Toshiko Sato is a hostage. Toshiko Sato is breaking into the Antebellum, the largest collection of alien artifacts in the country. Toshiko Sato has a plan. She isn’t the only one.

Rossa McPhillips’ script continues the Torchwood line’s ongoing fondness for high concept and cleverly locks it and Tosh’s fundamental empathy together. Here, as the hostage of a team from a rival organization breaking into  the Antebellum, a weapons vault like no other on Earth, Tosh is thrown into the spotlight in a surprising and welcome way. She’s still desperately compassionate and empathic but as the best Tosh stories do, this never mistakes that for weakness. Tom Butcher’s strutting arrogant Vernon is a kid in a deadly toy shop and he and Tosh are as ethically opposed as two humans can be. He’s the easy one, although Butcher does a good job of showing us even he has a human side.

Things get difficult, and interesting, with Nisha and Ed. Nisha is played with gifted child freneticism by Bahvini Sheth who joins the horde of Torchwood guest players who need to be brought back in recurring roles. She’s the alt-Tosh, a brilliant and mildly sociopathic young woman who was offered a spot in Torchwood, turned it down and never recovered. Her scenes with Naoko Mori spark with tension and understanding as the two women, each one decision away from the other’s life, work to get along and understand each other.

Homer Todiwala’s Ed is much quieter and to go into detail about just what he does here would be to spoil the best parts of the episode. Todiwala excels at finding humanity in steel and Ed’s journey from innocent victim to secondary protagonist is elegantly handled. All three of these people, sometimes opponents, sometimes allies, feed back into Tosh’s story which is, in many ways surprisingly positive. This could be a dark night of the soul and its certainly traumatic, but the story ultimately spotlights Tosh’s most overlooked quality; just how tough she is. Always compassionate, always empathetic and extremely hard to kill (at least at this stage of her life) she’s Torchwood’s brain and heart and Clemens (who has a fun cameo) and McPhillips spotlight that smartly and kindly, much like Tosh herself.

It’s not quite a home run. The Dow Cohort (an anagram, a fun one), Vernon and Nisha’s employers are an interesting idea but feel ephemeral especially given their actions here. They never quite coalesce as a threat, where the splendid, Control-esque world of the Antebellum absolutely does. Likewise this is a story full of spiky, difficult people which is at times spiky and difficult to like as a result.

But it’s also, as this line always is, very, very good. Another gear shift in tone and a surprising ensemble feel mark it out as something different.

Verdict: Clever, kind, determined and absolutely a worthy spotlight for its lead. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart

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