I hate this episode. I really do. In fact I may have rated it too highly in all honesty. But I felt that Eve Myles is doing a fantastic job in this episode, and so she single handedly bumps the rating up at least half a star.

My biggest problem with this episode is that all of the Torchwood team are complete idiots here. This series has had to rely on our heroes doing something obviously stupid many times over the course of this series. But usually it's just one character messing up, and with some sort of motivation. In this episode all 5 Torchwood members are inconceivable dumb for much of the episode, and the reasons why are so rushed and lazily drawn that it feels completely forced and unnatural. Honestly this whole series has made a strong case that the team at Torchwood 3 are actually terrible at their jobs. This has never been more evident than in this episode, where they essentially cause the end of the world, twice. It's utterly infuriating and frankly just bad storytelling.

So the basic plot for this episode is that when Owen opened the rift last episode to save Jack & Tosh, it caused the rift to expand and now all of history is pouring out through it. This is causing problems all over the world, with many seeing this as the 'End of Days'. Firstly having a global event of this scale feels way to big for 5 idiots in Cardiff to have to deal with. Secondly the episode does a bad job of demonstrating how big and global this threat is. They say it a bunch, but outside of Britain all we see is some UFOs over the Taj Mahal. So the threat level is too big in that it's a global calamity, but it never actually feels like the global calamity that we're told it is.

Anyway that's not the major problem. The major problem is that this was all clearly caused by Torchwood opening the rift. So everyone apart from Jack decides that in order to save the day they must... open the rift, but more. That's their genius plan, to do the bad thing that caused all the problems again. It's so obviously a terrible idea, and it turns out to be a really terrible idea because when they do so they release Abaddon, devourer of worlds.

Literally all of our team apart from Jack decide to do the stupidest thing, just for the sake of having a big monster to defeat at the end of the episode. They're all idiots for doing this (apart from Jack, but I'll get to why he's an idiot later). The justification that we're giving is some vague suggestions from Bilis Manger. That's right the suspicious and sinister Bilis who last episode the team realised was up to no good and do not trust, well now the team just listen to what he says without really questioning it. I hope he's not up to no good. I hope he doesn't want to unleash an apocalyptic monster to destroy the world. Why would he want to do that? Actually why does he want to do that? Why does he want to destroy the world? Doesn't matter, this episode isn't interested in giving anyody good character motivations.

For example the other thing that happens to convince everyone that they should open the rift is the team (minus Jack) all get visions. Owen sees Diane, Ianto sees Lisa and Tosh sees her Mum. Firstly it's a sad indictment of how little this show has defined Tosh's life outside of Torchwood, that there isn't actually a character from the show to appear to her. So they have to just fall back on her Mum appearing, a character we've never seen or really know anything about. But that's a different issue. My big issue here is that 3 supposedly smart people are convinced to do something that'll damage reality, for a second time btw, they've already done it once and now reality is threatened, because if they do, people they love will come back because... reasons. The world is ending, but I'll cause it to end faster because if I do I might get to see my dead girlfriend (or mum or Tosh's case) is a terrible justification. It makes these 3 characters look incredibly stupid and incredibly selfish.

Gwen is the only person who's motivations I can kinda buy. She's still a complete idiot, but Eve Myles sells the crap out of her characters grief & desperation. Gwen isn't shown visions of lost loves. She's shown a vision of Rhys dying (from the now incredibly trustworthy Bilis), so she knocks Rhys out and takes him to Torchwood where she can keep him safe. Then Bilis appears and stabs Rhys to death. I don't even understand why Bilis needs to trick Gwen into taking Rhys to Torchwood in the first place. Why couldn't he just appear at Rhys' house and kill him there? Doesn't ultimately matter, this episode has much bigger problems, but it feels needlessly convoluted. Anyway Gwen then decides that opening the rift will bring back Rhys. Again I don't really understand why she (or anyone else) thinks that the rift which is causing all of the problems, is actually a magical solution all of a sudden. But at least Gwen is believably out of her mind, so she's the character I dislike least in this episode.

Jack keeps saying that they can't open the rift, it'll make things worse. The other 4 Torchwood members stage a mutiny, Owen even shoots Jack in the head. Yes Jack comes back as always, but Owen didn't know that. As far as Owen was concerned he just murdered his boss. The team then use everyone's retinal scans to open the rift again. I don't think it's ever really explained why everyone's retinal scans are needed to open the rift now, when last episode they weren't, but whatever, who cares at this point. Turns out Jack was right, because of course he was. They open the rift Abaddon appears and the big monster showdown that the episode has been building to is complete crap.

Firstly just having Ianto mention the word Abaddon once, in an incredibly sweaty bit of dialogue where Ianto is reading end of the world prophecies from the bible (because sure, why not) does not equate to sufficiently setting up the big bad of your whole season of television. But even if they did setup Abaddon well, he'd still be s**t. He stomps around Cardiff for a bit, the effects budget can't really stretch to showing any real carnage, so we're just told that anything Abaddon's shadow touches has died. So Jack lures Abaddon to a field, because if Abaddon feeds off life, and Jack can't die, so what happens if Abaddon tries to feed off Jack. This means that the big climactic battle for the whole series, is John Barrowman screaming in shadow for a couple of minutes. Then his immortal life force defeats Abaddon, which also seals the rift and resets the timeline to before any of this happened. Again the episode doesn't even begin to explain why defeating Abaddon seals the rift and alters time, but it's gives us a happy ending. Except Jack has died... except no he hasn't, they just pretended he had for 5 minutes. Yay there were no consequences to any of it.

This is why Jack is an idiot btw, because there are no consequences. Well firstly he spends a lot of the episode being an asshole to his team. But mostly he's an idiot because when he wakes back up he's just like, well done team, we saved the day. Now onto season 2. Did he forget that his team, staged a mutiny and murdered him so that they could open the rift against his wishes. In doing so they released a giant demon who killed a bunch of people, proving him right and meaning they were wrong to go against him in the first place. Jack has to apparently die, and experience agonising pain fighting a freaking demon in order to rectify all the ways his dumbass team f*cked up. There's no consequences to any of that, Jack just wakes up and we all pretend non of that ever happened.

So yes Jack is also an idiot. Meaning we're 5 for 5 on the main cast of this show being idiots who are terrible at their jobs. What a terrible way for a series of television to end.