And civil servants v. elected officials. Don't forget that classic struggle. Our old school Mr. Dekker certainly doesn't let his fellow civil servant John Frobisher forget that.
Peter Capaldi (above left, with Prime Minister Brian Green, played by Nicholas Farrell) plays Mr. Frobisher, a hard-working bureaucrat that has see the elected officials whose bidding he does come and go, but he's reminded by Dekker (Ian Gelder, left) about elected officials and their transience in the first hour of Children of Earth.
So, he takes matters into his own very capable bureaucratic hands and puts things in motion, things that include wiping Britain's records of the 1965 visit to Scotland from another realm, disappearing the memory of twelve orphan children and then tracking down those that might betray the plan by utilizing the most extensive network of closed-circuit security cameras in the world and finally, killing those whose allegiance can not be counted on.
Collateral damage includes a huge part of a major Welsh city 132 miles away, damage that was ordered by the British government, ordered from what is technically another country, England, and carried out in order to shut the mouths of just three people.
Of course, those three people work outside the government and beyond the police. And they can't be contained. Or handled. Or silenced. Unless you silence them forever. We know that one of them can't be stopped, and as long as the other two are alive he'll never be contained. They are labeled enemies of the state. Terrorists.
They are Marginalized. Dehumanized.
And just like the blank page order that gets suggested by Frobisher, approved by the Prime Minister, then ordered to carry out by Frobisher to his personal assistant Bridget Spears, there is distance created from the instruction to commit acts to the carrying out of those orders.
As is the conversation between Gwen and one of the government hitmen in the ambulance at the scene of the hub explosion.
"Who do you work for, " she asks twice before he shoots him in the foot.
"The government. I'm working for the government, I'm just following orders ... I just do what I'm told."
It makes it easier to kill.
Even your favorite Cardiff constable PC Andy is used to get to his old partner Gwen, despite his assurances and then exclamations that "Gwen Cooper is not a terrorist." Fortunately he's smart enough to know that he's right, despite being scooped up by Frobisher's team of assassins near the blown-up Hub and used to find her home, now empty as pregnant Gwen and daddy-to-be Rhys surf a wave of raw potatoes in the back of a delivery truck to get to London to address their government leaders.
Gwen goes right to the source to get answers, even she being more confident than trepidacious, almost not believing that the government that she has working alongside would be targeting her for death based solely on her knowledge of particular State secrets.
Then Ianto reminds us, when he meets up with sister Rhiannon and her laptop and car, that he considers himself a civil servant as well. At that point you really have to think about the people that are placed in positions of power, inside or outside official structures.
What are their intentions? Is a man's allegiance to himself, to his family, to his benefactor, his religion or to the greater good?
We know Ianto's allegiance is to the memory of his Torchwood London colleagues, to Lisa Hallett, to Tosh and Owen, to Gwen, and ultimately (for some otherwordly spiritually-tinged reason) to Captain Jack both by love and the tenets of the Torchwood rebuild led by Harkness post-Canary Wharf.
Finally, toward the end of this second day of Torchwood, we have this exchange between Frobisher and Prime Minister Green. The PM has already instructed Frobisher, who has in turn instructed his personal assistant Bridget Spears to delete the files and burn the evidence of that day in 1965 when a group of young orphans were left without the protection of their government.
Once again, enough distance from the order so that both those who implement the directive and those who ordered it can claim distance from the act itself.
Frobisher, just as he turns to leave the PM's office says, "I just wanted to say how grateful I am sir ... I know that I am somewhat of a middle man in these affairs, I just wanted to thank you for trusting me with the responsibility."
"All I've done," Green says, "is put you on the front line. That's what the front line is for, John. First to fall."
Your heart sinks.
Finally, there is just one person with the political, moral and ethical will to do the right thing, a young woman who happens by chance to be in the right place and what many might consider the wrong time.
Meanwhile, Lois places herself on the front lines. Young impetuousness? National duty? Curiosity? It's your call why she does it.
Lois Habiba, after all, "didn't sign the Official Secrets act to cover up murder, and I didn't take the job to commit treason on the second day ... and if you lot Torchwood, if you're the alien expert, and they really are coming tomorrow, why does Mr. Frobisher want you out of the way all of a sudden? "
Conflicted but smart, and still untouched by the cold collective hand of a government in fear of the unknown, a government that has turned their collective backs on science.
Watch a preview of tonight's episode in a clip after the jump.
