Review: Torchwood 4.9: The Gathering

Bloody Oswald meets bloody Torchwood.

It's become somewhat of a cliche for me to even discuss how tired I am with Torchwood's fourth series. And, while the penultimate episode in this yawningly outstretched tale attempted to give us some answers, it only threw up more questions. Where it wasn't failing to move the plot along, it was being irritating inaccurate in some of its claims or simply wasting time on events that would later be rendered pointless. As the penultimate episode of not only this series but also maybe of Torchwood itself, it still clung close to the problems endemic in this painfully long series.
     Set two months after the previous episode (thus trespassing into Moffat's territory}, things have very much changed. While Rex leads his CIA in investigating the Miracle, Gwen has smuggled Jack and Esther into the UK and is acting as a drugs-runner while protecting her dad. A government official (named Finch, funnily enough} arrives to search the house as they're looking for her father, who they claim is an unauthorised Category One. Luckily he doesn't find her father and leaves. This raises some important questions. Like, for example, why the fuck is the government looking for Category Ones? Finch later calls her father a corpse; that just makes it worse! What reason is there to hunt for corpses - Gwen's dad isn't carrying an infectious disease, he's just had a few too many heart attacks and thus from where I'm standing is doing nothing to harm society. Also, Finch is a dick. Just thought I'd mention. At least for the first time this series the main characters aren't the ones irritating me.
     Oswald Danes then appears at the house, asking for Gwen's help. For the first time he's written semi-competantly, becoming (according to the sketchy sources at TARDIS anyway,} "redeemed." He asks for Jack and Esther because he has information, and when they're brought in he reveals that he used his skills with computers to hack into Jilly's account after she left, finding something call the Bosco technique. Esther explains that it's a subtle manipulation of language to influence public opinion on a subject. Using Rex's connections in the CIA they translate one of the videos she used back into the original dialect and back again, finding that "The Blessing" is in Shanghai, at the same time finding it in Buenos Aires. Then Finch raids again and takes Gwen's Dad after making some more dickish comments. Gwen shrugs it off. Oh well.

The team do stuff. It made little sense.

     As Jilly goes through a series of elusive people on her way to see the Blessing in Shanghai, the team work out that Shanghai and Buenos Aires are antipodes of one another (they're not - really} and that the Blessing, whatever it is, runs through the whole planet. Conveniently, half of them hop onto a plane to Shanghai (four people in a fucking crate, no less} and the other half to South America.
      Now we get to The Blessing. This is the most important moment of the entire series, and despite this only appearing very recently, it's something we've been waiting for for a while. This has to be interesting, clear and interesting beyond belief. Is it? Well... I don't know how to put this. It looks like a giant asshole in the ground. Literally. Apparently it runs all the way down the planet. And do we get any explanation besides cryptic riddles? No. We get fuck all. And then Jack's blood becomes alive, and I gave up.
      Yep, that's right. After weeks and weeks of perseverance, I gave up on trying to like Torchwood. I really want to be positive about the show but this episode really felt like a spit in the face because of the gaping void in what the show could have been and what it is. This penultimate episode should have been an exciting eye opener, but instead we got more riddles and more questions that don't leave me hoping for a good resolution. Worst of all are the smug little add-ons by the writers that seem so pleased with these damaged goods. Russell T Davies voices an announcer at the beginning of the episode for no reason other than to create a, "where have I heard that voice," moment. It was pointless.
      And that, unfortunately, is how I feel about this series in general. All I can do is hope for a resolution that doesn't disappoint me as much as the rest of the series has. The Gathering, the episode that promised us so much, instead brought us the pale imitation of what could have been, the real thing seemingly dangling so close and yet so far. The inconsistencies, inaccuracies and absurdities were all still there and there was truly no reprive from this series' problems.
      Join me this time next week, as this series comes to an end. Pray that it's a good one.

What. The. Fuck. Is. That.

Thanks.

P.S. John de Lancie was very good in this. But he's really good in everything.

P.P.S. I was going to put this series under the "Bad Sci-Fi" tag that I reserve for just that, but I don't really classify it as Sci-Fi anymore. It's more political fantasy.