Torchwood Dreams

I rarely remember my dreams for some reason, bar some soul-destroying nightmares and a curious version of The Worst Witch sequel with the redhead... Never mind. But tonight I had the strangest and most vivid of dreams that formed quite a narrative in my brain. Of course, there were the usual oddities - at one point the main characters were replaced by the Simpsons, at another I turned up in the episode telling people how much of an improvement the story was on the first season, and the actual ending did sort of blur a tad.

Anyway...

Owen and Gwen bump into each other on a street corner. It's not work, just random and idly they chat about Gwen's "normal" life, which is interrupted by a hit and run. A pedestrian gets hit by a car that hoons off and it's quite clear this a human tragedy, nothing to do with aliens. The victim's got a badly broken leg and Owen, for some reason, doesn't fix it with alien tech or basic doctor know how. He doesn't even call for an ambulance.

OK, it's a dream, forgive the plot hole!

Gwen and Owen help the guy walk while they look for help and they arrive at this sort of health clinic. They are met by the friendly, clearly very human staff who take the injured guy away. Gwen is suspicious about the place and contacts Tosh at the Hub (for some reason, this was a Jack-lite episode...) and she tells them that the clinic's been there for years and has recently become very popular and effective. Owen, not being stupid, suggest they scan for any alien doohickies that might explain the sudden good luck of the clinic.

Owen and Gwen meet the various people in the clinic. They all seems perfectly healthy and spry, even some older gits in residence, but the clinic insists they can't leave yet. Gwen and Owen search for a reason, but are distracted when accident guy turns up, and his leg is completely better!

Owen and Gwen agree to spend the night at the place (I dunno, maybe it's raining or really late) and somehow avoid sleeping with each other because, you know, there's more important stuff afoot. Now, it's a bit foggy, but one of the new patients at the clinic makes some kind of mistake, knocks over a CD player or some irritating accident like that. And all the other patients go psycho evil and gang up on the new patient and beat the living crap out of them. (The victim might have been female, but at this part they all turned into Simpson characters, and there was a disturbing bit where Bart insists that he can't join the beating because he is too much with sin to cast the first stone... so he waits until everyone else has left the victim for dead before torturing her.)

Our newly-bipedly accident victim sees this horror and runs off. The clinic security follow with lots of ominous "he cannot tell the outside world" and "he won't get far" type utterances. Owen and Gwen spot the exhausted victim, caught by guards, being dragged back to some kind of jacuzzi arrangement by the dispassionate doctors. The victims' legs have withered away to stumps.

The dream goes a bit foggier here, so suffice it to say, the twist is that the clinic isn't using alien technology to cure people, but earth technology and some alien ideas about heath. The patients are being cured by some special healing water. There are a couple of side effects - it needs long soaking before the cures are permanent, and then it leaves the DNA unstable so the victims either go psycho evil sadistic OR turn into lovecraftian monsters. Gwen and Owen are left on their own to sort this out.

Owen finds out someway to poison the jacuzzi of eternal life, cuing a moral speech from Gwen where she basically gets told to shut up - either they wipe out all the patients, or let loose a bunch of insane nightmarish carnivores who are completely insane. Then there's a bit of a chase and they manage to poison the pool and the patients enjoying their 'treatment' glow and turn to sludge.

(They also get funny last words since they were all residents of Springfield, and the only survivor was Sideshow Mel who realized he could survive by turning into a monster and staying in the water.)

After another chase and escape, Owen and Gwen flee the clinic, now haunted by the accident patient. No longer completely insane, but stuck as a huge spider-crab-beetle-squid monster. Too big to take to the hub, too harmless to murder, too much of a freak to ever return to the outside world. Owen dryly points out that THIS is a moral dilemma worth worrying about.

...

and then I woke up.