Review: Torchwood 1.6: Countrycide

The team go camping.

Chris Chibnall is this series' main writer and so far has written every even-numbered episode. All of them share their ambition and all of them have decent sci-fi ideas at their core, but bad dialogue decisions and poor execution have meant that Countrycide is the only once that comes close to reaching its own image. His on-and-off authorship is a smart move on the part of the production team but it does mean that this episode skips over the events of Small Worlds and follows straight on from Cyberwoman. Not a good accolade early on. Countrycide by itself is probably one of the most gruesome episodes of this series, a horror appealing to dark fears about human nature.
      The team head to the middle of the Brecon Beacons, with only one town in a 30 mile radius. They're investigating a spate of 17 disappearances from this one spot, and the team are making sure that aliens aren't involved. They set up camp, and there's a lot of bantering about kissing, noticeably covering Gwen and Owen's snog and the death of Lisa. When Gwen discovers a corpse stripped of all meat and internal organs in the forest, the team is distracted long enough for the strange killers to escape with the SUV.
     Following the SUV's tracking signal, they arrive at the small village of Brynblaidd, where Tosh and Ianto investigate the SUV while Jack, Gwen and Owen look inside a pub. There's nothing there, and so they go next door, where a frightened young boy shoots Gwen, mistaking her for "them." Tosh and Ianto are kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon room with fridges full of human meat. As Owen treats Gwen, Jack finds another person who seems to know something.

Ianto finds some Human meat.

     A creepy old woman comes into Tosh and Ianto's room shaking, telling them that she needs to take them to "them". When they arrive at a butchers' kitchen full of human meat, the true enemies reveal themselves - the villagers of Brynblaidd have a "harvest" every ten years, where they kidnapp and canibalise anyone coming through the area. In a rescue attempt Gwen and Owen get captured as well, but Jack saves the day by storming the place and shooting the villagers in the foot. When Gwen, who's pretty freaked out by the whole caniballism thing, asks the leader of the village why they do this "Harvest," he says only that it makes him happy. At the end of the episode there's a Gwen monologue as it's revealed that she and Owen are bonking.
     While there's certainly something deeply unsettling over seeing (what appears to be) human meat and human carcasses, the mainly scary aspects of this episode were all in the subtext - firstly in the "unseen enemy" that stalked our characters and then in the savagery that Human beings could commit. With the number of atrocities commited in the last 100 years alone, it's not that difficult to image something like this happening and no-one batting an eyelid. For once Chibnall's imagery isn't too heavy handed, as with this level of idea he doesn't need that to get his point across.
     On the character side of things we finally got some development for Toshiko, ready for her Centric episode next time. She's been one of the most potentially interesting characters and yet we only know about her now. Strangely enough, her character is the oldest there, having starred in Doctor Who before Jack. (Eve Myles was in Doctor Who before her but that's hardly the point here.) Gwen and Owen got some lesser development as well, with Gwen getting more used to her new career and giving in to Owen's temptation.

Our enemy doesn't just look human...

     There were of course some of Chibnall's more problematic features. Dialogue like, "When was the last time you came so hard you forgot where you were?" doesn't exactly fill one with a sense of confidence about this episode's quality. The villians were certainly a comment on human nature but despite how horrific humans can be, their motivations felt a little empty. "It made me happy" was chilling but ultimately silly. Typical, then, of Chibnall's episodes.
    Most of all, I'm just disappointed by Countrycide. Like its author's previous stories for Torchwood, the story is based on a brilliant sci-fi idea but doesn't execute it with any of the necessary skill. This time came near to acheiving the blackened image of humanity that it's clearly trying to portray, and at times it is genuinely scary, but once one knows that humans are involved the only horror comes from one's own beliefs about morality and the potential of mankind for evil. So close, yet so far.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.5: Small Worlds

Jasmine laughs as the Fairies frighten her bullies.

