This week’s episode, Random Shoes, was so vilified by fans that I wasn’t actually looking forward to it, to be honest. After seeing it, I don’t know why it’s provoked that reaction. I really did like it.

We’re started off with some facts. The speed of light is 299 792 458 m/s. Pain travels through the body at  350 ft/s. Sneezes can reach 100 mph. As for life, well, that just bloody whizzes by. No units are given for that.

We see Mr Jones lying in the middle of a road. He gets up and looks around, then passes under police tape. Seeing Torchwood, he calls out to Gwen, Jack, and Tosh by name, but they don’t respond; they’re talking about a hit and run. Eugene sees himself lying in the grass. Tosh says that he couldn’t even cross the road without messing it up. Ouch, Tosh!  That’s harsh. Gwen is asking what he was doing there, if he was hit deliberately, and if he really did have something to show them. Tosh quashes that last notion. Jack finds red paint under Eugene’s fingernails. Under his fingernails? Really? He was able to claw the car while being hit? Strong fingernails and presence of mind. Eugene realizes that he’s dead when he puts his hand through Tosh’s chest, and has a little existential crisis. And not only dead; he’s a ghost with a memory problem.

A phone in the grass rings, and it’s Eugene’s mom. Gwen tells her they need to speak, and they all troop to the SUV. Eugene hops in as well, asking Gwen whether he’s a ghost or a zombie; my bet’s ghost, since the dead body is still lying in the grass behind them. He tells himself to stick with Torchwood, since this is Torchwood, it’s gonna be ok. Obviously, he’s just seen them striding around Cardiff looking all well-groomed and competent and hasn’t found out about their more spectacular screwups. Gwen looks through Eugene’s phone and just sees three photographs of unidentified people’s shoes. Regardless of what’s happened, Eugene is somewhere he’s always wanted to be. Not in heaven, but you know, with Torchwood. Should we consider that a good second place?

There’s a flashback to explain a little of how we all ended up with the dead guy. Eugene has lost the final of the interschool maths competition in 1992. His dad has taken the day off work in order to watch, but Eugene choked, and everybody blamed him for the loss. The science teacher, trying to cheer him up, tells him about bad day he’d had, playing golf, hacking away and getting nowhere, when something fell out of the sky. Thinking it was a golf ball, he put it in his pocket; later he looked at it and saw that it was an alien’s eye. He gives it to Eugene, right before his dad bursts into the room, curses at him, and takes him home. Eek.

Dad has blown a gasket, and he and the mom are yelling at each other. Eugene is entranced by this eye. The cameras pan the ceiling, painted with stars and planets, and Eugene thinks that if it fell from the sky, then the eye almost certainly belongs to an alien. It’s a fair supposition. The shouting stops, Dad slams out of the house, and David Bowie’s “Starman” plays. Dad never comes back. The possibility of an alien encounter allows Eugene to avoid facing his dad’s abandonment by giving him something to focus on. As Eugene says, if you leave something important behind, you go back to get it. He wants the alien to come back so badly that he invests a lot of time working out a provenance for the eye, the possible life form and galaxy, soemhow calculating planetary escape velocities, launch windows and necessary fuel capacities. And waited. Dad never came back; his mom said that he had an important job in America. Eugene got interested in UFOs, collected alien artifacts, watched the stars, and waited.

Then he found Torchwood; specifically Gwen Cooper, who was the only one who was nice to him. At a scene, Owen says, “You again” grouchily but resignedly, and Eugene introduces himself to Gwen, who says hi, but Jack hurries her along. Eugene muses that he could never quite make contact.

At Eugene’s house, his mom is grasping at straws, but Gwen is very gentle and nice telling her that there’s no mistake. Owen and Ianto toss Eugene’s room, rather carelessly. Owen thinks it’s a waste of time, picks up a leaflet for a lecture on “Black Holes and the Uncertainty Principle.” Ianto finds Eugene’s treasures in a lit cabinet. Gwen picks up a coin, asks if it’s Roman. Eugene tells her that it’s Pre-Gorgan Pilurian currency; he’s had it authenticated. By whom? Owen picks up some thing and declares it to be Rice Krispies. Gwen sees that something is missing from a pedestal. The mom comes in, and Gwen asks her what’s missing. Ignoring the question, she asks Gwen why the driver didn’t stop–he just drove on.  Rather abashedly, Torchwood packs up a couple boxes of his stuff and leave. Gwen tells the mom she’s sorry. Eugene tells her that the top people are working on his case–Torchwood, him–and they’ll get it sorted. Too bad she can’t hear him; she’d doubtless be comforted by that.

