TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Blood Line”

It seems incredible that this season of Torchwood: Miracle Day was just ten episodes long.  So much happened and the action took us to the four corners of the Earth, yet paradoxically the pace was painstakingly slow at times.  The season opened with a miracle: one day, at precisely 10.36 pm, people stopped dying.  What seemed to be a blessing quickly became a curse as the true implications of The Miracle became clear.  The Earth began to edge towards overpopulation, resources became scarce, markets destabilised and ultimately, the global economy collapsed, leading to a great depression.

The governments of Earth responded by declaring three categories of life.  In retrospect, it was only really one category of life that they were interested in and that was the category of people that should have died, but didn’t as a result of The Miracle.  Those people were declared Category 1 and by the time we reached the latter part of the season, these people were earmarked for immediate transfer to overflow camps where they would be destroyed in mass ovens in a process described by detractors as “institutional murder”.

A red herring ran through much of the season, leading the audience to believe that a pharmaceutical company, PhiCorp, was behind The Miracle but that idea was laid to rest midway through the season.

The last remain members of the Torchwood team, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), were reunited in Torchwood: Miracle Day.  They were joined by Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) and Rex Matheson (Mekhi Pfifer), both C.I.A. agents who joined the Torchwood team when they become the targets of a growing conspiracy at the agency. Throughout the Torchwood series, Jack was famously immortal but this was reversed by The Miracle, making him the only mortal man on Earth.

Following a flashback sequence in the seventh episode, “Immortal Sins”, it soon became apparent that a sinister group known as The Families were behind the Miracle, that it somehow all centred around Jack's blood, and something known as The Blessing was at the bottom of it all.

Jack formed a theory that The Miracle was triggered by a morphic field but he did not know who or what was behind it, how they had manipulated it or what they wanted. 

At the end of “The Gathering”, the Torchwood team was split between Shanghai and Buenos Aires.  In Shanghai, The Mother Colasanto (Frances Fisher) showed the Blessing to Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose), warning her that it showed people their soul and had been known to lead to suicide.  Kitzinger was duly impressed by the Blessing and convinced of her own righteousness.  Across town, Gwen tended to Jack’s gunshot wound as Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) noticed Jack’s blood being drawn across the floor.  In Buenos Aires, Esther Drummond and Rex Matheson met up and Esther was carrying several pints of Jack’s blood.

“The Blood Line” opens with Gwen telling the story of the day her father was accused of theft.  She recalls how he told her that he couldn’t stand anyone thinking he wasn’t an honest man.  “So that’s my Dad”, she says, “Geraint Wynn Cooper, the nicest man in the world, and today’s the day that I kill him”.  The episode begins on a high emotional note and it remains that way right to the end, assisted by Murray Gold’s excellent score.

Having realised that the Blessing has the same drawing effect on Jack’s blood in Buenos Aires, the team wastes no time in narrowing down the location of the Blessing in both cities.  The C.I.A. sends out government forces to assist Esther and Rex but they fall victim to a saboteur suicide-bomber that blows up the blood.  As the C.I.A. begin to trace what can only be a mole in their department, Rex and Esther make their way to the Blessing, only to be captured by The Cousin (Chris Butler) and his forces.  Meanwhile, Jack, Gwen and Oswald are captured by The Mother Colasanto’s forces in Shanghai.

Oswald Danes emerges wearing a bomb, telling The Mother Colasanto that he will kill her, that he will not let her escape.  As the Torchwood team comes face to face with the Blessing, they see lifetimes of sin and guilt.  Gwen states that she is working with it, that she doesn’t need the Blessing to tell her that; Jack says that he can see all of his lifetimes and that they were not so bad; and Oswald states that the Blessing is sin but that he is used to sin. 

They cannot figure out what the Blessing could be, although Jack rambles of a list of possible suspects including Silurian mythology, human particles, Racnoss energy, and an expansion of the hibernation matrix.  He just knows that it is indeed a morphic field around the planet, binding us together like magnetism.  When the Blessing absorbed Jack’s blood, it absorbed it, copied it like a template and changed the settings of life on Earth. 

Jack and Gwen remark that the only problem was that the Blessing felt it was under attack and it took the blood pattern and tried to make it a gift.  It tried to be kind and used the blood to sustain everyone on the planet.  The Mother Colasanto brags that this is where the Families stepped in, that they had to tear down to rebuild.  Kitzinger exults that the Families wanted to make the world fitter, more compact and more disciplined and she likens this to salvation.  The final step in the plan must surely be to kill Jack and The Mother Colasanto orders his execution.

Jack pulls his trump card and states that all the Blessing needs is his blood and that will reverse the Miracle, much to the amusement of The Mother Colasanto and The Cousin.  No, they say, on account of the polar dynamic field, the blood needs to be introduced simultaneously on both sides of the planet and they wish Jack luck as he scrambles to get his blood to the other side of the planet now that Esther’s supply was blown up.

It is the darkest moment in Torchwood: Miracle Day and the darkness deepens as we realise that this is the true end for the Torchwood team.  I’ll stop short of spoiling the ending though, leaving just this powerful statement by Gwen Cooper as she spurs the team to action: “Because I’m standing here and I’m staring at Oswald Danes. And he chose when that girl lived and he chose when that girl died. And no one should have that power, not the rich, not the mad, not anyone”. 

Suffice to say, I was ultimately satisfied with how things turned out and gave a huge sigh of relief in the end.  Well, for a couple of moments, anyway.

At first glance, “The Blood Line” was an excellent episode and it appeared that all of the questions were finally answered.  As the final credits began to roll however, I began to experience serious doubts.  It seemed that “The Blood Line” raised more questions than it answered and that several storylines had been left hanging throughout the season.  Furthermore, as much as science fiction requires that we suspend disbelief, much of Torchwood: Miracle Day was simply implausible and improbable.

