Given the name of the episode, we knew the mortal (well, you know what I mean) enemies of the Doctor – of all mankind, in fact – the Cybermen, would be making some sort of appearance.

And the Cybermen are always utterly creepy, so we were in for a ride.

They did, in the personage of Lisa, a former member of the Torchwood London team, the lady love of Ianto Jones. However, she was only half converted into a cyborg, we learn, which explains why she’s basically in some weird bikini bondage version of the Cybermen robot garb.

Because the Cybermen’s sole goal in life is to “upgrade” all mankind, as soon as you see that Ianto has been keeping Lisa secret from Captain Jack and the rest of the Torchwood Cardiff crew, you just know things can’t end well.

For those who can’t remember, the Cybermen managed to come to Earth ever-so-briefly at the end of Series 2 of the new Doctor Who. Torchwood London was messing with the rift between the Earth we know and the Earth from Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel from earlier in the season.

In the season-ending two-parter Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, we got the great Dalek v Cybermen showdown and lost Rose to the alternate Earth where her father was still alive and Mickey had decided to take up residence.

But before we got to that point, the Cybermen managed to partially make it through the rift and, pressed for time, started just converting the bodies of anyone they could get their metal mitts on rather than transferring their consciousness into brand-new Cybermen bodies.

Lisa was a victim of that conversion, but the Cybermen hadn’t managed to finish the job and Ianto carted her off and, apparently, has been keeping her in some sub-sub-sub basement of Torchwood Cardiff ever since.

He finally found some weird guy, Dr. Tanizaki, who’s an expert in cyborgs to see if he could make her all human again. He’s totally creepy, feeling Lisa up, Ianto has to restrain himself from punching him out, it looks like.

Lisa’s breathing and hearing are cybernetic already, and Tanizaki estimates that she’s 55 percent, 60 percent cybernetic at this point. Jones is really pathetic, telling Tanizaki how much they love one another and how he has to save her. She wakes up, there’s tears, blah blah blah.

She gets off the Cybertable and ends up putting Tanizaki on it, trying to upgrade him. Doesn’t end well. Ianto finds out and hides the body. He loves Lisa too much, and you can see that her love for Ianto is still strong enough that she won’t try to upgrade him, even though the Cyberwoman part of her wants only to do that.

Long story short, Captain Jack finally finds out what’s up, he almost kills Ianto for lying and for putting not just Torchwood, but all of Earth at risk for a Cybermen invasion just because he loved Lisa.

Though it was obvious that Gwen would be rescued, it was still totally creepy to see all those mechanical arms come down to do their cutting and pasting just before all the power was shut down. I mean, let’s face it – as cheesy as the Cybermen are, they are CREEPY.

In the end, the pterodactyl does lots of damage to Lisa, and then, somehow the pizza girl ends up going into the basement and Lisa transfers her brain into this poor woman.

But seeing as at least a couple of her senses already were cybernetic, does that mean that even in this new body, she would have still been slightly cybernetic? Do Captain Jack & co kill her because of that risk? I have to admit, I was kind of confused on that.

But it was also kind of sad that just one episode after Captain Jack teaches Gwen how to fire a weapon, she has to use it to kill someone who was just moments earlier, a completely innocent pizza girl.

In the end, Ianto faces his “are you with us or against us” moment and has to pick a side. He put everything at risk, and that just can’t happen. Torchwood’s mission and the safety of the planet must come first.

One side note: I love how in each episode, they have Captain Jack early on saying something about how Torchwood’s a secret organization dealing in alien technology. You can tell it was a new series at this point, because they wanna keep reminding the viewers what the show’s about.