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TARDIS Guide

Overview

First aired

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Production Code

2.9

Written by

Phil Ford

Directed by

Ashley Way

Runtime

46 minutes

Time Travel

Present

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

LGBTQA+, Pregnancy, Shape Shifting, Wedding

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Cardiff, Earth, Wales

UK Viewers

3.75 million

Synopsis

Gwen Cooper is about to get married to her fiancé Rhys. Only one problem: on her honeymoon night she is bitten by an alien and wakes on her wedding day heavily pregnant with a shape-shifter's baby. The alien mother is on the loose and searching for its offspring. The only way for the alien to get the egg is to rip open its carrier, Gwen...

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4 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

Don't know what to say, I had a blast watching this episode. I was laughing at every interaction between the characters confronting the surrealness of it all.

It's 46 minutes of the team trying to prevent Gwen's wedding from going horribly, and, obviously, failing catastrophically.

Yes, this is not a profound or thought provoking episode, but that's the point. We just had 2 episodes of pure sadness and death, so this is just a great palate cleanser.

So yeah, I see I'm in a minority here, but I loved it, will rewatch when I want to just have fun and don't think too hard. This is what's great about Doctor Who, you can have tonally different episodes follow one another and it just works.


This review contains spoilers!

This has all the failings of the bad episodes from Series 1. It's trying too hard to shout 'Look at us, we're the adult Doctor Who!' by throwing in alien blowjobs and pregnancies, and it just comes across a bit gross. It's very corny too; I mean, in one scene the alien shapeshifter poses as Rhys's mother and comes out with such laughably cliche'd lines like 'Rhys, you're a bad boy. And you know what bad boys get?'.

 

The best parts are the wedding itself. The alien shapeshifter plot is just cringe overload.


This review contains spoilers!

It's not the worst Torchwood episode, but it's not good and definitely feels like a step back towards the first Torchwood series. It feels like a very silly use of sci-fi tropes when I was actually excited to get into a story about Rhys and Gwen. These two have had a rocky relationship to say the least so I figured this would be a way to build them back up together again, while acknowledging this should mean a change in the status quo. It felt like it should have been a big moment, with Rhys becoming more integrated with Torchwood and now him fully committed to Gwen, this should signify some sort of change in the characters and their lives. And while that is, to a degree, true of the larger show, Something Borrowed feels we make a bunch of jokes that I just didn't find funny and we're left with an episode I simply did not find purpose in. It feels especially out of place after such a heavy trilogy of episodes dealing with Owen.


Love a Gwen episode and this was a perfect Gwen episode honestly such a good story I feel all of the torchwood team come together for her in this one


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Statistics

AVG. Rating240 members
3.32 / 5

Trakt.tv

AVG. Rating263 votes
3.88 / 5

The Time Scales

AVG. Rating52 votes
3.40 / 5

Member Statistics

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670

Favourited

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Reviewed

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Saved

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Skipped

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Owned

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Transcript Needs checking

[Previously]

JACK: What's this?
GWEN: That's an engagement ring, that is.
JACK: You're getting married?
GWEN: Yes. Rhys asked.
JACK: And you said yes.
GWEN: Well, no one else will have me. I need stability, Jack. Someone I can rely on.

[Disco]

(Friday night. The music is loud, the lights flashing and the party girls are all in pink fur-trimmed stetsons and matching red t-shirts.)

MEGAN: Oh, it's the service she's meant to be late for, not her hen do. Where is she?
TRINA: There she is!
BOTH: (singing) Here comes the bride, looking for a ride. Here comes the bride, lads, she'll take it up the aisle!
MEGAN: Ey, I thought you'd bottled it.
GWEN: No, I had a lot on at work.


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