Before tackling those questions, I still maintain that Torchwood: Miracle Day moved far too slowly and that the story could have been dispatched in half number of the episodes.  By excluding some of the storylines that simply went nowhere, the first six episodes could have been condensed into two episodes and the final three episodes could have been condensed too. 

I’m not saying that all television should be served in bite-sized chunks, heaven knows that 24 managed successfully (and repeatedly) to stretch one day out into 24 episodes and I never felt that should have been condensed.  There was simply too much scene-setting and posturing in the first half of the season and the story didn’t go anywhere for too long.

Perhaps my biggest complaint was the character of Oswald Danes.  Despite some fine and creepy acting from Bill Pullman, his character never got the chance to delve below the surface.  In his final scenes in front of the Blessing, Danes calls out to his victim, whom he molested and murdered, shouting that he would see her soon.  I personally found that quite offensive and wanted to strangle the writers but I’ll move on swiftly.

Oswald Danes went from having the gall to demand he be released from prison following his botched execution, to breaking down on national television and begging for forgiveness, to becoming a voice for the new world and leading the Life is Life movement, to showing his true colours to Jilly Kitzinger and attacking her, to putting his curiosity before self-preservation and following the trail of Jilly Kitzinger and Jack Harkness, to finally agreeing to die but telling his victim he’ll meet her in heaven?

The man was obviously a predator and remained openly so, so the idea of him breaking down on national TV is a load of rubbish and while he might have appreciated the adulation of the masses, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen to die in the end.  If he remained a predator right to the end, he would have taken the first opportunity to disappear and establish himself in a position close to his next victim. 

The whole behaviour of the Families confounded me too. Why did they not just kill Jack as soon as the Miracle occurred? Better yet, why not get him into captivity before the Miracle was enacted and then kill him?  I appreciate that they did not know how the Miracle would play out (more on that later) but surely they had 80 years to plan this a little better?

While we’re on the subject, why wait 80 years? They had no idea until 1998 what they were waiting for and yet we’re expected to believe that they simply sat patiently, accumulating wealth, waiting to discover something like the Blessing? Why not incorporate some notion that they were behind other conspiracies in the 20^th century. The sole action attributed to them is the 2008 financial crisis, which Gwen and Rhys imagined to be a trial run in “End of the Road”.

Another factor that irked me was the need to remain truly anonymous.  What of other immigrant families who made it huge in the 20^th century. They didn’t need to wipe out all trace of their existence, yet they did land up in charge of banks, crime syndicates, technology, and even countries.   I guess the Families were meant to appear as some sort of parallel Illuminati but, once again, that should have been supported by a deeper storyline, one that delved into the idea that they had been active throughout the 20th century. 

Perhaps it was initially intended that this would be explored.  At the end of Escape to L.A., a disembodied voice states that “We are everywhere, we are always, we are no one.  And soon, the Families will rise”.  Without the benefit of a background story, the idea was poorly executed as they weren’t always and they certainly weren’t no one.  They were the Ablemarch, Costerdane and Frines families and for all the viewer knew, they had never met each other before 1927.

There were so many lose ends left across the season.  What was the point of PhiCorp, the Dead is Dead campaign, the visually stunning and powerful protest marches in “Dead of Night”?   I understand the notion of red herrings but I would have preferred fewer threads if the ideas had been better executed.

A common theme in Torchwood: Miracle Day was the power over life and death. This was really interesting but then in the final calculation, the major enemy in the series was not the Families but the governments who jumped on the Category 1 bandwagon and implemented institutional murder.  This notion was neglected in the end and in fact, there is absolutely no mention of how the planet recovers in the aftermath of the Miracle.  Compare this to the rations and austerity measures in England that lasted far longer than the either of the world wars.  The global economy is said to have completely collapsed in Torchwood: Miracle Day and we didn’t have any fancy time machine to simply reverse the entire event.

“Immortal Sins” was my favourite episode in the season but I still don’t understand the point of Angelo Colasanto living to present day and I certainly don’t understand how he knew to steal the null field from the rubble of the destroyed Torchwood hub in 2009.   With no evidence of significant Families activity over the years, they couldn’t have had any idea whatsoever what would happen once the blood was introduced to the Blessing.  I also don’t understand how Angelo said he was excluded by the Families yet in the final event, Mother Colasanto is very much a part of them. 

In the end, Jack and Gwen even remark that the Blessing went against plan, sensing it was under attack, and tried to present a gift to the world. The Families could have had no idea how this would pan out, much less suspected that it would undermine the world order and create an opportunity for them to step in and take over. There is no mention of what they were intending for the Blessing to actually do, yet they were intent on taking over the world.  Surely maintaining a state of readiness while they experimented on the Blessing (if that is indeed what they did in the 13 years since discovering it) would have cost huge amounts of money?

I felt that the entire storyline featuring the C.I.A. was flawed.  Much has been made of the scripting and the fact that C.I.A. agents don't run around identifying themselves as such and they don't operate locally but internationally.  In my opinion, the very nature of the C.I.A. means they would have been far more likely to have worked parallel with Torchwood than against it, perhaps referring their own extra-governmental teams to them in the past? Of course, this is all just speculation but it didn’t seem likely that the C.I.A. would pursue the Torchwood team so relentlessly.

Of course, there was the matter of agents Brian Friedkin and Charlotte Wills.  It requires too much of a suspension of disbelief to expect that the Families would have such well-placed moles in the C.I.A. and on the basis of what?  That something significant enough would happen and that they would be able to draw Jack out by searching for him?   How did they know that Esther would try to trace him?  Friedkin remarked how many times the Families had tried to involve him in their plans, how many times he’d refused them but they had no idea how the miracle would play out, and couldn’t have had any idea of what possible role the C.I.A. would have in it.

