Torchwood Miracle Day

In terms of plot, pathos, build-up, expectation and good old fashioned story telling. The Last Season of Torchwood Children of earth was really going to be hard to top.

So instead of going back to the classic series formula Russell T Davis and co decided to up the ante, make Torchwood a genuine trans-Atlantic spectacular set both in Wales and America and an American co production. Theoretically with the generous injections of cash (and the writing talents of former Buffy/Angel/Firefly writer Jane Espenson) this entailed and the options of filming in America and using known American stars this should have made Torchwood bigger and better than ever.

But the problem here isn’t the production values. The characters that are left from the original series are Gwen, her long suffering husband Reece, Captain Jack and……oh and that’s it. The formula for the original Torchwood was simple; Captain Jack was its immortal brain, Janto was its heart, Owen was its genitals, Tosh was its eyes and ears and Gwen was …..I dunno, what…Liver? Appendix?  What’s an organ that’s always getting into trouble and cheating on its boyfriend?

 Without those dynamics whilst introducing new characters that aren’t very good means that this Torchwood is behind the eight ball from the start.

The set up for Miracle Day is simple.  People on earth have stopped dying and are becoming crazy mixed up zombies…sort of. Whilst you don’t die, there seems to be little to no zombification going on and even less clamoring for brains. People are just not dying. No-one knows why but the real world ramifications of this are explored…to a point. The world’s population is skyrocketing, demand for pain relief is through the roof. The Torchwood team is getting back together (such as they are) but in a re-run of Children of Earth, powers that be want them stopped and put out of commission. Also Captain Jack seems to be not immortal anymore.  Hrm... I wonder if that will be important to the plot?

Enter Agent  Rex Matherson and his protégé Ester Drummond.  Agent Matherson is a hardnosed detective who hasn’t got time for any of that weird stuff and isn’t a very nice person. Involved in a car crash that should have killed him obviously being made immortal will make him a better person right? Or at least a more likeable character. Right?

The addition of a plethora of actors famous for sci-fi series like John De Lancie (Q from Startrek TNG), Nana Visitor (Kira Narice from Star Trek DS9) and C. Thomas Howell (Soul Man) make things a little more interesting but the overall feeling here is that this is a good idea strung out to too many episodes, consulting with too many writers and there’s a lot of filler here.  And then when you get to the end it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (especially what happens to Rex).  

Special Features:

There’s some making of’s and commentary on two episodes (1 and 10) as well as the I-Tunes introductions ahead of each episode which for the most part entails Jack Barrowman and Russell T Davis yelling at you about what the episode your about to watch contains.

There is also a “Motion Comic” which is apparently jargon for “Unbelievably Bad Animation” and even the fact that it stars Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) can’t save it. (I couldn’t get all the way through it and I couldn’t work out where it fitted into established Torchwood Chronology.)

Video: Video is crisp and clear all the way through.  It’s the most consistent thing about the series.

Audio:  Audio is presented in glorious 5.1 Dolby digital, which is used sparingly throughout the series, in Episodes one and two you really notice it, in later episodes they seem to have forgotten about it.