The Year in Doctor Who

I was thinking of doing a countdown/reassessment of the Doctor Who episodes of the year, but my opinons haven't really changed and a simple countdown is pretty boring*. So instead I'm offering an overview of the Year in Who.

In terms of the main show, it was quite a year. In fact, I struggle to think of a season of Doctor Who that has ever been as consistently good as this one. There was only one real clunker, and even some of the filler episodes were minor classics in their own right. I mean, a few years ago the slots held by The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex were represented by the likes of Love and Monsters and Fear Her. And it is one of the filler episodes - one of the few not dominated in some way by the overall story arc - that wins my award for the best episode of the year - The Doctor's Wife was an incredible, moving and inventive episode of Doctor Who. I would love to see Neil Gaiman writing another episode on the future.

And there were some brilliant performances in this season. Karen Gillan deserves a lot of praise for The Girl Who Waited, which is a startling rejoinder to those critics who have commented that she is more there for her looks rather than her acting ability. Likewise, Let's Kill Hitler finally gave some great lines to Arthur Darvil, who has perfected his bemused everyman routine. It also allowed Alex Kingston to play a very different version of River Song. But the best performer of the season was the star. Matt Smith has shown his versatility across 2011, and his performance in A Good Man Goes To War showed his incredible range across just forty-five minutes. Watch the Colonel Runaway conversation for a restrained yet compelling anger from the Doctor. Or watch the scene when he realises that Madame Kovarian has actually stolen Melody from under his nose. This year has shown one of the most talented actors the show has ever had as its star at the very height of his powers.

We also got some great monsters this season. The dolls in Night Terrors might have been derivative. but they were very creepy. The Minotaur of The God Complex was also derivative but striking; the nightmare maze it inhabited has probably entered the psyche and the nightmares of many a child. But the Silence were the monsters of the year; it would be good to see more of them and fully explore what they are about.

But while almost everything was well in the parent show, the same can not be said for Doctor Who's various spin-offs. The Sarah Jane Adventures ended as it really had to, given the circumstances, but at least it ended on a high. The Curse of Clyde Langer was a great instalment of that show, and a story that puts to shame many of the stories in the parent show.

Torchwood may have ended, or it may be back. But if it does end, then it effectively committed suicide. Miracle Day was a bloated mess of a series - about 50% longer than it should have been, it was turgid, bloated nonsense that took an interesting premise and then did nothing with it across the course of circa ten hours. The sole truly interesting moment was when a character met a fiery end in the camps; aside from that, it was a colossal waste of time and a massive step back from the really rather good Children of Earth. As I say, I don't know whether this was the last series of Torchwood, but the truth is that they don't deserve another series even if they happen to get one.

And last but by no means least, any review of the year in the Doctor Who universe has to note that said universe lost two of its most important figures last year - Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen. Short of the eleven actors who have played the lead role, it is difficult to think of any other actors who have been quite so important to the series. They deserved the accolades that made up their obituaries, and their deaths are deeply saddening. And their is a real poignancy in watching a story like Planet of the Spiders, and noting that the three protagonists are no longer with us. Rest in peace, Lis and Nick.

And what about next year? Well, we've got quite the wait until the good Doctor returns to our screens. When he does, we've been promised the tragic end to the story of the Ponds and a new friend for the Doctor. How will it end for the Ponds? I suspect that Moffat will stop short of killing them off, but I do think that there will be something very final about their departure. And the whole series is gearing up to the 50th anniversary and the fall of the eleventh - I suspect that either 2012 or 2013 will see the end of the Eleventh Doctor. So much to look forward to... even if it isn't coming for a while.

*Oh, alright, if you insists - here's the countdown:

14: The Curse of The Black Spot
13: The Rebel Flesh
12: Closing Time
11: Night Terrors
10: The Almost People
9: A Good Man Goes To War
8: Day of the Moon
7: The Impossible Astronaut
6: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe
5: The God Complex
4: The Girl Who Waited
3: Let's Kill Hitler
2: The Wedding of River Song
1: The Doctor's Wife

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky

As the good Doctor heads off into the stars for his pre-Christmas break (well, he has had a busy year, what with not really dying and everything), one of his previous companions jumps back onto the screens – albeit for just three short weeks. Yup, it is time for the return of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Any returning show runs the risk of not being quite as good as its last series – witness the nosedive in quality between Torchwood dealing with the Children of Earth and the unintentionally ironically named Miracle Day (the only miracle is that they were allowed to spread that boring farrago of nonsense across 10 weeks). Mercifully, Sky does not show any dip in quality. In fact, this is very much business as usual for The Sarah Jane Adventures. And that should be celebrated, because this series proves to be constantly entertaining.

