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.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.1: Rose

The Doctor explodes into Rose's life.

When Doctor Who ended in 1989, it was the end of an era. The sci-fi phenomenon that had so affected British Culture for over 25 years was cancelled at the request of television executive Michael Grade, who hated the program. Aside from a few disasterous attempts like Dimensions in Time, the next Who wouldn't appear for seven years, when the Movie was released in 1996. That flopped, but it did inspire a producer by the name of Russell T Davies to revive the show and, 16 years after its cancellation, the revived show aired in 2005. The Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, was joined by former 90's pop star Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.
     The weight upon this story's shoulders is understandably immense. Rose was faced with the task of not only proving that the show could be revived, but introducing the show and its mythos to a brand new generation while reinventing it to meet modern standards. The careers of everyone involved were on the line. Suffice to say that my reviews of Matt Smith's series are proof of how it fared. Rose has its issues, but before I go on about the specifics it is important to recognise its role in Who history.
     We're introduced to our companion for this season, Rose Tyler, almost immediately. She's a normal girl living a normal life; a blond shop assistant living with Mum Jackie (Camille Coduri} and happy with loser boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke, whom I mentioned in TW:Combat}. Then one day she's attacked by show-window dummies in the back of her shop and meets an eccentric stranger known only as The Doctor. He helps Rose escape before he blows up the building; he's getting rid of the transmitter that's making the plastic beings (Classic Series monsters known as Autons} work. In the process she's given an Auton arm, which her boyfriend Mickey disposes of.

100% Polypropelene!

     The arm crawls back up to try and kill her, however, but The Doctor picks it up. Rose brings him into the house and questions him, but he walks out and tells her to forget him. Researching, Rose (with Mickey} goes to see a Doctor enthusiast named Clive {the creepy Mark Benton} who gives some backstory. Meanwhile, Mickey is... eaten by a wheely bin. That burps afterwards. Dear oh dear. Mickey is replaced by an obvious-looking Auton duplicate. The Doctor arrives and beheads the duplicate, taking Rose with him to the TARDIS.
     They trace the origin signal from the head but they can't get too close. After Rose gets over the shock of The Doctor being a space-travelling alien, they banter about Mickey and where the signal is coming from, which turns out to be the London Eye. Climbing down into the base of the Autons' leader, the Nestene Consciousness, The Doctor's calls for negotion fall on blind ears as they know that his Tardis was involved in the war that destroyed their home planet. While an invasion rages in London, Rose manages to save the day by pouring The Doctor's pre-prepared Antiplastic into the Consciousness. They all escape in the Tardis, and the two are dropped off at home. Rose initially rejects The Doctor's invitation, but when he says that the Tardis also travels in Time she agrees. In slow motion.
     The Autons are a risky move on the part of RTD, despite their use twice in 1971-2 to open a series. Their execution here is mostly brilliant - the alien invasion scenes are perfect but the scenes with burping bins and the like are incredibly silly even for the intended audience. These scenes tended to lean towards a more physical comedy strand, frighteningly close to later Red Dwarf. Despite this, their inclusion does act as a symbol, passing the torch from the original series to the new, and their storyline neatly introduces one of NuWho's main background events - the War that The Doctor talks about briefly in front of the Nestene.

The RTD Tardis makes its first appearance.

     Ignoring my fondness for Peter Davison and Colin Baker, Christopher Ecclestone is my favourite Doctor by far. I have the utmost respect for his incredibly prolific career and his portrayal of The Doctor is one of my favourites - the manic, eccentric humour hiding a more serious, cynical interior born of a dark past. His introduction is the monosyllabic summation of the series to date - "Run" - and sets a tone for the series better than any long speeches could possibly do. His best moment in the episode is the monologue that he gives to persuade Rose to forget him, in which he describes how he can feel the Earth turn and spin around the sun. Billie Piper, despite contempory worries, is brilliant as our companion Rose, who more than ever acts as an Audience Identification figure. Never before has the companion been so thoroughly written as to stand for the everyman.
    The TARDIS, after its last incarnation as a grand library in the Movie here scales down a bit into this earthy, coral-themed version. While it feels a little naked compared to the Matt Smith version, the design is very evocative of the machine's tempermental nature, as well as taking the central tenets of the old console room (hexagonal segments, a round console and a central column} and giving the design a new spin.
    Rose does pale when compared to some of the better episodes of NuWho, but as a premier to the new series it did its job spectacularly well. The leads are excellent in all respects and the use of the Autons is inspired. The episode's only low point is a few rare scenes that are too childish for most tastes, and that did lie with the execution of the Auton concept, but it did nothing to harm the story in the long run. Rose is a brilliant start to the revived series and left me desperate for the next Saturday to come.
The Doctor Does Not Save The Day.
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Review: Torchwood 1.12-13: Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Twelve - Captain Jack Harkness

