Torchwood: Children of Earth, Day Five
JESUS FUCK, RTD.
TAKE IT EASY ON US WHY DON'T YOU. IT CERTAINLY COULD HAVE BEEN BLEAKER/DARKER/MORE GUTWRENCHINGLY DEPRESSING COULDN'T IT?
OK, this is where I'm thinking: RTD may have missed seasons 1 and 2 of Torchwood. This is not the same show. And while I'm not arguing that it was good, hard, difficult, interesting, it was also-- just bloody horrible. Completely not the same utterly cracktastic scifi show. (Apart from of course, children=crack, "you're shooting up our children".)
This was the only episode where the moments of levity utterly failed and felt forced and out of character and tonally disjointed.
Hell, Day Five wasn't even the same show as Day One.
While it's interesting to see a moral comeuppance, a reckoning, it went from whizzbang, fun, exciting thriller to a desperately dark and hopeless place; despite its preoccupation with death, Torchwood has always contained some hope, some aspiration, "the end is where we start from". But what was the message of this finale? The awful, the horrible, the monstrous is inescapable. It is human nature. We are vile and shameful creatures, we do not deserve saving, and those that try to challenge that reckoning are brutally cut down or left behind. "We stand up to them"-- apparently, no, we don't. There's no point in doing so. We are powerless and hopeless and worthless, and our only true option is to turn our faces away, to turn inward to our little lives, or to run.
"All the wonder that you could never see"-- nope, actually, it's a graveyard, a mortuary. Our governments cannot be trusted, our people cannot hope to stand up to them, and our heroes are soaked in the blood of their kin.
That's not dark, or brave, or subversive-- it's nullity. It's nihilistic. It's awful. Torchwood and Doctor Who have always tried to be about the wonder of the universe, "the things I've seen", each one of our lives becoming just that little bit bigger. But this? This is about insignificance and powerlessness. That's-- not prime time TV. And it's certainly not a moral conclusion that I can find any true worth in beyond a superficial desire to shock and frighten.
In conclusion: I was right. RTD was certain that there would be no S4 when he set out to make this. Ratings might have proved him otherwise-- but where can they go from here?