Owen Harper
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| Torchwood character | |
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| Doctor Owen Harper | |
| Affiliated with | Torchwood Institute |
| Race | Human |
| Home planet | Earth |
| Home era | Early 21st century |
| First appearance | "Everything Changes" |
| Last appearance | "Exit Wounds" |
| Portrayed by | Burn Gorman |
Dr Owen Harper (born 14 February 1980) is a fictional character played by Burn Gorman, and a regular in the BBC television series Torchwood, a spin-off from the long-running series Doctor Who. Within the series, Owen is the resident medic of the Cardiff branch of the Torchwood Institute.
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[edit] Characterisation
Owen Harper is a trained doctor, who worked as a houseman and aspired to become a surgeon. He was working at Cardiff A&E when he was recruited to join Torchwood.[1] Owen is one of the darker characters in the series, a narcissistic genius[2] and a seducer, although ultimately a good person at heart.
Owen is a womaniser who had a series of affairs with Suzie, Gwen and possibly Tosh, among many others. In "Everything Changes", he uses an aphrodisiac spray to encourage a woman to have sex with him, he also uses the same spray on her boyfriend. A note in the Torchwood website from someone named Jason references his bedside manner in a suggestive context. This page also suggests he has had a series of casual relationships, some of which were less casual on the part of his partners, and which may have cost him his previous job.[3]
A recurring plot thread through the series is how his colleague Tosh harbours feelings for Owen which she keeps a secret, worried of rejection. Owen finally agrees to go on a date with her just hours before he is shot dead. He was subsequently reanimated, although not actually brought back to life - he has conscious thought and control of his body, but no autonomic biological functions, including breathing, digestion and healing.
[edit] Appearances
[edit] Television
In "Adam" it is revealed that Owen had a difficult relationship with his mother, and that he left home young. Despite his apparently skewed moral sense in "Everything Changes", in "Ghost Machine", a different side of him emerges when an alien artefact forces Owen to witness the rape and murder of a young woman named Lizzie Lewis in 1963. Unable to do anything but watch, Owen comes out of his vision with a strong sense of responsibility toward Lizzie. Though he's denied backup from Torchwood, Owen tracks down the killer (Ed Morgan), now an old man, and confronts him with the knowledge of his crime. Initially, Owen's intention was just to scare the man, but as Morgan's growing paranoia fuels him into a confrontation, Owen loses his temper, threatening Morgan with his own confiscated knife and coming within an inch of killing him. He is talked down from the brink just in time, thanks to Gwen's intervention.
In the episode "Fragments", we learn that four years earlier, Owen had been engaged to a junior doctor named Katie. Katie had been suffering loss of functions, such as memory, leading the neurologist at the hospital to diagnose her with early onset Alzheimer's. Owen refused to accept that diagnosis, and insisted on more scans of her brain to make sure. The last scan revealed what appeared to be a tumour, and Katie was operated on the very next day. As Owen waited for news on the outcome, Jack Harkness arrived on the scene, told Owen he was sorry, and barged into the operating theatre. Owen followed, to see all the doctors dead on the floor and a living creature attached to Katie's exposed brain. The "tumour" was an alien incubating in her brain, causing the symptoms that led to the Alzheimer's diagnosis. It emitted a cloud of poisonous gas when threatened by the doctors who were operating, killing everyone in the room, including Katie. After the incident, Owen was kept under psychiatric observation temporarily, as the causes of death for all in the operating theatre were changed, and the cctv footage edited so there was no sign of Jack. Owen refused to believe that he'd simply made that up as a reaction to Katie's death, and kept trying to find out what happened. Eventually, Jack met Owen again, when Owen came to visit Katie's grave, and invited him to join Torchwood.
In "They Keep Killing Suzie", Suzie reveals that she has previously had a sexual relationship with Owen.
