Director:
Alice Troughton
Written
by: PJ Hammond
Producer:
Richard Stokes
Music
by Murray Gold & Ben Foster
Better
Do Better by HARD-F1
Born
To Be A Dancer – by Kaiser Chiefs
Ooh
La – by The Kooks
In the quiet of the woods
late one evening, an elderly woman speaks quietly speaking into her voice
recorder, as she walks into the woods, her camera hung around her neck,
Estelle, (Eve Pearce) is searching for her woodland ‘darlings.’
Locating them in the
centre of the woods, bathed in moonlight, the creatures dance and flutter
around a stone circle unaware they are being watched – until that is, when
Estelle snaps a few shots for her collection.
Excited, almost too much
perhaps, she turns and heads back home, but it’s not gone unnoticed.
Transforming from the once white fluttering creature, stands a tall ugly
deformed faerie, green and skeletal with mischief on its mind...
It’s quiet in the Hub and
Captain Jack Harkness lies in his bed below the floor in his office.
He’s drifting into another
disturbed sleep, as a whistle blows in the distance, and he's sitting in a
troop train carriage with a group of men on the journey to Lahore. The men are
laughing, and music plays from a harmonica, much merriment is to be had. Jack
jerks his head, gasps and squirms in the bed. They're not alone. Tiny wings can
be heard. They go through a tunnel. The music stops playing. Jack discovers to
his horror that as the train exits the tunnel, everyone in the cargo hold bar
him lie dead, with a mouthful of red rose petals. He wakes with a start, bathed
in sweat.
Jack climbs out of the
hole in the floor, wearing a white t-shirt and trousers, braces hanging loose
and leans against the desk, exhales heavily. An old Magpie television set
flickers white static nearby. His desk is cluttered with paperwork and on a
tray resting above the desk Jack is growing himself a new TARDIS.
In amongst the paperwork
rests a single red rose petal. Jack collects it up and stares at it with some
concern. Without warning he turns, startled - someone else is in the Hub
besides him.
'You shouldn't be here.'
Jack says, to Ianto who has his head in a file, as he walks past Jack’s door.
Ianto jumps, startled, and hesitates in the doorway, folder closed, thumb
marking the spot.
'Neither should you.' he replies. After a
beat Ianto returns to his work. Jack follows, placing a hand upon Ianto's
shoulder, as he reviews his findings.
'Unusual weather patterns.'
Jack realises with some
concern - they're back!
At Coed Y Garreg Primary
School it’s home time and the children pile out of the gates into the arms of
their parents or walk home alone. Young
Jasmine Pearce (Lara Phillipart) is waiting for Roy, her mother’s partner to
collect her. He’s late!
Also waiting at the school
gates is Mark Goodson (Roger Barclay), local businessman with an interest in
little girls. Spotting one child on her
own he bides his time!
Roy heads out after Lynn
reminds him he’s late.
Still waiting, Jasmine is
at the mercy of two spiteful girls, one of whom pulls her hair as she walks
past; her yells are heard by her teacher who comes to see her, checking the
time, curious as to who is collecting Jasmine.
Soon her attention is taken by other children and Jasmine is alone
again. Mark Goodson pulls away from the
kerb. Jasmine begins to walk home. Down
the steps by the bridge walking towards the footpath that cuts through the
forest, Jasmine is stopped by Mark Goodson who insists he’s been sent by her
Mum to collect her. Already aware not to
get into a stranger’s car, she continues walking. Goodson parks the car further ahead and
climbs out. Jasmine is in danger!
Insisting that she get in
the car, he grabs her arm but as she struggles, a strong gale force wind whips
up around the car and around Mark Goodson, throwing him back against the car,
as he turns away, his face connects with the corner of the roof, yet all the
while Jasmine is unaffected, and smiles.
Hurriedly, the man pulls open the door to his car and climbs in winding
up the window and stares out as the wind doesn’t blow anywhere near the child
who now skips off on the footpath home.
Goodson’s nose is bleeding!
Across the other side of
town Jack is taking Gwen to meet an old friend.
Estelle is holding a meeting of Fairies – fact or fiction. Settling into their seats at the back of the
room, Jack waves acknowledgement to Estelle as she continues her talk. The familiar photograph of the Cottingley
fairies starts the topic, then her own snaps, not clear to be precise what the
creatures are, but clear enough for Jack to be interested, and Gwen to still
see this as all a bit silly. Jack shakes
his head as Estelle continues her talk; referring to the fairies as anything
but dangerous creatures. As the meeting ends, and introductions are over, Jack
asks where the photos were taken and if she has any more.
