CYBERWOMAN

'"Cyberwoman"' is an episode of the British science fiction television series ''Torchwood''. It is the fourth episode of the first series, which was broadcast on 5 November 2006.

Contents

Synopsis

Plot

Cast

Continuity

Production

Music

References

External links

Synopsis

Ianto has a dark secret, tied to the basement of the Hub — a secret he will protect at any cost.

Plot

It is an uneventful day at Torchwood Three, and the team are playing basketball when Ianto arrives. They pay little attention to him, and decide to go out for a drink. Alone in the Hub, Ianto orders pizza just as a Japanese doctor named Tanizaki arrives. Ianto brings Tanizaki into the depths of the Hub and shows him a partially cyber-converted woman strapped to a cyber-conversion unit. Ianto introduces her as Lisa.
As Tanizaki, a cybernetics expert, examines Lisa, Ianto explains that his girlfriend Lisa worked in London, at Torchwood One during the Cyberman invasion. Near the end of the Battle of Canary Wharf the Cybermen were desperate for troops, so they began grafting cyber-components onto bodies instead of transplanting their brains. While Torchwood One began to burn, Ianto dragged Lisa out. Tanizaki asks how Ianto knew how to hook Lisa up to the correct support machines and to his surprise, she wakes up and replies that she told him. Although she is still in pain, she apparently retains her human mind. The two want Tanizaki to find a way to turn her human again.
Taking her to the autopsy room, Tanizaki manages to get Lisa breathing on her own. She and Ianto are elated, but the rest of the team have received an alert about a UFO over Cardigan Bay and are returning to the Hub. Ianto tells Tanizaki to help Lisa back down to the basement while he cleans up. Once there, however, Lisa grabs Tanizaki by the throat. Subduing him and speaking in a Cyberman-sounding voice, she secures Tanizaki in the cyber-conversion frame and activates it.
Above, Jack notices the sudden power drain and asks Toshiko to check. However, Ianto interrupts, claiming that the generators had been acting up and offers to fix it himself, turning down Gwen's offer of help. To Ianto's horror, he finds Tanizaki's bloodied corpse on the floor with cybernetic parts clumsily grafted to his face. Lisa simply states that Tanizaki's "upgrade" — her way of repaying him — failed. Ianto is upset, but tries to rationalise it by telling Lisa she did not mean it and that it is just some post-traumatic side effect. He tells her to stay in the basement and that this cannot happen again. Pulling himself together, he hides the body, while Lisa returns to the frame and re-energises.
Jack tells Toshiko to send a polite message to the UFO (an Arkan leisure cruiser) to leave Earth's atmosphere. Lisa's new power drain attracts attention, and Toshiko finds two life signs in the basement. One is Ianto's, but the other is unknown. Jack concludes that they are under attack and starts handing out sidearms. Gwen and Owen go to find Ianto, and Jack warns them to shoot first if there is any doubt; their main priority is to find Ianto.
The power source is interfering with communications as Gwen and Owen approach the basement room. Toshiko goes through the internal CCTV records and finds that someone has removed images from the system. However, she finds one that shows Ianto showing Tanizaki into the Hub.
Gwen and Owen burst into the room, guns at the ready. The conversion unit is empty, but Owen recognises it for what it is. They turn off the unit and base power automatically comes up. Owen reports the presence of the unit to Jack, who orders them back up immediately. Before Owen can respond, Lisa attacks him and knocks him out, next advancing on Gwen. Jack rushes down, telling Toshiko to activate lockdown procedures if she does not hear from him in fifteen minutes. Lisa disarms Gwen and places her in the unit, starting it up.
Jack is about to shoot Lisa when Ianto pushes him against a wall, allowing Lisa to escape. The unit is shut down just before the knives get to Gwen by shutting off the power to the whole base. However, they are now trapped inside. Ianto apologises, and Jack realises that he is somehow responsible for this. Jack turns his gun on Ianto and marches him back to the Hub to interrogate him, carrying an unconscious Owen and accompanied by Gwen.
