Torchwood: "Sleeper" (S2, E2)

"Okay Beth, you make light bulbs blow, we can't break your skin, what planet are you from?"

Sleeper (Season Two, Episode Two)

("When a burglary turns into a slaughter, Torchwood suspects alien involvement. Who is Beth, and can she be as innocent as she seems?")

WHAT I LIKED

* Owen tricking Gwen into staying at the hospital, when in fact Jack asked them both to stay.

* The actors hired to play the alien, Beth, and her husband. Both made the most of their scenes, and helped to give viewers some emotional investment in what happened to them.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

* Torchwood basically torturing Beth in the hopes that her sleeper personality will come out. Aliens have civil liberties too! Though I guess it does play into Jack's cryptic comment in a previous episode that he used to be a torturer.

* The scope compared to the budget. Sleeper agents trying to put together a plan to take over Cardiff (and presumably the world) needs to be a big deal, at least a two-parter if not a season-long arc, and it just isn't enough to see an evil mom blow up a building and an evil businessman try to break into a secret nuclear arms storage facility. In other words, the show came off looking cheap which it normally manages to avoid.

WHAT I'M NOT SURE ABOUT

* The aliens' plan. Bear with me. The aliens have the means and technology to create almost-perfect human duplicates and transport them to Earth in order to plant sleeper agents. Why do they pick sleeper agents in roles that give them no access to important secrets or defense facilities? Further, we're told the idea behind stealing nukes outside Cardiff is to irradiate the planet and open the door to colonization--well, if the aliens can occupy an irradiated planet and don't need it to be intact, why not just nuke Earth from space?

COMMENTARY/DELETED SCENES

None

TORCHWOOD DECLASSIFIED

* The challenges of adapting such a loaded script within practical limitations of money and time (the producers apparently think they succeeded admirably).

* The planning of the explosion of the building in downtown Cardiff.

* Discussion of Gwen's compassion for Beth.

* The actress who played Beth talking about what it was like to get shot on set.