Back at the Hub, Eugene geeks out. Speaking in incomplete sentances, he looks around, then–”Christ almighty! That’s the head of Exim XI! No way!! And–wow–a hand! In a jar!” Obviously, for all his alien research, he hasn’t come across the Doctor yet, or he’d be much more impressed. How the hell does he know about Exim XI? Is there a website?

Owen is finding Gwen a little tedious on the subject of Eugene, telling her that Eugene had a bit of a thing for her and now she’s feeling guilty because he’s dead. Gwen tells him to sod off. Whoa–I guess the bloom is off the rose in that relationship! Owen tells her to do the autopsy, then–you’re kidding, right? Isn’t that what he’s paid to do? He says he has a stack of admin to get to, so I guess the paper takes precedence over Gwen hacking away on poor Eugene. Eugene is still geeking, saying that he’s in heaven. No, dear, you’re in Torchwood, a highly disfunctional group of alien hunters. Eugene sees that Gwen is going to do his autopsy–you’d think he’d like that–while Owen tells her to get a #3 scalpel and start the Y incision at the sternum–piece of piss. As Gwen begins, Eugene passes out. You’d think a ghost would have a stronger stomach. So to speak.

There’s a commercial and an edit here. Ianto has the news that a red Vauxhall (sorry, couldn’t help flashing onto Jeremy Clarkson’s distaste for the Vauxhalls in general) was stopped outside Caernarfon with a very drunk driver admitting that he knocked over a guy near Cardiff but thought he’d be ok so drove on. Owen is Dr Sympathy as usual–so sad, nice guy, can we get on with some real work? Even if Owen knew Eugene was there, I don’t think his comments could be any different.

Gwen catches Owen with a DVD that he’d nicked from Eugene’s stuff; Owen protests, lamely, that he was going to take it back. Gwen says she’ll do it and heads out for lunch. Owen, back to her, waves her off. I think their relationship is in trouble.

After finding the video store closed, Gwen goes into a cafe. Eugene is there and thrilled to see her in his favorite place–he may be a regular, but the counterman doesn’t remember him. Gwen orders the same thing that Eugene did every day. He notes that he used to follow Torchwood around, and now they’re following him. Gwen has nicked the phone and keeps looking at the random shoes pictures. Eugene still doesn’t remember anything, but suggests she phone his pal Gary. Apparently Gwen can at least hear echoes of him from time to time because she does and leaves a message.

Next at the video store, the guy pops up from under the counter, saying, “Hello, gorgeous, wanna borrow a dream?” Kind of skeezy. She replies that she’d just returning DVDs for someone recently deceased. No shit? he asks, and when Gwen gives him Eugene’s name, vaguely remembers him. Used to come in with a pal, kind of a dreamer, kind of–”Irresistable?” Eugene inserts hopefully–”ordinary looking,” the clerk says, and charges Gwen 34 pounds in fines. Eugene calls him a bread-head bastard, and the clerk asks Gwen if Eugene killed himself; he was thinking that like others going into the video shop, Eugene didn’t want to be himself any more–”they want me to transport them.” What, he’s Scotty? Or a magician? please. The clerk continues puffing to Gwen, saying that he’s off to London in a couple months, but Eugene had “loser” written through him like “Brighton” in a stick of rock. I guess, but don’t know, that Brighton must have some fairly memorable geology. The clerk suggests breezily that Eugene couldn’t live with his failure anymore and asks for a check for the fines. Eugene looks stricken; Gwen just gives the clerk a Look.

