Review: Torchwood 4.5: The Categories of Life

SPOILERS - Vera Juarez, who dies in this episode.

Before watching this episode I made the mistake of visiting a fansite where its American audience had already given their opinions on what was going wrong. I tried not to have them to mind while assessing the episode, but one particular comment caught my attention. It asked, "Why should I continue to watch this show?" I'm beginning to sympathise. Miracle Day's fifth episode was plagued by a bombardment of plot holes and serious problems to do with its characterisations. There was more focus on the overwhelming arc, but this meant that the goal-posts were shifted for reasons that only existed for the purposes of dramatic tension.
     This episode was an examination of the "overflow camps" from last week's episode - stemming from a new system of healthcare in which people are sorted into categories. Type 3s are healthy human beings, Type 2s have a long-standing disease orinjury, and Type 1s are unconscious and "untreatable". All 2s and 1s have been called to the camps, where Esther has discovered, using schematics, hidden buildings called The Modules where the Type 1s are kept. The team, now bolstered by Vera Juarez after Gwen has buggered off back to Wales, plan to infiltrate one of the nearby camps by impersonating an office worker, an inspector and a patient. (Esther, Vera and Rex respectively.) Since Jack is mortal, he is left to cover things and so goes off to talk to Danes again.
     When Vera comes to investigate the camp, she is met by camp leader Colin Maloney (played by Marc Vann, who we know as the doctor on the Freighter. His performance here is great.) He is, to be brief, a royal cock, and when Juarez gets too close to discovering the truth he locks her in one of the modules (which Rex has conveniently escaped from) and activated it. It turns out, to everyone's horror, that the Type 1s are being burnt alive to dispose of them. Vera dies; Rex watches.
     Esther has conveniently forgotten all about her crippling family issues, and so have her colleagues. The writer for the majority of this series is Jane Espenson, and it shows as she didn't write Escape to L.A. and thus most of the characterisations follow on from Dead of Night. Jane Espenson has however opened up a can of worms here by changing the goalposts on the main premise. This episode shows people who are, for all intents and purposes, dead - unconscious, unresponsive. The entire point of the Miracle is that people are too alive - they are conscious throughout their entire ordeal. Are the writers seriously trying to tell us that the man who was blown up in The New World wouldn't have fallen unconscious from the trauma? Or that Ellis Monroe wouldn't have done the same from being crushed last week? It doesn't make sense. The rules are being changed, and with sci-fi on this level that is a big no-no.

Oswald deliberates over another BS speech.

     This week's secondary plots both shared similar problems. My comments last week about the Welsh team being a footnote were answered here and confrimed rather expertly, with Gwen trying in vain to recue her Dad and Jack going off to chat with Danes, who ignores him. Neither of them had anything important to do or say. Meanwhile, Danes' character, who used to be the most well-characterised and interesting, has now become diluted with conflicting ideas. Does he want to die? Does he want fame? Does he want little girls? It changes from scene to scene, and rather than providing an image of a complex and conflicted character it just comes off as jarring and inconsistant.
    This morning I was prepared to say that I was invested in Miracle Day, that I thought the concept was high enough in scope and ambition to tickle my interests no matter the course. But the story as told in the first half of this mini-series has taken too long to get off the ground, and the internal rules of the premise are being shifted as much as the characters' personalities. I want to like Miracle Day, but this episode has really that into doubt.
     Sorry for the ranty post.

Thanks.

P.S. It was Gallifrey Base.