Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Gareth David-Lloyd and Nikki Amuka-Bird

Directed by Colin Teague

Written by James Moran

Torchwood Three are called out to what amounts to an unusually bloody locked room mystery. Two burglars have been murdered by one of two people, both of whom are themselves unconscious and injured. But who did it? With what?

James Moran (Severance) turns in a script which is tonally in near lock step with ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang’ but manages to propel the team into some extremely dark territory. There’s a storytelling technique Michael Mann talks about a lot on the commentary for Collateral, ‘fractal’ storytelling that really applies here. Mann talks about it as a means of giving you exactly how much information you need to figure out the rest, seeing slivers of someone’s life and allowing the viewer to deduce the rest.

Moran manages the same thing here, introducing us to Beth (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a normal young woman whose entire existence is a lie. The story comes at this concept, and the larger one of a sleeper cell of alien invaders very much from left field, emphasising the horror of Beth finding out that everything she is, everything she thinks, is a lie. One of the few consistent points of series one was the quality of the guest stars and this season looks to have taken that to the next level with both Marsters last week and Bird this week turning in superb work. Whilst the path of the story, once revealed, is fairly standard, Beth’s eventual fate is a surprise, thanks entirely to the script and the quality of Bird’s acting.

The central cast too, continue to be well served. Barrowman’s Captain Jack is neatly set up here as someone who thinks eight steps ahead of everyone else, aware not only of the danger Beth faces but of what they will almost certainly have to do from the moment he first talks to her.

There are a couple of particular high points here, with his ‘good cop/bad cop’ interrogation of Beth with Gwen and the welcome return of his pathological need to joke under pressure marking this as very much the ‘Happy Jack’ of Doctor Who, albeit tempered by rather than crushed under the responsibilities of his job.

Likewise, Eve Myles is finally given a script which marks Gwen’s pathological need to care for their suspects out as believable, whilst Naoko Mori and Burn Gorman both receive some welcome moments of humour and, crucially, competence. Whilst things go wrong for Torchwood this episode, it’s because they don’t have all the information not because of the relentless stupidity that powered so much of the first series.

However, this is the episode that the series’ breakout character finally makes his move. Gareth David-Lloyd’s Ianto Jones has been transformed from the colossally inconsistent butler/maniac/office boy of the previous season into a character who is nothing short of wonderful. He has maybe thirty lines this episode and almost all of them are comedy gold, whether it’s complementing Jack on his terrifying interview technique, explaining what happens when the phones fail or being quietly incensed when he discovers someone knows more about Torchwood Three than he does. Lloyd’s amiable, laconic, slightly disconnected delivery is perfect and there’s at least one moment where it seems likely that both Jack, and Barrowman, are within seconds of corpsing, despite the tension of the scene.

The beauty of this as a piece of writing of course, is that it fits every conceivable fan theory. Think Ianto went crazy after the events of ‘Cyberwoman’? This fits. Think he’s simply a very nice, slightly eccentric young man with an odd job? This fits. Think he’s aware that his burgeoning romance with Jack gives him a little more leeway than everyone else? This fits. It’s a great performance by an actor relishing his work and a writer having fun and it comes across in every scene.

Sleeper’s not a perfect episode, suffering both from the inevitable drag without Captain John and a couple of moments where it’s reach exceeds its grasp. But it’s smart, that’s the crucial thing, it’s an unusual take on a classic idea which neatly gives every cha

racter a moment to shine and moves everyone along. It’s not the best episode of the series to date, but its damn close.