Owen regains consciousness as Jack asks Ianto what else he is keeping from them, and Ianto retorts that all the others want from him is to clean up after them, no questions asked; they have never asked about his life. He argues that, as Lisa fell in battle for Torchwood, they owe it to her to find a cure. Jack tells him there is none and explains that this is how it starts, with a small decision. The Cybermen work by exploiting human weakness, and if they do not stop her, a base will be set up from which they will sweep across the universe, assimilating everyone. However, Ianto refuses to give up on Lisa.
Toshiko reports that it will take six hours to get the power back up. As Ianto offers to talk to Lisa, she appears and tells them that the base is suitable and the "army" will be rebuilt from here. When Ianto and Jack point out that Lisa still looks human, her own appearance disgusts her. She offers to transplant her brain into Ianto's body so that they can be together as one, asking if this would be what love is. When Ianto disagrees, she tells him they are incompatible and throws him aside, with him landing unconscious facedown in a pool of water. The others run into the board room and decide that Lisa must be destroyed at all costs.
Jack hands Toshiko a device that will unlock any door in 45 seconds, and orders her to go up to the reception area and charge up two power rods that should give them enough power for what they need. Lisa reaches the board room, and Jack distracts her while Toshiko leaves and Owen and Gwen go to the autopsy room to scavenge any weapons they can. Lisa grabs Jack and electrocutes him. As the others look on, Jack gets up, but Lisa "deletes" him again and he stays down.
Toshiko manages to get through the main door before Lisa reaches her. Lisa moves towards Owen and Gwen instead, who hide together in one of the freezers. Jack wakes up again, and revives Ianto by breathing life into him with a kiss, as Owen and Gwen start passionately kissing each other in the freezer. Gwen's mobile phone goes off, alerting Lisa to where they are. Gwen and Owen scramble out of the freezer. When Lisa moves towards Gwen, Owen tells her not to touch Gwen and stabs one of Lisa's unarmoured areas with a scalpel. However, this only momentarily disables Lisa.
Up in the reception area, Toshiko finishes her rewiring. Down below, Jack holds Lisa off with a blow torch and sprays the special "barbecue sauce" that helps their pet pterodactyl identify its food. It flies down and attacks Lisa, who screams while the others use the now-powered invisible lift to escape.
In Roald Dahl Plass, Toshiko rejoins them. Ianto punches Jack for leaving Lisa for dead, and warns him that one day he will have the chance to save Jack, but will watch him suffer and die instead. Toshiko informs them that she managed to trip the lockdown timer, so power should be returning to the base. Hearing this, Ianto runs back to the front entrance, the rest giving chase. Meanwhile, the pizza delivery girl arrives and is let into the Hub, where she hears the pterodactyl's cries as Lisa, bloodied but standing, appears behind her.
Ianto grabs a gun from the reception desk and holds it on the others, threatening to shoot if they follow. Jack disarms him and points his own revolver at Ianto's head, insisting that Ianto's loyalty is to the team now, adding that if he does not kill Lisa, Jack will kill both of them. Ianto stands up to Jack, accusing him of being the biggest monster of all. Jack lets Ianto go, giving him ten minutes.
Ianto finds pizza boxes and a power drain occurring. Going to the basement room, he sees Lisa dead on the floor, her head bloody. Someone calls out his name, and Ianto turns to see the delivery girl, with stitches around the top of her head. She tells him she is Lisa; she took the girl's body and transplanted the brain so they could be together. He sobs, hugging her, then pushes her away, holding his gun on her. She protests that she did this for him as Ianto finally breaks down in tears, turning away. When she adds that they can both be upgraded, several shots ring out in succession as the other Torchwood members open fire, killing her. Ianto falls to his knees in front of Lisa's cybernetic body.
Ianto returns to the Hub the next day, and looks up at Jack in the board room. Jack simply nods, and Ianto nods back, starting to clear up the rubbish of the others. Gwen watches him and muses about all the deception, just because Ianto could not bear to live without Lisa. She asks Jack if he has ever loved anyone that much but he does not reply. Gwen adds that for a moment she believed that Jack could have really died. Jack replies that he did as well, and, for just that second, he felt so alive.