In "Cyberwoman", he and Gwen share a passionate kiss which he dismisses as the last act of a man about to die. He denies he "fancied her" but she counters that she could "feel his hard-on". However, in "Countrycide", the group discusses their last kisses in which Owen admits that his was Gwen. When she confronts him about it later on he confronts her right back in a rather sexually explicit fashion about how good the two of them would be together. At the end of the episode an apparently naked Owen is seen approaching Gwen from behind and kissing her passionately. The episode then ends abruptly. In "Greeks Bearing Gifts", Tosh's telepathic pendant reveals they have since had sex twice, at his flat, seen at the end of "Countrycide" and once possibly in the Torchwood SUV.
In "Out of Time", Owen enters a sexual relationship with Diane Holmes, a temporal refugee, and develops an emotional connection to her. He explains he has never felt as strongly for any of his other partners (presumably including Gwen). The accompanying website features suggest that Gwen still harbours feelings towards Owen, which he does not return.[4] Diane leaves at the end of the episode, flying into the Rift. In "Combat" Owen is still despondent over Diane's leaving and breaks off the affair with Gwen. Owen is also shown in this episode to have no fear of death, and to be at that point suicidal, as he says to Jack that he did not want to be saved. In the episode's closing scene, Owen is seen now with the ability to be able to scare a Weevil and unusually make it cower away.
In "Captain Jack Harkness", Ianto and Owen scrap for leadership of Torchwood Three with Jack gone, but Owen clearly states that he is next in command after Jack (and the deceased Suzie). Owen attempts to open the Rift with the pretence of rescuing Jack, but really wishing to find Diane. He is shot by Ianto as he tries, but succeeds anyway. Eventually, Owen opens the Rift, saving Jack and Tosh but ultimately causing apocalyptic results.
In "End of Days", Owen's actions have caused a worldwide disaster as time fractures. Owen is fired by Jack after little provocation, despite protest from Gwen and others. An apparition of Diane Holmes later appears, convincing him to return to the Hub and open the Rift completely, believing he will be able to save her. Supported by Ianto, Tosh and Gwen (each similarly coerced through loss of love ones) Owen overthrows Jack's leadership and shoots him several times in the head, though Jack does come back to life. After releasing the demon Abaddon, it is defeated by Jack, who apparently dies - for good this time. Jack eventually resurrects a second time, only to forgive Owen for what he had done. In an intensely vulnerable moment for the character, Owen breaks down and cries in Jack's arms after being forgiven.
After Jack's disappearance, Owen - along with the rest of the Torchwood Three team - was dispatched on a "wild goose chase" to the Himalayas by Prime Minister Saxon.
In "Reset" Owen accepts an offer from Toshiko concerning a date (first proffered in "Meat"), although he does say he insists on the right to still casually flirt with others, to which Toshiko agrees. At the end of that episode Professor Copley - a well known doctor whom Owen highly respected - threatens to shoot Martha Jones (visiting from UNIT) after Torchwood shuts down his operation. Owen attempts to reason him out of doing so, saying they are both rational men, but Copley shoots him in the chest, killing him. In an act of revenge, Jack shoots Copley in the head moments later, killing him as well.
In the following episode "Dead Man Walking", he is brought back to life, seemingly permanently, with a second resurrection glove. Although his body remains physically dead, lacking a pulse, body heat, or any kind of digestive system (thus rendering it both unnecessary and impractical for him to eat or drink as the food simply settles in his stomach without going anywhere), he is still able to walk, talk and think. He is also now unable to have sex due to blood no longer flowing, preventing him getting an erection. Newly found by Jack in a church infested with Weevils, the glove leaves him possessed by a skeletal creature referred to only as 'Death'. Transforming his body, it eventually escapes to try and fulfil its need to claim thirteen souls and thus power over all the Earth. Owen, being the only one who can fight Death as he is already dead, saves a young cancer patient, then brawls with Death until it dissipates. When Owen is brought back to life he asks in keeping with the series' recurring themes, "Is there nothing, Jack? Just blackness? Forever?"
