Torchwood: Dead Man Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As I continue to watch through Torchwood, I am struck by how much this darker, raunchier, more pessimistic spin-off of Doctor Who focuses on religious\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/01\/torchwood-dead-man-walking.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Torchwood: Dead Man Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As I continue to watch through Torchwood, I am struck by how much this darker, raunchier, more pessimistic spin-off of Doctor Who focuses on religious\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/01\/torchwood-dead-man-walking.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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{"id":5657,"date":"2012-01-13T08:19:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T13:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=5657"},"modified":"2012-01-13T08:19:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T13:19:49","slug":"torchwood-dead-man-walking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/01\/torchwood-dead-man-walking.html","title":{"rendered":"Torchwood: Dead Man Walking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

As I continue to watch through Torchwood, I am struck by how much this darker, raunchier, more pessimistic spin-off of Doctor Who focuses on religious themes, imagery, stories and symbols.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ In this episode, \u201cDead Man Walking,\u201d we learn that a church had been built on top of a site where a resurrection glove had been found half a millennium earlier. Earlier, when Suzie had been killed and brought back to life, she said that there was only darkness, and the sense that something was there in it. Owen had been shot in the previous episode, and being brought back to life with the second resurrection glove, he now says something similar. But this time it turns out that the thing in the darkness is a real entity on which legends of the grim reaper were based. It was waiting for an opportunity to return and kill freely on earth.<\/p>\n

It says, \u201cI will walk the Earth, and my hunger knows no bounds.\u201d \u00a0(I love when Ianto says that he Googled the phrase and the top hits were ads for Weight Watchers).<\/p>\n

Just as the last episode had a connection with LOST<\/a>, this one seemed to as well, when the grim reaper manifested itself as black smoke before taking shape as a skeleton.<\/p>\n

The legend of the previous time that the grim reaper walked the Earth said that he was stopped by faith. It turns out that \u201cFaith\u201d is the name of a little girl, one who had been raised with the resurrection glove on that occasion. Being already dead, she had nothing to lose, and so could defeat death \u2013 as Owen does in this episode.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ Owen was comical and full of black humor, unsurprisingly. I laughed when he said \u201cOwen Harper\u2019s soul has left the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though the episode is full of the typical pessimism and even apparent nihilism that characterizes Torchwood, there is still a profound undercurrent of religious exploration. Why else revive (if you\u2019ll excuse the pun) the figure of the grim reaper, rather than simply introduce a previously unknown alien? Why have a figure who has already died and been resurrected be the one who can defeat death?<\/p>\n

Torchwood provides illustration yet again that science fiction, even when it seeks to replace, combat, eliminate, undermine, or reconfigure traditional religious ideas, it ends up exploring the very same spiritual terrain in the process.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"