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Submission was the second in the Torchwood: The Lost Files mini-series. It aired the week after Series 4 started airing on Starz, but was set before Series 3.

Publisher summary[]

Torchwood are chasing aliens down the M4, when Jack accidentally blows a hole in the Severn Bridge, and the SUV hits the water. Whilst submerged Jack, Gwen and Ianto hear a strange noise, which, back at the Hub they realise is a cry for help. They track the cry to its source which turns out to be the deepest part of the Ocean - the Mariana Trench. Ianto rings old Torchwood flame, Carlie Roberts, who's an expert in marine geology, and Jack pulls strings with the US government to get them all on board the USS Calvin, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, which is heading for the Trench. From there they board the Octopus Rock, the only submarine built to withstand the pressure at that depth, and follow the signal. But when the Submarine crashes, the team are left at the mercy of a hungry alien.

Plot[]

Whilst chasing aliens down the M4 with Gwen and Ianto, Jack accidentally causes damage to the Severn Bridge and the SUV falls into the River Severn where they hear a cry which they find was heard all over the world. Ianto discovers that it is a distress signal from the Mariana Trench and calls Carlie Roberts, a marine geologist who worked at Torchwood One, for help. Jack, Gwen and Ianto meet with her in Tokyo and travel aboard UNIT's USS Calvin before descending into the trench in the Octopus Rock submarine.

At the bottom of the trench, an old man without a diving suit punches the Octopus Rock and fries its power with his cry. Carlie realises upon seeing the Guernica, lost in 1959, that the man is Captain Sam Doyle and Jack deduces that his body is being used and protected from the pressure by a parasite. Jack and Gwen head to the Guernica in UNIT diving suits to resurface and Gwen gets in contact with Sam, who explains that he and his mate fell from space long ago and that his mate needs a body.

Inside the Guernica, Jack and Gwen play a message recorded by Sam's partner, Henry Goddard, in which he says that the parasite possessed him before moving to Sam, apparently because Henry was suffering from depression. Sam admits that he abandoned his mate on his dying homeworld and that he needs another mind to escape his guilt after feeding on Sam's since 1959. With Ianto and Carlie joining Jack and Gwen in the Guernica, the group begin to resurface, but Sam causes a breach in the hull and the parasite possesses Carlie.

The Guernica gets too far away from the black smokers where it has been living and the parasite dies, as does Carlie due to their life forces being entwined. Ianto successfully resuscitates her and, when they get to the surface, she decides that she gave up on Torchwood too soon and decides to get UNIT to fund further missions to the Mariana Trench.

Cast[]

Worldbuilding[]

Notes[]

to be added

Continuity[]

Footnotes[]

  1. The first two episodes of Torchwood: The Lost Files are supposedly set no earlier than 2011, as Joanna Carew was born in 1930 and is 81 years old by the time of The Devil and Miss Carew, and dialogue places Submission "more than 50 years" after the successful return of the Trieste's crew from the depths of the Mariana Trench in 1960. This, however, conflicts with Ianto Jones being alive and the Hub still existing at the time of The Devil and Miss Carew and Submission, placing those two stories before the 2009 setting of Children of Earth: Day One (in which the Hub is destroyed); with Miracle Day being set in 2011 according to a text message display in episode 2, Rendition; and with Esther Drummond mentioning in The New World, the first episode of Miracle Day, that Gwen Cooper had not been seen in the past twelve months.

External links[]

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