The story zips along at a fast pace and is blessed, in Rani and Clyde, with two supporting characters (and the actors playing them, of course) that just work within the series. They are not so serious that they become boring. Nor are they so self-aware that they damage the drama. Rather, they fit in perfectly within the story and each play a convincing, and logically consistent, role within that story. Frankly, the tedious Gwen Cooper could learn a lot from Rani and Clyde.

There is also humour here, but it is not obtrusive. The banter between Rani’s parents, for example, or Sarah Jane’s attempts to explain away the fact that she has a new baby (and that baby goes from tiny to teenager across the course of one day) all help to keep the episodes light without undermining the story. Again, the performances help. This sort of story could very easily be over-acted and/or turned into a parody of itself. Instead, the actors seem to pitch it perfectly.

But what of the story? Well, it is safe to say that it is not exactly ground-breaking. In fact, after the River Song/Melody Pond saga in the most recent series of Doctor Who, a child with extraordinary power feels very familiar (and that’s without noting the similarities between Sky and elements of Delta and the Bannermen). But the story never becomes a shameless photocopy of previous entries into the Who universe. Yes, it may not be iconoclastic, but it does exactly what it needs to do – it entertains at the same time as introducing a new character into the series.

Ultimately, Sky is yet further evidence that this series has a firm place within the Doctor Who universe. It is never quite as good as the parent show, but it is streets ahead of the more often than not lamentable Torchwood. As such, it is always worth watching. So if you haven’t already discovered the The Sarah Jane Adventures, you should do so. Before it is too late.

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.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Gathering

So, stuff happened. The plot moved forward. We saw the Blessing, found out that Julie Kitzinger is right (about what we do not know), saw Oswald Danes (now a leering pantomime villain) get to Wales despite being the world’s most wanted man, and also witnessed the sluggish cliff-hanger to the previous week’s episode being utterly dodged. The incapable Esther managed to get Jack to Scotland. Yeah, and monkeys are flying out of my anus.

It would have to be something pretty bloody spectacular to impress me at this point given the general standard of this series – this episode was not that. It was largely scene setting for a finale I no longer care about. And it seems pointless to rant away further at what has been a grossly disappointing series of Torchwood. Yeah, it has been shit. But realistically, we’ve known that for weeks. Now it is, at long last, limping towards a final episode that, for a much less self-indulgent series, should have happened circa six episodes ago. Dare I hope for something interesting to round off the series? Well, yeah, I can hope – but that’s about it. Because we all know that, even if the finale is perhaps the best bit of TV all year, it is still going to come across as an anti-climax. This hasn’t been Children of Earth. It hasn’t even been Cyberwoman. And even if we have a finale that convincingly wraps everything up and perhaps even kills off a few regulars (Esther would be great) it won’t change the fact that the vast majority of this series has been tedious padding.

Because of “the Miracle” people live forever. Well, it feels like this series has been going on forever. The fact that it is about to end is a real blessing. Just shame that it comes with such a sense of tedium and anti-climax. Go on, Miracle Day, knock my socks off. But even if you do, chances are it will be too little, too late.

Torchwood - Miracle Day - End of the Road

So, two good things happened in this episode of Torchwood. Firstly, someone died, and thus the overall story was advanced. As such, this episode created for the first time in weeks the feeling that there actually is going to be some sort of resolution to this story, and that the whole thing won't just stop suddenly when the series runs out of episodes. Of course, prior to that death we had a long scene of poorly written, directed and performed exposition, and afterwards we had a lot of pure padding that reached its nadir when three of the lead characters had to touch the magic floor in order not to be heard by the nasty CIA agents. But whatever. I'll happily cling on to the minor move forward in the overall story arc as a positive sign that things might get better.

The second good thing that happened in this episode is the arrival of Allen Shapiro, a sweary, intolerant type who rightly had little patience of Gwen and therefore came across as the most effective character in this otherwise rather sorry farrago. No doubt he'll vanish from the face of Miracle Day moving forward because he is just too interesting.

Two good things. In an episode that lasted for about 50 minutes, but felt far longer. Two good things - and then that's it. For the rest of the episode we had to watch Rex do very little other than remain close-minded and generally quite ignorant, Gwen doing little else that raging like an irate teenager (and just as effectively) and Esther deciding that the best thing to do with a mortally wounded Captain Jack was to drive him round the arse end of nowhere while sobbing. These people are meant to be the people saving the world yet they act like inept children. Christ.

Okay, let me break cover and say what has been on my mind for weeks but has reached bursting point after the eighth episode of this tedious series - this isn't working. It isn't working at all. It is at best lacklustre, and at worst seriously shit. It has been a massive disappointment. It has become an effort to watch it each and every week, let alone review it. The only thing keeping me going is the fact that I've already invested so much time in it that I may as well watch the final couple of episodes to find out where it is all going (if anywhere). I still hope (against hope) to be proven wrong in my assumption that this is just going to all be a massive disappointment by the final two episodes. But with each episode that goes by with no signs of real improvement that hope dies a little bit more. Prove me wrong, RTD. Prove me wrong, Torchwood. Although I suspect that this is beyond all of your abilities now.