Cast

★ Captain Jack Harkness — John Barrowman

★ Gwen Cooper — Eve Myles

★ Owen Harper — Burn Gorman

★ Toshiko Sato — Naoko Mori

★ Ianto Jones — Gareth David-Lloyd

★ Rhys Williams — Kai Owen

★ Lisa — Caroline Chikezie

★ Dr Tanizaki — Togo Igawa

★ Annie — Bethan Walker

Continuity

★ In this second appearance of the pterodactyl, it is revealed that the reptile is attracted to "a sort of barbecue sauce", which is what the Torchwood team use to identify its food. The Torchwood Institute website explains that it is a special protein sauce to help the creature identify what is safe for it to eat.^[1]

★ Never-before seen flashbacks to the events of the ''Doctor Who'' episode "Doomsday" (2006) appear in this episode, featuring Ianto pulling Lisa from the destruction of Torchwood One.

★ The Torchwood Institute website reveals that Ianto worked for Torchwood One before he was transferred to Torchwood Three.^[2] It also reveals that Dr Tanizaki was the head of the Cybertechnology Institute of Osaka, founded in 2007 after the Cyberman invasion to monitor and learn from the Cybermen and their debris.^[3]

★ The lock-picking device is said to be something Suzie was working with. This is the first time Suzie Costello has been mentioned since her death in "Everything Changes". The lock-picking device is the same prop as the data scanning device seen in "Everything Changes", although it is not clear if it is the same device.

★ This is the third reference to Jack's immortality, although this time the others witness his ability to return from the dead.

★ Unlike the Cybermen of the main ''Doctor Who'' universe, the parallel Earth Cybermen usually transplant human brains into Cyberman shells. The cyber-conversion of Lisa by means of direct grafting of cyber-components is more akin to the original Cybermen's methods of conversion.

★ The Torchwood Institute website states that, while most of the humans who were cyber-converted were either pulled into the void, or had their cyber-components wrenched from them, those whose components originated from "this side" of the void were left behind. Most of these people died then, as their conditions could not be stabilised due to Torchwood's unfamiliarity with the technology.^[4] This clarifies an issue that was not made clear at the end of "Doomsday".

★ Jack and Ianto's kiss foreshadows a relationship between them that is first depicted explicitly in "They Keep Killing Suzie". The two kiss again on screen in "End of Days".

★ A similar looking, partially-converted "Cyberwoman" appeared in the illustrations made for the webcast ''Doctor Who'' radio story ''Real Time''.^[5]

★ Partially cyber-converted humans, with varying degrees of independent will and human personality, are seen in the ''Doctor Who'' stories ''The Tomb of the Cybermen'' (1967) and ''Attack of the Cybermen'' (1985). In "Doomsday", the completely converted Yvonne Hartman still retained some of her former personality, as did the similarly-named Yvonne Hartley from the Big Finish Productions audio play ''Spare Parts'' (which inspired the plot of "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel").

★ In "Rise of the Cybermen" (2006), the President of Great Britain says to the Cybermen, 'I'm sorry for what they did to you, but this ends now, tonight'. Jack says the exact same line before Lisa deletes him for the first time.

Production

★ The original title of this episode was "The Trouble with Lisa".^[6]

★ For reasons unexplained in the episode, Lisa's partially cyber-converted form wears two-inch heels instead of the heavy boots worn by other Cybermen, yet she still makes the same sound as other Cybermen when she walks. The design of her costume is also reminiscent of the gynoid Maria in Fritz Lang's 1927 film ''Metropolis''.

★ The pizza girl, unnamed on screen, is called Annie in the end credits.

Music

★ The song "Chocolate" by Snow Patrol can be heard in the background in the bar, (Snow Patrol having been previously heard in the episode "Everything Changes"). The song "We're No Here" by Mogwai can be heard as we are first introduced to Lisa.

References

1. Torchwood External Hub Interface - Pterodactyl
2. Torchwood External Hub Interface - Ianto Jones - Transcript - Online Counselling Session
3. Torchwood External Hub Interface - Doctor Tanizaki
4. Torchwood External Hub Interface - Report: Closure of Torchwood One
5. Real Time Picture Gallery
6. A Brief History of Time (Travel): Cyberwoman Shannon Sullivan

External links

★ "Cyberwoman" episode guide entry on the BBC website

★

★

★ ''Real Time'' (''Doctor Who'' audio episode)