4 lessons on writing good deaths from Torchwood
Death is the one certain thing in life, so obviously, it also has a huge significance in fiction. The question is, however, how to make the deaths meaningful, how to create an impact in the reader, and how to avoid predictability. Different authors have different ways of achieving this, some with more success, some with less, but today we are going to be focusing on what Russle T. Davis did in the Sci-fi show Torchwood (a spin-off to Doctor Who). I will go over both good and less good deaths from the show here, but before we go on:
spoiler alert: this post contains Torchwood spoilers for all four series of the TV show.
Lesson 1: Take a cliche or expectation and turn it on its head (Owen)
For this lesson, we are going to be looking at Owen Harper’s first death. For those of you unfamiliar with the show let me explain: yes, Owen dies twice, no, it is not a bad as it sounds. For one, he is only revived once, and for another both his deaths carried emptional significance.
What I love about Owen’s first death is how surprising it was. The scene is set up like so many others from crime shows and whatnot. The “good guys” spoil the plans of the “bad guys”, and as a last desperate attempt to not suffer defeat the “bad guy” pulls a gun. One of the “good guys” heroically steps up and talks the “bad guy” down. We know that scene like the back of our hand, like the inside of our pocket, but when was the last time you saw that scene end like this?
The scene is so cliche, so run of the mill, we lean back thinking the episode is pretty much over now and nothing more exciting will happen. It is just a chance for Owen to show off. We don’t expect him to actually die. And yet, he does die. He is shot and actually dies.
Who kills a character in a failed negotiation like that? The team had every chance to shoot the man threatening them before he had the chance to shoot Owen, but they believed that Owen could talk him down. And then… just… bang. Shot. And Owen dies, his last words literally being “I don’t think you wanna shoot that.” It is outrageous! Owen needn’t have died! If he had been less overconfident, if Jack had shot first, if Martha had been faster with the medical help… it was a pointless death! Owen needn’t have died.
And that is the brilliance of this death. It is pointless. Most real-life deaths are pointless. This is realistic. It feels real. Owen was overly confident sometimes, and he was a show-off – all the way through this episode too. Doing this is so him. And Jack, while he generally isn’t afraid to shoot first, he also trusts his team and their abilities. He believed Owen could talk the doctor down. Even Gwen wasn’t really scared, or she would have stepped in. This death has shock value, it is emotional, and it leaves the viewer with a “that didn’t really happen, did it? It can’t have!” taste in their mouth. This is a good death, because it fits the character, and it surprises the audience.
Lesson 2: Fit the death to the character (Tosh)
While Owen’s death does fit his character, there is another death within Torchwood that does so to an even bigger degree. Toshiko Sato’s death combined with Owen’s second death.
Quick recap of the scene before we analyze it: the Torchwood team is divided and hurt, Cardiff is under attack, and old enemies have come back to haunt them. Owen is trapped in a building that’s about to be flooded with radiation, Tosh has been shot and left for dead, and no one else is around or even knows they are in danger. The only contact they have is through a communicator.
First Owen freaks out, scream, shouts, rages about how he is now going to die again, how unfair it is. Then Tosh asks him “please don’t”.
What is amazing here is that Owen listens. Though the extra time he gained between his first death and this one, the amount of personal growth is clear and evident. He didn’t waste his second chance. What’s more, he puts Tosh first for once. When he first realizes he’s going to die he goes back to his old habits of being loud, rude and selfish, but he stops for Tosh. He actually stops. He is about to die, if at any time he had a right to be self-centered it is now – especially since he doesn’t know that Tosh is dying too. But in his last moments, he puts away his own feelings to be there for the woman he had ignored, teased, and taunted through two series. He drops the facade and levels with her.
His last words this time have nothing to do with thinking he can handle it all or being overly self-assured. This time, his last words are spent telling Tosh that it’s okay. He isn’t self-assured now, he is reassuring her. Telling her it wasn’t her fault. Telling her it’s okay.
