Review: Torchwood 4.10: The Blood Line (Finale)

I do find it incredibly ironic that the last episode of this really quite dreadful series is the one I most enjoyed. And that didn't just stem from the fact that I wouldn't be tuning in to disappointment each week - The Blood Line was a marked improvement on the past few weeks and one of the first episodes of the series to actually excite me while watching it. Yeah, there's still a lot of issues to cover, but the episode itself tied up everything nicely (apart from the odd sequal hook) and actually left me positive about the show's future. Every time Miracle Day took me to the lowest low, it always picked me back up again in small ways.

     One of the episode's greatest benefits was that stuff actually happened to further the plot; a given for any other show but a pleasant surprise here. The team focussed in on the Blessing with CIA help; Gwen, Jack and a weirdly-associated Oswald visited the Shanghai opening while the CIA helped Rex and Esther in Buenos Aires. There are some quick explanations; The Blessing controls the average life expectancy of the world, and the Families have been "feeding" it to cause the miracle. After the CIA team in Buenos Aires (carrying a whole suitcase of Jack's blood) are blown up because of Families spy Charlotte Willis, she begins to trace them and thus she is forced to kill John de Lancie and crew. At either end of the Blessing, the Families spokespeople explain to the teams what's been going on.
     The Miracle was caused when they fed the Blessing Jack's blood at both end. The Blessing recognised Jack's lifespan of forever and decided to help the Human Race by copy-and-pasting the results. The Families hoped to control the world after crashing the banks, the governments and the systems standing in their way. Jack threatens to give his blood to the Blessing but the spokesperson explains that it won't work because it has to be entered on both sides; Rex then reveals that he had Esther transfuse him with Jack's blood beforehand. Despite Esther being shot and Gwen's father about to be incinerated, they both give their blood and luckily both survive the ordeal. Months afterwards, at Esther's funeral, the team kill Charlotte Lewis, but not before she inadvertantly reveals that Rex is now immortal.
     And now I'm really stumped. Because I don't know what to write. I mean, Miracle Day hasn't been easy to watch, but it's been really easy to review. There's so much to complain about, so much to moan about, so little good to praise. Now I'm faced with an episode that I actually really enjoyed, and I have to go back to square one.

  Of course, this is still Miracle Day and thus there's a lot to nit-pick. One of the most controvertial in fan circles has been the Rex + Blood = Immortality thing, especially when we know why Jack is immortal and it has nothing to do with his blood. While they're getting themselves in a tizzy, I find myself really not caring - it adds a new dynamic to things and it doesn't stand out as much as some of the series' other discreapancies. Despite how spherical or not spherical the earth may be, there cannot be a creature that runs through the centre of the Earth in an exact straight line. One of the things that I did get irritated by was the lack of explanation about the Miracle beyond its mechanisms; they were clearly going for a, "terrestial enemy" story but it doesn't make sense when it's never been seen before or since despite how important they claim it to be.
      Miracle Day ended on what by their standards could be called a high, but I'm still emotionally detatched from the characters and plot. There are murmurs that a Series Five is in the pipeline, to be released as soon as January 2012. I'm not excited about that in the slightest, because I feel that Miracle Day will leave its own legacy. A legacy comprised of terrible scriptwriting, shoddy research and pacing that snails look upon with contempt, but a legacy nonetheless. Now I say goodbye to Miracle Day, and like the creepy stranger in a back-alley I will never meet it again.

Thanks.

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.

Review: Torchwood 4.8: End of the Road

Shapiro looks over operations.

