The episode featured the five initial series regulars John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David Lloyd plus recurring actor Kai Owen in a central role.

In the premiere episode of the first series Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is introduced as a newcomer to the organisation who keeps her job secret from boyfriend Rhys Williams (Kai Owen).

Rhys helps Torchwood in their attempts to apprehend the human villains of the episode and his bravery makes Gwen realise that she should no longer keep secrets from him.

The alien "space whale" seen in the episode was created using computer-generated imagery, with the exception of a cut section wound where the humans had been carving meat from.

The men subsequently show Rhys that they have captured a live sea creature which is the source of the meat and which continues to grow despite them cutting chunks of its flesh away while it is still alive.

Gwen is forced to confess her secret she has been keeping from Rhys that she catches aliens for a living, and her "special ops" role was a cover story.

"Meat" was made alongside "Sleeper", the second episode of the series which was also directed by Teague, as part of block two of production which ran from 3 June to 5 July 2007.

[1] In discussing the origins of the central alien writer Catherine Tregenna states that "we were just throwing ideas around and true to form Russell [T Davies] said "why isn't it just a great big whale in a warehouse?""

Tregenna felt that the original design for the creature was "a little fanciful" in that it was a bit too "beautiful and exotic" before deciding "if it looked like that they [the villains] would exhibit it, it would be a freak show."

[1] The hypothetical size of the space whale resulted in Teague having to find this "huge great warehouse" and hire a fifty-foot crane for camera angles.

In storylining the second series Davies states that "one of the first decisions we made was that we can't make this guy look like a sap any longer.

A warehouse near Roath Dock, Cardiff Bay was used as the location for the abandoned warehouse-meat processing plant, whilst the Imperial Park Bypass was used for some of the road scenes.

[9] Stephen James Walker, a writer of reference works on Doctor Who and its spin-offs, noted that "Meat" "was one of the more heavily edited episodes of the series for its pre-watershed repeat".

[2][3] Previewing the episode as one of his TV choices for the day, The Guardian's Gareth McClean stated that amongst "the snarling, shouting and awful, contrived sexual tension between Captain Pratt and the team, there's an interesting idea here — the consequences of leading a double life."

"[10] The Daily Mirror's Jane Simon also selected the episode as her single pick of the day, praising scenes where Rhys and Torchwood formulate their infiltration plan as containing "the kind of sharp, sarcastic banter that made Buffy such fun to watch".

"[11] Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy gave the episode four out of five stars, feeling it to be a "juicy treat to devour, combining heightened drama, genuine emotion and nice touches of humour."

He also felt that the episode's "eco-friendly plot" made it easy to sympathise with the alien space whale stating "the emotive howls of pain, big puppy-dog eyes and heartfelt score all [combined] to test the tear ducts."

He felt it was refreshing to have a story about aliens that weren't invading and opined that "the brutal scenes at the abattoir and the whale-like moans of agony from the beast tug on a few heartstrings."

However, he criticised the realisation of the alien describing it as "basically a giant, moaning turd sitting in the middle of a warehouse" and "a large lump of putty with eyes".

[15] Andrew Mickel of Den of Geek felt that Rhys has always been the "Welsh heart of the show" and praised his role in the episode for being "actually rather entertaining, approaching everything with invigorating gusto."

"[17] Stephen Frank, writing for the gay and bisexual male entertainment site AfterElton indicated that he was "all in favour" of getting "to know our favorite Cardiff cuckold [Rhys] a little bit better".

He criticised the alien space whale as the "one less-than-wonderful" aspect of the episode but praised the opening sequence and the use of the "bleak industrial setting" by director Colin Teague.

[22] He felt that the expanded role of Rhys was one of the most pleasing aspects of the scripts and praised the humorous interactions that constituted "male bonding" between him and Jack.

[24] He also felt that whilst they did not have much to do, Tosh, Owen and Ianto had some good scenes which further demonstrated "Tregenna's adeptness at handling the show's regular characters".