Our long and bountiful quest has brought us to the Series Finale. Like the real-life broadcast, I'm reviewing these two episodes together, begining with the first half, Captain Jack Harkness. It has a few issues with pacing, but the episode pulls out the big guns and is mainly a character piece looking at the history of the show's main character, Jack Harkness. In some ways it was also an Owen vehicle, but all of the characters (bar Gwen, who's been through quite enough alreasy got a splattering of character development as we gear up for the final episode.
     When investigating an old dancehall, Jack and Tosh are swept up by the rift and end up in 1941 at a party to celebrate the soldiers going back to war. The Dancehall is run by a strange-looking man called Billis Manger, who appears to Gwen when she follows up their disappearance in 2006. Jack becomes friends with an American Captain called Captain Jack Harkness. He later reveals to Tosh that when he was in WWII the first time (as a time-travelling conman} he stole WWII Jack's name as an alias,
     Owen, who's still hung up on Dianne, uses their disappearance into the past as an excuse to open the rift, much to Ianto's chagrin. The two argue and fight. As Tosh attempts to send the equations for the Rift Machine through time (being hindered by Billis along the way}, Gwen and Owen search the Dancehall to find them as well as a piece of the rift machine that appears to be missing. Eventually they have a complete Rift Manipulator and nearly all of the equations, minus three important figures.

     In WWII, the two Jacks bond because TW!Jack knows that this is the last day of WWII!Jack's life. Despite all of the encoragement he gives to make sure that WWIIJack enjoys his last night with his girlfriend, it's revealed that she's simply a beard. When the rift opens and Jack and Tosh have to return to the future, they share a passionate kiss.
     Seeing as not much actually happens in CJH, its writing depends more on its ideas and its characters than anything else. Over all other things, the characters are real human beings and unlike in the first half of the series there aren't any particularly huge problems. The original Captain Jack, played by Hollywood bit-actor Matt Rippy, is a great character and is a great example of a gay man in the 1940's. Billis is an intriguing villain almost immediately, his anachronistic nature presented in an incredibly subtle way.
     On its own, CJH is a bit of a non-entity. It falls into that dangerous trap that a lot of penultimate episodes do in that it uses the finale as its climax, and thus the rest of the story suffers as a result. But regardless of that, CJH is an excellent character piece filled with passion and human drama as well as a sci-fi idea that the show doesn't often touch upon.

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Thirteen - End of Days

The End of Days, and the end of the series. It's been a turbulent ride, but this last half has been really good by my standards and the hopes for the finale are high. A good finale should not only be an imaginative and conclusive adventure, but also should be a summary of the series' themes and should leave us wanting more. Oh dear. Everytime I say things like this I'm horrifically disappointed.
     After Owen fucked up the rift, the world has turned upside down overnight. Aliens are floating over the Taj Mahal, a hospital in Cardiff has The Plague and there are Roman soldiers in London. The team (sans immortal Jack}all receive visions of their loved ones (Toshiko sees her mother; Ianto sees Lisa; Owen sees Dianne and then Gwen sees a vision of a dead Rhys, who then dies}. Eventually the teams' hangups overrule Jack and they open the rift, which sends everyone home and resets time but also releases a 10ft demon named Abbadon that kills everyone in his shadow.
     Taking it remarkably well, Jack goes up to the demon and uses his immortality to over-face him, killing both of them. Jack remains dead for days, but after a kiss from Gwen he returns to life and everyone is forgiven. He then wanders into Season 29 of Doctor Who.

Jack has gone!