Mark Goodson is
spooked. Something is following him, he
hasn’t seen them but since he left his car, he’s sensed he’s not alone along
the streets. He hears the fluttering of
wings and mocking laughter. His nose
still bleeding he jumps and bumps into people especially a vocal male (Paul
Jones). Spotting the entrance to the
Cardiff Market he enters hoping to hide, to escape. But the creatures have followed, never losing
their mark, and as he looks up in the rafters of the building, he sees
one. It flies at him. Stood still in the building, he begins to
throw up, the reflex action forcing the blockage up and out of him. He coughs up petals, red flower petals. Coughing and retching he throws up more as he
staggers and stumbles through the building and out the other end, where he sees
salvation in the form of a WPC (Ffion Wilkins).
Grabbing her by her stab vest he shakes her, desperate to be taken
away. His wish is granted.
Roy (William Travis)
brings back a quiet Jasmine. He’d caught
her walking home. Her mum tries to
instil some form of warning but it goes unnoticed. She wasn’t in any danger.
Carrying back the folders
and the projector into Estelle’s house Gwen marvels at the room while Jack
insists on seeing all the photographs that Estelle kept of the fairies. Estelle introduces Gwen to Moses her long
haired black and white cat, then puts him out for some fresh air, leaving the
pair alone. As Gwen glances along the
mantelpiece she sees a photograph of a young airman in uniform. It looks just like Jack but he insists that
it's his Dad. 'He and Estelle were quite
an item once upon a time.' He says lifting out another photograph of a young
man with a beautiful young woman posing for a photograph on a pier. 'They were inseparable.'
'Then why did they part?' Gwen asked
'It was war time, he was posted abroad, she
went to work on the land.' Jack
shrugged. 'It just happened that way.'
Leaving Jack to peruse the
photographs Gwen steps out into the back garden to quiz Estelle further about
Jack’s ‘father’. Estelle tells her that
she’d lost touch with him after the war and Jack never wanted to talk about his
dad. Gwen learnt that Jack had contacted
Estelle a few years ago, a surprise after so long. 'So, like his dad, same walk, same
smile. I hope he’s still alive, he’ll be
in his early 90’s by now!'
Jack steps from the house,
still clutching the folder and insists that Estelle call them day or night if
she sees the fairies again. He wants her
to stay safe. He holds her close and
kisses her on the head, acting more like the ‘father’ than the son.
As Gwen and Jack leave
Estelle’s house, Jack displays concern for her.
It is a long walk back to the SUV and with the folder tucked under his
arm Jack and Gwen talk about the creatures.
Gwen wants to know what they were called.
'Something from the dawn of time how can you
possibly put a name to that?'
‘Are we talking alien?’
‘Worse.’
‘How come?’
‘Because they’re part of us.’ Jack explains as they walk down the street
past houses and parked cars. ‘Part of our
world yet we know nothing about them. So,
we pretend to know what they look like, we see them as happy, we imagine they
have tiny little wings and they’re bathed in moonlight.’
‘And they’re not?’ Gwen still wasn’t sure any of this was real.
‘No!
Think dangerous! Think of
something you can only half see, like a glimpse, something out of the corner of
your eye. A touch of myth, touch of the
spirit world, a touch of reality, jumbled together.’ Jack stopped to explain further. ‘Old moments and memories that are frozen in
amongst it, like debris, spinning around a ringed planet, tossing and turning,
whirling backwards and forwards through time.
If that’s them, then we have to find them, before all hell breaks loose.’
As Jasmine heads off to
the bottom of the garden and slips between the fencing into the woods, Roy
wonders why, when all other children have friends over, or play with toys and
laugh or read a book, that Jasmine does none of those things.
In the Hub as Ianto sets
out the coffees in the boardroom, Toshiko displays the oldest sighting of the
fairies on the screen. Gwen reports that
the photograph was a fake, when questioned further by Jack, after referring
that Conan Doyle was gaga and Houdini was a self publicist, she explains that she’d
written an essay in school on the Cottingley Plate photographs, ‘and when the
girls were old ladies they admitted they were fakes.’
‘So where was this sighting then?’ Toshiko enquires as a photograph of Estelle’s
came up on the screen.
