Small Worlds (Torchwood)

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05 – "Small Worlds"
Torchwood episode
The "Fairy"
Cast
John Barrowman – Captain Jack Harkness Eve Myles – Gwen Cooper Burn Gorman – Owen Harper Naoko Mori – Toshiko Sato Gareth David-Lloyd – Ianto Jones
Guest stars
Kai Owen – Rhys Williams Eve Pearce – Estelle Lara Phillipart – Jasmine Pierce Adrienne O'Sullivan – Lynn Pierce William Travis – Roy Rodger Barclay – Goodson Heledd Baskerville – Kate Ffion Wilkins – WPC Nathan Sussex – Custody Sergeant Paul Jones – Man In Street Sophie Davies, Victoria Gourley – Bullies
Production
Writer	Peter J. Hammond
Director	Alice Troughton
Script editor	Brian Minchin
Producer	Richard Stokes Chris Chibnall (co-producer)
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	1.5
Series	Series 1
Length	50 mins
Originally broadcast	12 November 2006
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
"Cyberwoman"	"Countrycide"
IMDb profile

"Small Worlds" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Torchwood. It is the fifth episode of the first series, which was broadcast on 12 November 2006. It was filmed in the villages of Radyr and Bryn-Derw in Cardiff North.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Plot 3 Continuity 4 Production 4.1 Music 4.2 Cast notes 5 Outside references 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Synopsis

A withdrawn but intelligent child has her suppressed anger taken advantage of; Jack must encounter his past to defeat those responsible: fairies at the bottom of her garden.

[edit] Plot

The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

At the Torchwood Hub, Jack wakes from a nightmare of dead soldiers in a train carriage with rose petals spilling out of their mouths, to find a single rose petal atop his desk. Ianto informs Jack that there are strange weather patterns in the area. The next day, Jack takes Gwen to visit an old friend of his, Estelle, who is giving a talk on fairies. Estelle shows them the Cottingley Fairies photographs, then compares them to photographs she had taken the day before, and claims to have found proof of the fairy's existence. After her talk at her home, Jack and Estelle discuss the photographs and the nature of fairies. Gwen asks Estelle and Jack about an old photograph she found of Jack, but they both claim that that was Jack's father who had relations with Estelle during World War II, and Jack looks just like him. Jack asks Estelle to call if she encounters any more fairies. On the way back to Torchwood, Jack explains to Gwen that the fairies are in fact creatures from the dawn of time and are not bound by linear time, and can be very dangerous. Jack instructs Toshiko to watch for strange weather patterns in the area in order to locate the fairies.

Meanwhile, a young girl, Jasmine Pierce, decides to walk home from school alone when her stepfather Roy did not arrive on time. She encounters a man, Goodson, who tries to lure her into his car. When Goodson makes a grab for Jasmine, a strong wind kicks up along with strange, ethereal voices, and Goodson is forced to retreat into his car as Jasmine continues to skip on her way home to play with her fairy friends in the nearby woods. Later, a tense Goodson arrives at the Cadriff market, still hearing the strange voices, and tries to run through it. He is attacked by something unseen by the other shoppers, and starts to cough up rose pedals. He manages to get himself arrested, declaring himself a paedophile in order to seek the safety of a jail cell. However, he continues to be attacked by unknown forces, and is found the next day dead by asphyxiation. Torchwood arrives and find Goodson's mouth filled with rose pedals. Jack confirms that Goodson's death was by the fairies as part of their protection of a "Chosen One", a child that will soon become theirs if they cannot find her in time.

Late at night, Estelle starts to hear the strange voices and calls up Jack to alert him. Hoewver, before Torchwood can arrive, she is killed, having drowned in a rainstorm despite the area around her being completely dry. Jack mourns her loss, and Gwen realizes that it was Jack himself who loved Estelle. Jack explains that he has seen the rose pedals before, back in Lahore in 1909, a week after some of his troops had drunkenly run over a little girl. While on a train, the rest of his men died, their mouths filled with leaves, and he realized that the young girl was a Chosen One. Gwen returns home to find her own house in disarray, with leaves and rock patterns on the floor, the team realizing that the fairies are becoming more protective.