Torchwood Series One is, over all other things, inconsistant in quality. After the silliness of Day One came the serious sci-fi of Ghost Machine, and now to follow the farce that was Cyberwoman we're given Small Worlds, a chilling episode that focuses on a mix of ancient myth and real adult fears about the world. It also deepened Jack's character some more, which is always welcome, yet again leaving Tosh in the lurk. What strikes one most about Small Worlds is its relative maturity and quality in comparison to the rest of the series so far, with Peter J Hammond's (who also wrote one of the best stories of the following series) script on shining form.
     The episode follows Jack's investigation into the Fairies - a group of timeless, time-travelling creatures with almost omnipotent powers. They disguise themselves as the fairies of legend and choose little girls to "take" and turn into them. The sightings are first made by Jack's now-aged wartime-girlfriend Estelle Cole, which frightens Jack who has experience with the Fairies from an incedent in 1909. Meanwhile, a peadophile stalks a little girl, Jasmine Pearce, and finds himself being chased by the fairies until they kill him in his sleep by suffocating him with rose petals.
     As the Fairies are invisible to any trackers, the team has to rely upon strange weather patterns. They investigate the death of the peadophile and Jack surmises that the Fairies are back and protecting their chosen one. Jasmine returns home to her worrying mother and her evil stepdad Roy, who makes fun of her for having few friends and always wandering into the forests behind the house. Estelle meanwhile gets a little too close, and the Fairies come and drown her with an incredibly localised storm. Jack mourns her, but moves on when Gwen returns home to discover the place trashed by the Fairies.

Estelle photos Fairies.

     The next day Jasmine is bullied by two other girls and the Fairies intervene with a sudden storm. Torchwood arrive for the aftermath and find out about Jasmine, who's come home to her parents' five-year anniversary party. Roy, who's been a bit of a cock in boarding up the back fence and slapping Jasmine across the face, riles up the Fairies as the Torchwood team arrive. They kill him and open up a path back into the forest as Jasmine wanders off with Jack and Gwen following. Initially Jack is reluctant, but when the girl threatens to destroy the earth (as there are more Chosen Ones in the past) he is forced to let her become one of them.
    The episode's themes are particularly more adult than the previous episode as well as being perfectly executed. The theme of cherishing youth expanded not only over Jasmine's storyline but also in Estelle and Jack's relationship, with the episode eventually leaving the viewer to ask the question as to whether Jasmine, who is by this point a complete social outcast, is better for being with the Fairies, her only friends. Jack, in a way, must envy her new existence as his immortality leaves him alone for billions of years, destined to watch all of his friends (like Estelle) die around him.
     So steeped in mythology, metaphor and meaning this episode is that it's hard to view it when coming off the back of an episode like Cyberwoman. John Barrowman is certainly one of the key parts in this endeavour, his acting experience paying off as his silent gireving was much more poignant and meaningful than any of Ianto's sobbing. This episode's morose moments actually stemmed from real, "adult," fears - a double whammy of the fear of death and the fear of losing one's children - things much easier to empathise with than having one's girlfriend turn into a cybernetic killing machine. The only downpoint is the rather obvious CGI for the the Fairies, but that doesn't dampen their impact.   

The (obviously CGI) Fairies attack Roy.

    Really what Small Worlds does, in the wake of the previous episode, is give an example of how these things should be done. It's a shockwave of potent imagery and emotion, with excellent acting from the leads and a chilling portrayl of an outcast little girl. It's fundamentally well made, and that can't be said for a lot of episodes in this series. Small Worlds is simply a treat to behold, and stands as a key part of the series' development.

Thanks.

P.S. Ianto had three sentences in this one. And no sobbing whatsoever.

Review: Torchwood 1.4: Cyberwoman

Lisa Hallet: Cyberwoman! (Worst Superhero Ever...)