Owen’s second death focuses on how he has used that extra time and evolved. How he made a conscious decision to be better because life is short, and most importantly that he succeeded in being better, it wasn’t just one of those near-death experience that changes everything for about a month and then it all reverts back to normal. Owen actually changed, he put Tosh before himself despite his circumstances.
The reason however that this death is so important to mention is how well it contrasts Tosh’s, now how well both of those deaths fit the characters.
Both tosh and Owen spend these scenes alone and isolated, having only the communicator to stay in touch with each other, but while Owen dies like that, alone and isolated, the rest of the team finds Tosh just as she’s about to die. This means that while Owen, the more social one, the one who prefered to keep busy and not be alone with himself, dies alone but at peace; whereas Tosh, the one who never felt truly invited or a part of the team, always felt a little like an outsider or unwanted, dies with the team around her. Not only does she die in Jack’s arms, but when she’s dead the camera zooms out, revealing first the whole room with the remaining team members, but then further out to show all of Cardiff, to show us how much of an impact she truly had, even if she never quite realized or believed it.
Both Owen and Tosh died in ways that they never thought they would be comfortable with or be allowed to, but Owen had grown enough to be okay with it, and Tosh was proven wrong in her assumptions that she wasn’t really invited in.
Tosh’s last words were:
What makes these two deaths so emotional is that on one hand, Tosh and Owen both have unfinished business, for example, that date Tosh had finally gathered the courage to ask Owen on but they had never gotten around to going on, and on the other that these deaths are so tailored to their personalities. Owen learned to be on his own, and Tosh learned that she was appreciated, important, and most of all loved.
Lesson 3: Make the people around the dying character the source of the sadness (Ianto)
With Ianto’s death Davis has taken an other direction. This death too focuses on the timing, on why it’s sad that Ianto dies now – but unlike the others, I don’t necessarily believe that this isn’t a high point in his life. Let me explain that.
The episode where Ianto dies has a few scenes where Ianto is trying to make Jack rely on him more, to let him in. For example with this converation:
Ianto: This must have been eating away at you. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped.
Jack: No, you couldn’t.
Ianto: I tell you everything.
[…]
Ianto: I’ve only just scratched the surface, haven’t I?
Jack: Ianto, that’s all there is.
Ianto: No, you pretend that’s all there is.
Jack: I’ve lived a long time. I’ve done a lot of things.
[…]
Ianto: You’re doing it again. Speak to me Jack. Where’re you going?
[…]
Jack: And just so you know, I have daugther called Alice and a grandson called Steven, and Frobisher took the hostage yesterday.
I’ve removed a few unimportant lines, but the interaction is clear. Ianto is asking Jack for more, for a relationship, and Jack is brushing him off, saying he doesn’t have more to give. When Ianto pushes it, asks Jack to talk to him, Jack responds with an information dump (his daughter and grandson) and walks away.
What I mean when I say I don’t necessarily believe this isn’t a high point in Ianto’s life is that I think he has farther to fall than to rise, mainly because the character development Ianto needs to find true happiness isn’t his own, but Jack’s. Ianto is happy being the coffee-boy, cleaning up after the others, because he doesn’t identify himself through his job as they do, he identifies himself by what he has on top of the job. At this point what he has on top of the job is Jack. That is why his death scene is so heartbreaking.
Ianto asks for Jack in his last moments, not just to be there, but to BE THERE. To be there for him, to be with him. He’s asking for Jack to tell him that he means more to Jack than just a workmate and a shag, or even just another guy in a long line of boyfriends and significant others. And I think he does. I think Jack genuinely cares deeply for Ianto, but while Ianto defines his happiness by what he has outside of work, work has been the only stable in Jack’s life for decades [for those of you who don’t know the show: Jack is immortal and really old]. People leave Jack all the time, or they die – but work remains. If Jack admitted he loves Ianto more than work, it would be that much more heartbreaking for him when Ianto is no longer there. In short, Jack does the opposite of Owen here, he puts his own feelings above those of Ianto, despite knowing Ianto is dying.