Torchwood - Miracle Day - Immortal Sins

Ok, so this was very typical Torchwood: Miracle Day in a number of ways. It progressed the overall story arc in a slight way (Jack's ex is behind the miracle, apparently, or at the very least knows how it started) but at the same time felt like an exercise in padding. But in other respects this was atypical for Miracle Day. Set largely in the past (other than the present day row between Gwen and Jack), this felt a lot like old school, pre-Children of Earth Torchwood.

Let's look at the evidence. The story involves a minor alien* conspiracy - minor, at least, in the sense that it is very easily dealt with by Jack. The rest of the story focuses on Jack's immortality and Jack's insatiable appetite when it comes to humping. So far, so much normal, old-school Torchwood.

And this is very much old Torchwood, but in fairness, it is old Torchwood done well. The relationship between Jack and Angelo is not simply casual titillation; the exploration of Catholic guilt and how people might actually respond to an immortal man is surprisingly intelligent. Indeed, the scenes where the mob turns on Jack are horrific and genuinely compelling. And I do wonder whether the trio of men who bargain over Jack and the vial of his blood taken in those scenes will figure later. That could be truly intelligent story telling (and therefore something this series needs a lot more of).

Plus it is nice to have the universe in which this series resides acknowledged. It was good to hear a mention of the Doctor (although any such mention does serve to highlight the extent to which Jack is a lacklustre substitute for the last of the Time Lords). The nod to the Trickster was also brought a smile to my face. This sort of references are nice for the fans but not too much for the casual viewer.

But, again, I'm left with the feeling that we lose something when we try to deal with the Torchwood team interacting with the Miracle. The scenes between Gwen and Jack, although played with gusto by the regulars, just feel a bit tedious and strangely out of character. Gwen has been built up to be almost a superhero so far in this series, but at the first hint of a threat (backed up with remarkably little proof) Gwen's attacking Jack and handing him over to his death. Furthermore, both Rex and Esther somehow managed to be irritating in this episode - no mean feat given just how little screen time they actually had. And the whole thing - the whole sodding episode - pretty much ignored the Miracle. It would be great, it would be fan-fucking-tastic, if we could focus a bit more on the world-changing event than Gwen tearfully emoting in the front seat of a car.

So a welcome distraction of an episode, but nothing more. Any chance we can start getting some sort of progress in the overall story arc sometime soon? Preferably before the final episode?

*Is this the first alien we've seen in this series so far? I think it might be.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Middle Men

Woo-hoo! Winston Zeddemore is in it! I don't quite know why that makes me so happy. I guess it is because it is a distraction from this slow-moving, lumbering beast of a story.

But let's look at the content of the episode rather than just the casting. Colin Maloney is a wonderfully ghastly creation - a unpleasant man in complete meltdown who has ceased to be fully in control of his own actions. There is the implication that, deep down, he knows that what he signed up to do is wrong, and when that combines with a sudden collapse in his life and things start to fall apart, he becomes terrifying and lethal. A maniac, out of control, in a vanity golf cart. The only downside to his character is that we never really saw it properly develop. We never saw him move from a minor public official into murderous, monstrous concentration camp director. Had he been introduced into the story earlier (and, as we know, those early episodes could have done with a lot more story and a lot less padding) we might have seen a compelling story arc and how humans can fall into evil. Instead, we end up simply with a rather transparent weak yet evil man. Which is good, but could have been so much better.

There is also the surprisingly intelligent conversation between Gwen and Dr Patel about moral choice in a concentration camp. It is even more striking given this has hardly been the most intellectually challenging of stories so far. It is a bit like coming across a discussion of the categorical imperative in a Colin Baker Doctor Who story. Of course, and rather sadly, it doesn't last for long, and with in minutes Jack is slapping the bum of a waiter. Back to business as usual, then.

The 45 club is another unsettling, but completely logical, extension of the Miracle. What a shame it wasn't introduced earlier, since the way it is treated here is just as a means to kill off a minor character in a world without suicide. Why can't we spend less time with the Torchwood team and more exploring this strange, new world? Are we going to hear about the 45 club again or have they just disappeared from the series, rather like the Soulless? There seems to be an assumption that we should find the antics of the Torchwood team so exciting that we only need brief hints of the world around that team. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true.