Aside from the pilot, the only other episode from the first series that I considered reviewing back then was this episode, Cyberwoman. Written by Chris Chibnall, who when it comes to sci-fi isn't a fan of mine, the episode's ridiculous premise and hammy acting make it painful to behold. It is, however, Ianto's only character piece until the end of Series Two and it starts off a few other storylines, most of them important to the rest of the series. Importantly, Cyberwoman comes straight off the back of Doctor Who's second series finale, and thus the audience expects a certain standard of episode. Ho, boy. This is going to be fun.
     While the team play basketball... for some reason, Ianto is left alone in the Hub. He orders the gang's pizzas and then greets a Japanese scientist called Tanazaki. They head down to the basement, where, he reveals, he has been keeping his partially-converted Cyberman girlfriend.
     Only four minutes in and so much stupid to cover. Firstly, the whole keeping it quiet business. This is Torchwood, a society that hordes alien weapons and has surveillance everywhere in Cardiff. If they can't tell that there's something big and lethal only a short way down a corridor of their base, then something seriously wrong is going on. Ianto couldn't cover it up; he's the bases' admin guy, sure, but even with the almighty powers of bureaucracy you couldn't hide the thing which caused the demise of the original society.
     Then there's the design of the "Cyberwoman". It's pure fanservice, blatant and unrepenting - big metal breasts and even heels for god's sake. It doesn't even make sense from a story perspective - the Cybermen from the modern series of Doctor Who take people's brains out and put them in suits, not cover them in randomly placed metalic segments with anatomically correct features! Even the excuse - that the Cybermen were running low on supplies - doesn't cut it beause surely moulding breast-cups would be more complicated than a basic suit.

Not a good look...

      Back to the story. Tanazaki is from a Cybernetics society, and has been brought in to try and "cure" the Cyberwoman, who's Ianto's girlfriend, Lisa. She's conscious and still "human" inside, for now. Tanazaki operates in the main area of the Hub, and gives her systems to allow her to breath by herself. The operation nearly fails, and the Torchwood team start to head back to the base. Lisa and Tanazaki are rushed downstairs and by the time they get back Ianto is totally nonchalent. Downstairs, Lisa's Cybernetic personality, which consists of a bad synthesiser and a massive chip on her shoulder, takes over... for some reason (you'll be reading that a lot) and she tries to convert Tanazaki. The team notice this immediately, as there's a massive power drain. Ianto blames it on a problem with the generator, and pops down to find the partially-converted (and dead) Tanazaki.

     Here we have the first of Ianto's grief moments, and while I don't think Gareth David-Lloyd is a bad actor overall, this story isn't evidence to contradict that. He simply can't do realistic grief, and his pained looks are often more hilarious than heinous. Here he completely freaks out, going from pained sobbing to random anger. Dude punched a Cyberman!
     Ianto, busy sobbing, doesn't notice when Lisa uses the Hub's power again to power herself. The team actually use their technology and, what do you know, discover an unknown-heat signature. One can only assume they've never used this technology before, seeing as Ianto's been in the group for the best part of a year. Gwen and Owen are sent down to investigate as the team gears up for an attack.

Still not a good look...

     Gwen and Owen go down and actually take a look.Tosh discovers that the CCTV from that room has been deleted... for the past year. Strange coincidence there. Gwen and Owen go in and discover the Cyber-conversion unit, which freaks Owen out considerably. They turn the machine off. He recalls them but they discover Lisa, which understandably sets the whole base on red alert. Jack gives orders to shut down everything in an emergency to make sure that Lisa doesn't escape.
     Owen incapacitated, Lisa attempts to convert Gwen. Jack's about to kill her when Ianto makes a dick-move and stops him from doing so. To turn the machine off they have to activate the lockdown mechanism. As they leave the basement, Jack gives a quick rundown on the Cybermen. When they get back to the main room Tosh reveals that total lockdown means that they can't gain access to the weapons room. Convenient, and, of course, totally non-intuitive. Jack gets ready to execute Ianto, who gives his reasoning as feeling unappreciative with his job and afraid of what Torchwood would do to Lisa. Jack reveals that this incident could start an entire Cyber Race again.
     Lisa pops up again and Ianto tries reasoning with her to attempt to save her humanity. Jack tries frightening her by showing her that she is not fully upgraded. She suggests transplanting her brain into Ianto's body and being converted again. When he rejects her, she knocks him unconscious (thank god) and the team do a "Code Nine" maneuver, which consists of running into a room. Tosh gets the job of unlocking the doors with an alien gizmo while Gwen and Owen are sent towards the medical area to get some weapons. So... no guns then? You can't use any of the many, many guns you had outside the weapons room earlier? Whatever.

