Owen and Tosh are remembered by a simple photograph stuck to a work station, and the Torchwood Three are learning how to keep on keeping on.

Jack and Ianto's relationship has moved beyond stopwatches. Ianto's getting angsty coming-out issues, and his sister spotted him dining with a gentleman caller. Having survived the unfortunate Nostrovite incident on her wedding day, Gwen is pregnant for real, giving Rhys the capacity for a whole new world of put-upon looks that say "this wouldn't have happened if I'd married that nice Debbie Watkins from the youth club."

And Captain Jack has a daughter! Heaven knows what happened the day Sally researched her family history, but she doesn't like the idea of having a dad who will never age. Despite not being quite disgusted enough to move away from Cardiff, she's cut Jack out of her life all the same. And she's quick to twig the real reason he suddenly wants to visit his grandson.

Oh yes, because now the cameras have arrived, there's trouble afoot. At 8:40 on a Monday morning, every child in the world stopped in their tracks. Ianto's sister Rhiannon put it down to mass hysteria, like when loads of girls faint at once. But what looks like an unfortunate series of road traffic accidents takes on a more sinister tone when it happens again and children all over the world start repeating the mantra "we are coming"(CREEPY) in a ridiculous God-of-hellfire voice. And in English.(AWESOME)

One person who knows more than he ought is John Frobisher – Peter Capaldi exorcising In the Thick of It's Malcolm Tucker for an altogether more sinister kind of civil servant – one who was instrumental in a 1965 alien cover-up that's coming back to bite him on the ass. "Civil servants are the cockroaches of government," observes his shadowy colleague Mr Dekker, who you can tell knows even more than Frobisher. Together they named the sinister alien threat the 456 after its hailing frequency, and the prime minister is washing his hands of all responsibility. We should also keep an eye on Frobisher's marvellously named assistant Bridget Spears.

Gwen meanwhile is using her special skill of "compassion" to interrogate mental patient Timothy White, the only adult who was also channelling the 456. He's significantly traumatised by the events of 1965 to have abandoned his old identity as Celement MacDonald. Tim/Clem can smell Gwen's pregnancy, and he's been able to smell the 456 returning for months.

With a fresh crisis on the way, Torchwood needs a new medic. And with Martha dispatched on honeymoon (or Law and Order UK on the other side), it's left to Jack and Ianto to snare handsome Dr Rupesh, from the local A&E. The pair don't take long to get excited, thinking of new and intriguing ways they can school him in the ambient sexuality that's a contractual obligation of working for the Institute. I hate Rupesh almost instantly – simply because he isn't Martha – so it's some relief when he's revealed to be a sneak and a turncoat working for shadowy assassin Johnson, played by Liz May Brice (Pat Kerrigan from Bad Girls.

And after a good 50 minutes of set-up, we finally get some action. Rupesh kills Jack(OMG); Johnson plants a bomb in Jack's belly and kills Rupesh before Jack resurrects. With a whole world of trouble brewing, Jack finds the bomb through Gwen's alien ultrasound, gets the two mortals out, and goes boom, taking the expensive Hub set with him ...(OH NO)