Has Torchwood lived too long?

                So Torchwood: Miracle Day…bad times. See it wasn’t always like this, in season one Torchwood was just stupid. It took a lesson from Enterprise in how to be more mature, i.e. by being more juvenile (sex addict aliens and the like) but you could see hints of a good show underneath. Season two…well I didn’t really watch season two, lost interest, nuff said but in 2009 something weird happened. See 2009 was the year I really began paying attention to the reviews around TV, Games, Comics and when I stumbled across all the praise for Children of Earth, the five-part Torchwood mini-series, I was flabbergasted. Suddenly the show that was described as ‘Scooby-doo with cumshots’ was being hailed as the science fiction event of the year.

 And you know what? It earned that. Children of Earth was a gripping science fiction thriller intermingled with heartbreaking human drama. While it’s premise may have been that aliens were using human children as beer helmets it was still a horrifying moral choice, excellently paced with standout performances and a shockingly believable insight into the lengths our government would go to in order to protect itself. So when it was announced that the show would return with another miniseries helmed once again by creator Russell T Davies and backed by and American studio, I was pumped. I was skeptical, but also excited.

                One of the things that excited me most about Miracle Day was the premise. One day nobody dies, people still get sick, they still get injured but no one dies. The boost in the human population causes a massive drain of resources, food, water, medicine and soon the human race will no longer be viable. I’ve often considered how most contemporary issues are caused by population, issues like pollution, unemployment, the waiting times in hospital all caused by an excess of people. Like it or not we need people to die to survive as a race. So how would the human race fare when you took death out of the equation?

                Well according to Miracle Day we’d handle it pretty darn well we’d just (Spoiler Warning) bung ‘em in the oven. Towards the end of the series there’s a massive two month leap into the deathless world and nothing’s changed. Where were the larger implications? Where were the two mile cues for water and food rations? Where were the public protests at the Category One camps? Where’s the suffering, the looting, the public backlash? Russell T. Davies I know stuff like this is expensive to show but seriously, make it happen. Cut out a few explosions, redress extras, hell maybe even call upon your fanbase to help but we need to see the impact this would have on the world. 

                One of the biggest problems with Miracle Day is its inability to keep up pacing through its ten-part structure. One of the issues with a mini-series is that everything has to be condensed as much as possible each episode has to take a dramatic turn and move the story along significantly. So why do so many episodes here feel like padding? The series kicks off great, introducing the conflict, dragging our characters in and throwing in plenty of action. Even the second episode keeps things going well even though it’s largely set during a ten hour plane flight. But then the plot really seems to meander through inconsequential territory. Even the episodes set at the death camps go on for far too long and never amount to much in terms of the big picture. A good mystery should be like a jigsaw where each piece is rationed out one at a time. Logically each episode should provide you with a nugget of information that makes the audience feel like they’re getting closer to the truth. Here though we spend entire episodes feeling like the plot is going nowhere. Even the death camps, as terrifying a prospect as they may be, feel like merely a symptom when we should be looking at the cause.

                Then there’s the characters, first off Gwen and good old Captain Jack Harkness are great. John Barrowman and Eve Myles are obviously having a lot of fun being back in action and really bring home the emotional conflict between them. Unfortunately the new characters do not fare so well, CIA agent Rex Matheson’s specialty seems to be either collapsing or barking orders. He constantly undermines Torchwood at every turn yet does little of value to the plot himself. And the cherry on top is that he's not even particularly interesting to watch. Esther Drummond seems to be the most human of the group a CIA analyst caught up in the whole thing and now out of her depth. However given the scale of the situation her inability to cope feels less like a fish out of water and more like the pathetic whining of a scared little girl. She never grows as a character throughout the entire series and what’s worse is that she’s seen has having some romantic fixation on Rex. Needless to say the two share little chemistry with almost no scenes showing them as friends as well as colleagues.

                It’s not all bad though. PR mastermind and satanic redhead Jilly Kitzinger may be as inconsequential as half the series but she’s always fun to watch, even if she’s saddled with the disturbingly uninteresting Oswald Danes. On that note, Jesus Bill Pullman, way to phone it in! As a child murderer who survived his own execution thanks to the Miracle, Oswald Danes was hyped up as a Lector-esque artisan killer. But Pullman never sells the role, he's neither frightening nor electrifying and it's made all the worse when the scene demands him to show some semblance of energy. Finally the one good note is CIA bigwig Allen Shapiro played by John de Lancie best known for his role on Star Trek: The Next Generation as the omnipotent Q. While there isn’t much to the character he certainly is entertaining to watch and gets the ball rolling, even if it’s too little too late.

                I do realise that writing this review after the show’s been broadcast will seem a little redundant. Anyone who’s seen Miracle Day will have seen it and BBC Wales along with Starz Entertainment are going to have all the info to decide to keep going. All I can say is that, if Torchwood does return, we need to wait. Just ignore it, unplug the TV, smash your broadband router, just wait until the reviews come out and see if it’s any good. If it’s good, enjoy it. If it’s bad then forget about it. After all for a series about immortality, Miracle Day might be the best evidence that Torchwood has lived too long. Maybe Children of Earth was a last death rattle that got it on life support and if so it might be time to pull the plug.