‘Roundstone Woods.’ Jack replies.
‘Oh, I know it, it has an odd history.’ Owen adds.
‘It’s always stayed wild, even in ancient times it was considered bad
luck to walk in there even to collect timber.
Even the Romans steered clear of it.’
Toshiko confesses to have
not had any word of any sighting but Jack knew they wouldn’t. ‘These things come in under the radar.’ He suggests Toshiko sets up a programme
detecting unusual weather patterns.
Brought into the police
station and Mark Goodson is still protesting about the shadows. Desperate to be locked up he confesses about
his passion for little girls, and is secured a cell for the night.
In the early evening Jack,
Owen and Gwen take a visit into the woods to investigate the stone circle. Jack takes readings from his VM of the area
around them. Gwen still unconvinced
about Jack’s story about his ‘father’ presses further about Estelle and her
airman.
Arriving at the stones
under the watchful eyes of the forest dwellers, Gwen still doesn’t fully
believe in the myth, and isn’t wholly convinced that the stones were anything
more than stones in a circle, while Owen takes samples. But the disturbances in the trees above them are
enough to spook the team below.
It’s night time and
sleeping in the knowledge that he’s safe, Goodson wakes up to fluttering in his
cell. As he opens his eyes and turns to
look up at the ceiling, the creature dives at him.
As Lynn (Adrienne
O’Sullivan) carries out the cups to the kitchen she hears noises in her daughter’s
room and comes up to investigate. She
hears laughter and chatter, but as she opens the door, her daughter is silent
and stares at her mother as if she’s something to hide.
Understandably Lynn is
concerned that Jasmine appears to have clammed up.
The Custody Sergeant
(Nathan Sussex) walks the Torchwood team down to the cells relaying the details
about the man who claimed when he was pulled in to have seen shadows and things
following him. Pushing open the door to
Goodson’s cell it’s obvious SOCO have already been, their box and lamps are
around the body.
Toshiko meets up with Gwen
and Jack confirming that no other prisoner heard or saw anything and that they
are being transported to another prison.
As Toshiko steps into the
room, Jack asks from outside of the cell for the cause of death.
‘Going by the pin point haemorrhaging around
the eyelids and the hairline I’d say oxygen deficiency.’ Toshiko replies. ‘But it’s odd...’ she adds, ‘as there’s no
fingertip bruising on the face, no areas of pallor.’
‘Nothing to suggest that pressure was
applied?’
‘Looks like he suffocated to death in a
locked cell.’
Gwen crouches beside the
victim and peer closer at his open mouth. She reaches back into the box for a
pair of tweezers; teases the instrument into the mouth of Goodson, takes a firm
grip and extracts a flower petal! Jack blanches. Back in again and again Gwen pulls out more
of the same. Toshiko astounded admits
she’d never seen anything like that before.
‘I have.’ Jack admits.
Nightfall in Plymouth Road
and Estelle summons her energy crystals to show her where the faeries are, in a
bid to meet them again. Fluttering and
laughter and scarily strange noises give Estelle quite a fright. Lowering her crystal, she edges towards the
kitchen and peers out of the window into the dark garden. A pair of moonlit blue eyes peer out from the
bushes and something smashes the glass scaring Estelle.
In the hub Jack views the
last moments of Mark Goodson’s life, thrashing about, clearly no signs of the faeries
in the cell. He tells Gwen and Toshiko
that to the faeries this is a game, they torment and punish as a warning to
others, to protect their own, the Chosen Ones.
‘Somehow children and the spirit world they
go together!’
He begins to explain to Toshiko
and Gwen about the faeries and how to find out who the faeries want, because
they can’t trap them, as they have control of the elements, fire, water, the
air they breathe, comparing the faeries to the Mara, malignant wraiths, ‘where
the word nightmare comes from, they suffocate people in their sleep.’ The phone
rings and Jack is made aware that the faeries have their target, it’s Estelle
and she’s in trouble, she’s realised that in amongst the good fairies there are
bad ones.
As the team head out in
the SUV, Moses yowls in the garden. Torn
between staying safe and rescuing her cat, Estelle steps into the garden only
to fall into the trap prepared by the woodland creatures. A wind slams the door shut and she cannot
open it, no matter how hard she tries.
Rain begins to fall heavily and the faeries are enjoying their game.