     My main problem with End of Days is that it's so uneventful. It's really slow-paced and the time-reset element means that little has changed at the end of it. In fact, upon one's second rewatch Billis is absolutely right - bearing in mind that he knows that Jack is immortal, he's right in saying that opening the rift would solve all of their problems. There's no threat at all, because apart from Abbadon, which is easy to fix in this context, everything that went wrong because of the first opening was fixed. Why this works I don't know, and it'll probably never be explained. Abbadon and Billis Manger's scheme is just silly, and while I thought it was scary on my first viewing (as a ten-year-old}it just looks ridiculous now.
     And so, despite how great the episodes leading up to this were, I'm still disappointed with End of Days. It relied on the character drama that this half of the series had set up, but the follow-through wasn't done well and the whole thing collapsed. The villains, while creepy, are ineffective and the ending teasing the third series of its parent program felt like of a bit of a cop-out. Sorry, Torchwood.

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News: Eccles Cake and Piper Pie

My Birthday was two weeks ago, and my main present has finally arrived - the first series of the revived Doctor Who. Now I can finally review the series that brought the show back to our screens. By the time my bumper Torchwood Series One Finale Review will be finished, I'll be back in school, but I hope to review another episode of the brilliant first series every Sunday here at Audenshaw Reviews.

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Review: Torchwood 1.11: Combat

Janet the Weevil.

The first two series of Doctor Who featured more side-characters than ever before, really examining the companion's home life like the Classic Series never did. One of these side-characters was the companion's hen-pecked boyfriend, Mickey Smith, played by Noel Clarke. Clarke, prior to and the since the role, has always been known better as a writer, his most notable works including the gang-culture film Kidulthood and its sequel Adulthood. Here Clarke gets a go at writing for the Whoniverse, and the results are nothing less than astounding.
    Like the string of brilliant episodes we've had since the series turned over into its second half, the script relies very much on human emotions and beliefs to power the story instead of focussing soley on an alien concept. Combat is about escapism and the consequences of a nihilistic viewpoint - one that Torchwood holds dear to its heart. What makes it so powerful is that the characters, while obviously having an eccentric lifestyle, all have motives firmly identifiable to the average Joe - something that Clarke, having written "real life dramas" is no stranger to.
     Jack interupts one of Gwen's dates with Rhys, prompting an angry reaction from her long-suffering partner. They chase down a Weevil that's running loose on the streets of Cardiff, and are shocked when it's thrown into the back of a van by some masked men. They follow a trail back to a warehouse, where they find the Weevil-bitten body of a young man. Owen, who's been drowning his sorrows after Dianne's departure, reluctantly arrives into work to act undercover as Owen Harper, Jellied Eels Salesman, to find out about the main suspect behind the murder, Mark Lynch. Owen and Lynch discover they've much more in common than the former would like to admit, and Owen is sucked in by his distinctly nihilistic philosophy.

Lynch talks to Owen.

     With the knowledge that they've obtained from the still-undercover Owen, Jack, Tosh and Ianto use their pet Weevil, Janet, as bait to track them down to where they're being kept. At home, Gwen is having real issues with her relationship. She drugs Rhys with Retcon and then reveals all about her affair with Owen, begging for forgiveness in a scene that eerily echoes what Suzie did to Max back in They Keep Killing Suzie. She returns to the Hub after he falls unconscious, and the scene where she cries over her transformation since joining Torchwood is excellently acted by Eve Myles (it had to be, considering it's one of the rare scenes in Torchwood without any dialogue whatsoever}. However, her presence at the Hub allows her to catch a postcode texted to the dead man, allowing the rest of the team (sans Owen, who's already there with Lynch} to find the Weevils.
     Owen discovers that Lynch has been running a sort of fight club - competitors pay £1000 to enter a cage with a Weevil, and the one who can stay in there the longest gets the full share of the cash. Now that Lynch knows that Owen is in Torchwood, he puts him in the cage as a means to get rid of him. To Lynch's surprise, Owen, having more reason to accept his nihilistic philosophies after the only woman he ever loved flew off into oblivion, is unafraid of the Weevil. As Owen is being mauled, the rest of the team (sans Gwen, who's still moping} barge in and stop everything. Now that he's no reason to live, Lynch faces a Weevil himself. Later, once Owen recovers, he hisses at the Weevils in the Hub's cells and they back away in fear.
     I've said before that I like Burn Gorman's portrayal of the very complex Owen Harper, and this episode allows him to show yet another side of the character. Here the emphasis is on the character's underlying rage with the world at large, something that previously has only manifested as a sardonic wit. Like his previous centric-story, Ghost Machine, Combat is also an important point for Gwen Cooper. Her character arc is very well realised, and the comparisons with Suzie as made in her episode come back to haunt us. It feels very much like a Greek tragedy; she has become what she had always opposed. For once, the rest of the cast had something to do as well. Ianto actually left the Hub for once, and Toshiko managed to show a shred of personality.