Pterodactyl versus Cyberwoman. Awesome.

     While Lisa whales on immortal Jack, shocking the rest of the team (who still don't know he's immortal), Gwen and Owen are forced to hide on top of one another in a morgue-chamber. As Jack gives Ianto the kiss of life, Owen starts off a subplot by snogging Gwen to shut her up. Unfortunately, in the classic cliche style, Gwen's phone goes off and, as they climb out, Owen stabs Lisa with a screwdriver. (A screwdriver... in a medical bay. Whatever.) She still survives and is only incapacitated by the well known classic... barbecue sauce? The sauce gives the team's pet pterodactyl a target, leading into the episode's only really "awesome" scene, in which a dinosaur attacks a cyborg.
     Anyway, the team all escape up through an emergency shaft and Lisa is left to be dino-dinner. Not content with having nearly cause a world-ending apocalypse, Ianto punches Jack in the face for killing his girlfriend. Not, of course, that he faces any reprecussions for this. At all. The power comes back on and Ianto rushes off to once again try and save his psychocyber girlfriend. Meanwhile, the pizza lady arrives and is intercepted by Lisa.
     Ianto threatens the team with a gun but predictably Jack just takes it off of him. He strikes Ianto a deal - he can go in and see Lisa, but only to make sure she's dead. Ianto sprouts some BS about Jack being the biggest monster of all but considering what a dick he's been, it doesn't really stick. He goes down to the basement and finds Lisa's dead body. He does some more sobbing, his most hilarious yet! To further the hilarity, it turns out that she's actually just transfered her brain to the body of the pizza girl, in a way that's completely impossible. Pizza!Lisa talks and Ianto sobs some more. They share a hug, but Ianto backs off when Pizza!Lisa starts talking about Cyberconversion. Unable to do the job himself, Jack shoots her from a distance. More sobbing ensues.

It's ok. This is the last one.

     The next morning, Ianto arrives for work. He has suffered absolutely no reprecussions for nearly causing Armeggeddon and instead gets some pitying stares. The final dialogue presents it as a tale of love and devotion, which if you ask me is a bit of a long-shot. What Cyberwoman is attempting to be and what it is are two very seperate things. It is enjoyable on a cerain level, but I really doubt that it's for the same reasons as the producers intended.
     This is supposed to be the first series' Ianto-centric episode, but rather than explore the character in any meaningful way it gives us an exaggerated and hilariously hammy personality that is never seen in the program again. Putting a Cyber(wo)man into the mix is an interesting concept and for the first ten minutes or so the execution was fine, but once the random new personality asserted itself, Lisa became a walking cliche and Ianto's character became less and less believeable. Love does strange shit to people, but still loving your girlfriend after she's become a murderous, emotionless cyborg that's tried to kill you twice? Please.

Bodyswap!

     Inevitably, with my history, I have to comment on Chibnall's script. I will give him this one not because it's particularly good, but because it doesn't contain many of his flaws - the obtrusive technobabble is noticeably absent here, and his character work is for once more than one-note. I admit that on a fundamental level the concept works - the idea of a Cybermen that's been left behind in our reality, still holding semblance of humanity, is a good one. Where the episode failed in that regard was in its execution and the number of glaring plot holes and unintentionally hilarious performances that execution delivered.
     So, to sum up. Cyberwoman has a great concept at its heart - a tie-in with its parent show that also explores the series' most one-note character up to that point. But in its execution in both artistic design and in the performance of the otherwise brilliant Gareth David-Lloyd, it becomes a work of unintentional comedy much better than any of the cheap sex gags the series throws up. It had so much potential to be a great piece of sci-fi, but I enjoy it as a piece of bad television just as much as I would otherwise. Also - pterodactyl vs cyberman! Awesome!

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.3:Ghost Machine

Owen, using the device, feels a woman's fear from 1963.

