Torchwood: Random Shoes (S1,E9)

"I don't want to find out what happened . . . I don't want this to end."

Random Shoes (Season 1, Episode 9)

"When Eugene wakes to find himself (a) dead and (b) invisible, he knows only Gwen Cooper can help him."

What I Liked

* The flashback scenes to Eugene as a child--well-written and well-acted. It's hard to make viewers care about a character they're seeing for just one episode, but I think the creators pulled it off here.

* The video store owner and his cheesy/sleazy come-ons.

* The pop music used, especially David Bowie's "Starman". It fit perfectly the mood they were trying to set up.

What I Didn't Like

* The end. Eugene rising into the sky was just a bit too . . . conventional. And what are his friends and family to think seeing him alive for just a few minutes and then having him disappear like that?

What I'm Not Sure About

* Eugene taking pictures of his friends' shoes. Yes, they were basically trying to steal the eye from, but what did he think pictures of the shoes would accomplish? It's pretty slim evidence in some sort of future (hypothetical) court case and seems like a weird thing to think up in the middle of an argument.

Commentary

By: Richard Stokes (Producer), James Erskine (Director), and Paul Chequer ("Eugene")

Tone: Comfortable if a bit bland, gets funner in the second half

Interesting Bits:

* This ep was shot simultaneously with # 12, which is why Gwen is heavily featured in this one and hardly at all in the other one.

* They used a working telemarketing floor for the shots of Eugene's job, and real calls in the background sometimes made it hard to hear the actors.

* A funny little story about location scouts knocking on people's doors to try to get them to turn over their houses for five days so the BBC could shoot there.

* The schedule got so tight that they had to shoot one of the scenes behind the production office, against what was basically a bare wall.

Torchwood Declassified: "Dead Man Walking"

* Discussion of Eugene as an ordinary guy smitten with Torchwood

* Discussion (pretty standard stuff) of the some of the challenges of filming a "ghost"

* Feature on filming Eugene's collision with the car

* Discussion of Eugene as a "geek" in a positive way

Deleted Scenes

* Gwen interviews Eugene's boss. He's a bit pervy like the video clerk, and Eugene is able to make him spill coffee on himself.