Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Blood Line

Man alive, that final episode of what has been a tedious and largely pointless series was shit. A magical blood transfusion saved the day. Thank fuck that I’ve wasted circa ten hours of my life waiting for that utterly convincing and in no way bullshit resolution. Thanks, people, for putting on the small screen perhaps the perfect example of how not to close off ten weeks worth of TV. In years to come, those teaching script-writing at universities and colleges throughout the world should point to this episode as a perfect example of how not to do it. And by it, I mean pretty much everything this sorry farrago set out to achieve.

It seems almost pointless to sit here and pick through all the ways in which the final episode failed to work. Yes, it was shit, but that should be evident to all but the terminally stupid and RTD. Let’s instead try to take a helicopter view and figure out just why what at first appeared to be quite a promising series ended up being such a steaming turd pile of absolute bilge.

The first reason is that if you’re going to write a Torchwood story, you should probably place the Torchwood team at the very heart of it. Not on the outskirts of the story, and not so they end up appearing as a tacked on afterthought. For example, Captain Jack is meant to be the hero of the series – not some second rate action man who has to be removed from said action because he’s suddenly become all vulnerable. Likewise, Gwen started off as an interesting character trying to cope with the strange world in which she found herself. To turn her into a chippy Welsh bird who just wants to chin everything that moves is to remove any residual interest in her or her character.

The second reason is that if you’re going to have a high concept story arc, then work out all the logical ramifications of it and also think about how to dramatically present it. So, if you are going to have a story that is in part about politicians deciding to introduce death camps, then it is probably worth devoting some of your ample run time to depicting those politicians reaching such an egregious conclusion. Likewise, don’t reach episode six and then suddenly forget (to a massive extent) about said death camps. Your regular viewers – the poor sods who made this whole thing possible in the first fucking place – will notice.

And thirdly, think about the pacing of your piece. If your most nightmarish image is the cooking of the terminally ill, then don’t reveal all halfway through your series. Build up to it across all ten episodes – don’t spunk it away by episode five. Because once Vera was incinerated, the whole piece became a question of “ok, that’s where this is going – and can we get there already please?”

The fourth, and for this post final, reason is that if you are going to write damn near 10 hours of TV then you shouldn’t be fucking well making it up as you go along. Nothing wrong with plotting it all out and working out where you want to get to and how you are going to get there.

But the fact that this series of Torchwood turned out to be a ripe example of an arse biscuit shouldn’t really be a surprise given what has gone before. The excellent (but still far from flawless) Children of Earth now appears to be the exception rather than the rule. The simple truth is – if they haven’t already had the option taken from them by this sorry farrago of absolute shite – the producers shouldn’t make any more Torchwood. Their heart isn’t in it and/or they are not capable of it.