Straight after that silly premise, Ghost Machine presents something quite different. Helen Raynor, who's good at this sort of thing, gives us a character-driven thriller based on memories and the odd bit of foresight bias. It's a welcome change from the opener and, as the first two episodes were broadcast together, feels like a more adequate summary of what Torchwood can do. Strangely, despite all my reservations about this series of Torchwood, this episode is an immediate standout.
     The episode surrounds a strange alien artefact, retrieved by the team from a youth called Sean. The device, first used accidentally by Gwen, uses a "quantum transducer to transfer emotional energy" - it allows the user to witness events in the past and empathise with the people present. Gwen sees a little boy evacuated from London, who they find living happily; Owen uses the device and witnesses the rape and murder of a girl called Lizzie in the 1960s. This hits him hard, and he finds the killer, Edwin Morgan, the next day. Morgan has spent the last fourty years becoming claustrophobic and paranoid. Owen goes and scares Morgan, and on the way out he discovers (and chases) Sean.
     The team get to Sean, who reveals that the device came with a bunch of strange (aka alien) coins from a warehouse along with the device's twin. The second device interlinks with the first in a pair and, as Gwen finds out, the device allows the user to see the future instead of the past. Gwen sees her with a knife and bloodied hands, but Jack tells her not to worry about it. That night Gwen goes to reassure Sean, who'd also used the device and saw himself dead, but the two are met by Ed Morgan whom Sean had been blackmailing after witnessing the murder himself. Sean doesn't die but Ed does after he accidentally runs into Gwen's knife.
     This episode was principally an Owen-centric character piece. So far he's the character with most development (bar Jack, but he was on Doctor Who) and this episode shows us both a lighter and darker side to his personality, making him much less of the one-dimensional womaniser from the pilot. At the moment Gwen has moments running through all of the episodes, and her time with Rhys isn't irritating, but it's a shame that Ianto and Toshiko haven't been looked at yet. The concept of the episode itself was a fun piece of sci-fi that, at the time, the parent program wasn't using too much; ironic for a show about Time Travel.

The modern Edwin Morgan.

     The only criticism that I can level at Ghost Machine is that the future aspect feels a little tacked on, popping up in the last ten minutes of the episode and yet providing a lot of the climax's drama. It would have been a bit better for the team to have the second device from the beginning and not realise what it was until the incident with Owen. What's there works well, and it's good compared to last week's basic runaround but it still needs a bit of tweaking.
     Ghost Machine is a standout episode of the early Series One that focuses on my favourite character while providing an excellent commentary on society via sci-fi technobabble. It may have some issues here or there but principally it's intriguing, poignant and notably tense in its climax, three things that this series needs to be able to deliver.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.2: Day One

Carys is possessed.

I reviewed Torchwood's pilot just under a year ago and decided that I would lay off Torchwood until I had new material to work with. My reviews of Miracle Day have brought me to a low ebb, and so I've decided that I'll revisit the first series via DVD and see if I can have any more fun here. Day One is The Second Episode and thus has to stand of representative of what the "average" episode of the show will be like. The episode does this, but the image we're given isn't all that attractive...
      Before I get to the plot, I have to talk about the elephant in the room. Day One is a perfect example of what is wrong with Torchwood Series One, in that it attempts to be more adult by throwing in plenty of over-eighteen sillyness and not by treating things more seriously. I'm not averse to the odd bit of childhood silliness, and indeed, my ten-year-old mind was intrigued by the series at the time, but there is a limit to what is acceptable before it becomes a parody. Torchwood crosses that limit. When I think of a more adult outing in the Whoniverse, I'm looking for high-concepts and serious drama - not sex monsters and masturbating security guards.
     A meteor falls while Gwen and boyfriend Rhys are on a night-out. Torchwood calls her in. They head to the meteor in their SUV, which is covered in Computers linked to the police. At the site she throws a tool to Owen that splits the asteroid open, releasing a purple cloud. The cloud  posesses a girl in an alleyway called Carys. She goes into a nightclub and has sex with a random punter, but upon orgasm he explodes into dust. Back at the Hub, and Gwen is chastised by the other members of her team. The team get the news about the death and head to the nightclub.
     After discovering the circumstances of the death they plan the coverup and then look for traces of the meteorite. More CCTV reveals Carys' possession. At home, we see that Carys doesn't remember. They track her down and stop her from killing a postman and take her back to the base. There she's locked up, and alternates between her personality and that of the entity. The entity explains to Gwen that it lives of "orgasmic energy" and needs it to survive. When the entity moves back, pheromones it's emitting mean that Gwen starts making out with Carys, until she claims that the entity needs a man.