And that's all I've got to say about this episode, really. Once again, I'm left with the frustration that this still isn't really going anywhere. This week, we learned that the camps are really bad. Which we also already knew. We learned that there is a conspiracy behind the Miracle and behind PhiCorp, which we also already knew. We didn't get to see Oswald Danes, or understand the implications of his speech. Oh, but we have found out that there is something called the blessing. But we know fuck all about it really. In short, we still know bugger all about what is going on here. Still. When you strip it down to basics, this episode was yet another exercise in padding.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Categories of Life

My last three reviews of Torchwood have been necessarily harsh, but harsh nonetheless. So let's redress the balance a bit. This episode was not bad; in fact, not bad at all. In fact, it was probably the best one since RTD kicked off the show five weeks ago. The main reason for this is that the Torchwood team now seem to be actively participating in their own adventure. Rather than just larking around on the sides of the Miracle, now they are fully exploring its implications. They are going into the camps and finding out what is going on - even if, in the case of Rex, it takes a demonstration for him to work out what the modules are for.

But it isn't just the active participation that works here. For the first time, we get a real sense of menace created through the fact that the Torchwood team are now genuinely in danger. Of course, it takes an extreme event - the gunning down and then incineration of Vera by a desperate man who has lost all control of himself - to really hammer this point home, but at long last we get a feeling (added to by the preview for next week's episode) that the team aren't playing around anymore - and nor are their enemies.

Elsewhere, the positively reptilian Oswald Danes (seriously, they should get Bill Pullman to play a Silurian in Doctor Who - he wouldn't need any make-up) appears to be hedging his bets; advocating PhiCorp in his speech, but also hinting (as Jack suggested) that they knew about the Miracle before it happened. And... that's about it, really, in terms of developing the overall story arc. Because while the Torchwood team have been finding out about stuff at San Pedro and Cowbridge, the rest of the story hasn't really gone anywhere. At the end of the last episode we knew there were camps and at the end of this episode we know there are camps where bad things are happening. It is hardly a dramatic leap forward in the underlying story, and other than the whispers about morphic fields we know next to nothing about the causes of the Miracle. Yeah, yeah there are still five episodes to go, I know. But it is telling that the pace of this story is so slow that the Torchwood team were able to have an evening to themselves and chow down on some Chinese takeaway at the beginning of the episode.

And while elements of the plotting of the episode - for example, that Danes was able to win over the crowd with his mix of contrition, flattery and hope - other elements of the story have me shaking my head in disbelief. If you're a government building large areas designed effectively to burn people alive, what is the one word you would want to avoid? "Camp". Brings up all sorts of association with, I don't know, mass slaughter. But what are the death centres referred to as here? "Overflow Camps". Fucking hell, you may as well call them "charnel houses" or "killing fields". And had they been named something else, then the Torchwood team would literally be none the wiser. They'd have continued larking around at the edges of the story. And frankly, it stretches a credibility that is already at breaking point to suppose that governments all over the world were able to build these camps without anyone anywhere ever saying "err, shouldn't we have a slightly less loaded word to describe them?"

But there are always going to be problems with a show as lazily scripted as Miracle Day. Let's leave that to one side, and instead keep our fingers crossed that the upturn in quality here is replicated and built upon in later instalments. The Categories of Life remains far from perfect, but does at least give me a certain level of hope that was sadly lacking after watching Escape to L.A.

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?"

Torchwood: Miracle Day: Dead of Night

Another week, another episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. And while Dead of Night is better than last week's effort, it is still far from superb. In fact, the episode struggles even to be good.

Part of the problem is that there is no real sense of menace in this show. Even when Gwen has to hide from Jilly Kitzinger there is no tension - in part because Killy is simply no threat to Gwen. By this stage in Children of Earth we had the 456 - barely seen triple-headed beasts with menacing voices and a penchant for projectile vomiting. In this story, all we have is a bunch of humans behaving in a slightly suspicious way. This isn't an episode of The Bill - it needs a little bit more dramatic.

And what has happened to Gwen? She seems to have evolved into a curious cross between Amy Pond, Sarah Jane Smith and James Bond. There is precious little left of the police constable who stumbled across Torchwood a few years back. Yeah, you could argue that this is part of her overall story arc, but there is precious little reference to that arc. Instead, it seems it is enough to have her occasionally mentioning her kid to reference her back story - and she has become little more than a bland cipher, a way of progressing the plot.

Not that the plot particularly progresses. We have now seen that there is a bad corporation, that there are drugs, and that Oswald Danes is falling in with what are heavily implied to be the bad guys (not that a murdering paedophile was ever really going to be a good guy, of course). And that's pretty much it. Basically, we've had 150 minutes of TV to get... well... not very far at all. Sometimes less is more and if you don't have the plot for 10 episodes, then don't try to tell your story across 10 episodes.

