Countrycide

Scooby Doo taught me that the real monsters were people....

No but seriously, Countrycide is good. The gang get dropped in a slasher for an episode and it goes just as well as you'd think. It was tense and horrific and so an excellent watch a few days out from Halloween

Blimey, that was one episode I'd never expect from a Who spin-off. Doctor Who and the broader Whoniverse has often done humans as the villains...but not like this. A very disturbing episode that leaves our heroes (especially Gwen) in a traumatic place.

Countrycide is a fairly standard episode with some strong aspects to it. I enjoy how this episodes looks taking great advantage of Brecon Beacons, giving it a little different than usual flair and taking on a slightly more grounded tone.

It's fun when the threat is just human, but where Countrycide loses me a bit is in the character drama. It feels a little overplayed and I just don't get much of anything out of Gwen and Owen. Owen's character is just presented as so ugly from the start it really is hard to feel much other than disdain for him so it is rough to see him paired with the audience stand-in. Once again, it feels more like Torchwood's trademark version of haphazardly "adulting" Doctor Who, and the effects are laid pretty bare.

Finally, our villains of the story feel pretty generic against the backdrop of other shows with darker science fiction and fantasy content. X-Files, Stargate, and Supernatural have all gone this route before, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples out there. So, it's alright, but yeah, just an episode that comes across as much better given what Torchwood goes through to get to this point. Credit to Chibnall for writing this one, but it does make sense to me as this episode is a lot closer to Broadchurch than anything he normally would do with Doctor Who - I think the writer has always been more adept at this grounded stuff while consistently fumbling the more exploratory nature of Who's Sci-Fi, which kind of shows when one considers the strengths and weaknesses of Torchwood and his time with Who.