Gwen talks with The Entity.

     The team eat Chinese and Gwen claims that the team should be running more than scientific tests. She creates a character profile of Carys. They examine the cell's air and discover the aphrodisiac pheromones, then finding Owen locked up her stead. Carys fights with Jack and then escapes after threatening to drop The Doctor's severed hand. Owen reveals the results of a practical test on a rat, showing the results of prolonged posession by the gas - the host explodes. Carys goes round to her ex-boyfriend's and kills him before heading to her workplace.
     Following from that lead, they trace her to her workplace, which is a Sperm Bank. With Carys cornered, she collapses. Jack "breathes" his excess life into her. Gwen prepares to let the gas posess her instead, but Jack captures it with a forcefield and it dies. Carys is retconned and returned home, as Gwen returns to a lasagne and her boyfriend.
     I'm speaking in hindsight, of course, and the things most noticeable to me are the characterisations in relation to the modern series. Gwen, being new, has a much more amiable personality - she cares for humanity and feels like an identifiable human figure instead of the shrill, ridiculous parody we see now. The characters in this series are really fun because they have a wide range of well-written characters that sometimes make the silly scenes worth it. Particularly strong for me at this stage is Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper, and it's a shame that I can't talk about his brilliant trilogy of episodes in Series Two.
     I think upon reflection that Day One was spoilt by its ridiculous premise and childish way of dealing with these things, but it does present a set of great characters and a lead pair, in Gwen and Jack, that are compelling to follow. I'm not saying that I haven't written this just to complain about Miracle Day, but I do think that one should look back on a series to test its quality. Torchwood is no exception.

Thanks.

Review: Being Human 1.6

"It doesn't remove my humanity. It... proves it."

The pace of this first finale really doesn’t reflect the series’ tight plotting at this early stage. Being Human really has a problem with finales, and of course, this is where it all started. However, like later finales, it does have some excellent climactic elements and it follows up on its preceding cliff-hanger in both an exciting and logical way. Most of all, it finally did justice to the character of George, whose cutesy little subplot with Nina felt like an unnecessary add-on up to this point. With Annie and Mitchell incapacitated in story-terms, George takes a rightful centre-place in an excellent climax to the series that would ripple in series to come. It also acts as a swansong (well, for now) for Jason Watkins' character Herrick, who uses this episode to royally ham up.

     The action is preceeded by a prelude that shows the two main characters first meeting - Mitchell saved George from being killed by a bunch of Vampires, led by Seth. 
      While Mitchell recovers from his staking (which is convenient, seeing as every other staking we see is pretty much instant-death for vampires – Mitchell’s second staking included) in hospital, George watches over him. After being surprised by a visit from the hospital vicar, played wonderfully by bit-part actor Michael Begley, the two ward off two vampires sent to finish Mitchell off. Mitchell recovers and, after Josie dies in her sleep, arranges to fight with Herrick in exchange for George and Annie's lives. George is understandably angry, but after visiting the Chaplain once more he arranges the fight as promised and tells Mitchell that he accepts his choice.
     Dumping Nina via letter, George makes his way to the hospital at the same time as Herrick and Mitchell. Instead of fighting on the roof, Herrick finds himself in the dungeons where a transforming Geroge prepares to finish him off. Mitchell and Annie come to see him, and try to persuade him to stop. Nina rushes down and, ignorant of George's condition, she gets scratched. George, who all this time has been told that the werewolf was taking his away his humanity, asserts that his act of sacrifice instead proves it.

George and The Chaplain face off two hitmen.

