I thought the most interesting aspect of this episode was that no matter how awesome I found Toshiko in “Citycide,” I found her almost unbearably annoying for most of this episode.

But I found her annoying much in the same way that Gwen and Owen did; I still liked her. Just found her to be a bit … needy.

Which was, I suppose, the point.

We start off in Cardiff in 1812, and for a few minutes, I though we were going to see some of Jack’s back story. No such luck.

A soldier goes into the woods with a prostitute and, as things are wont to do, it goes poorly, he slaps her, she runs off, he chases after to shoot her. But before he catches up with her, she’s posessed by an alien that had just been transported to Earth in shackles. (Though we don’t find that out until much later.)

The alien’s already killed her captor and now has slipped right into Mary’s body to blend in a little better. Not a bad idea when your true form is this:

Pretty cool looking, though, huh?

Anyhow fast-forward two centuries, more or less and you have Torchwood huddled over the skeletal remains of a body that appears to be of a woman killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. It’s definitely alien, they determine, because it has all sorts of alien elements, “even dark matter.” Nice touch.

And Toshiko can’t quite narrow down when the person died 196 years and 11 or 11 1/2 months – the site’s been disturbed, so she can’t determine it any more specifically than that.

One of the rubberneckers at the site is a woman who looks considerably like the prostitute we last saw in 1812.

This woman ends up “happening” into Toshiko in a bar, playing on her sisterhood to save a girl from a lecherous barfly. Until she lets slip that she knows Toshiko works with Torchwood.

She spouts off every freakin’ detail of Toshiko’s life, which freaks her out and claims to be part of some other group that has similar interests. Poor Toshiko has no friends and is sort of the odd man out at Torchwood right now – what with Captain Jack being so secretive, Gwen & Owen shagging and Ianto still in mourning over his Cybergirlfriend’s death.

So what does she do? She ends up getting trashed and blabbering on and on about Torchwood and how the aliens feel things and are so much like humans. It was a nice touch, though, her recalling a letter she’d translated that turned out to be a letter home from an alien to his children, saying he missed them.

That’s when Mary gives Toshiko a pendant that enables her to read minds. It’s been in her family for generations, she says, she wants to give it to Toshiko and knows she won’t give it to her colleagues at Torchwood, just won’t.

She doesn’t want it anymore, she tells Toshiko, because, “You hear too much. It changes how you see people.”

Of course, Tosh, when she goes to work in the morning, puts the pendant on to listen in on her colleagues. She’s going to show it to them, but is distracted by the fact that all Owen and Gwen can think about is when they’re going to be able to shag again. She feels very put off and uncared for.

Later, she realizes how much Ianto is hurting; his pain seems to bother her less than the fact that he’s not thinking about her, almost.

Back at home, she and Mary have somewhat of a tit for tat (sorry, no pun intended, actually) and it ends with them totally making out and then shagging. But meanwhile, we’ve learned that Toshiko actually has a thing for Owen (what is it about this boy? He’s not ugly, but he’s not Captain Jack good looking).

By this point, given the title of the episode, we’re all assuming that Mary is actually a Greek god. She tells Tosh she’s Philoctetes. Tosh, of course, has no idea who that is.

At Mary’s urging, she goes out with the pendant and manages to use the mind-reading ability to prevent a divorced dad from killing his ex-wife and child and then himself. Of course, he helped her by taking the opportunity to monologue about a chalet filled with spiders before pulling the trigger, so Tosh had the chance to catch up to him and knock him out with a golf club.

Back at Torchwood, we find out that the skeleton is not a woman (just a small, girly, man) and he died from blunt force trauma, not a gunshot wound. Owen can’t figure out the cause of death and is about to give up, but before he heads home, he checks some stuff out on the computer.

Nothing.

About to leave again, he tries something else.

Nothing.

About to leave again, he tries something else.

Hmm. Then he starts going back years and years in hospital records and he’s finding something he doesn’t like. We, however, have no idea what that is. He calls Captain Jack and tells him he has to see this.

By the by – Toshiko asks Captain Jack who Philoctetes was and finds out he was an archer who got into an argument on the way to the Trojan war and was marooned on the island of Lemnos for about 10 years. She also tries to read Captain Jack’s mind, but can’t, and lies to him about how she saved the ex-wife and child. Captain Jack knows there’s something wrong with her, but isn’t sure what.

Back at Tosh’s, she gets into a bit of a spat with Mary, saying she’s going to give up the pendant to Torchwood and Mary should come in, they can  help her. Mary uses The Voice (just like the Bene Gesserit in Dune) to stop her, then shows her her true form.

Her race hasn’t used oral communication for centuries. It’s disgusting. Then she smokes a cigarette. Very cute, writers, very cute.

Side note: Very funny that Tosh basically says her parents would be more disappointed in her sleeping with a woman than with an alien.

Tosh is a little taken aback, though, by Mary’s assessment of the human race, saying they would just want to dissect her and keep her imprisoned, not just try to help and understand her; the human race is very savage.

Tosh can’t really disagree, and doesn’t take her in.

Turns out Owen discovered bodies in Cardiff with their hearts ripped out going back years and years and years. Captain Jack finds this interesting.

Toshiko can’t take it anymore and takes Mary to Torchwood when no one’s there. She thinks. Mary needs her transporter (did I mention the Torchwood gang found some weird metal apparatus with the dead body?) and Tosh is going to help her get it back.

Jack’s there, and has Mary’s transporter.

The transporter was for two – a prisoner and a guard. Bet 10 quid which Mary is. Mary claims her feelings for Tosh are true, then threatens to kill her if she doesn’t get the transporter back. So Jack gives it to her. She’s transported away almost immediately.

But Jack somehow managed to reset the coordinates in the device to the middle of the sun.

It shouldn’t be hot; I mean, it’s night and everything.

Cute, Captain Jack. (Also cute when you tell Mary that of course you’re something different; one need only look at your teeth to tell you’re not a British man – lol!)

I liked the resolution, and found myself liking Toshiko a bit more again – she realized the power of the pendant and realized that people are often thinking things they don’t even realize. And she shouldn’t have been listening in anyhow.

Owen is pissed off anyhow; but Gwen, she understands, because she shouldn’t be with Owen, yet she is anyhow. Glass houses and all that.

Side note: I know it seems silly, but I really like the overviews of Cardiff. I’ve never been, but it seems rather attractive. It occurs to me that I’d like to visit the city.