At her school the next day, Jasmine is bullied by two girls at school, and resulting a large gale sweeps over the area. Torchwood arrives to learn that no one was harmed but the only one not affected by the storm was Jasmine, and make their way to her home. Meanwhile, Roy and Jasmine's mother Lynn are having a five-year anniversary party. Jasmine, helping her mother with the food, finds that the backyard has been fenced off by Roy to prevent her from going to the woods. Angrily she bites him, causing him to slap her. A sudden wind rushes up, and the fairies make themselves visible to everyone present, attacking and killing Roy. Torchwood arrives in time to prevent harm to other guests, but Jasmine and the fairies race off to the woods. Jack catches up and demands the fairies return Jasmine, but they refuse, noting that she is their Chosen One, and if she is prevented from going, many more people will die. Realizing he has no other choice, he requests a promise that Jasmine would not be harmed, and then lets her go, Jasmine and the fairies disappearing away. Lynn, having witnessed this, cries angrily and hits Jack over and over, with Jack only able to apologize to her and to rhetorically ask what else he could have done to his team.

Back at the Hub, Gwen is sorting through the pictures in the case when a Cottingley photograph from 1917 appears on the board room monitor. Spotting something, she zooms in on the photograph until the face on one of the fairies becomes clearly visible. It is Jasmine, smiling out of the picture, frozen in mid-dance. A fairy voice whispers:

"Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

(excerpt from "The Stolen Child", a poem by W. B. Yeats)

[edit] Continuity

• Although Jack claims that he does not sleep in "Ghost Machine", he is shown to have a waking nightmare in this episode.
• A pair of 3-D glasses, originally used by the Tenth Doctor in "Doomsday", can be seen on Jack's desk at the start of the episode.
• This is the first episode in which the Torchwood team "loses", as Jack has to give Jasmine up to the fairies in order to save the world despite his original goal to keep her safe.
• This is the first episode that explores Jack's past. At one point, he was in charge of a troop of 15 men in 1909 Lahore. A letter on the Torchwood website, dated 1908, appears to suggest that this was part of a diamond mining scam during his conman days.^[1]

[edit] Production

[edit] Music

• The hymn "Lord of the Dance" features during the school scene.
• The songs "Better Do Better" by HARD-Fi (Jasmine helps Lynn prepare food for the party), "Born to Be a Dancer" by Kaiser Chiefs, (Kaiser Chiefs having been previously heard in the episode "Day One"; Jasmine and Lynn take food out to the party), and "Ooh La" by The Kooks (The Kooks having been previously heard in the episode "Everything Changes"; Roy returns to the party and makes a toast to Lynn) feature.
• The music during the closing credits contains quiet samples of the fairy laughter.

[edit] Cast notes

• Lara Phillipart, who plays Jasmine in this episode, appears as a member of Tommy's family in the Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern".

[edit] Outside references

• The primary school is called "Coed y Garreg", which translates as "The Stone Woods", a possible reference to the Roundstone Woods seen at the beginning of the episode.
• The discussion about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in the Cottingley Fairies hoax is based upon real events that occurred near Bradford in West Yorkshire, England from 1917 onwards and based around two young girls who had taken photographs of what they claimed to be fairies. Doyle was apparently convinced of their veracity. The mention of Harry Houdini's involvement, however, is not historically accurate. While Conan Doyle did send a letter to the sceptical Houdini about the fairy "discovery", Houdini did not respond or use the event for self promotion as suggested in the show. The image seen on the show is very slightly altered, with Jasmine's face over one of the fairies.^[2]
• Jack compares the fairies to the Mara. His noting of "Mara" as the origin of the word "nightmare" and their ability to steal the breath from their victims suggests that he is referring to the Mara of Germanic/Scandinavian mythology and not the Mara of the Doctor Who stories Snakedance and Kinda. Christopher Bailey, author of Snakedance and Kinda, was a practising Buddhist and named Doctor Who's Mara after the Buddhist demon Mara.^[3]
• The episode's director, Alice Troughton, is not related to Second Doctor Patrick Troughton.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Small Worlds" episode guide entry on the BBC website
• "Small Worlds" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "Small Worlds" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "Small Worlds" review at CultFiction

v • d • e Torchwood series 1 episodes "Everything Changes" • "Day One" • "Ghost Machine" • "Cyberwoman" • "Small Worlds" • "Countrycide" • "Greeks Bearing Gifts" • "They Keep Killing Suzie" • "Random Shoes" • "Out of Time" • "Combat" • "Captain Jack Harkness" • "End of Days"