It breaks my heart every time. I want to strangle Jack. I want to watch him die and suffer. How could he do that to Ianto? to darling Ianto who never asks for anything, who accepts Jack for who he is, who has stood by Jack through everything… Ianto deserved far better than this. Jack was a coward here. Plain and simple. And yet, I do get why he did it. He has loved and lost so many times, it makes sense to try to protect himself. But I still think Ianto deserved better.
And that is the brilliance of this death. It is not Ianto that makes this sad, it is Jack. Ianto based his happiness on what he had outside of work, and what he had was Jack – to some extent, because Jack never fully gave himself to Ianto, and therefore Ianto never fully had happiness. Ianto’s death is sad through no fault of his own.
Lesson 4: Make sure to have choices in who dies (Esther Drummond)
When I first watched Torchwood it was on DVD, and each episode starts with a little introduction by Russle T. Davis and John Barrowman (who plays Captain Jack Harkness). One episode started with John Barrowman promising us a death in the episode.
For me, that was an invitation to trying to figure out who was going to die. I very simply went over each character and decided how likely they were to die.
Jack Harkness was the only mortal human for most of the series, having spent every other series being immortal. If he died it would be boring. Yes, he’s a beloved character and we would hate to see him die, but it would be too easy a kill, and none of the other kills in the series were easy and cheap.
Gwen Cooper is the access character, and as such can’t die. By access character I mean she is the character through whom we gained access to the world where the story takes place, like a combination between a Main Character and a Point of View character. In Torchwood Jack is the one it all centers around, and the point of view shifts between everyone as it usually does in TV and film, but Gwen is the one who got us into Torchwood. Without her we have no established access, and therefore no show.
Agent Rex Matheson was supposed to die in the first episode, and therefore he can’t be an emotional death. His death would have no shock value.
Oswald Danes is the convicted child molester and killer who was supposed to be executed in the first episode. He cannot be the emotional death since it would be more outrageous to allow him to live.
Rhys Williams is the husband of Gwen Cooper and the father of her daughter. If he dies Gwen would have no choice but to leave Torchwood for good this time, and this too would mean the loss of the access character. Therefore Rhys dying is highly unlikely – unless they kill the baby too.
Jilly Kitzinger is the PR person for Oswald Danes, and she’s not exactly a beloved character. Having her die wouldn’t provoke much of an emotional response, at most a shoulder shrug.
And that leaves us: Esther Drummond. Sweet Esther who had been a part of this since the first episode of the Miracle Day. She has a sister and two nephews who rely on her. She’s sweet and loving, she smart, she’s lovable. Losing her would be devastating. Esther is the best bet for most emotionally shocking death. Sure, some of the others might die as well, but Esther is the only character here who could provoke a truely heartbreaking death – and therefore I was about 98% sure she was going to die. And she did. To be precise of all the people I considered Esther and Oswald were the ones to die.
Now, the only reason I could predict her death so easily is because all the other characters were easy to rule out. There was no choice for an emotional death but Esther. Therefore, if you are going to write a death, and if you want it to have shock value and be surprising, make sure to have more than one possibility, more than one character whose death could break the heart of the audience.
So there you have it, four lessons for writing good deaths:
- take cliches and expectations and turn them around
- Fit the death to the character
- Create sadness through the surrounding characters
- Make sure you have choices in who to kill
One more thing to be aware of: if I hadn’t been familiar with Russle T. Davis’ way of writing deaths, chances are I couldn’t have predicted the Miracle Day deaths. So while these are all great lessons to remeber, you should also be aware that you should shake things up every now and then so it doesn’t become predictable. Maybe let a character die without first establishing why the timing is so emotional. Maybe chose one death that isn’t tailored to their character.