I certainly enjoyed this week's episode of Torchwood more than previously, although I could sense from my family that they were incredibly bored by the affair. End of the Road (a title that's been exploited by a lot of the series' cynical reviewers} was more about ideas than anything else, and it soon became incredibly convoluted as several weeks' worth of exposition was shoved into an hour-long period. There was a lot more to chew on, but on a base level it wasn't very entertaining.
     Taken to the house of Jack's former lover Angelo, his granddaughter Olivia revealed that her grandfather remained alive via normal means, and also exposits that the series' villains are three families who all have "The Blessing", providing them with immortality. Soon rogue-CIA agent Friedkin arrives to sort them out, being the Families' representative, but through some trickery that didn't make much sense, Rex managed to get Friedkin to confess his crimes in front of proper CIA agent Shapiro (Star Trek's John de Lancie}. After that little sojurn is taken care of, Jack says goodbye to the older Angelo who then dies without warning - the only corpse in the world. Jack finds the solution to be a panel under his bed that nulls the morphic field sustaining the human race. Jack decides that he needs to escape for some reason and so attempts to get away from the house, but he's shot in the process and Esther is left to drive him away.
     Oswald and Jilly, meanwhile, returned on the scene but were in fact less interesting than before. Oswald, keen to further confuse his character, ordered Jilly to get him a whore. When she arrives he unintentionally reveals that he wants her to be his first date, and she then laughs at him because he's going to become a Category Zero - people previously sentenced to death get put into the Modules. Oswald is pissed, and after fighting with Jilly he runs off, and she is invited by her contact to be granted "the Blessing."

Esther makes a personal call.

     The return of Oswald and Jilly only served to highlight their inconsistancies. Now Oswald is somehow a shy and lonely individual frightened for his life, and then moments later he's beating Jilly like there's no tomorrow. I don't really see why they were here, as apart from a bit of exposition to do with a new category, not much happened. The episode's other guests were a lot better. John de Lancie is an excellent character actor, and his appearance in the main story improved things immedately - his fast-paced snark and wit meant that he had a lot more life than the rest of the characters. Nana Visitor's Olivia Colasanto was also interesting to watch, despite the fact that she was burdoned by most of the exposition before being offed quite nastily.
     And finally we got something close to Torchwood's premise. The panel under the bed is the first plot-relevant piece of alien tech in Miracle Day, and the fact that it's taken eight hours to get here is irritating. Some people are calling Miracle Day a "mystery" series and that like a good mystery novel it should hold its cards to its chest for the viewer to work out the answers. The problem with that theory is twofold; A.} There haven't been any "clues" to pin together, and B.} I don't watch Torchwood for mystery. I watch Torchwood for well-made sci-fi.
     It's obvious that Torchwood is gearing up for it's big finale, but at this rate it's more likely to go out with a whimper than a bang. Despite some good guest characters, it's a little belated and the episode was still bogged down with everything that afflicts Miracle Day - inconsistant character motivations, misplaced political commentary and a pace so slow as to put the majority of viewers off.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 4.7: Immortal Sins

Angelo and Jack

This week's episode was the first real sign of a move towards actually uncovering our main enemy, although it took its damn time and was fundamentally badly constructed. Designed half as a flashback and half a procession of current events, the episode felt more like a mix of Boardwalk Empire, Queer as Folk and Lost. While the slower character stuff would be welcome in any other show, Miracle Day's current record made it feel like a firefighter turning up to the smouldering remains of a burning building...
      Our flashback followed Jack picking up a gay lover in the form of an Italian immigrant called Angelo during the prohibition period in 1927. In between them having sex, Jack makes cryptic remarks about the future. The two investigate a piece of alien cargo - a parasite that makes people go insane, designed to attack President Roosevelt - but afterwards Angelo is shipped off to prison and sees Jack "die." Ten years later, when Jack returns to newly-released Angelo without a scar on his body, the theif kills him and invites people to watch him revive, effectively turning him into a visitor attraction for people to witness. Three men make an agreement to "own" Jack. Guiltily Angelo helps Jack to escape, but Jack escapes him after telling him about his immortality and how they can't be together.
     In the present, and Gwen decided to do a stupid thing and tied up Jack, taking him to an undisclosed location as ordered to by her eyepieces. They talk, and Gwen says that she doesn't want to be in Torchwood any more because she can't handle it. When the Triangle representatives arrive at the spot, three people get out (led by Star Trek's Nana Visitor} and Esther and Rex spring from nowhere and take the situation under control. Then the lead woman says that nothing has changed; Jack will come with them because Angelo this there.
      As you've probably guessed, I'm not "invested" in the storyline of Miracle Day as much as this episode clearly wants me to be. This thing has crawled along a snail's pace and I really haven't been interested in the majority of it. Most of it stems, as I've said three times now, the segregation of the two halves of Torchwood, and to this episode's credit they did work together well in a way which was typical and yet more fluidic. The flashback, while being a noble gesture in itself, was completely wasted. The first twenty minutes or so, which was composed entirely of flirting and sex, felt more like RTD's gay fanfic than an episode of Torchwood. 
      And that's really the problem. It doesn't feel like Torchwood, it doesn't have the same vibe. Series One certainly had its problems, as I'm detailing at the moment, but it still felt like you wanted to tune in for the team's next "exciting adventure." This long, drawn out and unfulfilled mystery with a team that's desperately fractured in all the wrong places doesn't encourage me to come back each week.

