Here’s Beth, the “sleeper” of the title of episode 2. The picture’s a bit of a giveaway, but only for the first five minutes or so. If you haven’t worked it out by then you may well be a sleeper yourself. And by 15 minutes in, there’s no doubt. She’s not alone. She’s a member of an alien sleeper cell of indeterminate size. What are they doing? Sleeping mainly. At least, their alien personas are. So much so that they’re living normal lives as normal human beings and aren’t even aware of who they really are.

More to the point, neither are their partners. Which comes as a bit of a shock when you wake up next to that. In Beth’s case, her partner is mercifully unconscious when she first bursts into action to defend them against a pair of burglars. With the burglars dispatched, dead, through an upper-storey window, and no sign of a weapon that could have inflicted the horrendous wounds, it’s not long before the local bobbies turn the case over to Torchwood. Well you would, wouldn’t you?

Returning with Beth to the Hub and subjecting her to all sorts of electronic interrogation might not have been the best ploy, since it set off a signal to the other members of the cell. Fortunately for the Cardiff Crew these sleepers turn out to be not all that deadly. A couple of shell-shaped bombs and their toast. Or at least, mince.

The last remaining sleeper is a little more on the ball. He homes in on Beth and hence our heroes. It’s a good job Captain Jack is immortal. Somehow among all the alien technology these guys have at their disposal, his inability to die is the thing that rescues them time after time. Is it just me, or is this becoming as jaded as the ubiquitous use of the sonic screwdriver in the show’s anagrammatical namesake?

This was definitely an improvement on last week’s series opener, but once again I was left with the impression that it hit just wide of the mark. Can I put my finger on exactly what didn’t gel? Not really. Some of it was the rather heavy-handed discussion about what it means to be human. One part of it was a brief flash of the schoolboy nature I mentioned last week – when faced with imminent death and Owen comments: “let’s all have sex.” It’s not funny. It’s not risqué. It’s just pointlessly childish.

But mainly it was a vague feeling that the story could have been SO good, and in the end although parts of it were exciting and once again the effects were pretty good (this is the BBC we’re talking about remember), it felt rushed and unfinished. At the start, the episode was atmospheric. Spooky, dark and claustrophobic. We had the chance to guess what was happening. To pick up clues. Within ten minutes, we didn’t need to guess. Through a combination of explicit visuals and lengthy exposition, it was all laid out for us. You just sit there all nice and comfy, dear Mr and Mrs Audience, and we’ll just spool it all out for you. No effort required on your part.

Which leads me to the conclusion that the main fault lies with the way the stories are written. Not the content of the story, but the process. They’re simply not sufficiently revised, reviewed, rewritten and polished. Still, look on the bright side. So far we’ve had two pretty good eps, each one in their own right better than most of Series 1, and the second better than the first.

We’re heading in the right direction.