Weevils in one shot.
Paul.
GODDARD: We have Paul Kasey as the hero Weevil.
And then we have four extras.
They're wearing what we refer to as the stunt masks which are more simple pullover rubber masks.
As opposed to Paul's complete animatronical working Weevil head.
So for any close-ups, we'll always use Paul's proper Weevil head.
We have more Weevil action in this episode than we've ever seen before.
We haven't really seen them en masse like this before.
We had a top shot where you see the Weevils running, surround Jack and Owen, then they back off and start bowing.
You see all those Weevils, and then the whole thing turns on its head.
It's like they're actually there to worship.
I really enjoyed doing that sequence.
It will make it look like there's loads.
MAN: OK, ready.
Kneel down now.
You literally just hold the camera in the same place and you put five Weevils down, they do the action, and then you get them all to stand up and they move over and they lie down somewhere else, and they do the same action.
MAN: Jack and Owen, turn around, have a look.
Jack gets his gun out.
And then if you just stay in that position, doing all your growling, and the guvnor will give you the action to start to go down, and maybe start walking back a little bit.
You give it thanks and praises.
You're bowing.
All right? Kneel down in reverence.
This is death incarnate right here.
Basically, what we do is we just mark off different quadrants on the monitor with a chinagraph pen.
And basically, you just plot it.
And then the Mill composite those pictures together so that you have 25, 30 Weevils lying on the floor.
Owen, what the hell is going on? (IN DISTORTED VOICE) Melkurian abatha duroc minus mill kaval! Burn looks like a Thunderbird puppet when he has his contacts in.
I mean that in a good sense.
MAN: 1 44, take one.
Start shooting.
And action.
Owen, what the hell is going on? (IN DISTORTED VOICE) Melkurian abatha duroc minus mill kaval! Oh, my God.
Owen's turned into a Thunderbird puppet.
Or a Terrahawk.
He couldn't take it seriously.
We were on top of this car park, we had loads of Weevils after us, and every time I turned around he'd burst out laughing.
Which wasn't helpful.
In instances like that, we have a good little laugh.
Cameras cut.
Cue for the guvnor.
Mark? Lovely.
So, folks, that was 746.
I say we cut it.
Owen is shot dead.
That's what I knew was going to happen at the beginning of my episode.
It's about Jack's decision to bring Owen back from the dead.
See, you thought Owen was dead, but he's not.
If you're gonna resurrect a character using a resurrection glove, it had to have consequences.
You've got this corpse walking around.
He's not alive, he's dead.
They don't know whether he's able to be a Torchwood operative any more.
The most awful thing for Owen is it's not a near-death experience, it's the end of his life.
Why is it so important for Jack to bring Owen back? He says it in a line in the prison cell.
''I was not ready to give up on you.
'' MAN: 4099, take seven, pick up.
Shooting and set.
Action.
Is that why you pulled me back then? No, that's not why.
You see the two men getting closer than they ever have been before because they're now an extraordinary couple.
There's Jack who will live forever and Owen who's dead forever.
You've got forever.
I could have seconds.
Hardly seems fair.
It takes quite a bit for those two men to say what they feel to each other.
And they do open up to each other.
If you've got forever, you don't notice the flecks in the concrete or bother to touch the bricks.
The sequence was quite a touching one because you really saw their little relationship together.
And I have this thing where I slap him on the head after I've been really sentimental with him.
And it's the kind of thing that typically the guys would do 'cause guys don't get mushy with each other.
You're my knight in shining armour and don't you ever forget it.
I like that scene.
I like the fact that, okay, it's, you know, talking about the meaning of life and eternity and everything but also you've got farts and puking.
It was fun to do.
MAN 1 : 41 07, take three.
MAN 2: Thank you.
Shooting.
And MAN 3: Set.
MAN 2: Action.
Ah! That is the single most disgusting thing I have ever seen! And I know disgusting.
Cut.
He's become a specimen.
He's become a subject of study.
It's quite dark, actually.
But a great story.
That scene stunk.
Bless Burn, when he stood on his head the first time, it went all up in his nose and in his face.
It fell through the rift about 40 years ago.
There is an episode in series one which is all about the resurrection glove, that we first see in episode one of series one.
And there was a lovely line towards the end of the episode That's the thing about gloves, sir.
They come in pairs.
So we always knew we wanted to do another story involving a resurrection glove.
I knew in this script the glove was gonna be a lot more agile.
It was gonna be physically attacking people.
It was just sort of irresistible, actually, to take the second glove to say it has new properties, and to have much more fun with it.
There were a couple of ways we went about doing the glove when it attacked Martha.
I wanted something that was quite dexterous and quite spider-like.
We had an animatronic glove on a green pole that we could paint out.
For some jumping scenes, we've got a moveable green screen rod which makes the fingers move as well.