 

In addition, what was the point of Jilly Kitzinger?  I understand that she had a role in getting Danes to act as a spokesperson for PhiCorp, I loved the Blue Eyed Man and I appreciated that she was needed as a plot device to introduce him again in the last scenes, but it is cheap and she wasn’t actually needed.

My biggest query with the Torchwood: Miracle Day plot is the nature of Jack’s immortality and how this was used in the season.  It is true that Jack is not subject to death (the definition of immortality) because Rose / Bad Wolf gave him life. He was fixed in a specific point in time and space and his condition was characterised by an ability to heal, for his body to recover from serious injuries. He knew that he aged, but very slowly.  If the Families fed his blood into the Blessing which subsequently interpreted it, why were people not given the ability to heal from their injuries?  Surely the inhabitants of Earth should have been spontaneously recovering from wounds and gasping back to life?

It also does not explain why the Miracle made Jack mortal, much less why it took away his ability to heal.  That is how his mortality manifests itself, after all. The scratches from his wrist, sustained after jumping two stories into a fountain from an exploding building, do not heal. If the Blessing was benevolent, why would it have done this?  Moreover, how could it have been predicted? The Families wanted Jack right from the beginning, how could they have known so early on that he would have been made mortal? What possible leap of logic tells us that Jack’s blood would lead the Blessing to make the inhabitants of Earth immortal and him mortal?

One thing is for certain, the writers of Torchwood: Miracle Day intend for the series to return and the Families will very much remain a primary enemy of the Torchwood Institute.  I cannot stress enough how carefully this needs to be written.  If Russell T. Davies is going to insist on using a different writer for each episode then it would make sense for each writer to make his or her own mark not by leaving storylines hanging but by returning to an investigative format with a different arc per episode.  I don’t mind if the Families are the “big bad” in the next season but I certainly wouldn’t be interested in watching another ten episodes based solely on this arc. 

So what do you think?  Have I totally missed the point and somehow failed to pick up on the answers that were handed on a platter to viewers?  Or did you also begin to feel somewhat dissatisfied as you began to process the final episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day?

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Blood Line” on Blogcritics

Read more »

TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Gathering”

It is two months later and the penultimate episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day opens with the planet in the midst of a global economic crisis as the Great Depression enters its 61st day.  In a move described by detractors as “institutional murder”, governments are instructing that all Category 1 patients are to be taken to overflow camps for immediate disposal.

The Torchwood team are seemingly defeated and scattered across the globe.   Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is living in Swansea, Wales with her husband Rhys Williams (Kai Owen), daughter Anwen and her parents.  She has resorted to raiding pharmacies to secure morphine for her Category 1 father and is selling stolen medication to supplement the family income.  Knowing the risks incurred in housing a Category 1 patient, Geraint Cooper (William Thomas) is kept in the basement for his own safety and that of his family, while a spy watches from across the road.

Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) are holed up in Scotland.  Jack has mostly recovered from the gunshot wound that he sustained in “End of the Road” telling Esther “yeah, the gunshot didn't kill me. But I think you will”.  The two months have taken their toll on the pair but Esther has emerged more confident and daring, no longer frightened of her own shadow.  It’s about time they wrote a backbone into her character. Esther has begun taking daily collections of Jack’s blood in the belief that if the Families want it, it must be truly valuable.

Back at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Rex Matheson (Mekhi Pfifer) is leading the team and has imposed long hours and strict working conditions on all staff.  He is reporting directly to Allen Shapiro (John de Lancie) and still has no idea that Charlotte Wills (Marina Benedict) is in the Family business. 

Rex believes that he has a lead.  Now that they know that every trace of the family has been erased, Rex believes that they must look to popular fiction and folklore.  He refers to a 1935 work of pulp fiction, The Devil Within, written by a man called Victor Podesta.  There are five points of reference in the book that are identical to Harkness story, proving that the author was in that cellar, that he saw Jack Harkness.  Like the Ablemarch, Costerdane and Frines families, the Podesta family line also disappeared but Victor’s brother John was murdered, and the murder weapon, a bloody knife, is still in possession.  So far, so good until Rex agrees to give the knife to Charlotte for DNA testing.

Meanwhile, Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose) is none too happy with her new position within the family and expresses her frustration to the Blue-Eyed Man (Teddy Sears).  Surprisingly, he agrees and tells her that has been invited to Shanghai to meet the Families.  She is sceptical, stating that China closed their borders months ago but the Blue-Eyed Man says yes, but not to them.  He tells her that her name is now Lucy Statten Meredith and that they will not meet again.

Back in Swansea, there is a knock on the door and possibly the creepiest police officer of all time, Finch (Ian Hughes), forces his way into Gwen’s house, citing the Emergency Powers Act as a reason for not needing a warrant.  In what must surely be the most tense scene in television history, we watch as the police search the house and Finch personally conducts a search of the basement, sweeping his torch across the wall behind which Geraint and Mary Cooper (Sharon Cooper) are hiding.  He does not find anything but before he leaves, he tells Gwen to take great care of her family.  Is he giving her a message or simply threatening her? 

Once again the affairs of the Torchwood team begin to converge.  In Langley, Charlotte reports that there is no DNA lead from the blood on the Podesta murder weapon and Rex slowly realises that he is dealing with a mole, although he doesn’t quite realise yet that it is Charlotte. 

Oswald Danes gains access to Gwen’s house by posing as a delivery man, prompting Gwen to take a saucepan to the most recognisable face on the planet.  It turns out that Oswald wants Jack, that he knows Jack was smuggled into country and that Gwen provided him safe haven.  In return, he says he has the name of the miracle.

