Simple.

Jack, Ianto, Stopwatch.

Gwen can go on a training course of how to be interesting and not nearly die in every goddamn episode, Toshiko can learn to say interesting things and Owen can learn that non-Doctors can't do autopsies.

Eugene can just plain die because he was creepy and stalkerish, despite being dead. He can also realise his dad wasn't just an 'ordinary man', he was somewhat less than ordinary because most men don't abandon their children if they care enough to sing at the funeral.

Then more Jack, Ianto and stopwatch.

I can't believe there wasn't so much as a hint of the stopwatch, or even anything remotely Ianto/Jack to that.

Agree completely with all those points above, I've never met such a boring character in my life.

How would you have brought up the stopwatch, though? ;)

Eugene can just not be in the episoe. Behead him with a cheese wire at the beginning or something. And also ask him why he has such a silly name. Eugene? That's the name I gave to my boiled egg years ago as a joke.

Gwen can get the sack and learn that she is awful at her job, a terribly boring character, and way too slutty. 'Cuz, seriously. She's shagging Owen, sleeping in the same bed as a ghost and holding hands with Jack! She is there to study alien tech, not fulfil her sexual needs!

Ianto and Jack can have hot sex. Or, y'know, the two of them can just hang around nekkid for the whole episode or something. And be eye-candy. I'm good with that. :D Hey, call me shallow, but you'll be more likely to keep your audience if you have a whole episode of nekkid!Jack&Ianto than if you do episodes like tonight's again.

Um. Yeah, mainly sex, I think. And then we can all throw tomatoes at the writer of this episode. And maybe behead her with a cheese wire too. :D

Do you know, I'm pretty sure I have a cheese wire somewhere around here! ::grin::

I was also hoping for the Gwen sacking thing to be brought up this ep, because really, something needs to be said about her actions from last episode.

And that stopwatch clearly needed to be resolved in some way too. See? Shallow is just what we want!

*flexes fingers*

First off, Eugene would have been a corpse. And that is all. In the grand tradition of Greek Tragedy we would never have seen him alive. We would open with a dead man on the side of the road... who is he, how he got there... those are the questions we would be looking to answer.

So then we pull out, as in the show, and Torchwood is there, and they all look rather grim. Because they know this man. They don't know a damn thing about his life, but they met him and they ignored him. From Owen's teasing we learn that the dead man had a thing for Gwen, and so on.

Basically, the whole of Torchwood becomes obsessed with this man's life. Since there's no imminent apocalypse planned, Jack says it's ok and they all get down to it.

One by one, they learn something about Eugene's sad and lonely life that shows them something about themselves. Gwen and Owen could figure out what the hell their relationship means as they investigate Eugene's last movements (flashbacks to Living!Eugene optional), Tosh could get into the whole "eye conspiracy" (briefly, because who gives a care), Ianto and Jack spark off each other as Ianto gets all involved with the father elements and Jack gets absorbed in thinking about death and the fact that he can't die, omg angst and subtext, ticking stopwatch drives Jack a little crazy, he turns it off and snogs the living daylights out of Ianto, because that makes them both feel alive (fields and exhaust fumes? please...)

Obviously we then move on to a final, group dinner, a la episode one (or two, I forget), with them all having a quiet, understated realisation that Torchwood is their lives, and they'd better make the most of it. Pass the prawn crackers.

Credits roll.

That's brilliant!

The team are enjoying a normal day at the hub when suddenly they discover a [NOUN 1] that allows Gwen to [VERB]. Owen makes a sarcastic comment about [VERB] [PLURAL NOUN], but Jack thinks there may be something [ADJECTIVE] going on.

Insert aerial shot of [CARDIFF LANDMARK] here.

While Ianto [ADVERB] makes coffee, Toshiko does some research on the computer and discovers the [NOUN 1] may actually be a [ADJECTIVE] [NOUN] from [PLANET].

Jack stands at the top of a very tall [NOUN] and broods. Meanwhile, Gwen snogs [NAME OF CHARACTER OR ALIEN OR OBJECT].

The characters are all placed in mortal danger, but all is resolved when [NOUN 1] is revealed to be a [NOUN] by Jack, who [ADVERB] [VERB] it.

