Torchwood: Miracle Day: Escape to L.A.

Another week, another episode of Torchwood. I could go through and do a "I liked this (Gwen and Jack pretending to be parents, for example, or the really rather horrific car crusher fate of the pseudo-Sarah Palin character) and I didn't like this (incidental music is still shite; Esther being surprised that Child Services took her sister's kids away and committed said mentalist sister - seriously, what the fuck did she thing was going to happen?)" sort of a review, but that's a bit boring and likely to get even more boring if repeated over the next six weeks. So instead, I want to look at the series overall, and try to figure out why it isn't working. And I think there are two fundamental reasons.

Firstly, there is no sense of reality here. Now, that might seem to be a curious claim given (a) it's a sci-fi show and (b) I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, which wrapped up the first half of its latest season with the floppy haired, badly dressed ancient-yet-young central character pulling together an army involving a lactating warrior troll and a lesbian lizard to fight another army which included headless monks. So let me explain exactly what I mean here. Of course, Torchwood is going to be unbelievable and unreal to a large extent. The last series involved multiple headed vomit monsters seeking children to get high off. Ken Loach it ain't ever gonna be. But Children of Earth worked better than Miracle Day is working because it tried to at least connect the over-arching narrative and the cartoonish Torchwood team with reality. They did this through having normal people involved in the narrative - such as Ianto's family and the tragic figure of Frobisher. There aren't any similar characters in Miracle Day. Look at the people who aren't part of the Torchwood team. They include a murderous paedophile and an amoral PR guru who is perfectly happy to suspend her revulsion over said paedophile in order to do her job, and indeed chuckles with glee when he does well. They are a world away from a working class family desperately trying to save their children and the children in the neighbourhood. Or the compromised civil servant forced to do the unspeakable and murder his whole family in order to save them from a worse fate he has worked to bring to other families across the country.

Furthermore, the desperate and pathetic political posturing of the odious Prime Minister Brian Green in Children of Earth added another sense of reality to the show, as we saw politicians desperately trying to seek solutions to unprecendented problems and having to make terrible choices in the process. Here, we get none of that. In fact, all we hear about politically is the silence from the White House. This is a shame - it would be great to understand what politicians are trying to do in the face of this new world. It would be great to see a President being forced to deal with the drug companies, with the Dead is Dead campaign, with the Soulless, and being forced to make terrible choices as diseases go on the rise. Maybe we will see this in future episodes, but I doubt that. And if we do, I will have to ask the question of why the hell that plot strand wasn't introduced earlier, because this series of Torchwood could really do with extra plot strands.

Because, and this is the second reason why it just isn't working, there is simply not enough plot for the four episodes we have seen so far. Meaning the whole thing comes across as very slow moving, plodding and padded out. I'm amazed we are only on episode four of this story; it feels like I have been watching this series for years now. And I really cannot believe that there is another six fucking episodes of this to go. Part of the issue is that we have learned so little about what is going on. We know that PhiCorp is involved in the miracle, and we know that some sort of force is controlling events and favours a circling triangle to remain cryptic. That's it. Across four episodes of TV. That's it. And frankly, it isn't enough. And the characters in the show even seem to be acknowledging this. Gwen's frustration when Rex shoots the hitman who was about to cut her throat just as he is about to reveal the names of whoever is controlling this whole conspiracy mirrored my own frustration. Can't we please just have a tiny bit of information about what the fuck is going on here as we slowly grind towards the middle of the series?

Let's compare where we are in this series of Torchwood to where we had got to at this point in the last series. By the end of the fourth part of Children of Earth we'd seen the aliens, understood what they wanted and how terrible it was, and the team had just lost another key, and much liked, member. By the end of this fourth episode we basically know bugger all. Yeah, I understand that Miracle Day is twice as long as the immediately preceding series, but that is the point and the second big flaw with the series - it doesn't need to be twice as long. In fact, the amount of plot we've seen so far could have been condensed into one episode without too much trouble.

The end result is that this round of Torchwood has become immensely frustrating. There are clearly good ideas going on, but they are dripping out at such a slow rate as to make the whole thing barely worth bothering with. I'd almost rather see Miracle Day: The Edited Highlights than sit through another six plodding episodes that consist of little more than padding and a refusal to let the audience in on what is actually going on here.

Of course, it may pick up; after all, we aren't even halfway yet. The next six episodes may prove to be outstanding TV. And I really hope that they are. Because I don't want to have to write another six reviews that all basically all say "seriously, is this actually going anywhere?"