     Yes, it was a satisfying end to this particular storyline; the often clichéd and laughably stereotypical vampire plot to take over the world ending with a massive showdown. The storyline had the potential to be so much more. I won’t reiterate what I said about the vampire storyline in 1.5, but the waste there meant that this episode was all the more bittersweet from my point of view. It certainly helped that  Jason Watkins was given free reign in this episode to give as many long-winded speeches and diatribes as possible, which are all enjoyable and at times make up for the lack of plotting.
     Other than that, I haven't much else to say on Being Human Series One. It was a fundamentally well-constructed show with excellent dialogue that was not only funny in all of the right ways but explored deeper ideas central to deconstructing those cliches. Mitchell himself is a deconstruction of the "Freindly Neighbourhood Vampire" archetype, while Annie's storyline is a near-perfect example of an abusive relationship. It really is just text-book well done, with the right amount of charm and wit to bolster the novel premise. The finale to this series, while not number one from a plot point of view, was a brilliant character piece. 

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: Good Omens

It's been a while since I did a book, isn't it?

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

I’ve loved the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett for a few years now – that way that the the stories often transcend fiction and mess around with narrative certainties while being steeped in satire that lasts through the ages. Pratchett, a humanist who started writing in the 80s, is one of the greatest sci-fi-fantasy authors of his generation. I couldn’t, however, review any one of his books on their own without gushing madly about the entire series.

     Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, is someone whom I wish I’d heard of but unfortunately haven’t had the time or energy to investigate. My first encounter was only recently this year with the The Doctor’s Wife in the six series of Doctor Whom and immediately I was won over by the episode’s complete admiration not only for the series it was in, but also for all fiction. As a British ex-pat, Neil has a healthy admiration for both cultures. His greatest (and most well known) work is the Sandman graphic comic series, which I have never read by am in fact rather curious about. I’ll have to look into it.

     I’d heard of Good Omens but I hadn’t really considered seeking it out, not knowing about Gaiman’s writing style or tastes. Seeing the book recently in a book shop, however, I bought it and was not disappointed by its less than modest reception. The subject matter may be a little suspect for some more pious and possibly American audiences – the book surrounds Armageddon as happening in 1990s England.

     With a rich wealth of characters, it’s difficult to know where to start when discussing Good Omens. In a nutshell, the story follows the apocalypse as predicted by the fictional witch Agnes Nutter, who, after being employed to cash in on the trade of false prophecies, turned out to be completely right. Heaven and Hell both have their servants – albeit it’s difficult to tell which side is which. Two such servants, Aziriphale and Crowley (nee Crawly, who happens to be the Snake from the Garden of Eden), are charged with overseeing the Antichrist, who is brought to Earth eleven years before Nutter has prophesised the Apocalypse. Aziraphale, a camp book-collecting angel, has made good friends with his supposed opposite Crowly, a snake-like demon who adores the 20^th century.

     The Antichrist, Adam, unintentionally gains the powers to change the world according to his will, and thus starts creating magical things from nowhere; Atlantis rises from the sea, and Tibetans tunnel up through the Earth. Not helping things are the anthropomorphic personifications of War, Famine and Pollution (Pestilence retired after the discovery of penicillin in 1936), who are intent on causing the apocalypse no matter the cost.

     The duo have managed to turn in an exciting page turner that not only tickles my funny bone but presents itself as a satire of both political and religious dichotomy. The characters, while often unnecessary quirky or weird, are so well characterised that you can’t help but be charmed by their idiosyncrasies. As is often true in both their writing, the characterisations are so thickly woven into the story that it wouldn’t be the same without them; nothing is predictable but everything makes its own kind of sense in hindsight. One of my favourite things about the book is its unique running gags which punctuate it, with the results being blamed on Pratchett’s oft used ‘power of belief’.

     This is a book that I would refer to anyone and everyone, if only for the ability to say that one has read the book; sufficient nerd cred in itself. Good Omens is an example of terrific writing, excellently pitched humour dripping with timeless satire, and a set of characters so rich that they reach from the page.

Thanks.

Opinion: (Other) Shows I Love

You know the shows I love - Doctor Who, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, etc. . But there are some shows that I can't find either the time or the nerve to review but do watch on a regular basis. So; here are four (Other) Shows I Love.

Star Trek

The Cast of Voy. Season 4 onwards.

