Adrift (Torchwood) - Plot

Plot

Jonah Bevan (Oliver Ferriman) is walking home across the Cardiff Bay Barrage when a mysterious bright light appears. He vanishes. Seven months later, at the instigation of her former police colleague Andy Davidson (Tom Price), Torchwood agent Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is investigating Jonah's disappearance. After Jonah's mother Nikki (Ruth Jones) starts a support group for relatives of missing people in the Cardiff area, Gwen realises that there are more cases resembling Jonah's disappearance. Gwen collates a chart of the missing people and her colleague Toshiko (Naoko Mori) discovers that all the disappearances occurred during negative spikes of activity from the Cardiff space-time rift. The two women postulate the implications of this: that the rift can take people away and discard them elsewhere. Gwen confronts her boss Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) with her research but he informs her that nothing can be done and orders her to stop the investigation.

Gwen becomes consumed with the issue of the missing individuals and this takes its toll on her relationship with her husband Rhys (Kai Owen). They argue, and he states that he if Gwen is working to safeguard ordinary life then she has not been successful. Returning to Torchwood's headquarters, Gwen interrupts Jack and fellow Torchwood employee Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) during a sexual encounter. After apologising, she tells Jack that she wants to continue the investigation. Jack refuses to help, but Ianto later gives Gwen a GPS device with coordinates to a hidden location, leading Gwen to a facility on Flat Holm. It harbors 17 of the missing people that the rift has taken and subsequently brought back. Gwen finds Jack there, and demands access to Jonah. Jonah (now Robert Pugh) has aged and become physically deformed after being stuck on a burning planet shortly before witnessing the burning of a solar system. Jack reveals that he set up the facility when he first took command of Torchwood, in order to care for the victims of the rift, who had previously been locked away in the Torchwood vaults.

Gwen brings Nikki in to see Jonah under the supervision of a facility staff member. At first Nikki is horrified, believing it to be a cruel joke, but Jonah starts reminiscing on his childhood. Nikki calms and thinks about taking Jonah home to care for him herself. However, Jonah starts screaming horribly, necessitating that everyone leave his company. In a voiceover, Gwen reveals that the scream lasts for 20 hours every day because Jonah looked into the heart of a Dark Star, which had the effect of driving him insane. Gwen visits Nikki a week later, who implores her not to show the island to anyone else. Nikki states that it would have been better for her to have remembered her son as he was, rather than to know of his true fate. Nikki packs up Jonah's belongings and knowing he can never return home, breaks down into sobs. At home that night Gwen prepares a romantic candle-lit dinner for Rhys who, realizing that she is shouldering a massive trauma, insists that Gwen shares her burden.