What gets me is that this had all the trappings of a good episode - the relationships between Ianto and Jack and Ianto and Lisa were highlights. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode. The Cyberwoman costume is, of course, horrific, the dehumanisation done to Torchwood's first black character is bad, and whatever the hell that scene in the cupboard(?) with Owen and Gwen was also bad. But there could have been something good there

IANTO #1! IANTO NATION FOREVER! I WOULD HAVE CONVERTED TONS OF HUMANS WITH YOU, AND KEPT YOU ALIVE FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!

A missed opportunity. The ideas are there, but the execution falls flat. Poor writing and production decisions all around (Why does the Cyberwoman have boobs?, Why is Jack so surprised that the Cyberman is a woman when it's not that unusual?).

no one gets this episode like i do

S1E4

Cyberwoman

7/10

Having rewatched this one again... Wow!

It's a very interesting episode, and the plot is engaging throughout. But it's very dark and horrifying!

The Cyberwoman design doesn't quite work for me, but I give it some leeway because the plot is decent.

Ianto dragging his half-converted girlfriend from a conversion chamber to Torchwood, setting up everything to keep her alive? That's so awful to live through! How long has she been down there?!

I like this as a character piece on Ianto, especially since we really don't know much about him other than he serves the coffee.

There's several times I was thinking "this can't get any worse, can it?" and it did!! Especially that poor pizza girl...

The only thing that bugs me about this episode is the consequences for Ianto. Shouldn't he be fired after this? Memory wiped of Torchwood? Some consequence? I don't recall anything about this after this episode. And here, at the end, it's not well addressed.

The perodactyl attacking the Cyberwoman? Ridiculous, I kinda love it.

And GDL's acting? It's pretty good. He plays it very traumatized, desperate. I don't get some complaints I've seen about his acting. I really enjoyed the scene between him and Barrowman holding him at gunpoint before sending him in to finish things.

I enjoyed watching it, and there's certainly other nitpicks and plot issues to point out, but I don't care enough to.

I think I'll need a short break from Torchwood after this one cause that was SO dark.

I am not, at all, a fan of Cyberwoman. I think it is crass, it is hard to ever really let this side of Ianto just slip away, and for all of Torchwood's talk of maturity, we get this. One of my least favourite script by one of my least favourite Doctor Who writers. The design of the Cyberwoman looks terrible, the idea of the story just doesn't hold up well at all, and I think it cheapens the idea of the Cybermen in general.

Though Torchwood would eventually find some marks of quality, early stories like this and Day One did a lot to turn me off of the series, and view it as simply incapable of handling Doctor Who material. Over time, I suppose I would be proven wrong, but it is still hard to shake the image of this being the dorky little show that acts tough and pulls crap that would have been silly and exploitative in the 1970s.