He gets better.

      This episode definitely showcased Jack, which should have been a good thing. He's consistantly been one of the show's more interesting and generally competant characters, and yet due to his newfound mortality he's been very much sidelined in this series. His flashback - what could have been an intriguing use of his character and a way to escape the rut that the series has been in - was an academic failure many regards. The writers' insistance that the omni-sexual Jack is only gay is further highlighted here, and it's incredibly irritating - not to mention the continuing sex scenes which add nothing to the story or to the characters.
       For now, Torchwood has redeemed itself with an interesting format (for this episode at least}and sign that things are going to happen son, but the show's insinuation that this miracle was as the result of one of Jack's gay flings isn't a good sign. As one viewer noted on Twitter, "It would be a Miracle if this series ended well."

Thanks. 

Review: Torchwood 4.6: The Middle Men

It's comparatively difficult to get these images...

There's little, in fact, to say about The Middle Men. I've reached a point in the series where I really don't care. The plot holes are gaping, the characterisations are irritating and inconsistant and, worst of all, the story isn't going anywhere fast. My experience of the series so far has been like swimming in maple syrup - it may be novel to begin with, but it's slow, incredibly difficult and wrong on a couple of levels.
     Again our cast was seperated into American and Welsh, with the two originals not appearing until half-way through. The Americans faced Maloney in the stupidest way possible; Rex got himself kidnapped, tried to appeal to Maloney's sensibilites and then got tortured. Esther acted like a bumbling busybody (sorry, acting isn't the appropriate word here) and then wrestled Maloney to save Rex, and she still had to be saved by a Camp Guard. Gwen saved her Dad (third time's a charm, then) before blowing up the Wales camp and, using her lenses, somehow exposing the camps to the world. Jack, meanwhile, went and harrassed the head of PhiCorp who knew less than he did. The episode ended on the cliffhanger that the Triangle Group have not only been monitering Gwen's lenses, but have also kidnapped her entire family.
     That's very exciting, I assume. The truth is that I don't care about Gwen's plight in the slightest - I haven't since the series began. Maybe it's because I'm not a parent and I "don't get it," or maybe it's the more likely explanation that Gwen's character has strayed so far away from the likeable, human Gwen in the early series that I've no empathy left. Like Abby Grant, Gwen has become nothing more than a tedious distraction to the main chain of events. At least Oswald Danes had the courtesy to not be in this episode.
     The reason that, last year, I was afraid to review Lost (which I will complete... at some point) was because I thought that the heavily serialised nature of the episodes would make it too different from my norm to actually review. That didn't happen with Lost, but it is happening with Miracle Day. The direction, the music - it's all ultimately forgettable, something that Torchwood, a show devoted to spectacle and outrage, shouldn't be.
    I tried not to give into temptation, but I'm afraid that unless next week's Torchwood manages to captivate me in some way, I'm not reviewing it. Simple as.

Thanks.

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.

Review: Torchwood 4.4: Escape to L.A.