And there's still a lot of padding. Having the two male protagonists getting laid is a good example of this; it adds little to the plot, just titillation on the sidelines of the story. And we seem to be seeing a recurrence of what I'm going to call the Old Law of Torchwood - if the story is flagging, throw in a bit of shagging. As well as killing time, it also allows you to make your programme look adult. Not in the sense that it is challenging drama for adults, but instead because it has to be broadcast later in the day as the sex is not appropriate for the kids.

That's the Old Law of Torchwood; unfortunately, there seems to be a New Law of Torchwood. And it runs like this - the closer characters get to the Torchwood team, the less interesting they become. Rex was a great character in the first episode; now he is a second-rate Captain Jack - doing what Jack does with more petulance and with less of an ability to deliver a quip. Likewise, the odious Oswald Danes somehow loses some of his menace - despite describing the murder of a young girl - when describing it to a frantically emoting, gun-wielding Captain Jack. Once again, I'm left with the feeling that this show would be better without the Torchwood team in it. Hopefully that will change... hopefully.

And a word about the incidental music. Who in the name of Christ decided that the often hideously out of place music would be appropriate for what is supposed to be an edgy sci-fi thriller? A teenage boy who likes to ROCK? It sounds amateurish, like someone who has actually seen the show trying to create a score from it using the solely the tag lines for each episode.

Not everything is bad, of course. The soulless strike me as a great - and really rather spooky - idea. So can we see more of them? Can we get a feel from where we have come from? Would it be possible to see how, y'know, ordinary people are responding to the miracle rather than the increasingly cartoonish regulars? Wouldn't it be a good idea to see a normal person becoming one of the soulless? I mean, the whole thing feel very padded out, so perhaps a further storyline that normal people could relate to might have been a nice addition. But, no doubt, the soulless themselves will fall foul of the New Law of Torchwood. As soon as they get sustained contact with Torchwood, they will become much less interesting.

I think the most frustrating thing about the evolving Miracle Day series is its very mediocrity. It isn't good enough to look forward to each week, and it isn't bad enough not to watch. And, while I never really thought I would write this, what this needs is more RTD. He wrote the first episode which is, by a country mile, the best of the three we have seen so far. Torchwood is his baby, and frankly the baby needs its father because at the moment, it is floundering. It should be essential viewing; instead, it is watchable at best.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: Rendition

What a difference a week makes.

Last week's edition of Torchwood was good. It boded well for the following nine episodes. Sadly, that quality has not been maintained into the second week.

Don't get me wrong, this episode was not a disaster. A few of the plot strands were geuninely interesting. The Danes strand is getting more and more interesting. The idea that he could gain redemption through blubbing on TV is interesting although not 100% convincing, especially given he is a murdering paedophile who said that his victim did not run fast enough. I appreciate that the world has changed with the suspension of death, but I'm not quite convinced that the public would be willing to forgive such a character so quickly. What is interesting, though, is what Danes's agenda is and precisely where this strand is going. What is behind his repetance? What are the implications of this sudden popularity? Furthermore, while the idea of the CIA turning on its own is hardly original, it was done with an element of panache particularly as Esther Drummond realised that her own organisation was setting her up. Her escape from her employers was well done - I mean, it was clear that she was always going to escape, but her initiative was good to see. It showed a quiet resourcefulness that the show as a whole could do with more of. And the full implications of the "miracle" are being admirably expanded upon - the rise of drug resistant disease and the need to change the way medicine operates being two good examples. In fact, what was happening in the US was far more interesting that what was happening to Torchwood.

Indeed, whoever said it was far more interesting to travel than to arrive clearly never saw this episode of Torchwood. The flight was about six hours long and despite the episode being circa 50 minutes long, I could swear to God that I was there for every minute of that flight. The plane sequences were boring and nothing more than padding. The whole Jack-being-poisoned-thing added nothing to the story - we already knew that he is mortal and therefore vulnerable at the same time as knowing that the CIA is against him and Torchwood - and ended up with a craptacular sequence when Gwen and Rex did an A-Team style thing to combat the Arsenic poisoning. Furthermore, the cheap shots about the male flight attendant were not funny and drifted towards casual homophobia. And what happened when they got to the USA? They immediately escaped. All the flight stuff seemed to be about was making their journey to North America more interesting. And in that, it failed.

I hope that the series picks up - and a big way in which it could do that is to get the Torchwood team to engage with the ongoing action. Because as things stand Torchwood are the weakest link, and if things continue as they are, then the sad reality is that Miracle Day will end up being a better series if it didn't have Jack and his posse in it.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: The New World

Looking forward to an episode of Torchwood is to take something of a gamble. It can either be very good - awesome, gripping fantasy entertainment - or half-baked sci-fi that mistakes humping for making a show truly adult. So the start of Miracle Day provoked some rather ambivalent feelings in me - especially since it is a co-production with a US company. After all, the last time a Doctor Who (and Torchwood remains part of that world) was produced in part by a company from the US it didn't go tremendously well.