Eugene wonders if his life has just been a failure. Maybe he didn’t live up to his early promise as a maths genius, but he was waiting for the alien to come back and change his life. An elevator takes Gwen and him to a telemarketing firm where Eugene worked.  Eugene looks around and sees that its “all nauseatingly familiar.” My guess is that he wasn’t exactly salesman of the month. The cubes are all labeled with numbers. As if working in a cube isn’t bad enough, you’ve got a big number on it too. He says he can remember details of his facinating daily life but not the vital time before he died. Gwen recognizes a pair of shoes from the phone pics. It’s Gary. He acts shifty. A coworker comes up with a card for Eugene’s mom, on which he’s inscribed, “Good luck with your new job”–in pen. Poor Eugene. A pretty gal, Linda, taps Gwen and asks if it’s true Eugene was run over, cries, and confirms that the boss just kept him on out of the goodness of his heart. Gwen arranges a lunch date with her and tracks down Gary’s cube. He’s not there, but she finds another copy of the black hole lecture, which she nicks.

Lunch with Linda. Gwen is told that one day over lunch, both she and Eugene were pretty dispirited, and she said she’d like to just chuck it all and go to Australia. Eugene offered to pay for the ticket. In response to Gwen’s question, Linda says that they weren’t together, that he loved someone unattainable. Eugene looks expressively at Gwen. How would he get the money? He was going to sell the alien eye. He brought it into work and auctioned it  on eBay. The bids went up to 15005.50 quid. No one knows who bought it. Eugene’s mom calls Gwen on her son’s phone.

Gwen is viewing the tape Eugene’s dad took at the competition. His dad is narrating, saying he’s the youngest one there. The fatal question is what curve is described by Y  = 4AX squared. Eugene chokes; his dad is muttering not to let him down. I knew that American education isn’t as good as most other industrialized nations, but it’s a Cartesian equation of a parabola that has its vertex at the origin at Y. This is trig, and Eugene is about eight or nine. Impressive that he’d be expected to know this! I don’t blame him for forgetting; I forgot trig pretty promptly myself. Eugene’s younger brother Terry says abruptly that that his mom can stop pretending now; Eugene could square the root of the square friggin’ root but he couldn’t cross the road; Eugene always said their dad left because of his failure. The fiction that the dad is in the US is revealed; Eugene did a search online and found that  he works the night shift as a cashier at a local garage. Now Eugene remembers why he sold the eye: seeing his dad at the garage was so disillusioning to him that he felt everything, including the eye, was a crock of shit. Gwen, who is now at the garage in her car, looking at the dad, goes to get out, but Eugene says, “No, Gwen!” this somehow makes an impression on her and she shuts the door. Eugene doesn’t want anything to do with his old man and apologized to Gwen. She says, “It’s ok.”

Back at the Hub, Jack chews her out for turning off her phone. She says that Eugene needs some help. Jack points out that he’s dead, and even Eugene thinks that doesn’t sound good. Jack turns to go back to work, and Gwen sits there until Eugene says that she can’t stop, what about the money? She jumps up and tells Jack that Eugene had a Dogon Sixth Eye. WTF? Jack says it’s one of the ones in back that lets you see where you’ve been, lets you put things in perspective–useful, fun, slightly terrifying, and that’s why there was a demand for it. Gwen tells Jack she can get it for him. Jack gives her the weekend, and sternly tells her to keep her phone on . Ooh, I love it when he gets all commanding.

Gwen pulls out the lecture flyer. Eugene tells her that he and Gary were going to go, but if he was going to spend the night by the sea he knows who he’d rather be with.  Gwen smiles–she must be listening to the radio as she’s also kind of bopping around. He tells her that he’d trust her with his life; if, you know, he still had one. Gwen sees Gary at the lecture, but he runs. He does come back, though, and admits to hiking the price on the eye to cheer Eugene up. He slips and inadvertently reveals that someone else was in on it too. Gwen stares at him and says he saw Eugene on the day he died. Gary admits it; his story is that he had a coffee, Eugene was scared, then he went off to meet the winning bidder–Gwen asks if it was somewhere on the A84. Gary is evasive, saying maybe not, Eugene was being secretive. It could have been in Splott. I guess only the estate agents pronounce it Sploe. Gwen asks Gary who else he was with, to whom the other shoes belong, but Gary shrugs it off, saying he misses Eugene. It’s nice, if completely unhelpful.