Finally, [CHARACTER] and [CHARACTER] are revealed to be sleeping together, generating [NUMBER] comments on the torch_wood response posts and [NUMBER] posts for the mod to delete.

I strongly suggest you send that plotline to RTD right away. :D

"You've got the weekend."

Jack's head was pounding. He needed ibuprofen, now.

By the time he reached his office (and the pills in his desk), Gwen had gone. So had his headache. He shook his head to help clear it.

"Sir?"

Jack glanced up from his computer at Ianto, eyebrows raised inquisitively.

"No word yet on the Dogon eye," Ianto said, "I'm beginning to doubt if the seller will deliver."

Jack opened the file on Eugene Jones (deceased). “I’ve put Gwen on the case. I’m sure she’ll track it down eventually. In the meantime…”

“Have you repaired your stopwatch yet?”

::grins:: Yeah for stopwatch mention!

I love wondering what Jack/Ianto got up to whilst Gwen was off gallivanting over Wales. :D

By the roadside, the team is examining Eugene's body

Ianto Jones: Sir, how do I get one of these bluetooth head sets?

Jack Harkness: Sexual favours.

Ianto Jones: ... I'll get my coat.

YES! Yes, that's EXACTLY what we want to see! XD

Okay. Obviously it would be lovely to have an entirely new plot, but let's see if we can salvage something from the ashes of tonight's dreck.

Gwen notices that someone is stalking her as she goes about a few minor investigations. Mentioning it to Owen and Tosh, they tell her it's Eugene, a 'complete arse who thinks we want to buy petty salvage brought throught the Rift'. Eugene was monitored for a while by Torchwood 1, before they decided he was a small-time dealer in junk and 'mostly harmless'.

This time, though, Eugene's managed to hit the motherlode, and he's selling it online. He's got no idea what power the Eye has, but he knows there's an American company who'd be happy to meet it- if they can meet the price he's got on e-Bay. When Geocomtex's contact in the UK get in touch with him, he realises that the contact's his father- who had abandoned his family when he realised they were holding him back. Eugene's been screwed over by American buyers before, but this time he's not going to be taken in. His father may have taken his childhood away and left their family in near poverty, but he's sure as hell not taking Eugene's eye.

With his father and the power of Henry Van Statten bearing down on him, Eugene realises that his only chance to make his money, defy his father and survive is to try and convince Torchwood to buy it. Jack and Gwen turn up to buy the Eye at a Happy Cook on the A38, but as they leave Geocomtex's wet team storm the building. Gwen grabs the Eye, Jack leaves an IOU note, and they storm out of the building guns a-blazing. Eugene is left sitting at the table with a banana milkshake, without the money but with a big grin on his face when he tells his father that he doesn't have the Eye any more. His father curses and sings Danny Boy off key and tells Eugene that he could have been in line for a job, but he'll have to go back to his dead-end call centre job now for his insolence.

Back in the Hub, Jack tells Gwen they have a new enemy- Geocomtex doesn't take losing a new artefact lightly- but Torchwood plays for keeps. In future episodes, Eugene becomes a minor informer for Torchwood and an occasional source of pre-credit amusement when Torchwood 3 have to get Eugene out of trouble with random aliens when he's dungeon-crawling through the sewers and municipal dumps of Cardiff. Geocomtex prove an occasional enemy and rival to Torchwood's acquisition of alien goods on British soil.

The episode closes on Jack's naked buttocks, for the fangirls.

This episode would have been much better for me if the only thing that changed was the exclusion of banana milkshake. *tries not to vom* Of all the milkshakes...

Haha, when you break it down to the bare essentials that's pretty much what's going on for most of them, yeah. (What about Tosh though? What's her theme?)

Yeah, make the writer read it, or better yet: tie them up before a telly screen and make them watch this ep on repeat. That might hurt more.

If I kept the general idea, I would have, say made it clearer. Shown us the eye right away, tell us how it works, and give us a sense of fright/anticipation of what's gonna happen to the Gwen(the team). We would discover, near the end, that he really is an alien, although he didn't know it, and when he goes away in the end, it's in a spaceship with his real people. Gwen would have known that she was the only one to see him, and tried to get the rest of her team to believe her, but noone would, for various reasons.

