A series of bombs make a building collapse on top of the gang (minus Gwen, who slept in). Buried in rubble, they have flashbacks...
After Jack was left behind by the Doctor, he travelled to the 19th century and got stuck there. When he found out that he was immortal several decades later, his first few weeks of eternal life were spent alternately drinking and dying a lot while yelling about the Doctor. Torchwood Cardiff (consisting, true to form, of two beautiful women in a lesbian relationship) noticed him, dragged him off the streets and into the Hub, and killed him a few times over again for science. They convinced him to become a freelance agent. The Cardiff tarot-card girl told him that he'd have to wait over a century for the Doctor to show up, and Torchwood reminded him that the organisation exists to stop the Doctor in the first place, so Jack decided to stay on and reform Torchwood with his knowledge and expertise.
When Tosh' mother was kidnapped by terrorists, she was forced to become a corporate spy inside the Ministry of Defense. She stole alien weapon blueprints and made a sonic gun for the terrorists. UNIT captured her, convicted her of military espionage and stripped her of all her human rights. After she spent months in bare-bones solitary confinement, Jack realized that Tosh was a genius: she was able to make the weapon even though the blueprint was wrong. He pulled some strings with UNIT and got Tosh to join Torchwood, but she could never see her mother again.
When Torchwood London was destroyed and Lisa was nearly converted to a Cyberman, Ianto began stalking Jack and trying to get a job with Torchwood Cardiff. Jack refused. One Weevil hunt, one very good cup of coffee and one captured pterodactyl later, Jack and Ianto had developed some serious UST, and Ianto had a job.
When Owen was still a nice, normal, functioning member of society, his fiancee developed early-onset Alzheimer's. The Alzheimer's turned out to be brain cancer. The brain cancer turned out to be an alien tentacle monster that lethally gassed everyone in the operating room. Jack was the one to show him the corpse, let Owen punch him in the face a few times, and offered him a job.
The bomb was planted by Captain John Hart, but everyone survives. John has found Gray, Jack's brother. Oh, and he stole their car.
Tropes:
- Armies Are Evil: Military Organisation UNIT is portrayed in a much less flattering light than usual, withdrawing Tosh's rights and throwing her in prison indefinitely without right of appeal or contact with the outside, all because she leaked important information in a bid to save her mother from terrorists.
- Boxed Crook: Jack first encounters Tosh whilst she's being held as a prisoner by UNIT. He offers her a deal to work with Torchwood for five years, with successful completion allowing her to go free. Naturally, Tosh takes it.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Tosh had to deal with her mother being kidnapped by terrorists and UNIT locking her up in a Hellhole Prison without any hope of escape before Jack saved her by offering her a job at Torchwood.
- Jack was revealed to have been tortured by Torchwood operatives who threatened him into working for them in the 19th century. He also had to spend New Year's Eve 1999 finding his entire team dead by the hands of one of his teammates and being unexpectedly thrust into a leadership role.
- In spite of his prior established relationship with his mother, Owen was once happy and intending on marrying a woman named Katie. This lasted until Katie was killed by an alien disguising itself as a tumour in her brain.
- Driven to Suicide: Alex Hopkins kills himself and almost all of the members of Torchwood 3 in 2000 after viewing a piece of alien technology and concluding that him and his team would be better off dying now rather than meeting more grisly fates later on.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Jack's flashback starts with him reviving while having a broken bottle stuck in his gut. He then proceeds to pull it out and throw it away and is killed again a minute later.
- Hellhole Prison: Tosh is locked up indefinitely in a small single room in a prison without any contact with the outside world, any way of appealing her sentence, or any way of passing the time. If it wasn't for Jack cutting a deal with her, UNIT were intending on keeping her locked up in there for the rest of her life.
- Millennium Bug: Jack's flashback in 1999 starts from him coming back from an encounter with a millennium bug. According to him, it seems to be an actual living entity that has 18 legs and is stacked full of poison.
- Murder-Suicide: Alex kills almost all of the members of his team before turning the gun on himself, believing it to be a Mercy Kill from whatever horrors he believes await them in the 21st century.
- New Year Has Come: Part of Jack's flashback takes place on New Year's Eve 1999. Considering the fact that it involved his leader killing his entire team before turning the bullet on himself, it was not a pleasant way to bring in the new millennium.
- Sole Survivor: Jack served with Torchwood 3 for decades before becoming its only member on New Year's Eve 1999 (which places the events of this flashback parallel to the 1996 TV movie, meaning that Jack was suffering while the Eighth Doctor was living it up with Grace and battling the Master). The cell leader crosses the Despair Event Horizon after gaining knowledge of the future, murdering the other members before killing himself.
- Stalker without a Crush: Ianto's flashback has him stalk Jack to get a job at Torchwood Three.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Almost all of the episode is dedicated to learning through Flashback how the members of Torchwood came to join the organization.
- You Are in Command Now: Alex Hopkins turns over leadership of Torchwood Three to Jack before killing himself, as he is unable to give Jack the Mercy Kill that he feels is necessary and which he has applied to the rest of his team.
