Torchwood: Miracle Day - Not So Miraculous!

First of all, I want to apologize for disappearing all summer. I got very busy with work and studying for the MPRE (which I passed by the way) . Then school started and well here we are at almost the middle of September. And I promise, in the next few days I will post a round up of my Summer TV Rewind of series 1 of "Robin Hood" over on More TV, Please !

Anyway, last night Torchwood aired the series 4 finale on Starz. After watching the conclusion, I felt the need to do an overall reaction to the series (if you pop over to More TV, Please!, you'll see that I blogged episode 7 "Immortal Sins" for Jen). Be warned, SPOILERS abound for the finale.

***

Way back when they first announced Torchwood was coming back, I was excited. We would have Jack and Gwen back on our screens. Then they said it would be set in America and have two American team members. I grew skeptical. As sad as it makes me to say this, I'm afraid "Miracle Day" was not miraculous for me.

If I had to pick one overarching problem with series 4, it would have to be the storytelling. I believe the show suffered, rather than benefited, from the enhanced budget and production values. Sure the explosions looked good but the story being told was not as compelling as the writers (yes I'm looking at you RTD) would have liked to believe. The premise, the entire world becomes immortal one day when no one dies, in and of itself had the potential to be amazing. In execution, it was lacking. We had more than half the series full of episodes about political and Big Pharma drama instead of fighting aliens. In fact, if you are as big a fan of Torchwood and Doctor Who as I am, you will be outraged to know there was no alien behind the miracle at all. Just a big chasm running through the middle of the world (which made me wonder whether the hole in "A Whole in the World" in Angel season 5 was somehow related). I think Torchwood worked better either with the format of series 1 and 2 (with more monster of the week episodes) or the mini-series format with a shorter episode run. Children of Earth was so compelling and mind-blowingly intense because it was crammed into a shorter span of episodes and it was mainly nonstop action and craziness.

Miracle Day by comparison was drawn out. We could have done without the entire PhiCorps nonsense. In the end it really wasn't all that important. Yes, The Families had their fingers in a lot of pie, including Big Phama but still, they could have shown that in a much abbreviated form. The same could be said for the overflow camps. We understand that no one dying means the economy goes to shit. But we didn't need to see people burned alive. We really didn't.

In addition to sub-par storytelling, I found the new characters of Rex and Esther to be poor substitutes for well...any of the prior Torchwood team. I'll probably never forgive RTD for killing Ianto but even Tosh and Owen wee preferable to clueless Esther and over-the-top Rex. I didn't feel, even by the end of the series, that I'd connected with them as people who I cared about. When Esther got shot, I honestly wasn't surprised or felt that I cared that she died. It was more, okay who of the team will get killed this series. RTD has a penchant (much like Mr. Whedon) for killing off characters. And perhaps the stupidest part of the whole resolution of "Miracle Day" involved Rex transfusing Jack's blood so that when the miracle reverted, he became immortal like Jack. I will concede that perhaps what Rose did to Jack in "The Parting of the Ways" probably affected him physically but they never said his blood was what made him immortal. Also, I dislike Rex enough that him being immortal now just pisses me off.

Now, the series did have a few high points. We got some shout-outs and throw-backs to prior Torchwood members. In the pilot, Jack goes by the name Owen Harper to get in to see the bomber that got charred. And we had several references to Ianto (usually when Jack was dealing with some hot guy he'd slept with). And we had some deepening of Jack and Gwen's relationship, especially in "Immortal Sins". Even in the finale, we saw how close Jack and Gwen had become over the years. She was willing to kill him and he willingly let her do it to save the world.

If Starz orders a fifth series (and RTD is around/available to write it) I hope they do a shorter order and for god sake, have aliens in the damn thing! I really think "Miracle Day" could have been done just fine from Cardiff, even if it wasn't back in the Hub. Needless to say, if I feel the need to indulge in some top-notch Torchwood, I will be going back to old favorites like "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and "Captain Jack Harkness" before I venture into "Miracle Day" reruns.