A young lady is on a drive out in the country when she spots a body in the road. Turns out it's not a body, but clothing trussed up to look like one. She tries to get away from whatever set up this decoy, but to no avail.
Torchwood is on the scene and goes out camping nearby. Gwen decides to play a nice campfire game of "who was the last person you kissed?". Tosh hasn't kissed anyone in months, but Owen was her last, Ianto lies and says his last kiss was with Lisa and he doesn't want to talk about it, Jack just sort of sidesteps the question, and Owen informs the group that he snogged Gwen during the Cyberwoman attack. Gwen isn't happy with the whole group knowing about that.
Turns out this local area is the source of several mysterious disappearances. As they set up camp, Gwen and Owen go out and get firewood, Owen grilling her about the kiss they shared a few episodes ago. While this is happening, they find a flayed body in the woods, all the meat and organs gone. While investigating, the team hears the SUV being stolen. They track its signal to a nearby village.
Ianto and Tosh go look for the SUV while the other three check the area. They find a rather nervous kid who blasts Gwen with a shotgun. Owen fixes her up and the two share a tender moment.
Meanwhile, Ianto and Tosh get close to the SUV, but get captured by our Monster of the Week. They come to in an underground bunker where they find human meat in a fridge. Wondering what alien could be doing this, they're let out of captivity by a nurse who says she has to lead the two to "them".
Turns out she's one of "them". Our "aliens" are merely cannibalistic humans. Gwen and Owen, having separated from Jack, get held at gunpoint by a police constable who's in on the act, and everyone gets gathered together to prepare for the village's "harvest". Just then, Jack busts into the building on a tractor and incapacitates the cannibals.
Afterwards, Gwen interrogates the patriarch, trying to figure out why they cannibalized people. The only response she gets is "it made me happy".
Shell-shocked by the ordeal and unable to confide in Rhys, Gwen has now begun to find solace in sleeping with Owen.
This episode has the distinction of being, as of 2023, the only televised episode of any Doctor Who franchise series to have absolutely zero science fiction aspects in the story (Jack's immortality, while present, has no bearing on the plot as its never used, and the most advanced technology the episode features is an SUV tracker). This is all Played for Drama of course, as Gwen has to come to terms with humans being just as horrifying as aliens sometimes.
Tropes
- All Love Is Unrequited: Poor old Tosh. She tries hooking up with Owen, even admitting she shared a kiss with him under some mistletoe around Christmas, but Owen still acts like a jerk toward her.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: This episode shows why Jack is the leader in the first place. Harm his team and he'll come crashing in to the tune of his own Leitmotif.
- Bed Mate Reveal: At the end of the episode, Gwen laments about all the things she's seen. We're led to believe it's a narration, but it turns out she's talking to Owen.
- Big Damn Heroes: Jack barges in to the main house in a tractor and wounds every member of the cannibal family to save every member of his team, plus the boy they had kidnapped.
- Break the Cutie: All the things Gwen has seen are starting to take a toll on her.
- Call-Back: Ianto calls Gwen out on her thoughtless question about who was the last person everyone kissed, replying it was Lisa.
- Cannibal Clan: Turns out it was people murdering passerbys, not anything alien.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: A heroic but still terrifying example for Jack.
- Deadpan Snarker: As usual, most of the team, but Owen in particular:Owen: "Only in the bloody countryside!"
- For the Evulz: The patriarch's reasoning for their cannibalism — It made him happy.
- Hillbilly Horrors: A rare British example, but with all the usual US tropes.
- Horrible Camping Trip: Complete with Owen failing at the concept of a tent.Tosh: Need any help getting it up, Owen?
- Ianto: You know, I never liked camping.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Possibly one of the most disturbing examples in the Whoniverse — there's no alien presence, and there's no technology more advanced than tracking technology and a phone, and yet, is a lesson for everyone involved that Humans Are Bastards.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: The Harvest is this; killing those who pass through the village just for the funsies.
- Idiot Ball: Thrown around. Owen leaves the keys in the car (which allows it to be stolen), the team split up to find the SUV and charge into houses to work out what the hell is going on, and, justifiably getting more scared, wave guns around like crazy.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The people who did all the murders that catch Torhchwood's attention, well, it's not aliens this time, it's humans who are sick in the head because of a ten-yearly tradition of murdering people.
- Innocently Insensitive: Gwen's attempt at a light-hearted conversation about snogging ends when Ianto flatly points out that the last person he kissed was Lisa.
- It's Probably Nothing: At one point Ianto thinks a screech is a fox (it isn't, obviously).
- Jack Harkness Interrogation Technique: Apparently, Jack was pretty good at torture back in the day. He uses it on one of the attackers.
- Leitmotif: This episode's use of Jack storming in with a tractor and shotgun in tow has a unique variation of "Captain Jacks Theme" playing over it
, as a nod to Ben Foster seeing this scene, and used the phrase "Here he comes in a ruddy great tractor" as he found it such a fitting scene to turn into a Leitmotif for Jack. These origins are later referenced in the soundtrack for Children of Earth, which has a noticeably out of place track called "Tractor Attack". - Let's Split Up, Gang!: This episode is particularly guilty of this, though they were expecting an obvious alien presence, not people taking the team out one by one, and are blindsided as a result.
- Mundanger: This episode is devoid of any supernatural elements, and relies on a Cannibal Clan disgusting the whole crew, and for Gwen to accept that Humans Are Bastards just as much as aliens are.
- Oh, Crap!: Several moments:
- Ianto's eyes are practically popping out of his skull when he realises what the meat in the fridge is.
- Gwen when the police officer her and Owen find double-crosses them.
- Ianto and Tosh's reaction to the woman lying to them about being an unwilling subordinate meant to fetch them; instead, she's the wife of the murderer
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In through the wall comes a tractor, and out of the tractor comes Jack Harkness with a shotgun, and he is pissed.
- Stiff Upper Lip: Owen jokes Gwen should lie back and think of Torchwood while he sets to digging the shotgun pellets out.
- Stress Vomit: Gwen begins retching and vomiting upon coming across one of the flayed corpses in the village.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The village, once a decade, feasts on passer-by's that nobody would miss and eat them. All for fun, apparently. Gwen is, to put it mildly, horrified, to hear this at the end of the episode.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Gwen doesn't think much of flayed bodies.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Once Gwen gets pegged in a non-vital area with a shotgun, Owen immediately sets to work trying to get the pellets out. This is mostly to set up a tender moment between the two.
- Wham Line: "...'Cos it made me happy."
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is very similar in conception to the Supernatural season 1 episode "The Benders", which also involves human hillbilly cannibals as the Monsters of the Week on a normally supernaturally-driven show where the protagonists mistake the killings for the work of non-human monsters at first.