So what to make of The New World? Well, it works. It is much more in the vein of the great Children of Earth than the reprehensibly poor Meat. Part of this is the pace - because we have a story spread over numerous episodes rather than just 45 minutes installments, the characters and the plot lines have time to breathe and it doesn't all feel desperately rushed. It also allows a sense of anticipation to build up as you start to wonder where different plot strands are going. In particular, the Oswald Danes (a strikingly repellent character if ever there was one) storyline seems intriguing, and I wonder where that plot strand will go and how far they will be willing to push the envelope with it. Of course, the slower pace means Gwen gets nothing to really do for the first half hour, but that's not a major problem - the American characters have the potential to be far more interesting than the UK ones.

Furthermore, the central conceit of the show - that everyone has stopped dying - initially appears to be less threatening than the coming of the 456. But the episode works hard to show why it is not as positive as it might first appear, and why the absence of death will actually create a dystopia rather than an utopia. The episode subtly suggests that things are radically changing - possibly forever. Whatever problems there may be in RTD's writing, you have to hand it to him - he certainly thinks on a grand scale.

And then we have Captain Jack. Ah, the Captain - a mixed blessing it ever there was one. He has the potential to be a great character, but prior to this episode he has always been something of a superman, and just as bland. Here, as a man who shouldn't exist anymore, he is forced to rely on his wits and cunning, rather than his reputation and that of Torchwood. I particularly like Jack pretending to be a FBI agent to investigate - not least because he uses a pseudonym that is a subtle, yet great, nod to the fans. And I can't help but love the moment when Jack turns up in Wales to rescue Gwen et al. It's more than a bit cheesy but fuck it. It's cheese that works.

But this is more than just Jack's show - the character of Rex, for example, is a great addition to the Torchwood universe. He's determined, ruthless, intelligent and questioning - at the same time as being obsessive to the point of being very funny. His departure from hospital, and his complete ignorance of the UK, is nicely handled in a way that is humourous but not too obtrusive ("you mean I've got to pay for this bridge? Goddamned Wales"/"Wales is insane!"). If this is Jack's last stand, then Rex deserves to become the new star of the show.

And the episode also has some striking images - the nightmare that is the man who was blown to a pulp but still lives (and then was decapitated at Captain Jack's request) is a great example of this. Not all of it works of course - the missile sequences are just poor CGI. But the whole thing has the feel of quite a big budget production, and Torchwood deserves a big budget.

Is it truly great? Well no - not yet. But it feels like it has thought out, properly plotted and is genuinely intriguing. I want to know why Jack is vulnerable again, why Torchwood as a concept was sent to the CIA at the same time that death stopped, and just what has caused the immortality gripping, and threatening to destroy the world. So congratulations to RTD and the Torchwood crew - you've avoided the potential curse of Torchwood, and it looks like you've got a hit on your hands.

Resurrecting the dead.

Death is always a difficult thing. If you lose someone close to you, or learn of the death of someone you respect, then it may be as difficult to come to terms with that death and the many hurtful feelings that hit you in the aftermath. Some people, of course, use the death of some important to them to change things. You might try to change the law. Or you might campaign to let people know about a particular hazard or lifestyle that you feel contributed to the death. However, campaigning for the return to life of a dead person seems to be a little silly. Particularly when that person is fictional. 

Yeah. Ianto Jones was a friendly, nice character. He was designed to be. And his death was very moving. Yeah, it was designed to be. But really, don't people have better things to do than try to argue for the resurrection of a main character of an apparently moribund TV show? I mean, the sun is shining outside the window (here, briefly), so perhaps they could go for a walk or something. 

Of course, it is far easier to achieve the resurrection of a fictional person than a real one. You'd have more chance of getting Adric back into Doctor Who than Patrick Troughton. Sadly. But, whilst this campaign is having a positive side effect, it would destroy a lot of the drama of Children of Earth if Ianto Jones came back from the dead. 

Perhaps I should start a campaign named "Leave Ianto Jones Alone". But even I have better things to do with my time...

Torchwood - Children Of Earth

Earlier in the week, I had a bit of a pop at Torchwood. You know, as a way of welcoming in the new series. Still, this has been a good week of television (well, for the five hours that Torchwood was on for, anyway). And many of the objections I’ve had in the past to the series evaporated this week.

The reason seems obvious to me. The increase in quality is linked to the decrease in the number of episodes. Plus RTD has a fraction of the usual number of Doctor Who episodes this year, so it feels like there has finally the focus on Torchwood it perhaps always deserved.