It would have been nice to know a bit more about that eye, I mean just what could it do? (apart from giving Eugene some perspective on his life) Does it control the 'passing on' of souls? That kind of stuff.

Alas that we got the drivel we did instead.

The alien idea is a great one, I mean that ending was a bit WTF, though if eveyone could see him floating up into the sky (spaceship or not) then Jack's going to be needing a lot more memory pills, methinks XD

Yeah, it was really lame trying to fit him in with TW when we've never seen him before. It wouldn't have been hard to even have him hanging about in the background as they appeared on the scene of some alien encounter or something- I'm sure some of us eagle-eyed fans would have noticed that he kept cropping up at least.

Alas that the writers obviously don't care so much about continuity.

I wouldn't watch the ep again, because I found it boring to watch, though I can admit it had some good points to it- just not many of them. lol.

Christ! So many damn replies and I haven't long woken up!

I am not happy. (I sent you a txt, which you haven't replied to yet!!!) That episode was such a let down. It didn't make sense, it was boring, and where on earth was everyone? Poor Tosh for christ sake! Did she get a word in that episode? Jack and Ianto were hardly in it, and weren't even the same scene even once! What's going on! Why leave us with an end like that on episode 8 and then suddenly do this?

That episode just didn't make sense. It didn't feel like Torchwood. The moment it started I knew something was wrong. It felt as though it was a completely different programme with just the Torchwood characters. It wasn't just the worse Torchwood episode, it was worse than all of the Doctor Who episodes as well. That's not good!

And what on earth happened at the end? None of it made sense. He saved her life from a car? Did the driver not see her or something? Was the driver deliberately racing towards her to kill her? Why could everyone see him after saving her? I am confused!

Very dissapointed. After all the fantastic episodes so far, this one ruins it. We could have easily done without that episode. It was so not Torchwood!

If I feel like it later, I might rewrite the episode, but at the moment I am just venting rage. And besides, people who have already commented have probably done a good enough job.

I agree with EVERYTHING you just said there. I can't believe that they did that to us. There have been a few people saying that they liked it because it helped show 'Gwen's humanity' but my god can I just say that if I see anymore of her bloody humanity I will seriously be kicking some executive producer arse. We see her bloody caring side practically every damn episode, I certainly don't need a whole ep dedicated to the stuff. Nor to some random nobody no one gives two shits about. Grr.

Okay, I'll quit ranting now and save it for msn later ;) Just thinking about it gets me so riled up.

I would make it an Jack/Ianto fluff episode! But did tyhey write it? NOOOOO! Instead they give ya 5mins of Ianto with a weird new haircut *cries in corner*

It was a rather nice haircut. And I think he had a new suit too. And he was more snarky in those first five minutes than I think we've ever seen him!

Clearly all this Jack-shagging is doing wonders for his self-esteem. XD

I'm in agreement with everyone here. Poor episode, RTD should be spanked for allowing that to air. Every 'alternate ep' i've read in this post has been better than the actual ep, and if a bunch of fangirls can write episodes that good, then the real writers have no excuse.
Also agreeing with the comparison to 'love and monsters' i actually turned to my man and said "that was worse than that crap ep of DrWho with the bloke off Hustle" i'm guessing it was a space-filler, or maybe a week off for the rest of the cast.
I couldn't decide which was more yucky; swallowing an alien eyeball, or the thought of banana milkshake... *shivers* Nope, banana milkshake is way grosser.
lil

Can't say much for banana milkshakes either XD

My main problem with this episode is that they felt they needed to add a 'filler' at all. We only get 13episodes, shouldn't they be using each and everyone one of them to gain more/keep existing watches with their awesomeness?

I think some of us fangirls should get a say on Torchwood eps, we'd make sure they were good enough! ;)

(Sorry for such a late reply, darling!)

50 minutes of Jack shagging Ianto, with a guest appearance by the stopwatch.

Bingo. :D

Now THAT'S my kind of episode! XD