In the Brecon Beacons outside of Cardiff, seventeen people are missing, and Torchwood investigates, using the last mobile phone signal from the last disappearance to begin the search. Gwen (Eve Myles) and Owen (Burn Gorman) are collecting firewood for their camp (they don’t look much like holidaymakers to me), when they see two hooded figures in the trees. They give chase but find only a maggoty corpse. Jack (John Barrowman) and Toshiko (Naoko Mori) join them to try to find the cause of death, but their Range Rover starts up and drives off. Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) tracks it to a nearby village. Jack thinks the corpse was a lure to the village and warns them to be careful when (having never seen a horror movie, I guess) they split up.
Jack, Gwen, and Owen search the pub and nearby homes and find more corpses. The only living person about is a young man named Kieran (Calum Callaghan) who shoots and wounds Gwen with a shotgun because “they” are coming for him. They barricade themselves in the pub as Owen treats Gwen’s wound, but they still don’t know if Rift Aliens are involved. The lights go out and there are noises from the cellar. Kieran is dragged off. Jack shoots a man in the cellar named Martin (Robert Barton). Gwen and Owen find a policeman named Huw (Rhys op Trefor) who directs them to a town meeting.
Toshiko and Ianto look for the Range Rover, but they are captured and locked in a cellar with a refrigerator full of human body parts. Toshiko is sure they are going to be food. A frightened woman with a shotgun—her name is Helen (Maxine Evans)—tells them she can’t help them as she has been told to collect them for the Harvest, which happens every ten years. They are taken to a kitchen filled with corpses. A man named Evan (Owen Teale) begins to handcuff them, but Ianto head-butts him, allowing Toshiko to escape. Evan pursues her and begins to strangle her, but Owen and Gwen turn up with Officer Huw and stop him, But Huw is Evan’s nephew, and they are all led away at gunpoint. Just before Ianto is cut open, Jack bursts into the building on a tractor, firing off a shotgun. Travellers, it seems, are butchered in the town every ten years. The villagers are taken into custody by the police. Back in Cardiff, Gwen begins a relationship is Owen, since she can’t begin to discuss her life with her boyfriend.
When Jack bursts in for the rescue, a new tune is played—Jack’s Theme. None of the story takes place at the Torchwood Hub. The events are eerily similar to something that happened in the Medieval village of Wharran Percy in North Yorkshire, not far from South Wales. The name of the town, though not mentioned in the episode, is Brynblaidd. The story makes little sense—the whole town, every ten years, and nobody notices?—but the story was moody, gorgeous, creepy, well acted, and disgusting. After this Welsh Chainsaw Massacre, the intimate scene between Gwen and Owen is rather touching.