Gwen regrets her journey.

     When it comes down to it, I love Combat because it got it all right. Apart from one scene at the end that was a little silly in its execution, I can't name any particular faults with this episode that can't be aimed at the series itself. The sets are gorgeous and fit the tone episode perfectly. Most importantly though, the script portrays a human drama that let me empathise with both my favourite character and my least favourite, while extending on and codifying ideas from previous episodes. Combat is the perfect way to lead into the finale and one of the best character pieces in Series One.

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Review: Doctor Who 6.8: Let's Kill Hitler

"Shut up, Hitler!" Rory

Coming off the back of a six month wait, Lets Kill Hitler exploited Steven Moffat's excellent writing to not only develop River Song's character but to take all of my expectations and prove them wrong. Despite what its title may suggest, the episode's focus was less on the murder of Nazi leaders and more on the development of our our main characters, which was good for me as I'd been worrying about how cheesy the episode would get. Spoilers always follow.
     Contacting The Doctor via drawing a crop circle, the three reunite and The Doctor reveals that despite his temporal certainty of being able to find Melody, he's had little success. Then, to all of their surprises, Amy and Rory's childhood friend (who had never been mentioned before} turns up brandishing a gun. In some flashbacks it's explained that Mels was always listening to the stories that Amy and (by extension} Rory told of Amy's childhood encounter. Mels shoots the TARDIS console, forcing The Doctor to crash-land in Nazi Germany, where a miniturised crew were attempting to assassinate Hitler by impersonating a Nazi officer. After saving Hitler's life, they put him in the cupboard and Mels reveals that she's been shot. She talks about how she always wanted to marry The Doctor, and then, in a surprise turn, reveals her true identity by regenerating.
       Appearing as Alex Kingston's portrayl of the character, it's shown that this is still Melody Pond, who wants to kill the Doctor because of the brainwashing she was exposed to by The Silence as a child. The guys in the robot decide that River, as the woman who killed The Doctor, is a much better target than Hitler. The Doctor stops all of her attempts to kill him, apart from the last - poisened lipstick that prevents him regenerating. Melody goes off to cause mayhem in the Reich while The Doctor stumbles off to his TARDIS and Amy and Rory, as friends of The Doctor and relatives of River, are miniturised into the robot.

The penny drops.

     The Doctor arrives just in time to stop the robot from killing Melody, and she's impressed when he still tries to save Amy and Rory (in a fast-collapsing robot}. To her surprise, she can pilot the TARDIS as she was born there. They save Amy and Rory, and then, after The Doctor whispers something into her ear, she uses up her remaining regenerations to save The Doctor and ends up enrolling at a University.
      The reason why Hitler and the Reich were in this episode felt a little thin when it came down to the wire; Had Melody chosen to interupt a different figure in her quest to kill The Doctor, she wouldn't have run into the time-travelling robot and this scenario would have ended very differently. At the end of the day it feels much more like a publicity stunt, which really, really irritates me.
       The entire "Mels" part of the plot was very annoying despite how "clever" it felt afterwards. The character was an obvious retcon and her only saving grace was that she went on to be revealed as River Song. It is nice to see this side of River's character and to really flesh her out in an unexpected way, but this felt really clumsy. Of course, after the reveal of her parentage there were cries of Mum and Dad abound, terminology that felt a little jarring coming from the pointedly older River.
      These reviews are admittedly very difficult for me because I can only talk about the plot; the rest of the episode was spot on, as usual - the acting was great, the set design was inspired and Murray Gold's score hit the spot again. Then again, studying the plot isn't that useful, either, because Moffat is very good at series-long arcs and there's still a lot for us to see before I can truly look at this episode in the correct context.