I’m not enough of a fan to really review any Star Trek episodes – there are other people on the internet that can do and are doing it better. I love Star Trek because unlike Doctor Who, it takes one central sci-fi idea and expands upon it in a wonderfully technobabble-filled setting. Like that show, Star Trek is best when examining character and realistic moral dilemmas, something it does very often.

     That said, my favourite series of Trek is probably Voyager, mainly for its focus on the Borg. Its bad episodes are, unlike certain episodes of the putrid Enterprise, funny because of said poor quality. While not every character gets enough development, I think that the excellent development of The Doctor and Seven of Nine are enough to watch Voyager’s highlights. I also like Deep Space Nine for its deeper political tales and its very strong characterisation across the board (although to me the Ferengi are downright ridiculous and entirely superfluous to proceedings.)

    Part of Voyager’s fun that I really enjoy is Janeway, whose splintered and inconsistent characterisation is even joked at in some of the later seasons. Her character is a “matriarchal hypocrite” – like Karen Fisher but with 100x more responsibility. Her exploits make the show dynamic, and even when this applies to the show’s quality it’s still something that keeps me coming back.

    Star Trek, while more science-based than Doctor Who, is in some ways a perfect Americanised staple. Maybe I’m being too heavy on the comparison, but both have had a profound influence on their home cultures and on each other. Different, but the same.

     For good reviews from everything Star Trek, I reccomend Sci Fi Debris.

Luther

I said at the beginning of the year that I’d be reviewing the second series of this excellent cop-drama series, but I couldn’t conjure the words. Luther (Hollywood actor Idris Alba) is fundamentally a tired concept amongst tired concepts – a maverick cowboy cop who doesn’t play by the rules and has nothing left to lose. But, for some glorious reason, Luther takes this and rejuvenates it with perfect art-deco style and a series of characterisations so fun to witness that it feels a shame not to come back every week.

    The first series had its share of issues, but the show was held together by the side-character Alice, a psychopath who managed to escape prosecution for the murder of her parents. A charming stalker, she assisted Luther and helped him with not only his troubled private life (with ex-wife Indira Varma and new hubby John, played by Paul McGann) and his cases.  The second series left those characters behind, and with some strong characterisations the series stood on its own two feet with a series of three powerful villains.

    One thing that separates Luther with other cop-shows is that, rather than trying to discover who the killer is, the show introduces the villain as a main character and then follows how the police find out what we know. Not new to the genre, maybe, but it’s a concept not seen on British crime drama at the moment and thus feels very fresh and exciting.

The Brittas Empire

Readers of my blog know that I absolutely adore Red Dwarf mainly for the performances turned in by Chris Barrie as Rimmer. In 1993, Barrie got his own sitcom – The Brittas Empire, set around the neurotic and incompetent Gordon Brittas in his day-to-day management of a Leisure Centre.

     The series’ charm for me, like a lot of other, “UK Gold Comedies”, is that the humour relies on both slapstick and on the characterisation. Gordon is probably one of the most well-characterised comedy protagonists this side of Reginald Perrin, and this is in no doubt codified by Barrie’s stunning performance.

            The show ran for seven series before it was cancelled, and after that Barrie went off to film a full series of Red Dwarf (the horrifically bad Series VIII). Despite British Brevity, this means that I unfortunately couldn’t review it as I haven’t the money nor the time to discover which episodes are in which order and to find them in television together at a convenient time.

            The Brittas Empire will always hold a special place in my heart, not only for its cast of brilliantly written characters, but also for the tremendous performances and the often powerful and satirical stories.

Jeeves and Wooster

One of the more well-known adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse’s series of written comedies, Jeeves and Wooster took the incredibly well-written and enjoyable stories and took them to screen with the same vigour. Starring two of the early nineties’ best comedians – Hugh Laurie (fresh from Blackadder) and Steven Fry, who had been popular with their sketch-comedy series A Bit of Fry and Laurie – I love the show for its trademark wit and charm, taking an Edwardian feel and translating it to modern audiences. It feels more like an ITV Costume Drama than a typical “UK Gold Comedy,” and so is too oft ignored – a crime, considering the quality of its writing and acting.

There are many other shows I like but can’t review, but these are the ones that I have considered reviewing in the past and just haven’t been able to.

Thanks.