In the following episode "A Day in the Death", Owen is suspended from work by Jack since, being the living dead, they don't know how much of a danger he poses to the team. UNIT medical officer Martha Jones, having taken his place as team medic, examines him and is able to determine that any wounds incurred will never heal (and must be sewn up weekly), but can understand little else about Owen's new condition. The glove's energy that gave him life again is dissipating, but according to Martha, "could take thirty years," or, as Owen says, "thirty minutes." Owen suffers from a state of depression from no longer being able to eat, drink, have sex or live his life as normal, which leads him to carry out a high-risk mission. Owen finds he can electrocute himself and feel no pain, able to cut out power supplies with ease, and is similarly without a body heat signature or sufficient breath to carry out CPR. Owen eventually returns to his position at Torchwood, with Martha departing once more. Owen finds some peace with himself when he is able to convince a mourning woman not to commit suicide by telling her the story of his death, and the struggles he faced after returning to life.
In the episode "Something Borrowed" the Nostrovite comes face-to-face with Owen, but doesn't kill him because it can sense he is already dead. In "From Out of the Rain" the Ghostmaker attempts to steal Owen's breath, but he has none, and can only leave him in a temporary state of pain.
In the second series finale, "Exit Wounds", he is trapped in a Nuclear Power facility bunker as it is flooded by radioactive material. The compound causes his body to decompose until there is nothing left, with Owen remaining conscious until the very end. While the Torchwood Declassified accompaniment said farewell to actor Burn Gorman and the character of Owen, Gorman jokingly alluded to the possibility that the character may have survived somehow, for example, escaping into the sewers, and becoming "The King Of The Weevils".
[edit] Literature
Owen appears in the first six of the Torchwood novels, published by BBC Books. The first wave, Another Life by Peter Anghelides,[5] Border Princes by Dan Abnett,[6] and Slow Decay by Andy Lane,[7] were published in January 2007.
Published in March 2008, and tying in with the concurrently airing second series of Torchwood, Owen appears in the novels Trace Memory by David Llewellyn,[8] The Twilight Streets by Gary Russell,[9] and Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale.[10]
Owen also appears in the first two Torchwood audio books, Hidden by Steven Savile, narrated by Naoko Mori (who plays Toshiko).[11] and Everyone Says Hello by Dan Abnett, narrated by Burn Gorman.[12]
The novel Another Life reveals that Owen once had a relationship with a fellow medical student, Megan Tegg, in London. When he split up with her in 2001, he moved to Cardiff to continue his medical course. In the novel Trace Memory, Owen is seen on the verge of completing his medical course in Cardiff in 2003. These appearances are consistent with his history shown in "Fragments". As with all Doctor Who and Torchwood spin-off media, the canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear.[13]
[edit] External links
- Owen Harper on the BBC's Torchwood website
- Owen Harper on the BBC-created Torchwood Institute website
- The Torchwood website
[edit] References
- ^ Burn Gorman interview
- ^ Owen's profile on the official website.
- ^ Owen Harper background check
- ^ Gwen/Owen conversation
- ^ Anghelides, Peter (January 2007). Another Life. BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-48655-8.
- ^ Abnett, Dan (January 2007). Border Princes. BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-48654-1.
- ^ Lane, Andy (January 2007). Slow Decay. BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-48655-8.
- ^ Llewwellyn, David (March 2008). Trace Memory. BBC Books. ISBN 184607438X.
- ^ Russell, Gary (March 2008). The Twilight Streets. BBC Books. ISBN 1846074398.
- ^ Baxendale, Trevor (March 2008). Something in the Water. BBC Books. ISBN 1846074371.
- ^ Dan Abnett (author), Burn Gorman (narrator). (2008-02-04). Everyone Says Hello [Audio book]. BBC Audio. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
- ^ Stephen Gray. "The Whoniverse Guide to Canon", Whoniverse.org. Retrieved on 2006-12-30.
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