En route, Toshiko detects
unusual weather patterns around Estelle’s home. Moses can only watch as his
mistress drowns in the rain held down by the faeries, while he remains safe in
the dry part of the garden. As the team arrive there’s no answer in the house,
but as they run around to the back of the garden, Jack slows as he spots
Estelle, quite still. Owen the good
doctor detects no breath or pulse. As
Owen steps away, Jack kneels down closing Estelle’s eyes and lifts her limp
body against him. Gwen can see that she
was right all along, it wasn’t Jack’s father, it was Jack.
‘We made a vow that we’d be with each other
till we died.’
In the Hub Jack opens up
to Gwen about Estelle and where they’d first met.
‘In London, at the Astoria Ballroom, a few
weeks before Christmas, she was 17 and she was beautiful.’ He smiled.
‘I loved her at first sight, but nothing lasted back then, promises were
always being broken. Estelle...’ Jack whispered, broken. ‘...to have to die like that.’ He knocks back a shot of brandy.
‘Those petals in Goodson’s mouth, where had
you seen that before, was that during the war?’
Gwen asked.
‘No! Long before then, on a troop train,
fifteen men and me in charge. Everyone
happy! Too happy! Too noisy! Then we hit a tunnel. We thought some birds had flown in through
some open window. Then came the
silence. Then when we came out of the
tunnel, all 15 men were dead. They’d
been suffocated, my squad, men I was responsible for.’
‘But why were the men killed?’
‘About a week earlier some had got drunk,
drove a truck through a village, ran over a child, killed her. That child was a Chosen One!’
The toy horses on Jasmine’s
shelf rock back and forth awakening her.
She sits up to watch the faeries at play. As Lynn switches off the lights, locking up
for the evening she hears a dog barking in the neighbourhood, and curiously
looks out of her door. She hears strange
laughter which spooks her, quickly closing the door as the faeries swoop, she
locks the door and switches out the lights.
At the end of the busy day
both Rhys and Gwen arrive home to find their flat vandalised and something
familiar sitting in the middle of the floor. A stone circle.
At school Jasmine is
pushed over by the regular bullies.
Jack steps into the lounge
of the flat to find Gwen filling another bin sack with leaves. She tells Jack
she’s not once had to bring the bad stuff home with her. Jack, having never been inside Gwen’s home
before, looks around at the once homely abode, the photos of Gwen and her
partner, loving couple hanging squint on the wall, broken furniture and broken
stones, ornaments. Gwen tells him how
scared she is as he shakes his head, surveying the damage. She wants to know about the creatures and why
they are doing this, hearing nothing from Jack she yells at him.
‘TELL ME JACK!’
‘All these so-called faeries were children
once, from different moments in time going back millennia. Part of the lost lands!’
‘Lost lands? What?’ Gwen stared back at Jack.
‘The lands belong to them!’
‘What exactly do they want? Why are they here?’
‘They want what’s theirs, the next Chosen
One!’
In the playground, Jasmine
sits on a wooden fence underneath the tree.
A school choir joyfully sings ‘Lord of the Dance’ as the two spiteful
girls walk over (Sophie Davies, Victoria Gourley), pulling Jasmine away from the
fence and push her onto the ground, laying the boot in.
A wind begins to pick up
in speed and fallen branches and play equipment falls over. Children scream and run for cover, but the
two bullies are pinned against the bushes and fence unable to reach safety, and
all the while Jasmine stands in sunshine – unaffected.
The teacher (Heledd
Baskerville) seen the previous day on home time duty rushes into the playground
to protect the frightened girls and notices Jasmine briefly standing enjoying
the moment.
As Jack and Gwen return to
the Hub Toshiko reports an unusual weather system despite the dry hot
spell. ‘It’s happening again.’ Isolating
the area, Torchwood responds. They pull
into the school grounds and file out, Gwen heading towards the playground while
Jack, Owen and Tosh head into the school itself. The teacher gives her account of what
happened but is still pretty shaken from the ordeal. All the children have been sent home for the
rest of the day.
Gwen views the devastation
of the playground noticing people clearing the mess. Up in the trees, she hears the mischievous
laughter and is certain she’s spotted the creatures and runs back into the
school. Re-joining Jack in the classroom she learns about the child, Jasmine
Pearce, who was unaffected by the wind, as if something was protecting her.
