Damned Heroes: A Christian Interpretation of Torchwood

The British TV show Torchwood was created by Russel T Davies in 2006 as a spinoff to Doctor Who. It follows the story of Gwen Cooper, a Cardiff police officer who accidentally discovers a secret semi government organization called Torchwood. Torchwood is led by a man who calls himself Captain Jack Harkness. Harkness is hundreds of years old because of a small problem he has; when he dies he comes back to life.

In the very first episode of Torchwood, Harkness brings a man back from the dead for a minute. After being asked what he saw when he died the man replies “Nothing. I saw nothing. Oh my god, there’s nothing.” And then he dies again. This immediately sets a tone for the show. It will be darker than its parent show, more adult, and it isn’t afraid of a nihilistic worldview. Or at least that’s what it seemed to be trying to do. Ultimately the first season fails at being adult. Yes, it is inappropriate for children, but it is awfully hokey and juvenile despite that. What it fails at even more-so is its nihilistic theme. I would argue that it makes more sense to interpret Torchwood season one as  being set in a world where there is a Hell, and most likely a Heaven.

                The most important episode for this topic is They Keep Killing Suzie. Suzie was a member of Torchwood who became a serial killer, and was ultimately killed. In this episode she’s been brought back from the dead and isn't very keen about dying again. She kidnaps Gwen Cooper and has a couple conversations with her about death.

Gwen: So what's out there?
Suzie: Nothing. Just nothing.
Gwen: But if there's nothing, what's the point of it all?
Suzie: This is. Driving through the dark. All this stupid tiny stuff. We're just animals howling in the night. 'Cause it's better than silence.

This is a fairly standard nihilistic conversation and there isn’t anything that actually contradicts that here. I'ts also a fairly standard theme in season one of Torchwood; There is nothing after death and therefore nothing matters. We are just animals pretending we're something more. The problem comes the next time the two talk about the lack of afterlife that Suzie is avoiding. It starts with Gwen asking a completely irrational question;

Gwen: So when you die, it's just—
Suzie: Darkness.
Gwen: And you're all alone, there's no one else?

If someone told me that there is nothing after death I would not immediately ask them if they were alone. Why? Because you have to be somewhere to be alone. The whole  idea that there is no life after death is that we no longer exist. Your soul or mind does not go anywhere after you die because you don’t have one, and whatever you did have died with the brain. But these people are not describing oblivion; they are describing an experience. The clear distinction here is that they remember nothing. It's not that they have no memories after death, because they distinctly remember nothingness. And more importantly, they remember being within this nothingness; They remember being along in the dark. Suzie makes this more obvious when she answers Gwen’s ridiculous question;

Gwen: And you're all alone, there's no one else?
Suzie: I didn't say that.
Gwen: What d'you mean?
Suzie: Why do you think I'm so desperate to come back? There's something out there... in the dark. And it's moving.

And then later she says the following to Jack right before she dies again; 

“Captain, my Captain. Do you want to know a secret? There’s something moving in the dark and it's coming, Jack Harkness. It’s coming for you.”

Suzie explaining her lack of understanding of metaphysics. 

Not only do they remember being nowhere but they remember something being there with them. And not only is it a something they can feel moving in the dark, but they are also afraid of it. The whole idea of oblivion is non-existence or nothingness. According to any sort of atheism people cease to be after they die, they don’t float alone in the dark. That is not nothingness, rather it is clearly an afterlife of a sort. No one has ever said afterlife has to be fun, it just has to be a continuing existence of the mind/soul/you.  This is also an afterlife most Christians wouldn't have a problem believing in. In fact it sounds an awful lot like one that the vast majority of Christians do believe in; Hell. I’m going to use the Catholic definition of Hell; According to that definition Hell is "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed." So essentially Hell is being alone, separated from God and from those who were saved, forever. I guarantee you that if you told most Christians that you had a near death experience which was eternal loneliness in the dark surrounded by an evil presence, they would not have an existential crisis. They would most likely tell you that what you experienced was Hell.

