Review: Torchwood 4.2: Rendition

Torchwood end their Rendition

After a premier that tried to reassure old viewers and drag in new ones, the second episode of this serial drama managed to paradoxically take a step back from the action and become much more exciting. While it wasn't as idea-focussed as last week, this often felt to its detriment as it was far too fluffy. The pace was the main issue, however, again not giving us enough tension or suspense until the last five minutes.

     Our main protagonists spent an inordinate amount of time this week on the five-hour plane journey across the Atlantic, a situation which provides the episode's best scenes when Jack, the last mortal man on Earth, is poisoned by a CIA agent working with a group of people trying to eradicate Torchwood and all those who know about them. Using Rex's contact to Doctor Vera Juarez, who's at a medical conference discussing the issues surrounding Miracle Day (which include peace in the east due to the Indians and Pakistanis no longer believing in an afterlife/reincarnation, and the increase of anti-biotic resistant bacteria), the team manage to create a makeshift cure for the arsenic poisoning. During this sequence, in which Gwen very much played the hero, the character ws very irritating, with shrill shreiks and unrealistic bouts of excitement. I don't know whether to blame Eve Myles' acting or the script itself. In better news, Arlene Tur's Doctor Juarez is still proving a more competent and compelling character than the rest of the main cast. 
     Back at the CIA, and Governer Friedkin was organising the cleanup operation, in conjunction with a strange third party sending him instructions via email. Esther, slowly getting closer to the truth, had $50,000 put in her bank account and her security card invalidated. This storyline didn't have much going on and it felt like a second player to the events on the plane and elsewhere - areal shame considering that the situation with Firedkin is probably one of this series' overarcing lines.
     A different storyline saw Oswald Danes, our series' antagonist, make a fuss on a chat show, where he broke down in an unrealistic fit of tears. For some reason, this actually made some of the characters feel sorry for the peadophilic rapist. Later on, Danes was accosted by PR manager Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose), who praised him for his excellent perfomance.

Lin acts as assassin to kill mortal Jack.

     What's pissing me off the most about Torchwood:Miracle Day is how slowly it's going. It's as if the show is treating its shorter run with the American mentality of a slow-burning drama. It doesn't work - we're one fifth of the way there and we've only just really sorted the premise out. I want conflict, I want tension, I want some genuine plot development beyond shuffling new characters into place and going on philosophical quandries about the implications of your premise that interupt everything else. Maybe this should have been a shorter series; the premise, which I doubted would stretch to ten episodes, has failed on the second week. 
     It's good to see a more character-focussed show but there comes a point where good characterisation doesn't make up for lack of plot development. It's enjoyable to an extent, but it's more of an intellectual exercise than I need from a show like Torchwood. I'll still be reviewing this next week, but if it doesn't get a move on I might have to reconsider.


Thanks.