Torchwood: Miracle Day - ho hum
Caught up with the last episode of Torchwood tonight. I enjoyed it, kind of, but I'm not jumping up and down loving it. And that's a bit sad.
My overall reaction to the series is sort of mixed. I kind of enjoyed Miracle Day in parts - but the promise of the first episode, which I thought was pretty strong, did not play out across the series. There were some powerful moments (Vera's death, for instance) but some deep flaws too. It all solved itself a bit too easily; Esther was obviously the team member set up to die, having completed her Journey from Innocent Wallflower to Tough Secret Agent Gal; and I totally called both Jack and Rex's resurrection from the moment the blood thing was set up. And I don't buy that it's Jack's blood which makes him immortal, it's the Time Vortex, dammit, and Rose and Bad Wolf and stuff, and I don't want him to have someone to share immortality with. He's more fun jetting around on his own.
I did think the performances were solid across the board though. Eve Myles was superb throughout and of the supporting cast I particularly liked Lauren Ambrose (even if she ended up being a bit pointless). Shame that there wasn't more scope for using Kai Owen and Tom Price - I miss the Welshness of old TW.
Oddly I don't mind that there wasn't much alien stuff. Some people have commented that alien stuff was the essence of TW; there I disagree. Jack Harkness is the essence of TW and the craziness he seems to draw around him. He's a magnet for chaos in many ways. What I think Miracle Day could have done, which was what CoE did so magnificently, was use the chaos and the weirdness as the magnifying glass through which you can view humanity. Miracle Day alluded to that a lot, but it was all on the surface and never got below it really (what happened to the rest of the people on the medical panels? Why did people like the horrid Colin agree to run the horrific camps? Why did more people not rise up against the camps?) Unlike in Miracle Day, where you had Lois and Bridget and Johnson and Rhiannon to show different facets of reaction, there wasn't anyone here really to do that. Nobody was playing the everyman because all the characters were invested in what was going on at quite a deep level. And I didn't care so much about the supporting characters (except perhaps Vera, and she died too early) as I did about Frobisher, for instance. In CoE's finale I sobbed. In Miracle Day's finale I giggled quite a lot, gasped when they shot Esther, and said "yeah, I knew it" at the end. So it was kind of enjoyable but very much on a surface level. Unlike CoE, or any episode of Doctor Who, for instance, I don't particularly have any urge to go back and rewatch. That's a shame.
My overall reaction to the series is sort of mixed. I kind of enjoyed Miracle Day in parts - but the promise of the first episode, which I thought was pretty strong, did not play out across the series. There were some powerful moments (Vera's death, for instance) but some deep flaws too. It all solved itself a bit too easily; Esther was obviously the team member set up to die, having completed her Journey from Innocent Wallflower to Tough Secret Agent Gal; and I totally called both Jack and Rex's resurrection from the moment the blood thing was set up. And I don't buy that it's Jack's blood which makes him immortal, it's the Time Vortex, dammit, and Rose and Bad Wolf and stuff, and I don't want him to have someone to share immortality with. He's more fun jetting around on his own.
I did think the performances were solid across the board though. Eve Myles was superb throughout and of the supporting cast I particularly liked Lauren Ambrose (even if she ended up being a bit pointless). Shame that there wasn't more scope for using Kai Owen and Tom Price - I miss the Welshness of old TW.
Oddly I don't mind that there wasn't much alien stuff. Some people have commented that alien stuff was the essence of TW; there I disagree. Jack Harkness is the essence of TW and the craziness he seems to draw around him. He's a magnet for chaos in many ways. What I think Miracle Day could have done, which was what CoE did so magnificently, was use the chaos and the weirdness as the magnifying glass through which you can view humanity. Miracle Day alluded to that a lot, but it was all on the surface and never got below it really (what happened to the rest of the people on the medical panels? Why did people like the horrid Colin agree to run the horrific camps? Why did more people not rise up against the camps?) Unlike in Miracle Day, where you had Lois and Bridget and Johnson and Rhiannon to show different facets of reaction, there wasn't anyone here really to do that. Nobody was playing the everyman because all the characters were invested in what was going on at quite a deep level. And I didn't care so much about the supporting characters (except perhaps Vera, and she died too early) as I did about Frobisher, for instance. In CoE's finale I sobbed. In Miracle Day's finale I giggled quite a lot, gasped when they shot Esther, and said "yeah, I knew it" at the end. So it was kind of enjoyable but very much on a surface level. Unlike CoE, or any episode of Doctor Who, for instance, I don't particularly have any urge to go back and rewatch. That's a shame.