I feel like I haven’t been writing much funny stuff this episode, but now I’m all sucked into it – only the shitty episodes are any fun to recap. Sorry! Anyway, a guy named David is telling his wife a funny story and pouring himself some wine when he suddenly gets a weird look on his face. Red Cylon lights come on on his arm, and he starts to walk out the door, all zombified. His wife shouts after him and he comes back, snaps her neck, and keeps going. All over the place (well, all over Britain), people are getting activated. An EMT walks away from a dying patient. A young woman lets her baby carriage go rolling off down a hill and walks away. We get shots of their blinky arms so you know these are in fact sleeper Cylons and not just random douchebags suffering from fugue syndrome. Although that would be funny. ‘Who, me? No, I’m not an alien, I just have amnesia.’ In his lab, Owen tells Gwen he’s done, and I crack up when I see they’ve actually frozen Beth into the center of a huge fucking block of ice. Way to take things way too literally, guys. Down in the vault, Ianto shoves Beth into one of the drawers, and he and Gwen walk away. Aw, those two are like, never in scenes together. And I guess they still aren’t really since they don’t talk. Ianto offers his elbow to Gwen, who puts her arm through his. Dawwwww. So much love for Ianto right now. There’s an ominous thud from inside the drawer, because Cylons are fucking hard to kill. Also, in case you’re a complete idiot, we get a shot of Beth’s eyes snapping open.

Upstairs, sirens are going off. Is anything ever not going horribly wrong in Torchwood? Jack wants to know what interrupted his beauty sleep, and all the lights go out. Jack’s concerned that Beth’s set off a virus, but Tosh says that the lights have just gone out, that’s it.
“What is it with her and light bulbs?” gripes Jack. Hee.
They’re trying to figure out what’s going on, since Beth could’ve killed them all by now but hasn’t. Owen’s still hung up on how she got out of cryo, and says she must’ve manipulated the monitors to make it look like she was frozen. Also? I only JUST NOTICED that Owen’s dyed his hair this season – it’s black. Jack says they’ve taken her off the Cylon network (Borg network?) so now they’ve got some rogue Cylon running around on a mission of her own. What could possibly go wrong? Awww, she’s gone to see Mike in the hospital. She asks if he loves her and he says yes. She’s all, ‘even if I was a crazy murderous alien robot?’ Beth says she has to leave, for Mike’s safety. He’s understandably upset and begs her not to leave. He flings his arms around her and says he won’t let her go. This tender moment is then ruined by a weird squishing noise. Beth leans back to see her alien left hand has morphed into a giant nasty blade and stabbed Mike right through the stomach. Ewwwww. Beth starts screaming for a nurse or someone, but what she gets is Jack and his pistol. He and Gwen neutralize the blade for now and drag Beth bodily out of the room.

Elsewhere, one of the agents we saw activated earlier swings by a family’s house to stab them all to death. Wow, this seems like a really, really inefficient way to wipe out the human race. Also, not one that requires a whole lot of research. I mean, how long does it take to answer the questions: “Have this species got squishy bits?” and “Can we jab pointy things in those squishy bits to kill them?” Anyway, a slightly smarter agent pulls up in a gas truck outside the hospital and blows it up, destroying a big gas pipeline. Jack and Gwen are booking it on foot, while Owen and Tosh yell at them over headsets. Ianto says the guy who was murdered is in charge of taking over the city during emergencies and the Torchies are all, how do you know that random tidbit, and Ianto replies that he’s just that awesome. The other agent, the killer-mommy one, heads into a telecom center and blows it up too. The headsets go dead. Jack and Gwen sit Beth down and ask her how to stop this from happening. She says she doesn’t know, but they say she can still use the implanted technology even though she’s cut off from the Collective. Beth pulls herself together and concentrates. She says there’s one agent left, and she can tell where he is. They head for the BBSUV and go tearing back to Torchwood, where Toshiko is impatiently telling Owen the entire telcom grid is down. Owen’s all, well then fix it, computer genius! Toshi keeps yelling at him and Ianto comes in and says slowly to him, “No phones – phones all broken!” Thinking maybe that didn’t get through, he holds his hand up to his ear and goes on, “‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ No, because the phones aren’t working.” Seriously, what is with the sheer awesome that is Ianto this episode? Not that I’m complaining, mind. Owen, however, has had more than enough of it.

