Torchwood Miracle Day

 

Finishing my wander down Torchwood memory lane I suppose I should also review Miracle Day.  An Amercian/ BBC Wales co-production it exits in a strange place between Hollywood and Cardiff with Torchwood’s remnants forging an uneasy alliance with Rex Matheson and Esther Drummond of the CIA.  As with Children of Earth there’s one Earth changing back story.  Everyone has ceased to be able to die.  People are still living after having been blown up, squashed in a car crusher and several of the characters have failed to die after being killed yet stay alive.  Chief among these is the child murderer Oswald Danes who is executed on death row after everyone stops being able to die and becomes a weird kind of cult celebrity.  His career is propelled by the sinister and cynical PR lady Jilly Kitzinger who works for a shadowy Mafia like organisation called “the families” about which we learn very little.  So Torchwood takes another wander into its favourite subject matters – death its self and political corruption.  As with Children of Earth soon the government are making cold decisions and splitting people up … this time into Categories 1, 2 and 3…? Sound a bit like Tiers 1, 2 and 3…?  As usual we see the human tragedy through the effect it has on Gwen Cooper’s family.  The 10 episode run seems a little over-long and it sags in places.  And I wonder about the final confrontation …is that crack …actually supposed to look like … a crack?  One wonders what became of many of the US actors in this… not that it’s any of my business. 

This is the end.  Torchwood never came back to TV but one has to wonder where you can go from here after a series based entirely around the issue of immortality.  What bigger crisis can humanity face than no one dying?  And it’s a cliché but "no one seeming to remember the last times the entire world was held to ransom" is getting a bit silly now.  Russell T Davies kind of acknowledged this in a running joke in Doctor Who that humans are somehow wired to not remember and Moffat insinuated that the fabric of reality its self is changed by the Doctor which may explain no one remembering but … then again when the Daleks don’t invade earth in 2160 I guess we’ll have to admit it is all nonsense anyway which …after all it all is.  But having stories that affect the entire world takes one away from the feeling of “well that could happen” that you get from stories like Horror of Fang Rock.  I dunno.  But where do you go from here? 

Backwards to Children of Earth

Further Back to Series 1 and 2