Random Shoes
by Jacquetta May
Torchwood meets Love & Monsters.
Synopsis
Eugene Jones is dead and for some unknown reason, Torchwood is investigating the scene of the accident. Meanwhile, Eugene Jones stands beside them. He is only just beginning to realize he is dead, and he cannot remember the last two weeks of his life.
Eugene had been a bit of a Torchwood groupie and so he’s thrilled when Gwen wants to investigate his death. (Despite the fact that there’s no evidence of alien involvement.) Eugene narrates his thoughts on life while he follows Gwen on her investigation.
It turns out Eugene had been in the possession of an alien artifact, and Gwen’s investigation leads her to realize that Eugene’s two friends committed eBay fraud to make him think his artifact was worth £15,005.50. Greed got the better of them when they realized someone else would pay £15,000 for it so they try to force him to hand it over. He swallows it and they chase Eugene into traffic and to his death.
Mystery solved, Eugene can now go to his grave a fully-informed corpse, but not before he temporarily physically manifests himself so that he can save Gwen’s life from a traffic accident.
Analysis
I can only assume that writer Jacquetta May was told they needed to do an episode on the cheap and then locked in a room with a videotape of Doctor Who’s Love & Monsters as an example of the official “How to cheap an episode guideâ€.
That said, this was vastly superior to Love & Monsters, primarily because, with a 5 person cast, they were able to draw in Gwen only (with the other cast having greatly reduced roles) and produce a story you could rightly call Torchwood.
I question the wisdom of placing two episodes about life after death back-to-back, especially when they directly contradict each other.
Eugene had swallowed the Dogon Eye just before he died, and conveniently because he couldn’t remember what happened, that’s not revealed until the very end of the episode. The notion that the Eye inside his body has caused this little stint of life-after-death isn’t well-realized and the explanation is haphazard at best.
(Why, by the way, did Toshiko’s alien artifact detection equipment not notice the Eye in Eugene’s corpse?)
In a show that can’t quite find its niche, this isn’t such an odd duck out like Love & Monsters was for Doctor Who. If you don’t look too closely, and you don’t mind a title that sounds like a joke working title that they forgot to change, it’s not a bad character piece.