Category: Torchwood
Torchwood episode 33: Rendition (21/7/2011)
‘I’m Welsh.’ Less consciously epic than the first episode, but still a step up from much earlier Torchwood. This focuses on Jack and Gwen’s eventful extradition to the USA, where released child-killer Danes is now becoming a media darling following a dramatic TV apology. Like a lot of Torchwood, there’s a studied edginess to some of this – can a paedophile be rehabilitated and transcend his crimes? But so far it’s interesting.
Torchwood episode 32: The New World (14/7/2011)
‘He’s the second one tonight. DOAs who just won’t die.’ Torchwood’s transfer to the US Starz network comes with a visibly increased budget (and Bill Pullman) which not only leads to better effects (the grisly aftermath of the suicide assassin) and action sequences (the helicopter battle on a Welsh beach), but an international flavour and a greatly increased sense of scale. Amusingly, given Doctor Who’s own experience of becoming a US co-production, it also begins with a character being rushed into ER and miraculously surviving death.
Torchwood episode 31: Children of Earth – Day Five (10/7/2009)
‘Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame.’ Victory at a terrible cost, so business as usual for Torchwood. It works better than some Doctor Who finales by virtue of being quite so bleak, even if there are strong Turn Left overtones to it (the UK collapsing into martial law as people are rounded up and bussed away). Clearly the murder of Jack’s grandson for the sake of all the millions of children being harvested by the 456 is more extreme than Donna choosing to sacrifice her own life to save the “proper” timeline, but in the end it all boils down to the same thing.
Torchwood episode 30: Children of Earth – Day Four (9/7/2009)
‘There’s nothing we can do.’ The first half of this episode is Torchwood Gogglebox, as the team watch the negotiations with the 456 and the British Government’s response. At first, they bargain with the lives of the easily forgotten: failed asylum seekers, one child for every million people. When the aliens reject the offer, and stick to their demands for 325,000 kids, the discussion descends into squabbling over exemptions and throwing the underprivileged under the bus. That’s one way to level up, I suppose.
Torchwood episode 29: Children of Earth – Day Three (8/7/2009)
‘We want your children. We will take your children.’ The first half of this episode is a mash-up of various popular TV shows of the 2000s. The Torchwood team turning out their pockets and going out to add to the stash is Hustle, Johnny’s own hustling is like something from Shameless, and the scenes set in the corridors of Whitehall come from any number of political thrillers (although Capaldi’s presence inevitably recalls The Thick of It). And is Hub 2 the same warehouse the Doctor, Jack and Martha hid out in during The Sound of Drums?
Torchwood episode 28: Children of Earth – Day Two (7/7/2009)
‘If you’re the good guys, who am I working for and why do they want you dead?’ The 456 remain noises off in an episode that focuses on Torchwood as fugitives, fleeing a conspiracy to take them off the board ahead of the aliens’ arrival. This makes for a gripping interlude as Gwen and Rhys hide out, Ianto makes covert contact with his family, Jack demonstrates his most remarkable restorative powers yet, and Lois flirts with becoming Torchwood’s Deep Throat.
Torchwood episode 27: Children of Earth – Day One (6/7/2009)
‘I can survive anything.’ Almost a different show, this feels less like a sexy version of Fringe and more like a 21st Century reimagining of Quatermass, with a Nigel Kneale-ish streak of brutality. The cold open, children encountering what looks like an alien spaceship in 1960s Scotland, flips to present-day Cardiff and Gwen going about her business while around her kids on the way to school suddenly freeze and without much preamble we’re straight into the story.
Doctor Who episode 766: Journey’s End (5/7/2008)
‘This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.’ The cliffhanger resolution sets the tone for the episode. The Doctor regenerating into himself is a neat trick that cleverly avoids having to deliver on the implication of the previous episode. And all the way through, RTD pulls off similar feints: ‘Everlasting death for the most faithful companion’ becomes “Donna gets a mind wipe”; Rose is reunited with the Doctor forever – except it’s a meta-crisis duplicate. The Children of Time come together at the end, only to stand around and watch while the Doctor/Donna saves the day. There’s something vaguely unsatisfactory about this – not exactly the audience being cheated, but being given less than expected.
Doctor Who episode 765: The Stolen Earth (28/6/2008)
‘Someone tried to move the Earth once before, a long time ago…’ The closest Doctor Who has come to one of the Marvel Avengers movies, as the ‘Children of Time’ assemble. At the time, this was true event television – possibly the last time my whole family watched TV together. Even my mum, permanently sniffy about the series, was drawn in. Years later, it’s easy to pick flaws with this. The TARDIS zipping about gives an illusion of movement that’s not really present in the script, which unfolds as a series of scenes on the guest stars’ stock sets: Sarah Jane in her attic, Torchwood in the Hub. Martha at least gets to teleport from New York to her mother’s front room, but this is a way from the vertical chases of Army of Ghosts, or the thriller elements of The Sound of Drums.
Torchwood episode 26: Exit Wounds (4/4/2008)
‘It’s always the same: nobody cares until you tie them up.’ On the one hand, it’s much better than End of Days, with some genuine stakes that flow from story ideas seeded through earlier episodes: Jack’s relationship with his brother; Owen and Tosh, even Rhys and Andy. The return of Captain John provides a link to the beginning of the series, and Marster’s performance is more impressive as he takes John from being a sniggering chaos monkey to something more nuanced and sympathetic.
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