Torchwood: Miracle Day

The two regular seasons of Torchwood were pretty weak. The shortened Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries was pretty good. The question was which direction Miracle Day would lean, as it has the former's longer length but the latter's singular focus on one idea. Unfortunately, it tended toward the weak side of the scale. Miracle Day either didn't take the right lessons from Children of Earth or just didn't apply them correctly, because while I thought it started off pretty strong, it couldn't sustain itself, and I had completely lost interest by the time it ended. It really should have been another five episode run. There just isn't enough story here to justify it being ten hours, and it's all the worse for being stretched out.

The concept is intriguing enough. One day, death basically turns off, and while people can still be crushed and maimed and weakened by disease, their bodies just won't die. Torchwood, or the two surviving members of it, get involved when they receive a message at the exact moment of the "miracle", a message that the CIA detects, causing two agents named Rex and Esther to pursue them. The four team up to figure out what caused the miracle and why, and there's also a completely terrible, nonsensical subplot that ultimately goes nowhere featuring a creepy pedophile murderer played by Bill Pullman whose execution is aborted by the miracle and somehow becomes a popular public speaker for a while.

The show works early because it looks at what would happen if death stopped happening. Hospitals fill up, disease begins to spread like wildfire, doomsday cults form, and quickly the global economy collapses. Procedures and policies that function because death exists break down and have to be rethought. It's interesting stuff, but it gets pushed aside once Torchwood gets a whiff of what's behind it. They quickly learn that a certain pharmaceutical company had stocked up medication for just such an emergency, and must be involved in whatever plot caused the change. They eventually figure out the real truth, which is pretty silly, doesn't capitalize on the concept of death disappearing, and revolves around Jack's two key characteristics - his immortality (which disappears after the miracle) and his willingness to have sex with anyone (which doesn't).

The final answers to the show's question are not satisfying, and the journey to get there is too padded and dull to make that an irrelevant complaint. The new characters don't contribute much either. Pullman's Oswald, as I said, makes no sense. Rex is too much of an asshole on the asshole-rogue scale, and Esther is cute but not much else. The show really doesn't do much with its transition to America, honestly. There's one pretty good for TV action scene in the premiere, and they make a few easy jokes about how the US and the UK are different, but that about covers it. The CIA is also amazingly inept and inconsequential to the plot, with its only success being the introduction of John de Lancie as one of Rex' higher-ups a little too late.

The plot is meandering, with most episodes struggling to stretch themselves to over fifty minutes and too much time wasted before any real information actually gets exposed. It's just a textbook example of how to sully a neat science fiction concept in a television show. I'm not sure if Starz plans to renew their collaboration with the BBC on this, and I'm not sure I care either way. And I definitely hope they don't follow through on their threat in the finale of returning to the same idea.

Doctor Who - The 2009 Specials

Instead of having a normal televised season last year, executive producer Russel T. Davies and current (now former) Doctor David Tennant elected to say goodbye to the show with a series of hour long specials, including a two-part version of the normal Christmas episode to transition to the new regime. It wasn't the most consistent material we've seen, but it was a nice way to say goodbye to the man who brought the show back from the dead and one of the most beloved owners of the role.

The Next Doctor


2008's Christmas episode (which didn't air in America until June the next year) was a fairly average one. The story of a man deluded into believing he's the Doctor, if the Doctor was human and relied on 1800s Earth technology, is fairly interesting, but the actual conflict of the episode is somewhat tired at this point. Ooh, Cybermen again! And a villain who wants to take over the world and refuses the Doctor's offer of help and peace! Not terrible, just nothing new.

Planet of the Dead


This was another pretty boring one. If I was a big Who fan in England when this aired last April and knew it would be the only content I'd be getting in about a ten month span, I'd be pretty upset. The way the Doctor and a bus of Londoners end up on the titular planet is neat, but they get about as much excitement out of being marooned on a deserted wasteland as you'd expect. The girl was cute, though.

The Waters of Mars


Now here's what I like to see. Once in a while they'll just stick the Doctor on a semi-advanced Earth space vessel (in this case a base on Mars) where something is about to go horribly wrong, and just about every time it works out amazingly well. Doctor Who is a show that likes to be fun, but once in a while they'll be dark and emotional and dramatic like this, and it totally works. The resolution is as flawed logically as they come, but overall a very good episode.