Jack and Esther are reunited with Gwen as they Retcon the spy from across the road and gain access to Gwen’s house.  Matters reach fever pitch as the team process the fact that Danes really is a monster and that he really did say that his victim "should have run faster".  The newly emboldened Esther intervenes and Danes tells them how he stole Kitzinger’s laptop and tracked her online, and that she disappeared the previous day.  Thinking he knows the name of the person behind the miracle, he tells them that Kitzinger was employed to send information to Harry Bosco.  Esther laughs and says Harry Bosco is not a man, but a process.
It refers back to the Vietnam war when Harry Bosco altered information and manipulated translations.  Kitzinger has been creating smokescreens.

Finally, Rex is brought back into the fold as Esther calls and asks for the C.I.A.’s help.  Unfortunately, Charlotte witnesses Rex taking the call and realises something is up.

 

In Shanghai, Kitzinger fails her first test by forgetting to use her new name of Lucy Statten Meredith.  The Young Man (Adam Silver) tells her that she is a storyteller, that she tells a story the minute she walks through a door.  He tells her the story of the three Families, how they went out into the world and entered politics, finance and the media.  He tells her that they need her to rewrite history and we realise that  Jilly Kitzinger is central to the events in Torchwood: Miracle Day. 

The Torchwood team begin to identify a series of strange events across the world and watch a news item that has been translated twice, each time moving further from the truth.  A badly injured man on a gurney supposedly tells reporters that it is a godsend that his life was saved, which was translated from the Mandarin “it’s a blessing my life was saved” and in the original, it was “The Blessing saved my life”.  It seems Jilly Kitzinger and the Bosco-effect have been in full force and the Torchwood team realise that The Blessing is either in Shanghai or Buenos Aires.

Gwen’s father Geraint once again becomes the centre of a tragic and painful scene as Finch and his team break down the door and use thermal imaging to find Geraint in the basement.  As Geraint is taken away on a gurney, Jack asks Gwen what she wants to do next.  Between clenched teeth, she says, "Go to Shanghai, I don't care if we have to walk. I will travel the whole bloody world to put this right, Jack".  Could this really be the end for Geraint Cooper?

In the midst of all of this heartbreak, Rhys tells the team that The Blessing is in both Shanghai and Buenos Aires, that they are two cities on opposite sides of the planet.  And so it is that the Torchwood team splits up once again.  Oswald Danes weasels himself in on the mission and joins Jack and Gwen in Shanghai, while Rex and Esther fly to Buenos Aires, tipping Charlotte Wills off in the process.

In Shanghai, Kitzinger arrives at a secure facility and is met by a grey-clad woman, The Mother Colasanto (Frances Fisher).  The woman states that Jilly must feel terrible, that the Blessing does this the closer one gets to it.  She explains that the theory is that The Blessing shows you to yourself, that people often look upon it and end their lives.  She says that it is something beautiful because each time they were hiding something vile.

As Kitzinger approaches The Blessing, the expectation is that she will feel terrified but I knew that would not be the case.  I absolutely expected that she would look exhilarated as she exclaimed that it tells her she is right.  I really enjoyed this scene as I enjoy Kitzinger’s particular brand of moral ambiguity and ruthless ambition but I have to admit that I was disappointed by the visualisation of The Blessing.  It looks like the inside of a mouth or a giant trachea which presumably leads all the way to the other side of the world.  Could it not have been a tiny bit magical and look more like a black hole or something?  Perhaps we will find out next week that the Earth is really nothing more than a fancy alimentary canal.

Elsewhere in Shanghai, Jack is seriously ill.  He tells Gwen that he is tired and that "this mortal life, it hurts so much".  He is bleeding from his gunshot wound and as Gwen tends to him, Oswald notices that his blood is being drawn across the floor.  They realise it is being drawn in the direction of The Blessing and that whatever it is, it is calling Jack.

What does the title “The Gathering” mean and could it be that the Torchwood team have waded into a trap, gathering at the two sites as planned by the Families?  Why is The Mother Colasanto involved in this when Angelo worked against the Families, when he was in fact marginalised by them?  Why is Jilly Kitzinger so important to the Families?  Surely there is more to her than just her beautiful hair and ambitious nature?  Will Jack Harkness die and will Gwen Cooper save her father?  Will the Dead is Dead marchers make a return this season as was previously hinted?  Will the inhabitants of planet Earth ever regain their humanity after slipping so easily into the mass extermination of living beings?

There is just one episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day left and I certainly hope to see all of the questions answered next week.  So much has happened in the past three episodes and I am glad that the season finally seemed to pick up the pace and step up the action.  The writing has certainly improved and I feel that writer John Fay did a sterling effort on this episode. 

Russell T. Davies and Jane Espenson have written the finale, “The Blood Line” and this makes me slightly nervous.  I was not a fan of Espenson’s episodes “Dead of Night” and “The Categories of Life” but I loved “Immortal Sins” and liked “End of the Road”.  Russell T. Davies hinted earlier in the year that he might step down from the show after writing this season and this also makes me wary that he will aim for the big, ridiculous, unbelievable finale for which he is so renowned across the Whoverse.

As it turns out, Torchwood: Miracle Day has proved a lot of my fears and expectations to be unfounded so we can only hope that next week will be a resounding success.  I certainly wouldn’t want this to be the end of the Torchwood franchise but I have to wonder how the series will remain true to the Doctor Who canon with the departure of Russell T. Davies.  Perhaps it would be fitting if the series were to end now?

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Gathering” on Blogcritics.

Read more »

TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “End Of The Road”

As the season of Torchwood: Miracle Day begins to draw to a close, the Torchwood team uncover a terrible secret that could mean the end of the universe as we know it.  The various clues that have been dropped throughout the season begin to fall into place and it seems that we are finally getting to the bottom of the Miracle.

At the end of “Immortal Sins”, the Torchwood team seemed to get the upper hand against the people that had kidnapped Gwen’s family and forced her to turn Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) over to them.  The victory was short-lived as Olivia Colasanto (Nana Visitor) informed them that it changed nothing, that they would certainly want to leave with her as she could take them to the one person who could explain the Miracle: Angelo Colasanto.