In a parking lot, Jack is rigging up a CB radio, and elsewhere the Final Cylon is tearing down the road in a little car. He’s the one who stabbed the guy and his family, and is still absolutely fucking covered in blood. Jack manages to call in to Tosh, and says that two of the agents blew themselves up, Beth is with them, and the fourth is headed out of the city. He wants to know where the guy’s going. Ianto digs out some records and says it’s an old abandoned coal mine, now owned by the military. Tosh “hacks into” the military files, which as has been mentioned elsewhere, requires nothing more than some random and enthusiastic fapping*, just like on Doctor Who. She says it was easy, and Ianto’s a little turned on by her rampant exploitation of easily-violated security holes. Tosh says the mine shaft is full of nuclear warheads, and wants to know if they’re all boned. Jack says that there’s no chance, not with “a dashing hero like me on the case!” He gives Gwen a look that says they’re totally boned. Back in Torchwood, Ianto mutters, “He is dashing. You have to give him that,” more to himself than anyone. Hee. The three in Deep-13 are all pensive, because they know they’re all dead if Jack doesn’t come up with a plan. Owen has a plan of his own. “Let’s all have sex.” Ianto rolls his eyes. “And I thought the end of the world couldn’t get any worse!” Awwww, that we’re-about-to-die thing totally worked on Gwen. Okay, Owen, I love you too.

At the military base, the remaining agent gets shot all full of holes. He looks mildly annoyed and keeps coming like the fucking Terminator. He delivers stabbity doom to one of the soldiers and steals the machine gun, then starts calmly mowing down the rest. He heads into the compound, and one soldier was just playing dead and rolls over to take a shot, but gets shot in the head. Awwwwww, good try buddy! A for effort! The agent starts typing security codes into a little thing that looks like an ATM, and doors start opening. Jack comes tearing in in the BBSUV, and he’s going to see the stabbity arm thing and raise the agent one very fast-moving vehicle. He runs right the fuck over him. The agent is damaged, and getting all twitchy. Jack and Gwen go running over to it, and the agent gets its blade-arm back and calmly stabs Jack in the stomach. The poor guy’s all OMG THAT REEEEEAALLLLY HURTS, and the agent tells him calmly, “You can’t stop us. We know what your weakness is. We know who you are, Jack Harkness.” Jack looks like he could maybe listen a little better if his liver wasn’t getting shredded into little pieces right about now. Also, if the agent knows Jack can’t die, this means he’s totally just being a dick. Gwen manages to deactivate the force field around the agent, and Jack stands up, yanks out the blade, and shows he can be a dick too and shoots the agent in the shoulder. He wants to know when the rest of the invasion is coming, but the agent just laughs and shows them the bomb in his hand. Jack runs pretty damn fast for the guy whose heart probably isn’t even beating right now, and they all make it away before the agent explodes. Jack giggles with relief.

Back in Deep-13, everyone’s sort of wrapping things up. Ianto comes out carrying some freaky-looking contraption, and jack takes one look at it and is all, “sweet!” and they go off together. Ewwwww. Also? Haaaaaaa. Gwen goes off to find Beth, saying they’ve fixed the freeze-tank so it’ll work this time. Beth just says she’s too dangerous to stay around. She asks if Gwen’s ever hurt someone she loves, and ohhhhhhhh Beth, don’t get me started. Gwen at least admits that she has, and Beth says that then she knows that Beth won’t be able to live with the guilt. Also, she’s just a ticking time bomb. “I don’t want to die as one of those things, Gwen.” Beth pretends to go berserk and takes Gwen hostage so the other Torchies will kill her. It seems to be working, as everybody’s got guns out. Gwen pleads with her, but Beth just quietly tells her goodbye and whips the blade back like she’s going to take Gwen’s head off. Bullets haven’t riddled a woman this thoroughly on the show since Cyber Woman, and I really don’t think Beth’s getting back up after that. Gwen’s all, “YOU STUPID SHITS! I TOLD YOU SHE WAS FAKING!” and they say they couldn’t take the chance. They all agree that Beth proved her humanity. Saaaaaaad sad shot of Beth’s bloodied-up corpse. What a bummer episode.

Later, Jack’s in his office, tooling around with the blade from the implant-thingie. Gwen comes in to ask whether they can prevent the coming invasion, and Jack says he doesn’t know, but that they have a fighting chance. Then he pretends to be a pirate. Yeah, I don’t know either. He asks about the wedding, but Gwen doesn’t want to talk about it, so he sends her home, then sits around with the blade looking upset.

Next Time: Tomb of the Unfroze Soldier! Tosh kisses a guy and Gwen gets screamed at. Haunted hospital, more WWII issues. Seriously, show, there have been other wars. Just sayin.

* [later edit] The verb ‘to fap’ used to mean ‘type enthusiastically and possibly at random,’ at least in the groups I used to hang out with. More recently it’s come to mean ‘masturbate enthusiastically,’ but I still tend to use it to mean typing, in some cases to my intense embarassment. Here I meant it as ‘thwacking random keys on the keyboard at great speed,’ sorry for any confusion.