So when he flies through frame, I'll be getting little bit of movement.
(SCREAMING) GODDARD: We also had Ruari and his green suit, would wear the glove.
Today I've been doing the glove bit, so I've had all green and had the glove on.
So I can move the glove all around and they can then chroma me out.
'Cause I'm all dressed in green, so it makes the glove look like it's animated on its own.
MAN: Thank you.
Nice and quiet, please.
And action.
(SCREAMING) Ruari crawls across the floor with the glove.
We then showed a clean plate shot.
When the two shots are put together, they'll basically erase Ruari out of the picture.
So what you're left with is just the glove moving along.
(ALARM BLARING) (SCREAMING) MAN 1 : Cut.
MAN 2: Thank you.
Cut it.
(BELL RINGING) GODDARD: It was Ruari we used more often than not.
'Cause we just had the most motion control out of it.
And it just did exactly what we wanted.
Thanks.
MAN: 4605, take one.
Action.
(SCREAMING) Then Jack throws it back out into the room.
Give me the gun.
I'm gonna need the gun now.
Jack, give me the gun.
Jack throws him the gun.
And boom.
Cut there, please.
Okay, good.
Let's just pick in the middle of the action.
This is a copy of the real gauntlet.
It's hollow inside.
In there I've got a selection of detonators.
Squibs, basically, that will blow the fingers away, the main body of this and the wrist apart.
All in one.
Just one big bang.
And then Owen shoots it.
Lovely, people.
Listen up, please.
We will shoot the exploding glove.
Okay, can I have the stunt hand, please? The foam hand, folks.
The autopsy room doesn't immediately lend itself to what's basically an action sequence.
It is a very small, tight space.
Especially when you've got every single member of Torchwood plus Martha Jones plus me and the rest of the crew.
It's very tight.
It was long, long days in the autopsy room.
I left part of my soul in the autopsy room, I think.
Clear out, please.
It was quite exciting to have the idea of lots of Weevils running down the street.
A nest of Weevils in a church.
What I really love about the Weevils is they're terrifying.
And if you're alone with a Weevil and you've not got a gun, you're probably dead.
That's been very well set up in the previous series, how dangerous the Weevils are, and how much you don't want to be around them.
Take four.
Here we go.
Shooting and action.
So the idea that our heroes would get trapped with a horde of Weevils coming at them, I just thought was brilliant jeopardy.
We have five Weevil heads and we can only use four at any one time because two of the Weevil heads only fit one actor.
So the first job was for the second AD to go and find a supporting artist who had a small head that we could fit the other Weevil head onto.
And we found that, hooray.
So we could finally use the five Weevils in one shot.
Paul.
GODDARD: We have Paul Kasey as the hero Weevil.
And then we have four extras.
They're wearing what we refer to as the stunt masks which are more simple pullover rubber masks.
As opposed to Paul's complete animatronical working Weevil head.
So for any close-ups, we'll always use Paul's proper Weevil head.
We have more Weevil action in this episode than we've ever seen before.
We haven't really seen them en masse like this before.
We had a top shot where you see the Weevils running, surround Jack and Owen, then they back off and start bowing.
You see all those Weevils, and then the whole thing turns on its head.
It's like they're actually there to worship.
I really enjoyed doing that sequence.
It will make it look like there's loads.
MAN: OK, ready.
Kneel down now.
You literally just hold the camera in the same place and you put five Weevils down, they do the action, and then you get them all to stand up and they move over and they lie down somewhere else, and they do the same action.
MAN: Jack and Owen, turn around, have a look.
Jack gets his gun out.
And then if you just stay in that position, doing all your growling, and the guvnor will give you the action to start to go down, and maybe start walking back a little bit.
You give it thanks and praises.
You're bowing.
All right? Kneel down in reverence.
This is death incarnate right here.
Basically, what we do is we just mark off different quadrants on the monitor with a chinagraph pen.
And basically, you just plot it.
And then the Mill composite those pictures together so that you have 25, 30 Weevils lying on the floor.
Owen, what the hell is going on? (IN DISTORTED VOICE) Melkurian abatha duroc minus mill kaval! Burn looks like a Thunderbird puppet when he has his contacts in.
I mean that in a good sense.
MAN: 1 44, take one.
Start shooting.
And action.
Owen, what the hell is going on? (IN DISTORTED VOICE) Melkurian abatha duroc minus mill kaval! Oh, my God.
Owen's turned into a Thunderbird puppet.
Or a Terrahawk.
He couldn't take it seriously.
We were on top of this car park, we had loads of Weevils after us, and every time I turned around he'd burst out laughing.
Which wasn't helpful.
In instances like that, we have a good little laugh.
Cameras cut.
Cue for the guvnor.
Mark? Lovely.
So, folks, that was 746.
I say we cut it.