“End Of The Road” opens at the plush Colasanto residence in Nevada, USA.  Ever conscious that this might just be a trap, Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) remains outside, maintaining a communications link with Jack, Gwen and Rex as they follow Olivia inside.  Jack asks if Angelo is still young, still alive and Olivia answers that yes, he is alive.  For those of us that fell in love with Angelo in “Immortal Sins”, our disappointment at seeing the bedridden and dying Angelo must mirror Jack’s own, as he was no doubt expecting a joyous reunion. 

Olivia explains that Angelo did not cause the Miracle but he did find a way to prolong his life.  She says that it started with three men, each representing a different family.  Jack remembers the three men that had stood before him, negotiating a deal, as he was repeatedly killed in “Immortal Sins”.  Olivia explains that they came to view Jack as the resurrection and this is why his blood was collected. 

Suddenly it all falls in to place and we realise that these are the very same families who proclaimed in the final, terrifying moments of “Escape to L.A.”, “we are everywhere, we are always, we are no one.  And soon, The Families will rise”.   The three families are identified as the Ablemarch, Costerdane and Frines families.

According to Olivia, Angelo was shunned by The Families but he did monitor them (as he monitored Jack throughout the years) and he uncovered significant events in 1998 relating to the Blessing.  This was the same set of events that Stuart Owens told Jack about in “The Middle Men”.  Whatever the Blessing was, the family found it.

Up to this point, the episode had seemed quite interesting, though I was disappointed that we did not have further opportunity to interact with the vulnerable and tragic Angelo Colasanto.  It then descended into chaos as Esther was attacked and the Colasanto residence surrounded by the C.I.A.  Enter Rex’s old boss Agent Brian Friedkin (Wayne Knight) who was responsible for burning Rex in “Rendition”, causing him to go on the run and join Torchwood.  It seems that Rex engineered this whole scene, earlier making a phone call to Vera Juarez’s family, knowing it would be traced.  Using the special Torchwood contact lenses, Rex extracts an admission of complicity from Friedkin which is broadcast on screens across the residence and witnessed by the “real” C.I.A. 

It is a strange scene and the dispatch of Friedkin, obviously a pawn of The Families, seems altogether too easy and convenient.  I have no doubt that we will discover that he was not the main threat after all.  Nevertheless, the scene sets the stage for the entrance of C.I.A. boss Allen Shapiro (John de Lancie, Star Trek) who instantly takes a disliking to Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles). 

The banter flows thick and fast as Shapiro belittles Gwen and threatens to deport her, to which she retorts "I'm not English and I'm not a girl".  He moves on to Jack, asking "what is it with you, Red Baron, you got Snoopy up your ass?".  As entertaining as this scene was, Shapiro’s disregard for Torchwood is firmly established and we have to wonder if Rex made a mistake in calling them in.

Agent Friedkin decides that he would rather die than face the wrath of The Families, ominously remarking on how many times he refused their sinister plans before.  He blows up the car, taking Olivia Colasanto and Agent Wilson (Nayo K. Wallace) with him to category 1 status, and drawing the rest of the agents outside.

Jack is left alone with a dying Angelo, and makes a touching (if not cheesy) soliloquy about lost loves, telling Angelo that he would have been jealous of Ianto.  At the point at which he kisses Angelo on the cheek, Angelo dies.  That’s right, in a world where nobody can die and Jack is the last remaining mortal man, Angelo Colasanto’s heart stops beating and he dies.  This changes everything.

Meanwhile, an utterly repulsive scene unfolds in which Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) asserts his normalcy and demands that Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose) secure him an adult prostitute.  He cranks his music up loud as Jilly attempts to brief him on their next engagement and the audience’s sense of irritation surely rises in line with hers. 

 

As a furious Jilly exits Oswald’s room, she is cornered by an ambitious young intern by the name of Shawnie Yamaguchi (Constance Wu).  When Shawnie commiserates with Jilly, asking how she can put up with Danes, Jilly mysteriously states that she will not have to put up with him for much longer.  We have to wonder what she knows. It soon turns out that Congress are pushing through an emergency mandate to create a new category: category zero. It is for those people who have earned a place in the ovens, who deserve to die.

Back at the Colasanto residence, Esther speaks to her sister Sarah (Candace Dean Brown) who tells of her intention to volunteer as a category 1, taking her daughters with her.  It is a very real threat and Esther realises more than ever that she has to work to reverse the Miracle.  Gwen speaks to Rhys (Kai Owen) and they talk of the isolation policies and stock markets failing.  They realise that 2008 was just a trial run.

So much of this season has been dedicated to setting the scene for a new world order, raising endless questions about the significance of the Miracle and the powers behind it.  In many ways, this episode is strikingly similar to the first three episodes of the season.  It is then that the significance of the title of the episode becomes startlingly clear.

The Torchwood team discover a unit under the floor where Angelo’s bed had been situated.  Jack begs Esther not to pursue it but she mentions it to Shapiro.  Jack confirms that it is alien technology and reiterates his theory that the Miracle has been caused by a morphic field.  He says it doesn’t mean anything as he still doesn’t know who is causing it or where those people are.  He warns that the unit is a proper null field, that it is alien technology that Angelo could only have retrieved from the ruins of the Torchwood headquarters in Cardiff.

Shapiro does not believe that Jack cannot tell him anything further and finally orders that Gwen be deported. 

Jack finally tells Esther that he is from the future, and that this technology would be the end of us.  Warning that humans cannot get their hands on a true null field, he warns that this timeline would be terminal and begs Rex and Esther to get him and the controller for the field out of the house.

You really need to pay attention at this point as clue after clue is finally solved and the various parts of the Miracle Day puzzle begin to fit together.  The mysterious blue-eyed man (Teddy Sears, The Defenders) from “Categories of Life” returns to offer Jilly Kitzinger a promotion, stating that he is far above PhiCorp and that this is family business.  Strangely enough, that is precisely what Esther’s trusted colleague Charlotte Wills (Marina Benedict) says when she finishes speaking to him on the phone.