I'm starting to feel some fatigue towards Miracle Day. The slow theme is uninspiring and there are several factors that make watching the show a tedious experience. It feels like Torchwood in name only, and I care more about the new American characters and their respective issues than I do about our fast-redundant Welsh characters. Escape to L.A. did nought but codify my irritations despite its increasingly enjoyable tone.
     The team this week, while heading to California to hack into PhiCorp, also managed to all explore their pasts. Esther visited her sister's house, where her already psycho sister was holding Esther's nieces hostage, and reported her to social services. In the face of a campaign from a far-right republican, Ellis Monroe, to strip rights from "dead" people (appropriately and satirically called "Dead is Dead"), Rex visits his hobo dad who fobs him off. The increasinly irritating Gwen repeatedly called her hubby in Wales about her daughter and her dad, something she managed to avoid for the past three effing years.
      Gwen at the moment is entirely superflous for me. Her entire purpose as a character was the Torchwood equivalent of a Doctor Who companion - someone more human and down to earth than the rest of the characters for the audience to relate to. We don't need that now - this is more of a political thriller than a fun moster-hunting romp, more of an American slow-burner than a British classic. All Gwen does is act ridiculous, worry about her relatives and make condescending remarks. Her character at the moment is empty, vapid and irritating beyond belief.
     Oswald Danes, who is really enjoying his comfy hotel rooms, is having trouble too - Ellis Monroe's Dead is Dead campaign is upstaging him and is directly opposed to his continued existence. He's also used his... skills... as a kiddie-fiddler to discover PhiCorp's hidden information network. In the episode's climax, at an "overflow" hospital designed to hide away the sick, Danes upstaged a speech by Monroe by walking into the hospital and seemingly getting the "dead" vote.
     It's telling that after this momentous piece of political television the climax felt more like a whimper. Our Welsh characters, half-way through hacking into PhiCorp, were knocked out and tied up by an assassin working for The Triangle (the unseen enemy behind this series, the Triangle being their only representation so far). The assassin, who at that point had also stalked Esther, tortured the guy who made the Phicorp server and left Ellis Monroe to be crushed in her car, was shot by Rex... in the throat. This felt like a very contrived "prophecy" tease, although I should be used it that with RTD by now. 
     Overall I was glad for this week's development of Rex and Esther, which made the characters finally feel a tad more three-dimensional. The downside to this, of course, was that our Welsh characters, despite having three years' worth of development, felt surplus to requirements. At the moment I'm really wishing that this series was an independant project by Davies that didn't involve Torchwood, as that would change the tone of it completely for the better.


Thanks.


P.S. RTD is really writing Jack as a carbon-copy of the Tenth Doctor at the moment. It's subtle but still irritating.

Review: Torchwood 4.3: Dead of Night

This week’s episode of the Welsh drama was much an improvement, even if the only reason that I say so is that the episode felt a lot more like standard Torchwood fare. That does, however, include some of the old Torchwood’s issues, but overall it was more engaging than last week’s slow crawl. Dead of Night still has a lot of work to do, but it’s a step in the right direction.

     This week the main cast came together in a much more Torchwood-esque way, leading them from the corrupt Brian Friedkin to PhiCorp, a medical company. They track the company back to a warehouse where it turns out PhiCorp has been storing non-narcoleptic drugs (the painkillers that the Miracle needs) for over a year. Rex disagrees with Jack’s attitude and goes off on his own when they realise that everyone (including Rex’s ex-CIA mentor) has been poised against them.

     As armies of Anonymous-esque people wander the streets claiming to be “soulless,” Oswald Danes’ television career leads to him being beaten up by some policemen. Kitzinger is waiting for him and brings him to a PhiCorp conference – she works for the company. Rex by now has also rejoined the Torchwood team after bonking Dr. Vera Juarez, who’s also at the conference.

     Gwen uses the Camera Contact Lenses from Children of Earth to hack into Kitzinger’s PhiCorp computer while Jack faced Oswald Danes to try and settle his own guilt with killing his grandson last series. Turns out Danes is still a freaky paedophile and, as Jack reasons, is so self loathing that he wanted to be executed, and is now suffering because of the Miracle. Unfortunately Jack is escorted out by PhiCorp’s guards, who’ve now got a vested interest in Danes – PhiCorp is exploiting his new cult of personality to push through legislature to allow PhiCorp to take a monopoly over all pharmaceuticals and to allow all drugs to be bought without prescription.

     Part of the fun in this week’s team dynamic was the near-constant American-British discordance, almost as if the show is trying to translate the cultural differences across the audience. It really stands out and it isn’t very interesting in the long run, and on my end felt very condescending. For example; everything Gwen said Esther would “translate” into an American version. Also strange was that this episode cut out some sex scenes that were present in the American version – usually it’s the opposite. Not that those sex scenes were at all necessary – in any way. Maybe Rex bonking Juarez was important to the plot but I still don’t see how Jack picking up a barman did anything to advance the plot.