This focus allowed the creative team to decide on what the tone of the story should be. The more gleeful, immature sexual focus of the earlier seasons disappeared this time. Instead, the writers focussed on creating real relationships for the characters rather than just casual fucking for cheap jokes. The pinnacle of this was Captain Jack and Ianto’s relationship. It transformed from being a chance for John Barrowman to get his clothes off every other episode into a touching, clumsy fledgling relationship. Which made the ending to Day Four even more affecting.

And they also decided on the tone for the series – dark as pitch. There was much talk when Torchwood launched about it being a paranoid thriller and finally, it became so for the first time over the past few evenings. It has been hinted throughout the modern Doctor Who series that the government isn’t to be trusted (particularly not when run by Harold Saxon). However, in this story that feeling went into overdrive. The civil service was perfectly happy to kill and kill again to hide a secret for the past. Even more dispiriting, in an odd sort of a way, were the leaders, personified by the oily, self-centred Gordon Brown. Sorry, sorry, Brian Green. He wasn’t directly evil, just a coward more focussed on himself than anything else. And as a result he was just as dangerous as the Master. He was willing to sell 10% of the Children of Earth to violent aliens at the bat of an eyelid. In power, making decisions that affect millions – and his most pressing concern was his own longevity in power. It was great when Green got his comeuppance – although it was slightly disappointing that he didn’t die in hideous pain.

Also, characters went through full story arcs and developed across the five nights of the story. The most noticeable example was Captain Jack – by the end of the programme, after the death of his lover and his grandson – finally seemed to have lost a lot of the occasionally grating bravado that has been central to his character. He was broken by compromises and choices he’d made in the past. We finally had a contrite Captain Jack Harkness – something I thought we would never see.

And other characters went through a transformation to. Perhaps one of the most emotionally involved storylines was around John Frobisher. He went from middle-of-the-road civil servant to ordering deaths by the end of the first episode. But rather than being a heartless government drone, he developed further. He became an ambassador to the stars (literally) and tried to find a solution to the 456 problem. And then, finally, he was broken by the cowardly Green ordering him to give his children to the 456. And he took drastic, heart-breaking action. The only action he could take. Yet at the same time, the deaths of his family and his own suicide where the result of his own actions across the whole story. It is a measure of how good Peter Capaldi’s performance was that by the end of Day One I’d stopped seeing him as Malcolm Tucker. And therefore stopped wondering when he was going to start swearing.

It was also exceptionally well directed. Euros Lyn was able to get moments of almost excruciating tension from what were scenes of a civil servant talking to a fish tank, and gave the whole series a cinematic, gripping feel.

Yet there were flaws. It's fair to say the 456 themselves were well realised. The tank, the smoke, the booming voice. However the responses of the world leaders to them weren’t totally convincing. The 456 had made the children speak in unison. They made the humans build something in Thames House. Then they killed the people in Thames House. And that is it. Sure, it is pretty unsettling. But is it enough to warrant giving up 10% of the world’s children? After all, within the continuity of the Doctor Who series, this is a human race who, just months before, had faced the Daleks dragging the whole Earth across the universe and then setting to work on invading that planet. Maybe the human race is now paranoid, and prepared to surrender to any alien threat at the slightest sign of force. I guess what I would have liked to have seen would be more of what the 456 were capable of. As if was, the occupant of the fish tank came across as the Slightly Tetchy Chunder Monster.

Furthermore, the story still felt very padded out, despite the number of episodes in the series being reduced by half. The cliff-hanger to Day One took fifteen minutes to set up – to the point where I just wanted Captain Jack to explode so the story could move on. Likewise, as atmospheric as it was, the first half of Day Five was pure padding before Captain Jack was released from his cell. And pretty much the whole of Day Two was padding that could have been condensed into 10 minutes. We didn’t need 60 minutes of the Torchwood team trying to find Captain Jack. In fact, it reminds me of one of those Doctor-lite episodes of Doctor Who. Which are ok when you have a thirteen episode season. If you have just five episodes, it seems a little contrary to write out your lead character for the best part of one of those episodes.

And finally, the ending to the story. The solution to the 456 problem. It was a little… well, simple. Yes, it cost Captain Jack personally. But turning a signal back on the 456 was too easy. And not epic enough to justify the four and a half hours that went before.

Nevertheless, the sum total was much more than its weakest parts, and the Children of Earth worked. It worked far better than any other Torchwood. The series has found its way. Although quite where they take it now I don’t know. After all, Ianto is dead, Captain Jack is back in the stars and Gwen is racing towards to maternity leave. Torchwood’s finest hour (well, five hours) could also be the end of the programme.

Torchwood - Tonight, 9pm, BBC One. Fingers Cross It Is OK.