The episode closes with a bleak outlook on the future of the Torchwood team as they are separated, injured and in serious peril.  Will they manage to pull together in time to reverse the Miracle and save the world?

 

“End Of The Road” is certainly an exciting episode and I am glad that we’re finally being given some answers.  However, this episode does seems to embody so much of what I have not enjoyed about this season.  After eight episodes, I still don’t like Rex and Esther and I am convinced that I enjoyed “Immortals Sins” so much because Rex and Esther had such small parts plus Jilly Kitzinger and Oswald Danes were completely absent from it.  I continue to find the writing extremely weak and cannot help but despair at how C.I.A. protocols are ignored, to the point that it feels like a parody. 

Many of the scenes in “End Of The Road” felt formulaic, as if the writers were simply ticking boxes.  They made sure that we were aware of how real the threat of the Miracle became for Esther, how the collapsing stock market hinted once again at the involvement of big business and big money, how easy it is for governments to erase human rights in the face of such a catastrophe, and finally, how the Miracle reaches right to the top, far above pawns such as Kitzinger or Friedkin. 

It hangs in the balance then whether the remainder of the season will be as magical as “Immortal Sins”, as terrifying as “Escape to L.A.” or “The Middle Men”, or simply a neat wrapping up of the various story threads, leading up to the big battle where Torchwood save the planet.

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “End Of The Road” on Blogcritics.

Read more »

TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “Immortal Sins”

At the beginning of each episode of the original Torchwood series, Captain Jack Harkness proclaimed, “Torchwood: outside the government, beyond the police.  Fighting for the future on behalf of the human race.  The 21st Century is when everything changes and Torchwood is ready.”  This statement captured the excitement and allure of the original series, hinting at the significance of the rift in time and space that just happened to be located in Cardiff, Wales.

Likewise, the seventh episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, “Immortal Sins” is when everything changes and the various threads of the season are gathered together in a simply masterful and superb manner.  Any doubts that I might have had up to this point simply dissipated in what is possibly the best Torchwood episode I have seen to date.

“Immortal Sins” opens up at Ellis Island, New York City, 1927.  A man responds to the call of the immigration inspector for a ‘Jack Harkness’.  Seconds later, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) comes barrelling through, toppling the man and accusing him of stealing his visa. I would refer to him as the ‘real’ Jack Harkness but we all know that is not true.

And so we meet Angelo Colasanto (Daniele Favilli), an Italian immigrant that Jack ultimately assists in entering the United States and with whom he falls in love.  Much of the episode focuses on their tender and passionate love affair as Jack helps Angelo to come to terms with his sexuality.

Meanwhile, in present day, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) tases Jack and bundles him into a car.  In the first of several powerful scenes featuring Gwen and Jack, Gwen explains that the lenses are in her eyes, that she is being monitored and that they have her husband, mother and child.  As we weave in and out of the story of Jack and Angelo, Jack offers himself in place of Gwen’s family but no further communication is offered through the lenses.  Jack tries to negotiate with Gwen to untie him and very nearly succeeds, only to be met at the last minute with the full extent of Gwen’s rage.  She explains that she loves him but would not hesitate to sacrifice him to save her daughter. 

Referring to his new state of mortality and his need to preserve his own life, Jack rages back, “I love you Gwen Cooper but I will rip your skin from your skull before I let you take this away from me.”  This is powerful stuff and the battle lines are drawn as Jack and Gwen’s relationship is challenged to the limit.

 

Throughout the episode, we witness as Jack infiltrates the operation of New York mobster Salvatore Maranzano.  He tries unsuccessfully to get Angelo to leave before contemplating that, like The Doctor, perhaps he, too, can have a companion.  Together, Jack and Angelo discover a box that is protected and feared by mobster Maranzano, although he has no idea what is inside it.  The box contains a brain parasite that has been sent by The Trickster Brigade to alter the course of history.  It is intended to cause Franklin Roosevelt to yield to the demands of Nazi Germany and allow them to win.

Jack destroys the brain parasite but this sets off alarms and Jack and Angelo are soon cornered.  Angelo watches as Jack is shot in the head and he is captured and driven away as Jack appears to die.  A year later, Angelo is released from prison and is horrified to find that Jack is still alive.  As they struggle to rekindle their relationship, Angelo is overcome by the horror of witnessing Jack’s death and he stabs him in the stomach.  Jack, of course, survives but his survival is witnessed by the landlady and her butcher husband. 

In some of the most gruesome scenes featured in Torchwood to date, Jack is taken to the butcher’s premises and repeatedly killed in front of blood thirsty crowds, only to suffer and die and come alive, again and again.  As three mysterious men negotiate Jack’s purchase, we cut to the present day where Jack and Gwen arrive at a location in the desert and Gwen asks Jack about the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. 

As the episode reaches its shocking climax, Jack is betrayed in a way that will alter his relationships forever and the two storylines in “Immortal Sins” come crashing together, finally revealing who is behind the miracle.  As the end credits began to roll, the first thought that crossed my mind is that I simply cannot wait for next week for the story to continue.

This is the first episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day that I have been compelled to watch twice before I could even begin to make sense of it.  There is so much that happens and this episode has far more to do with the overall Torchwood and Doctor Who universe than any in the season so far. 

Like the episodes of the first two seasons, this episode featured a primary enemy, The Trickster’s Brigade.  For viewers not familiar with both Doctor Who and spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, I imagine that Jack’s mention of The Trickster’s Brigade as the entity behind the brain parasite might not have meant much.  For those of us that remember the absolute havoc that The Trickster wreaked in the lives of Sarah Jane Smith and Donna Noble, the name invokes a special sort of terror.