     The episode had a lot more ties to Children of Earth than we saw in episodes one and two, in ways that actually made some sense – Jack misses Ianto, is guilty over killing his grandson and has kept the only gadget they had left, the Camera Contact Lenses. It may not really gel with the new American audience, which is always a consideration now, but I liked the stronger continuity that went together with said references. One of the strongest points in the episode was a touching telephone call between Gwen and Jack, talking about the events of that storyline. As someone who thought that Jack’s actions at the end of Children of Earth were extremely out of character, I was glad to see (albeit after three hours) that the character acknowledges this.

     Now it seems we actually have a face behind the villains of this story (except for Danes, of course.) PhiCorp’s activities are perhaps more villainous to us here in the UK with Universal Healthcare, as the call for the ability to “buy whatever drugs you want” is nothing new to the American system (from an ideological point of view.) What an alien presence wants America’s money for I really don’t know, but it’s an interesting concept that I’d like to see developed.

     Overall this week’s episode felt like it actually went somewhere and it advanced the plot into unseen directions that were fun and gave us a lot to think about. There was still a lot of things going on that were unnecessary, such as random sex scenes and arguments for the sake of argument, but Dead of Night was a deeper exploration of our characters and a fun romp that showed that this miniseries is heading in a direction close to being to the right one.

Thanks.

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.

Review: Torchwood 4.1: The New World

Forenotes: 1.) The official publicity gives the official name of this series as "Torchwood: Miracle Day." For the purposes of simplicity, I will be reviewing it as "Torchwood 4". 2.) There are intense spoilers for a program that has, as of the time of writing, not yet aired in the UK. 

Gwen acts badass to protect Anwen.

So; after managing to watch the premier of this new, Americanised series of the cult hit, what can I say about it? Well, surprisingly little. The show tempted me in with a trailer that promised a high-action adventure with all of our favourite Torchwood stars; instead, we got a slow-moving investigative thriller with a few Welsh overtones. Despite the fact that there are less episodes here than in Series One and Two, it still feels more serialised. The question being, then: Can Torchwood 4 support its premise over the course of ten weeks?
    Our main focus for this particular episode was on our American brethern; CIA analyst Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) investigates Torchwood, a message about them having appeared on their databases at the exact same moment that everyone in the world stopped dying. Agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer) initially dismisses her concerns, but decides to follow the lead when he, as par "Miracle Day," survives being impaled after a road accident. Flying over the Wales, Matheson comes into contact with Gwen Cooper (a tired Eve Myles), her husband Rhys (Kai Owen) and their baby, Anwen. Both Esther and Rex end up bumping to Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), culminating in an action scene in the finale where Jack, Gwen and Rhys escort Rex away from a mysterious helicopter gunman who was trying to kill Gwen.
    Along the sidelines we saw the effects of "Miracle Day," notably the spread of the phenomenon (in which no one has died, no matter what injury) and the failed execution of convicted peadophile rapist Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman), whose repellent personality paints him quickly as the villian of the piece. The episode expored the concept with some gusto, I thought; not only explaining the base aspects of Davies' premise but also its ramifications. Especially gruesome was the example of a terrorist who had blown himself up, leaving his charred corpse fully conscious afterwards. Like Children Of Earth before it, this series of Torchwood has so far earnt its "adult" rating with more adult themes about death, rather than the more childish examples seen prior.

Rex Matheson finds Gwen in Wales.

     The American involvement certainly has had an effect on the show past locale and character nationality. Its production values are much, much slicker and the escapade resembles more of a Hollywood blockbuster than usual Torchwood fare. Despite British director Bharat Nalluri's (of Life on Mars alumni) best efforts, the episode had much more of an American atmosphere that made even the Welsh hills more spectacular.
     The New World wasn't as fast paced or gripping as its publicity had suggested but it did run well on its central premise, one that is interesting enough to stay the course. I'm a little worried about some of the characters and how Davies will manage to balance their writing with his more familiar creations, but for now I think it's safe to say that Miracle Day is off to a good start.

Thanks.