The End of Time


This is the tale of two specials. Part one, which aired this Christmas, had a few moments, but was ultimately a failure. It's all set-up for the second part and not a whole lot of particular consequence happens, and watching it is barely a pleasure in itself. It's hard to call anything Who does outright bad, but it just felt like a waste of an hour. Part two though was pretty great, airing a week later on New Year's. It was probably too long, as the resolution of the main conflict happens with plenty of time to spare for a heartfelt sendoff for Tennant in the last 15 minutes of an hour, but instead we have to watch another 30. And the actual core of the plot had some interesting ideas, but didn't really make sense. The return of the Time Lords and the explanation for how the war really ended were neat revelations, and I sort of enjoyed Timothy Dalton's role as their leader even if not a whole lot was done with it. And they actually made the Master more interesting than he seemed to have been previously. They definitely tied up a bunch of loose ends without leaving nothing for Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, the new head writer and Doctor respectively, to tackle. While it might have dragged a bit, the Doctor's latest regeneration was very well handled, and I'm definitely going to miss Tennant in the role.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

This is one of the more interesting things I've seen a running series do. When Torchwood moved from BBC2 to the regular BBC, they only got an order for a five episode miniseries instead of a full season. So they turned it into a five day event, and it became the most interesting thing the show has done. Instead of several disconnected stories, they tell one with a lot of attention to detail. You'd think stretching a plot over five hours instead of fifty minutes might result in some boredom, but the events are heavy enough that I was attached to my seat the entire time, unlike my previous experience with the show.

The pace is generally slow, but the drip-feed of information and curiosities is enough to keep you interested before things really ratchet up. It's a couple episodes before the real villains actually show up but their presence is felt through the creepy manipulation of all the world's children. It sets the mood for what's to follow, where politicians have to face a terrible decision, and it gets treated with the proper weight that you generally don't see in fantastical stories like this. The normal activities of the Torchwood Institute are sort of placed on the back burner as the focus is more on their survival and personal relationships, and they spend a lot of time just trying to not die. The resolution was pretty rapid compared to the amount of buildup and drama before it, but it was a nice capper to a genuinely intriguing tale. I'm really not sure what's going to happen in season 4 with the current state of the cast, but it will probably be worth at least checking out.

Doctor Who - Season 4

David Tennant's final regular season as the Doctor is a suitably epic one, and especially with the scope of the finale it seems sort of anti-climactic that they're stretching out his last days with a whole year of specials. They bring back practically every significant character from the reboot and the spin-offs, and it's a pretty awesome set up even if the bad guys are kind of tired. I also thought they telegraphed the final conflict better than they have before. Hiding clues in previous episodes is fine, but this felt the most like a true serial.

I'm a bit ahead of myself, though. This season brings the return of the Companion from the Christmas special after the second season. I'm pretty ambivalent on her, because she has some nice points but it's not hard at all for her to turn into an annoyance. Still, she did a decent job as the most important Companion of the series that I've seen, even if the Doctor seemingly couldn't go an hour without mentioning Rose. There was actually some pretty good multi-parters this season, from the Sontarans who I found to be the show's most interesting war-mongering alien race to a really good and fairly creepy story in a gigantic library. Russell T. Davies has done a lot for the series, but I'm excited to see Steven Moffat take over next season, as each season he's written one or two episodes that have been among the best that year, if not the best. I still don't think Doctor Who is that amazing of a series, but it's certainly quite a bit of fun.

Torchwood - Season 2

Torchwood. We watch over a rift in time and space through the middle of Cardiff. We capture and study alien technologies. We also like having sex with people.

The second season of this wacky ass show doesn't do a lot that the first didn't. There's still people who have been sent through time and Weevils (Aliens who have come through the rift and live in the sewers) and not a whole lot of variety or ambition in the stories. It's kind of odd, because they have more freedom with adult content than parent series Doctor Who, but practically none of the freedom with actual story ideas. There are some interesting guests though, with a stint by Freema Agyeman reprising the Martha Jones role and James Marsters of Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame playing a fellow time agent every bit as pansexual and insane as Jack was before he spent a century and a half stuck on Earth. There's a somewhat interesting plot involving a cast member living in a state of death, although I'm not sure they really took it to its rightful conclusion. I thought the finale was weak, mostly because the villain was such a whiny turd who earned almost none of his constant hate for everything. The ending is surprisingly far-reaching in its effects on the show though, resulting in a seemingly very different third season. It's really not that good, but it's not a waste of time either.

Doctor Who - Season 3

This was my favorite season so far of the revived series. Martha Jones isn't too different a character from Rose besides being a little smarter and hotter, but that's enough to make her more likable to me. I mean, I understand Billie Piper is famous in Britain for things besides Who, but does she need to be brought up in every episode even though she's gone? She kind of looks like a monkey. Meanwhile, Freema Agyeman has one of the best asses to ever fill a pair of jeans. Anyway, it's pretty much the same show, the standard of the stories just seems a bit higher. From the Christmas special featuring an angry yet strangely tolerable bride to be and ancient giant arachnids to the finale that just might be the most epic yet, I enjoyed it nearly fairly a lot.