Of course, by the end of the episode, a far greater enemy emerges, one that reaches across the whole Torchwood narrative and forms the basis of Torchwood: Miracle Day. 

 

As I finished watching “Immortal Sins” for the second time, I began to experience a couple of doubts and was concerned by what seemed to be discontinuity within the show as a whole.  It seems important to place this episode within Jack’s timeline.  After all, the coat that he wears and the name he goes by were both stolen from an American World War II volunteer by the name of Captain Jack Harkness in 1941.  “Immortal Sins” is set in 1927 in New York City and Jack requires a visa to enter the city. 

Captain Jack Harkness was a time-travelling conman who first appeared in episode nine, series one of the rebooted Doctor Who, during the London Blitz .  He then became a second companion for the rest of series one, joining The Doctor and Rose in their travels through time and space. 

At the end of series one, Jack is separated from the TARDIS crew and stranded on Satellite 5.  He uses his Vortex manipulator to transport back to Cardiff and arrives in 1869, but the Vortex manipulator burns out.  With no ability to move through time or space, Jack must remain in this timeline until he can meet up again with The Doctor.  He joins the Torchwood Institute in 1899 and is thus on Torchwood business, without the ability to travel through time or space, at the beginning of “Immortal Sins”.  At the start of this episode he has been on Earth for almost 60 years but originally travelled back in time from around 5100 AD.

I think the timeline adds up but am sure to spend the next couple of days dreaming up further possible plot holes.  For now, I will say that I have been pleasantly surprised by Jane Espenson’s script and am almost ready to forgive her for “The Dead of Night” and “The Categories of Life”. 

Following what has been a disappointing and frustratingly slow-moving season to date, “Immortal Sins” proves to be a powerful and riveting episode that draws in aspects from the entire universe of Doctor Who and the related spin-offs.  I’m excited about the various threads of the Torchwood: Miracle Day storyline coming together in the final episodes and look forward to the fears expressed in my review of “Dead of Night” being proven wrong.

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “Immortal Sins” on Blogcritics.

Read more »

TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Middle Men”

As this season of Torchwood: Miracle Day crosses the halfway mark, we come to reflect on the first half of the season and the changes that the show has undergone while wondering whether they’ll ever reveal who is behind the miracle. 

One day, at precisely 10:36 pm, people stop dying.  What is initially thought to be a miracle rapidly becomes a disaster of global proportions as the Earth hurtles towards overpopulation and the collapse of the healthcare system.  In an effort to relieve hospitals of the burden of caring for patients that should have died but are simply hanging on, overflow camps are set up in major centres across the globe. 

Life and death is redefined as humans are divided into three categories of life: Category 1 belongs to those that should have died, Category 3 is healthy, functioning people, and Category 2 is everybody in between.  The sinister function behind the overflow camps was revealed in the last episode, “The Categories of Life”, as it turns out that the modules where Category 1 patients are to be kept are in fact ovens, designed for the mass incineration those patients.

This season pairs the last remaining Torchwood members, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) with CIA agents Rex Matheson (Mekhi Pfifer) and Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins).  Matheson initially aims to apprehend the Jack and Gwen but soon, he and Esther find themselves to be targets and a new Torchwood team emerges.  Rex is assisted throughout by Doctor Vera Juarez, a member of the medical boards who joined the team in the last episode.

In the meantime, convicted paedophile and child murderer Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) survives his own execution and is freed under a cruel and unusual punishment technicality.  He quickly becomes the spokesperson for the Miracle Day and is courted by Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose) on behalf of the pharmaceutical giant PhiCorp. 

Instead of pursuing a different story arc per episode, as was the case with the first two seasons of Torchwood, Torchwood: Miracle Day has stuck to one major story arc across the full ten episodes.  The pace has been extremely slow to date and this has been compounded by the use of a different writer per episode.  The result has been a disjointed storyline where interesting concepts are often raised but simply dropped the following episode.  I am not referring to the Families (“Escape to L.A.”) or the mysterious blue-eyed man (“The Categories of Life”) (as I am sure that they will return) but what happened to the visually stunning protest marches from “Dead of Night”, for example?

“The Middle Men” opens with PhiCorp CEO Stuart Owens asking a colleague in Shanghai to investigate a PhiCorp construction site as he wants to know whether PhiCorp has anything to do with Miracle Day.  Having suspected since “Dead of Night” that PhiCorp was behind the miracle, it turns out that they may be nothing more than middle men, despite the profits that the miracle has afforded them.  The colleague Zheng Yibao sees something that disturbs him so much that he jumps from the top of a building.  Just minutes earlier, Owens had been watching a television piece on the “45 Club” where people had reinvented the notion of suicide and eternal oblivion by jumping from buildings of at least 45 stories high.

At San Pedro Overflow Camp, Rex Matheson records all that he is seeing, compiling proof of the modules and mass murders while Esther becomes suspicious of camp director Colin Maloney and wonders where Vera Juarez is.  In Cardiff, Gwen and her husband Rhys Williams (Kai Owen) race to rescue her father from the modules at Cowbridge Overflow Camp and in Los Angeles, Captain Jack Harkness confronts Stuart Owens.  Owens reveals to Jack what he knows and when Jack tells him of his only clue, that the miracle involves geography, Owens informs him of a mysterious document originating from the Council of Ministers in Italy that made reference to The Blessing.

This is the first episode in Torchwood: Miracle Day that does not feature Oswald Danes and also the first since “Rendition” that does not feature Jilly Kitzinger.  The episode was written by The X-Files alumni John Shiban and certainly had a darker feel to it.  Perhaps the usual inclusion of Danes and Kitzinger serves to lighten up the show with all of the hype and media frenzy, not to mention Kitzinger’s ambition and Danes’ ruthless manipulation? 