"Who's River Song?"

     So I'll sum up by saying this episode works at its best as the premier to this second semi-series. It was exciting, intrigueing and well-made from the off-set, with excellent character development, sci-fi ideas and humour. As it stands it's an excellent piece of Nu-Who and really the only criticism that I can find is that the episode's namesake was involved at all. Good Job, Moffat. I'm really looking forward to the rest.

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Review: Torchwood 1.10: Out of Time

Fred, Dianne and Emma-Louise enter a supermarket.

As the finale to our story creeps up on us, Out of Time presents something of an enigma. Instead of one story, it instead splits into three stories looking at one member of the Torchwood team and a guest character (again leaving Tosh and Ianto in the lurch}. While this allows for some nice variation, it also means that some areas of the episodes are very different to the others in quite ominous ways. At times Out of Time is a drama, a tragedy and a comedy, and because the three stories are interspliced it has a jarring feel to it.
     Three people from the 1950s fly through the rift and are intercepted by Torchwood. Pilot Diane Holmes (Louise Delamare}, merchant Fred Ellis (Mark Lewis Jones} and Emma-Louise Cowell (a pre-Candleford Olivia Hallinin} are forced to adjust to the world of 2006 - they look for living relatives (and find none}, live in a hostel and are generally astounded by everyone around them.
       The weakest of the three subplots was the one that I suppose you could call a comedy - Emma Louise, as an 18-year-old used to living in a sexually repressed society, is taken in by Gwen when it transpires that her parents are long since dead. She adapts, talking to girls of her own age. Later, she goes out to night-clubs and Gwen has to give her the "talk" to reassure her about modern attitudes towards sexuality. Eventually she is forced to leave Cardiff for London, not only for a job but to make sure that Rhys doesn't become any more suspicious about Torchwood.

Fred's son has Alzheimers.

       Fred Ellis' storyline should have been the most poignant of the three, but it fell short of the mark because of his unsympathetic 50s steretype character. Desperate to find his son, Fred's repressive attitude singles him out from the other three almost immediately, and Jack was the one whom he felt the most in common. When the team finds his son, he discovers that he has Alzheimers and doesn't remember who Fred is. That night, he steals Ianto's car and, after Jack fails to convince him otherwise, he commits suicide by breathing in carbon monoxide.
       The main subplot was arguably the love affair between pilot Dianne and Owen. They begin flirting almost immediately, and then they have a close, sexual relationship. Owen finds himself buying her a dress and not being able to think of anything else. On their last night together he tells her how scared he is, because just after a week he finds that Dianne is the only woman he has ever loved. She eventually flies away, trying to find the rift once again and either return home or find somewhere new.
       One thing that made Fred and Dianne's stories gel was that Jack and Owen (respecively} have such great chemistry with them. It makes sense for Gwen, the most human of the team, to take in the girl most likely to adapt to the period,but here it really didn't work and for periods her side of the story felt more like Being Human-era cringe comedy. It was trying to be serious, with casual mentions of how her parents are dead and she loved them very much, but there's nothing to empathise with in her character at all. Fred's story is about watching the people you love die, and Dianne's is about not spending your life doing the same thing. Emma's "try new things Aesop" feels more like it should belong in a Sainsburies ad. than an episode of Torchwood.

"I'm scared." "I love you too."

     I have to commend the stunning performances from Delamere and Jones, whose portrayals only strengthened their storylines. I feel sorry and frustrated about Gwen in this episode - after such a great episode previously, this week we head towards the series finale as her relationship with Owen finally ends. She's left with Emma-Louise's storyline to work with, and that really isn't very interesting. At least the development for Owen and Jack was very well executed and actually had a bearing on the plot.
     So while Out Of Time's emotional triptych was a novel idea, it only two-thirds worked, and in a 45 minute episode that's still a lot of wrong. The episode simply tried to do too much with its premise, and instead of giving us a mature examination of life, love and death it fell back on the old comedy, "fish out of water" staples in places where such things weren't required. It's a great watch in the majority of places but it's a shame that the comedy is there in the first place.