Suzie stays dead this time but the subject of afterlife does not die with her. Throughout the remainder of the season people tell Jack that there is something in the dark coming for him. This goes on, mainly because of Russel T. Davies's penchant for foreshadowing. The nihilistic themes also continue. In one episode near the end of the season, Jack meets a man who wants to die and they have the following conversation;

Captain Jack Harkness: I can't leave you here.
John Ellis: Then we'll wait. The sun will rise, we'll have some breakfast, take a walk...
Captain Jack Harkness: Yes. A new day.
John Ellis: And I'll suffer it all and smile and wag my tail and then, as soon as your back is turned, I'll make sure I do it properly. Because I want to die.
Captain Jack Harkness: You don't get reunited, John. It just goes black.
John Ellis: How do you know?
Captain Jack Harkness: I died once.
John Ellis: Who are you?
Captain Jack Harkness: A man, like you, out of his time, alone and scared.
John Ellis: How do you cope?
Captain Jack Harkness: It's just bearable. It has to be. I don't have a choice.
John Ellis: But I do. If you want to help me, then let me go with some dignity. Don't condemn me to live.

Again Jack describes it as going black. This could just mean that he remembers nothing but the wording seems to fit Suzie’s description better. Its interesting though that it never occurs to the characters that this could be anything other than simple nothingness even though they know it isn’t. They know there is something in the dark with you afterlife and that is not nothingness. That’s something!  It reminds me of a passage from G.K. Chesterton’s essay “The Red Angel”;

For the devils, alas, we have always believed in. The hopeful element in
the universe has in modern times continually been denied and reasserted;
but the hopeless element has never for a moment been denied.
As I told "H. N. B." (whom I pause to wish a Happy Christmas in its
most superstitious sense), the one thing modern people really do
believe in is damnation. The greatest of purely modern poets summed
up the really modern attitude in that fine Agnostic line--

"There may be Heaven; there must be Hell."

The gloomy view of the universe has been a continuous tradition;
and the new types of spiritual investigation or conjecture all begin
by being gloomy.

This is very clearly exemplified in Torchwood. The characters discover that Hell is real and barely bat an eye, because they always believed in it. It is Heaven’s existence that would shock them, not Hell’s.  At the end of the season this gets further confounded when Abaddon rises from the Abyss;

Bilis: From out of the darkness, he is come.
Gwen: What is he talking about?
Bilis: Son of the Great Beast. Cast out before time, chained in rock and imprisoned beneath the rift.
Gwen: What?!
Bilis: All hail Abaddon, the Great Devourer. Come to feast on life! The whole world shall die beneath his shadow.

So Jack fights Abaddon and kills him, with a lot of Christian symbolism but that’s a whole other matter that I may or may not write about another day. And then they all go about business as usual. Why? Because their hearts are hardened to the truth. There is the explanation that Abbadon was chained below Cardiff in the Rift in space and time but there are two questions that that does not answer. First is who chained hi;. It seems to be fitting that the Beast who was cast into the Pit would be chained there, so I really have no problem with that one. The second question is why do we go to the rift when we die? We know that the dead people were in the same place as Abaddon. They felt him moving in the dark. So if Abaddon was beneath the rift than people must have been going beneath the rift when they died. Maybe below the rift is just another way of describing Hell since I can think of no explanation of oblivion that includes an afterlife underneath of Cardiff.

I know! Let's have Jack kill the Devil in the first season. Then he can fight his little brother in season 2, and maybe some junkies in season 3. That will be cool.

My theory is that there is a Hell in the Torchwood universe and there is also a Heaven. The characters don’t know about it because they assume their experience of after life is the only one, completely discounting the possibility that their experience is not universal.. As for the main characters going to Hell, well that’s not really a problem either. Suzie was a serial killer, and Jack is a hundreds of years old con man, murderer, and thief. He has been trying to redeem himself but during the show itself has done some pretty terrible things, including giving a school bus of children to an alien. But lets ignore that and say that he is a stand up guy. It still wouldn't matter from a Christian perspective. It is not morality that condemns or saves us, we humans are incapable of being good enough to be saved by works. Rather it is faith that saves us, it is our choice to accept God’s forgiveness that leads to our salvation. So a group of heroes can all be damned to Hell, simply because they do not accept the grace of God. I personally think this interpretation of Torchwood makes a lot more sense than the usual Nihilistic one. It also makes it an even more tragic tale; Captain Jack is a man fighting for his redemption but he does not realize that he cannot earn his forgiveness. Torchwood is not a story of heroes fighting in a Nihilistic universe, it is a tragic tale of heroes who fight desperately to save the universe while being unable to recognize their own need for salvation.