I have a theory why the show doesn't totally work for me. There's nothing wrong with the show in concept. I mean, a clever, somewhat nerdy guy accompanied by a hot girl travel all through time and space touching on every science fiction staple imaginable from alien invasions to dying space stations to alternate history to mad scientists and everything in between. There's just something wrong with the execution, and it feels like the pacing. The conflict of the show seems to be introduced too quickly, and they spend too much time fighting against whatever the villain is and it gets a bit boring before it finishes. There's no sense of rising action, climax, and falling action like a normal story, it's just the same baseline of excitement the entire time until the last five minutes when things finally resolve. If it spent a bit more time establishing things and just having the characters interact I'd probably like it more. Not that what it is is bad, it just isn't quite right. An example of an episode that I thought was perfectly paced is "Blink", which is one of the best quirky time travel stories I've ever seen or read. Doctor Who doesn't have to be perfect though, it's enjoyable enough to keep watching.

Torchwood - Season 1

Torchwood is the more adult spin-off of Doctor Who, although the added bloody violence and swearing don't really make it a better show. Instead of traveling through time and space meeting aliens and solving their problems, Captain Jack Harkness and crew stick around the same basic location in Wales and deal with whatever wacky cases fall into their lap. There's a decent amount of variety and creativity in the stories, including multiple cases of people accidentally falling through time and the discovery of strange alien artifacts. It's not all sci-fi either, such as one episode that's pretty much just a straight up The Hills Have Eyes sort of horror story.

Besides the main action there's also an inordinate amount of sexual tension as everyone wants to bang or is banging everyone else. It actually gets in the way of what I want to watch the show for, because there's a lot more subtle and interesting ways to do that sort of thing on a lot of other series. And it kind of undermines the seriousness a bit, because you know, screwing your coworkers isn't very professional. Still though, Torchwood is a fairly entertaining detective/science fiction show that fans of stuff like Fringe might find they like. It ties in with its parent series in a vaguely interesting way, and is a bit of a nice thematic break from it. The finale was just about as absurd as anything in Who, though.

Doctor Who - Season 2

I'm not quite sure what it is, but I enjoyed this season a bit more than the previous. David Tennant's Doctor is a bit sillier than Christopher Eccleston's, and while the latter might have had a bit more gravitas in the most important scenes, the former seemed to be written a bit better and fit the show's strengths better. Also since we've already gone through the reestablishment of the universe after the long break between regular installments, which is necessary and not too bad but still tiring when every show has to do it, there's more time to just do what makes the show fun. Billie Piper's Rose is gone for a while after this season which means more new companions, but their transitions into regular cast should go a bit quicker.

Doctor Who has two modes, and I like it more when it's lighthearted and fun as opposed to dark and epic. Most episodes feature both of these at least a little, but the pattern so far is to shift focus from the former to the latter over the course of the season as they start doing more multiple part stories that rarely have enough actual story content to require the extra time. These episodes aren't bad, I just prefer the show when it's less serious. I mean, if I want adult and menacing entertainment, I'll watch Torchwood. Which I am now, by the way. Just like Bad Wolf from the first season, all of the Doctor and Rose's adventures this time coincidentally are tangentially related to the Torchwood Institute, which ties everything together in a less than satisfying way since they never really explain why this convenient stuff keeps happening, but it does establish the spin-off which follows directly in continuity after this season. Also, the first Christmas special that was technically a part of this production I guess was all right.

Doctor Who - Season 1

So after an absence of over fifteen years from regular episodes and a decade since the last incarnation, Russell T. Davies finally brought Doctor Who back to life in 2005. I've never seen it before, but it's always been a beloved and seemingly interesting series, and this seemed like a good point to jump on, so I decided to check it out. This is Christopher Eccleston's only season as the Doctor, with David Tennant already cast to take the part over before it aired, but he does a pretty entertaining job with the part in his one go at it. It's a more complicated character than I expected at first, normally pretty happy-go-lucky about his position as the final Time Lord who jumps around averting disasters, but he can get deadly serious if he has to. Billie Piper's his main companion and the most remarkable thing about her is the severity of her accent.

I wasn't totally sold on the show in the beginning, as it seems to be filmed on a much lower budget than the current standard for American science fiction television and was a little goofier than I thought. It did seem to get better as it went on, with more intriguing and intelligent conflicts and plot developments. The time travel mechanics often don't seem to make sense, as they ignore obvious solutions to their problems and the universe's solution for paradoxes is laughable. It's definitely very, very British. The whole genesis for this relaunch of the show seems to be Davies' idea for an episode where then-popular shows like Big Brother still exist in the future, though in a much deadlier form, and while it's a bit funny in places it just seems to date the show. Futurama did that too sometimes, and those are generally the weakest episodes in retrospect years later. If you accept Doctor Who as a comedy about as much as science fiction though, it's mostly enjoyable.