At the hotel, Eugene remembers he called a taxi, put the eye in a freezer bag, and went up a hill to a shiny building. Gwen examines his keyring and finds a paper with what looks like a pacman on it. Eugene blurts out that he doesn’t want her to find out what happened; he doesn’t want this to end; he loves her. This echos again, and it seems like Gwen heard it; she gets up to look out the window and stands face to face with him before drawing the curtains. It does suck to be a ghost.

Next day Gwen is driving along and sees the logo for a Happy Cook restaurant, which has the little pacman-like logo. She goes in, recognizes the shoes of the waitress. Eugene remembers now–he was all wound up, excited, “shitting myself, frankly,” to be meeting his alien, and walked in the restaurant only to find his friends there, Gary and the video store guy. He orders a banana milkshake, then finds out his friends are the winning bidders. When the bid jumped up to 15 000 pounds, they got greedy, bid a bit more, but the other buyer didn’t top it. The creepy store clerk offers Eugene 34 pounds for it. Eugene is angry; he takes the pictures of their shoes under the table and says he’s calling a cab. Eugene asks if it’s such a joke, why they bid on the eye. The creep says he has a friend with a visual impairment. He realizes they’re going to resell it on eBay for the money and cut him out entirely. Nice friends! Creep says he checked the other bidder, a collector of alien ephemera and Nazi memorabelia–and Beanie Babies, so he’s a bit crazy, but the rich part is all that matters. He tries to snatch the eye from Eugene. The waitress stepped in to break up the physical confrontation, and Eugene swallows the eye. Eew! That’s a prosthetic eye, man! The creep–his real name’s Josh, we find out–tries the Heimlich, then Gary pours the milkshake down his throat.  Eugene gets away and runs out. As the waitress finished  telling Gwen what she saw, Josh and Gary show up. Josh tries to get the waitress to keep what she saw to herself, but it’s too late–Gary sees Gwen.  Josh tries to run, but Gary trips him because he misses Eugene and wants this to be over, I guess. Gary tells Gwen that they ran after Eugene, but he was faster; he ran across the highway and they lost him. Gwen leaves the Happy Cook and calls the garage. Eugene remembers runing across the field, heart beating fast, a slight nausea, all the stuff that tells you you’re alive–and gets whacked by a red Vauxhall.

By rights, Eugene muses, he should be well pissed off. His friends had cheated him and he hadn’t gotten to meet any aliens. The turnout for his funeral is small, but Gwen’s there, and Linda, and Gary. His dad, too. He realizes that he’d been given the chance, by swallowing the eye, to see his life for what it really was. That it wasn’t his fault his dad left, that he wasn’t Superman, or even an alien. After his mom can’t speak, his dad gets up, says something brief and awkward, and begins to sing Danny Boy. The casket goes down, and Eugene realizes that his dad mad a mess out of things and left, and it was a terrible pity because they missed each other completely. It’s a poingnant moment.

At the graveyard, Gwen lurks. The mortician comes out and gives her a bag with the eye. Eugene says that 28 is a good number, equal to the sum of its divisors. Twenty-eight cm/s is also the top speed of a lone lobster…and his age when he died.

At the house, Eugene wonders that if the eye inside him is what was keeping him there, why is he still around? Gwen wonders the same thing, not looking at him (because of course she can’t see him). The SUV pulls up. Owen says hello, stranger, Jack asks if she got it, and she shows it off. Jack says it’s impressive, Owen says they haven’t done the tests, so don’t get too excited, and Tosh says they have to go.  She looks pissy again; is it because Gwen’s the center of attention? Gwen crosses the road to see Eugene’s dad get out of a taxi, approach the mom and brother, and shake Terry’s hand. A black SUV (no, not driven by Tosh or Suzie, or any other disgruntled Torchwood member) almost mows her down, but Eugene tackles her out of harm’s way. He is visible and corporeal. The team hustles over as he and Gwen exchange hi’s. Everyone can see him. Gwen thanks him and gives him a kiss; he gives her back the eye and goes into the light.

“Life is full of near misses and absolute hits, of great love and small disasters. It’s banana milkshakes and loft insulation and random shoes. It’s dead ordinary and truly, truly amazing. What you’ve got to realize is it’s all here, now, so breathe deep and swallow it whole. Because take it from me–life just whizzes by and then all of a sudden, its”