In “Middle Men”, the spotlight shines on the path to genocide as the focus seems to move from Category 1 patients to illegal immigrants.  Darkness descends as we realise that above all, the governments of the world are sanctioning these camps and the extermination ovens within.  The level of terror that was introduced in the final scenes of “Escape to L.A.” are raised once again in the final scene of “The Middle Men” as Gwen realises how personal this has become and the price she might have to pay to save the Earth.

John Shiban has written a dark and terrifying episode and it has left me wishing that he had written the whole season.  My favourite episodes of this season were “Rendition” (written by Doris Egan), “Escape to L.A.” and “The Middle Men” (both written by John Shiban).  Apart from the season opener “The New World” which was written by show creator Russell T. Davies, my worst episodes were “Dead of Night” and “The Categories of Life” which were both written by Jane Espenson.  The bad news is that Jane Espenson has written or co-written three of the four remaining episodes, the last one with Russell T. Davies.

There are aspects of Torchwood: Miracle Day that are brilliant and show the vision, imagination and talent of Russell T. Davies and the writers on the show.  But there are also parts that are terrible or cheesy and I still have difficulty caring about either Rex Matheson or Esther Drummond.  The factors that seem to have contributed most to a shaky season are the single story arc, multiple writers and extremely slow pace.  I really would like to see Torchwood: Miracle Day renewed for a further season but they’d have to follow the example set by the writers of Veronica Mars after their second season and split the season up into more story arcs in future, with more consistent writing or perhaps one lead writer per story arc.

 

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – “The Middle Men” on Blogcritics.

Read more »

TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – "The Categories of Life”

As the final, terrifying scenes unfolded in last week’s episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, it seemed as if the story was finally going somewhere and that the great alien threat was about to be exposed.  By the end of this week’s instalment, “The Categories of Life”, this had still not happened which means that viewers have sat through five episodes of scene setting, weak plotting and no mention of aliens.  The pace is excruciating and I have no doubt that this season should have been dispatched in three or five episodes. 

The slow pace is compounded by the use of different writers each episode which works in Doctor Who or the previous incarnation of Torchwood when there was a new storyline or villain each week.  The effect in Torchwood: Miracle Day is an inconsistent and jumbled story with several false starts and no real build up.  “The Categories of Life” was written by Jane Espenson who wrote “Dead of Night”.

The episode begins with Vera Juarez (Arlene Tur) entering the city hall in Washington D.C., only to discover that all of the other medical panellists have left as their work is done.  The three categories of life have been decided and are being presented to the President.  Vera calls Rex to announce that she is joining their team and flying down to Venice Beach.  She is horrified by the categories as she claims that government have taken control over life and death and that nobody should have that much power.

Meanwhile, Gwen Cooper arrives in Cardiff under a false identity and is met by husband Rhys Williams (Kai Owen).   We learn that the overflow camps are located in old army barracks and when Gwen tries to visit her father, we learn that they are not letting healthy people anywhere near the patients.

Once Vera arrives in Venice Beach, the team gets together to pool their intelligence, with Gwen attending via video link.  The nature of the categories is discussed with category 3 being healthy people, category 1 being those with no brain function or those who should be dead, and category 2 being everyone in between.  I know that this was a pivotal point in the plot of Torchwood: Miracle Day but I found this idea to be weak and poorly executed.  Many of the moral and logistical dilemmas surrounding the miracle had been explored in interesting ways in previous episodes but this just seemed contrived and overly simplistic.

 

 

 

The team discovers that certain modules in the overflow camps are being masked and that their true function is therefore hidden.  Much of the episode then consists of Gwen and Rhys trying to break into the overflow camp in Cardiff to rescue her father, while Vera Juarez, Rex Matheson and Esther Drummond enter the facility in San Pedro to gain more information on the hidden modules.

Captain Jack Harkness (or Mortal Jack, as he is now jokingly called) is left behind during this exercise and decides to attend the Miracle Day Rally in Los Angeles as Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) is giving a speech.  Convinced that Danes knows his own nature and wills his life to end, Jack seems to persuade Danes to expose PhiCorp and end the miracle.  A mysterious blue-eyed man (Teddy Sears, The Defenders) tells Jilly Kritzinger that she is doing a good job and being noticed by the right people.  All of that hangs in the balance, of course, as we wait to find out whether Danes will, in fact, expose PhiCorp.

The next scene is remarkable in that it was obviously intended to be moving and powerful and it all fell flat.  Oswald Danes rambles on about humans evolving from animals and now into angels and once again, the audience is expected to believe that a stadium full of people (and viewers around the world) are being moved by a paedophile and child murderer.  Not only that, but the Dead is Dead proponents at the rally are so persuaded by this ridiculous rambling that they are willing to forget that he is a dead man and suddenly support him too?  Danes utters the carefully placed keyword ‘revelation’ as suggested by Jilly Kitzinger and the scene closes with people chanting the name of Oswald Danes.

  

I have to admit that the next two scenes were so disturbing that it took me some time after the episode to resolve my feelings about them.  In these scenes, both Rex Matheson in San Pedro and Gwen Cooper in Cardiff realise that the modules are ovens, intended to burn category 1 patients alive.  I found this direction quite disturbing and I could not help but be reminded of the ovens in World War II death camps.  I really hope that the writers intend to whip up some phenomenal storytelling to justify such a gruesome storyline, but I fear it might just be arbitrary and gratuitous.

Worse still, it could be swept under the carpet once we remember that the category 1 patients are not dead after all but are now some living, non-breathing cloud of ash hanging over the world.  At this point, the only good thing I have to say about Torchwood: Miracle Day is that the season is now half way through.  Hopefully the pace will pick up in the remaining five episodes (three of which are written or co-written by Jane Espenson).  One can only hope for a miracle.

All images © 2011 BBC Worldwide Limited.

Article first published as TV Review: Torchwood: Miracle Day – "The Categories of Life” on Blogcritics.

Read more »