It’s Lynn and Roy’s party,
and it’s in full swing outside, Roy has the burgers on the barbecue, drinks are
flowing, guests are still arriving. Five
happy years together! In the kitchen of their house, Lynn chats to her daughter
who sets out the sausage rolls onto a plate.
Lynn asks about Jasmine’s friends, and if they’d like to come over,
Jasmine tells her they don’t like parties.
‘Not surprised if they live in trees.’
As Jasmine and Lynn rejoin
the party, Jasmine notices something odd at the bottom of the garden and is
upset to discover the new fence. In a
bid to coax Jasmine away, Roy takes hold of her arm, but after a hefty kick in
the leg and a bite on the hand, Roy lashes out, cuffing the little girl. A loud
crack of thunder echoes overhead. As Roy
returns to the party, the small windmill in the garden begins to whirr rapidly.
The SUV hurtles down Old
Forest Road as Roy gives his speech to his guests about Lynn and how long
they’ve been together. The wind picks up
and the faeries make themselves visible in the trees. They leap into the garden, knocking over the BBQ
scattering the food and drinks. Guests
file into the house through the French windows pushing and jostling, while two
faeries trap Roy, leaping about him, singling him out from the guests.
As Torchwood arrive, they
usher other guests out of the garden as the wind is now so strong they can
barely see clearly. One faerie leaps at
Roy knocking him onto his back, and is soon upon him, a hand over his eyes and
mouth suffocating him, before plunging its long green skeletal arm deep inside
Roy’s mouth up past its elbow, stifling his very breath. As Jack and Gwen can only watch, another
faerie fancies his chances with Jack to enact the same but just as it latches
its clawed fingers around Jack’s neck and climbs onto him, Gwen yells and
knocks it off, knocking both her and Jack onto the ground. The creatures leave and Jasmine follows them,
through the gap in the fence made by one faerie.
Jack watches the girl go
but is taken by the death of the man lying not too far from him. The faeries had had their fun and had left
their calling card. Lynn unable to
comprehend what just happened sits beside her partner, distraught.
Owen and Toshiko remain
while Jack followed by Gwen head after Jasmine through the destroyed fence. They locate her standing on the tip of the
forest. She tells them that they are
standing in a great forest, that’s magical and she wants to stay in it. Despite Jack’s attempts of talking her out of
it, and Gwen, the little girl is adamant she wants to stay with the
faeries. When Jack pulls the girl
towards him suggesting the faeries find another Chosen One, Jasmine tells him
that they will find her through time.
‘The child belongs here.’ Jack growls defiantly
maintaining a hold of Jasmine.
‘No!
She lives forever!’
‘Suppose we make her stay with us.’ Jack offers
‘Then lots of people will die.’ Jasmine replies.
‘Did they tell you that?’ Gwen probes.
‘They promised! They can make storms at my
school, kill Roy and that man and your friend!’
‘How do you know that?’
‘If they want to they can make great storms,
wild seas, turn the world to ice, kill every living thing. Let me go.’
‘The
child won’t be harmed?’
‘Jack you can’t.’ Gwen is alarmed.
‘Answer
me. The child won’t be harmed?’
‘We told you, she lives...forever!’
‘A dead world, is that what you want?’ Jasmine looks up at Jack. He faces her properly looking at her, at her
level.
‘What good is that to you? There will be no more Chosen Ones.’
‘They’ll find us, back in time.’
‘Take her.’
Amidst horror from Gwen
that Jack would do this, the girl skips off into the woods, turning back only
to thank him. As Lynn runs into the
woods spying Jasmine, she called to her, but to no avail, a white light
surrounds her and she disappears – forever.
Lynn, consumed by anguish, rage and loss, charges at Jack. He holds her
back from the pummelling she wants to inflict on him, as she cries heartily at
the loss of her daughter and husband to be. In his heart of hearts, he knows it
was the right decision to make, but at what cost?
As the team file out of
the garden, none of them can look at Jack.
‘What else could I do?’
Back in the Hub as Gwen
gathers up the photos on the desk, the screen flickers with the photo of the
Cottingley Fairies, looking closer she lifts the device for enhancing a
picture, and isolated one portion of the screen, around one particular faerie
as the haunting paragraph from W.B. Yeats poem is recited by a faerie. The faerie at the bottom of the old
photograph was of Jasmine Pearce.
'Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in
hand.
For the world's more full
of weeping than you can understand.'
Gwen leaves the room.
