Come one, come all, to the creepiest circus since that one your uncle took you to that definitely wasn’t for children.
Short Synopsis
Old film footage unleashes ghostly circus performers who literally step out of the screen to steal people’s life-breath. Torchwood must stop the resurrected “Night Travellers” before they turn Cardiff into a silent movie of corpses.
Extended Storyline
It all begins, as many horrifying things in Torchwood do, with Gwen being unable to enjoy a perfectly nice evening out. This time, she and Rhys attend a film screening at a run-down cinema, because nothing says romance like a sticky floor and a projector that’s older than Jack.
The movie turns out to be footage of a 1920s travelling circus called The Night Travellers, a troupe who specialized in haunting dreams and violating OSHA safety standards. As the reel plays, something goes very wrong — the performers step out of the film, like cursed celluloid celebrities who missed the memo that talkies are a thing now. The cinema’s projectionist finds himself the proud owner of a living nightmare, and it’s all downhill from there.
Jack, naturally, knows something. He remembers hearing legends about the Night Travellers — performers who came out only in the rain and vanished by morning. He explains that they were rumored to collect souls, which, for a showbiz crowd, is just about the worst PR imaginable.
The mysterious “Ghostmaker” and his eerie accomplice, the “Mermaid,” wander Cardiff, stealing people’s last breaths and leaving behind human husks. Tosh, Owen, and Ianto work out that they’re not ghosts but “echoes” sustained by the celluloid film that birthed them. (Meanwhile, Gwen’s face does that mix of disbelief and irritation that’s become her signature expression this season.)
Jack and Gwen track the performers to a derelict fairground — because of course that’s where undead circus folk would go. There, they find the Ghostmaker’s collection of trapped breaths, bottled like ghoulish perfume samples. The confrontation gets properly spooky: tents flap, lights flicker, and Jack, as always, looks entirely too pleased to be facing certain death.
When Jack smashes the bottle collection, the trapped souls are released — except for one bottle, which he saves to revive a dying child as a bittersweet gesture. The Ghostmaker and the rest of the Night Travellers vanish back into the film reel, which Torchwood promptly burns. Still, a single frame survives, fluttering in the wind... and inside it, a shadow moves. Because heaven forbid Torchwood ever truly wins.