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Review: Torchwood 1.9: Random Shoes

The Dogon Sixth Eye

The second series of Doctor Who saw the advent of a type of episode called Doctor-lite (or Companion-Lite, if needs be}. A means of making production easier, Lite episodes featured very little screentime from the main cast while more emphasis was put on those left behind (be that The Doctor, his companion or a guest star}. The first one, Love and Monsters, didn't get off to a great start, but all of the Lite episodes after that are some of NuWho's classics. Random Shoes feels like an attempt at a Torchwood version of a Lite episode, and this produces some interesting results.
        The episode follows the ghost of a suspiciously not-Welsh man called Eugene Jones as he follows his idols, Torchwood, in their investigation into his own death. He starts with a flashback to a school maths competition, where he not only lost the respect of his classmates but also of his father (a bit of a cock then, really.}After this his science teacher showed him an alien eye that had fallen from the sky one day, andever since Eugene had been obsessed with aliens.That night his dad left. Again. A bit of a cock.
       As an adult he kept following Torchwood, but the only person who showed him any interest was Gwen. They kept ignoring him - until he died, that is. After they empty Eugene's house of alien artefacts, it becomes clear that Gwen is the only one that gives a damn about the case. She goes off on her own, visiting the cafe where Eugene frequented and returning his DVDs back to the shop. As Eugene follows Gwen, he appears to have some form of suggestion over her - telling her to "ring Gary" and such. She visits his place of work, a call centre. They meet Gary, who's shifty. She arranges a chat with one of his colleagues, Linda, who describes how Eugene claimed that he would raise enough money to send her to Australia by selling his alien eye. In the end the bidding came to £15005.05.

Gwen and Eugene on a journey.

       Eugene's Mum shows Gwen the video of the maths quiz with his Dad's commentary, explaining the eye. They find that Eugene wanted to go because he found his Dad was, instead of working in America, a cashier at a garage down the road. Gwen can now hear Eugene clearly. Back at the Hub, and Jack explains to Gwen that the eye is probably a Dogon Sixth Eye - a spare that allowed the five-eyed Dogons to look into their past. He gives her the weekend to get the eye, and so she goes with Eugene to a science fair that they were planning to visit. Gary, it turns out, inflated the price of the bids to help Eugene's confidence, but stopped when Eugene started to think it was the alien. Eventually, on the day he died, Eugene went to meet with the alien after getting an e-mail.
     Gwen can now feel Eugene to the touch, but can't see him. They trace his last destination to a Happy Cook (a parody of Little Chef, I imagine} on the A4. Eugene remembers that he met his mates in the café, who told him about their deception. They planned to take it off Eugene for 30 quid and then exploit the online interest for it. In the end, to save it, Eugene swallowed the eye. Escaping, he ran out into the road - leading to his death. Gwen rings Eugene's dad and the episode segues into his funeral. He realises his mistakes - and forgives his father. She retrieves the eye from the coroner, and outside his old house she bades him farewell. With everyone gathered together, they watch as a now physical Eugene saves Gwen from being killed. He appears and says godbye to everyone, before rising into the sky in a haze of white light.

Hi.

     While Marc Warren's narration in Doctor Who's Love And Monsters felt like an example of how not to make a Lite episode, the similar approach here actually worked because instead of being a silly, "let's chase an alien" plot, it worked as a real human drama about deception and its consequences. Paul Chequer's Eugene is as real and as quirky as the script demands and at the end he has a lot of chemistry with Gwen - a decent acheivement for someone he's only had 40 minutes of screentime with.
    It doesn't gel with the series' mentality at all, but this is still an outstanding piece of television in the regard that it manages to take a brand new character and make the audience emotionally connect with him. I even forgave his father - and a script that can make me forgive someone who left home because his son failed a maths test is a good one at any rate. I've been comparing it to Love and Monsters, and maybe I really shouldn't because the only person really missing for the majority of it is Jack, but if Torchwood was aiming for a more mature take on the Doctor Who universe, then this is the perfect example of when that premise is working perfectly.

