Plot
A date between Gwen Cooper and her boyfriend Rhys Williams (Kai Owen) is cut short when they witness a meteor crashing outside Cardiff. Gwen receives a message on her mobile phone, and is called into action. As the Army secures the area, Torchwood investigate the meteor. Colleague Owen Harper (Burn Gorman) taunts Gwen by calling her the "new girl". In an attempt to retaliate, she throws a chisel at him, but misses and cracks open the meteor, allowing a purple gas entity to escape. The gas finds a young woman, Carys Fletcher, outside a nightclub and takes her host. In the club, a possessed Carys seduces a man and takes him to a restroom, where they proceed to have sex. At the moment of climax however, the man dissolves into dust while Carys absorbs the energy that remains.
The Torchwood team become aware of the bizarre death and realises through CCTV that the gas has taken over Carys. Gwen feels guilty at having caused the man's death, but team leader Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) assures her that everybody makes mistakes. Gwen also learns that she is the only team member who's in a relationship, as the others are too busy working to find time. They later find where Carys lives and arrives there before she could harm a postman. When she tries to escape, Owen traps her using a portable prison cell, much to Jack's chagrin, as he forbids using alien technology without his permission.
Carys is placed in a Torchwood holding cell. As tests are run on Carys, Gwen feels uncontrollable urges to kiss her, showing that Carys is emitting high levels of pheromones, effectively becoming a "walking aphrodisiac", but the gas is also slowly killing her. Later, Carys escapes from her cell after seducing Owen. Jack attempts to apprehend her, but she manages to get hold of a jar containing a severed hand, which Jack finds valuable. He allows her to leave for the jar's safety, but she destroys it anyway.
In an attempt to capture her again, the team run on Toshiko Sato's (Naoko Mori) hunch that she will be after her ex-boyfriend; they arrive at his house to find Carys already killed him. Later they discover Carys works as a temp at a fertility clinic. They race to the clinic to find Carys has been inside for some time killing some of the clients. After eventually cornering Carys, they find that she has moments before she dies. Jack buys her some time by kissing her, transferring some of his "excess" of life onto her. Gwen offers the gas presence her own body as a host to save Carys; it leaves Carys, but before it could enter Gwen, Jack throws the portable prison cell at it. Since it cannot survive in Earth's atmosphere for long, the gas dies out. As Jack inspects its remains, Gwen kisses Jack on the lips, saying "thank you", leaving Jack puzzled.
In the end, Carys is reunited with her father. The team returns to Torchwood, and as she leaves for home, Jack advises Gwen not to let the job consume her because her perspective is important to the team. He then encourages Gwen to go home and spend time with Rhys.
Read more about this topic: Day One (Torchwood)
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