Torchwood/Awesome

For Miracle Day moments, see that page.
For The Lost Files moments, see that page.

• Practically everyone in "Exit Wounds" gets a crowning moment of awesome. Tosh and Ianto shooting the reaper-like figures, Gwen's rallying the troops speech, Ianto and Gwen nearly shooting John, John actually shooting Jack, Jack living through being buried alive for nearly a two thousand years and forgiving the people who buried him, Tosh and Owen's deaths
  • To elaborate: Tosh gets shot in the chest. It is obvious that this is a fatal wound, and the Big Bad Gray freakin' gloats over this fact. But she applies pressure and survives for something like twenty minutes while talking Owen through his own problems at the nuclear plant, which lead to his own very visible oncoming death over which he freaks out, and then calming him down and talking him through his last minutes without ever letting on that anything is wrong on her end. Only after everyone else's situation is resolved does she allow herself to die.
• Ianto tasering a guy in the forehead in Meat. "Pray they survive" indeed.
• In Dead Man Walking, Owen finds himself, Tosh, and a kid named Jamie Berman in a hospital, locked in with the motherfreakin' Grim Reaper, who has killed twelve people and needs one more soul to cement its power and walk the earth forever. Suddenly he realizes how to beat it, and while Tosh is working out how to open the door, he sits Jamie down for a talk about how to beat cancer, ending with:

Owen: ... the ones who have the best chance are the ones who truly believe they can beat death. So watch and learn, Jamie Berman.
Jamie: Watch what?
Owen: Watch me. Beat. Death.

• • And then he shoves Jamie and Tosh through the sliding glass door and takes down the Grim Reaper hand-to-hand because there is nothing it can do to him, having died once already. Death is its one trick, and it doesn't work anymore.
• Owen gets another CMoA in A Day in the Death:

Security Guard: What are you?
Owen: I'm wrong.
Security Guard: (shaking) What are you!?
Owen: I'm broken. I'm Doctor Owen Harper, and I'm having one hell of a day.

• • You kind of have to see it for yourself.
• Children of Earth: "Day Two", when Gwen and Rhys are trapped in the mortuary by armed guards, just when you think they've been caught, a plan the viewer didn't even KNOW existed hits home. Cue the use of heavy construction machinery, an exit that wasn't on the architectural plans, and achieving an objective the viewer didn't think would even be possible, namely Ianto escaping with Jack, who had been treated to a cement cell
• Children of Earth: "Day Four" has one for Lois Habiba when, to help Torchwood, she, rather meekly, gathers the courage to stand up to the panel of politicians who have been discussing how they are about to sacrifice millions of children to the 456. She doesn't yell, and the unsureness in her voice doesn't make it Tranquil Fury, but as an ordinary person thrust into the fray against her will she holds up fantastically, if not more impressively than someone who's been trained to do so.
  • The best part is this exchange:

Cabinet member: You and what army?
Lois: (completely even) Torchwood.
(Cue Oh Crap expressions from Green and Frobrisher)

• Children of Earth: Gwen is dragged into an ambulance by two mooks dressed as paramedics, then knocks them both out with a fire extinguisher, steals the ambulance and drives away.
• Owen as "King of the Weevils".
• Jack and John kissing in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," the ensuing fight, the post-fight chat and the confrontation with the rest of Torchwood there. "You went to murder rehab?"
• "Children of Earth: Day Five": Ianto's brother-in-law and the other estate people going against the riot police. And PC Andy eventually joining them. (The fact the rest of the episode is just one huge Tear Jerker probably helps, but still.)
• Children of Earth: Day Five when PM Green says that he feels they "got lucky" because they can blame the Americans for the treatment of the children, Bridget Spears tells him that she used emergency protocols to requisition the Torchwood contact lenses, then got Lois to teach her how they worked. She's recorded him saying he feels lucky as well as everything that's happened since her meeting with Lois and threatens to make it all public. When he threatens to arrest her, Denise (the other older woman) says "I don't think so. Thank you, Bridget, you're free to go. And Miss Habiba will be released, I'll see to it myself. I think I'll be taking charge of very many things in the days to come. Is that all, sir?"
  • "I can hardly feel them, sir." YESSS.
• Jack driving through a freaking wall and shooting the bad guys in order save his team from cannibals during "Country-cide".
• In Cyberwoman, Jack held off Lisa by willingly getting electrocuted twice in a row. That was analogous to sitting in an electric chair, having it turned on full, surviving, then willingly going through it again. All that bought his team maybe four seconds.
• In Greeks Bearing Gifts, meek little Tosh overhears the thoughts of a man plotting to kill his ex-wife, follows him to the woman's house where she finds him menacing her with a shotgun, and slams him over the head with a golf club.