As well as being the longest running sci-fi TV series of all time – and the best - Doctor Who can also claim to have one of the best spin-offs of all time. A spin-off that is well-written, well-paced and pitched, and sometimes so sublime that it is better than the original series. But enough about The Sarah Jane Adventures. I’m going to talk about Torchwood this afternoon.

Torchwood is back on our screens this evening – 9pm, BBC One. In fact, it has completed its journey from joke station (BBC Three) through to a key slot on BBC One. Although that isn’t quite enough to please the star, the ever-present John Barrowman:

Barrowman said "We were the most successful show on BBC3, ever. We moved to BBC2 because the ratings were so good, the ratings were great again and we were beating shows that had been on BBC2 for a long time. The decision was made to go to BBC1, and then we were cut. From 13 episodes down to five.

"The five episodes, the miniseries as I call it, are incredible, I have no doubt about that, but personally, I felt like we were being punished. Other shows move from BBC3 and 2 to 1, and they don't get cut. So why are we? It felt like every time we moved we had to prove ourselves."

Hmm. Now, it is worth nothing that what Barrowman says is spot on. Whatever station Torchwood has found itself on, it has tended to do very well. In terms of viewers. However, unlike both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, it has struggled to be an artistic success. The tone of the series has always been all over the place, and – as much as it pains me to admit it – it sometimes comes across as crass, poor and just plain disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some superb episodes. The creepy as hell From Out Of The Rain, the poignant Out Of Time, the clumsy yet moving Captain Jack Harkness and the gleefully energetic and utterly insane Something Borrowed are great bits of genre television. Less effective, but still watchable, are Small Worlds, the very nasty Countrycide*, the predictable mid-season episode Adam and the faintly touching (in an utterly geeky way) Random Shoes.

Yet the very fact that all these different stories and styles can be part of the same series over the course of just 26 episodes is the problem. You never quite know what you are going to get from Torchwood. Which is also sort of true of Doctor Who. Yet the latter has a mesmerising lead character, whilst Torchwood is headed up by a polysexual version of Roger Moore’s James Bond. Captain Jack works as a sidekick in Doctor Who - however, his ersatz charm and predatory nature is not quite enough to work as the lead character of 13 episodes of TV each year.

And that isn’t even taking into account the poor episodes. The futile Greeks Bearing Gifts, the so macho it is homo-erotic Combat, the moronic Meat and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - all of these would be instantly forgettable, if they weren’t meant to be part of the Doctor Who universe. And at its very worst, you have Adrift - a plodding, over-directed story that manages to make every character in someway unsympathetic. 

Torchwood’s producers make their thought processes very clear. Take Cyberwoman - a passable episode that clearly came from a “wouldn’t it be great if…” conversation within the production team. “Wouldn’t it be great if… we had a Cyberman in the series.” “No, no! A Cyberwoman.” “And… ooo… she’s a woman, so she can show a lot of flesh despite being a Cyber-form.” “And she can, like, create loads of tension in the Torchwood team. Don’t worry, we’ll forget all about that tension in the next episode…”

This all comes down to a failure to set a tone for the series – a style and a background against which all episodes can be judged. More often than not Torchwood feels like a pitch rather than a plot. Yeah, it is the adult version of Doctor Who. But what does that mean? Other than occasional fucking and swearing. At its most jarring, Torchwood feels like soft-porn for geeks. Witness the sex-beastie in Day One. Oh look, there’s sex. And girls snogging. Which has been seen before on some many different programmes - and many different websites -  and as a result just feels moronic here, because there isn’t anything other than a lazier than lazy script to back it all up.

In fact, we see far more mature and adult themes in the main show. Such as in Father’s Day, The Girl In The Fireplace, the wonderful Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Blink and the dark as pitch Midnight. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures had managed a story more adult and more spooky than anything that has been shown as part of Torchwood**.

So I reckon Torchwood’s success comes mainly from the fact that it comes from a more popular – and much better – parent series. And as such, it is lucky that it is still going, let alone on BBC 1. Had Torchwood not been spawned from such a great series, I think – as harsh as it sounds – it would have sunk without a trace, vanishing after its first series. It has been lucky – very lucky - to have graduated to BBC 1 in a core slot. Going down to five episodes is a small sacrifice to achieve that.

Of course I’ll be watching this evening***. Hoping that it is better than it sometimes is, and hoping that it is worthy of the parent series. And also marveling at the fact that a programme that was derided for many years as dead by so many has now managed to propel an erratic, unsatisfactory spin-off into a prime-time slot for the next five nights on the BBC.

*Actually the first episode of Torchwood I actually enjoyed watching.
** Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?, in case you are wondering.
*** Review to follow. At some point.

Children of Earth

A limited amount of Doctor Who this year means I am, as a shameless geek, also liable to get over-excited about Torchwood... Go here for the preview...