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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 1.8: They Keep Killing Suzie

The undead Suzie Costello

The pilot's villain, Suzie Costello (Idira Varma), was very visible in publicity of the series before the show aired, mainly to preserve the pilot's surprise ending. What it did was create an intriguing character whose appearance felt a little wasted, and in this episode, heralding the start of the series' second half, the writers have given us an entirely new look at the character. Unlike the first half of this series, where great ideas and concepts were let down by poor execution, They Keep Killing Suzie is an excellent sci-fi crime drama with a terrible background. Seeing as there was really nothing new to this episode's roster of ideas, it had to rely on Suzie's gameplan - which, as is turned out, was messy and unbelievable.
      Torchwood investigate a spate of killings committed in their name, mainly with the company name written in the victims' blood. DNA tests reveal that the killer had Retcon, the team's go-to amnesia drug, in his system. Determined to discover who the killer is, Gwen suggests using the Ressurection Gauntlet from the pilot to interrogate the victims. She is the only one capable of using it, and thus finds out about a philosophy group called Pilgrim - a society absent from any records. One of the victims mentions that the killer is called Max, and that he was close to another woman - named Suzie.
     The team are skeptical but after searching through her belongings (kept in a Torchwood warehouse) they decide to ressurrect Suzie. As the Gauntlet alone won't work, they stab her corpse with the Life Knife, the weapon used by Suzie to test out the glove that has a connection to its function. It works but Suzie doesn't die as subjects of the Gauntlet usually do, and is thus interrogated by Jack. She reveals that Max is psychotic because she kept him as her companion and thus drugged him with Retcon every day for two years. Using Suzie's help the team bring Max in, and Owen finds that Max reacts to nothing except the word Torchwood, which sends him into a blinding rage for exactly ten seconds.

"Someone wants your attention."

      Gwen bonds with Suzie when she realises that she is a near-perfect replacement for her role in the group. Just as the rest of the team discover the reason for Suzie's longevity - she is draining life off of Gwen - she takes Suzie to see her father in hospital. They chat on the way to the hospital, with Suzie calling immortal Jack a hypocrite and revealing that there is no afterlife. Back at the base, and the base has shut down completely - because, as the team works out, of a command Suzie installed when she was alive to shut down when a certain poem was read - a poem being recited by Max.
      Here is my point of contention with this story. Suzie was, before her death, both lonely and obsessed with the Ressurection Gauntlet. Her lust for life would be understandable after her death, but this contingency plan for immortality seems a little silly for someone without any intention of dying at all. How could she know that Gwen Cooper would join Torchwood? Or that the person who did join Torchwood in her absence would have the required empathy to operate the glove? Also, I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me that a weapons/computer specialist like Suzie wouldn't be able to brainwash someone so much that they execute instructions in specific periods of time.
       They call their Police Liason Detective Swanson, who told them about the murders, and after some ritual humiliation she relents and helps the team to escape. To this end they work out that the code to escape the base is the ISBN of the book of Emily Dickinson poems Suzie was using. At the hospital, Gwen starts to feel the full effects of Suzie's gunshot wound as Suzie becomes able to walk once more. They finally meet the two at a pier, where Suzie is now immortal - until, that is, Tosh destroys the Gauntlet, which severs the link and kills Suzie once and for all.

"You're getting shot in the head."

       They Keep Killing Suzie is the first episode of the series to actually fit the premise of a sci-fi crime drama. The murder investigation, while being a lot closer-to-earth, was actually a very interesting turn of events and Suzie's return was well handled. I've never really seen the character as a good villain because of the fact that she doesn't do anything obviously villanous in this episode other than smile evilly at things that she's done beforehand. Her ideology is supposed to be the most frightening thing about her, but I really don't see why, as a fear of death doesn't really shout "madwoman" from where I'm standing.
       As the beginning of the first series' second half, They Keep Killing Suzie sets us up for the much more mature stories that abound as we get closer to the series finale. Its direction and its more crime-oriented tone allowed a more potent emphasis on character that brought to life (both literally and metaphorically) an underused character. I want to hate it because of its reality-stretching premise, but I have to admire the skill in its construction and Indira Varma's excellent performance. Interesting stuff.

Thanks.