47 replies to this topic

[NBooth]

Tyler, on 28 August 2011 - 10:01 PM, said:

NBooth, on 28 August 2011 - 08:36 PM, said:

And when that guy we've not seen for several episodes blew himself up because the Family had his family all I could think was how much more powerfully portrayed the morally compromised bureaucrats in Children of Earth were.

Do you mean Newman? I wasn't quite clear on why that happened. But now that you mention it, I do remember him being in league with the triangle brigade a ways back. Wow, that feels like it was a really long time ago.

That's the guy. It was all very jumbled, but he blurted out something about how many times he had stopped the Family, but he couldn't this time because they had his. Then he detonated his...wristwatch? It seemed very perfunctory to me.

It does seem like a long time ago; in fact, it seems like most of the interesting stuff (barring the previous episode--which felt like an whole other series) happened in the first couple of episodes, and then everything spiraled out of control. Back at the start everything felt a lot tighter to me. Now it's a baggy monster of a show.

[Tyler]

Last week's episode, "The Gathering," felt kind of like those episodes at the end of Dollhouse when they knew the show was cancelled and they shoved a season worth of story into each hour. The difference, of course, is that Miracle Day was always going to be a 10-episode series, so the issue is poor pacing, rather than unexpected show-ending.

Still, it's nice to see the season arc finally starting to come together.

Is anyone else besides NBooth still watching the show?

[NBooth]

NBooth, on 20 August 2011 - 09:30 AM, said:

OTOH, every clue regarding what's behind "Miracle Day" points in a separate direction--and every single option is incredibly boring. In list form:

Spoiler

• It could be an elaborate plan by Phicorp to control the health industry/make profits off the land sold to construct the camps
  
• It could be an attempt to immortalize the entire human population using Jack's blood--gathered by the three men during the neverending death scene.
  
• It could be aliens who use the overflow of id or jouissance or whatever to power their lives in some way--which has been done before.
  
• It could be a quasi-Masonic conspiracy.

Huh. Looks like I more or less hit the right notes.

Honestly, last night's episode was hardly as much of a letdown as it could have been, but it was certainly not as good as it should have been. Likes:

Spoiler

• I seem to be the only person on earth who likes Rex as a character, but there you go. I'm glad he survived, and I'm interested to see what they do with his immortality should Torchwood return.
  
• Jilly. Just...Jilly.
  
• I think the show did a reasonable job underlining the consequences of reversing the Miracle.

Dislikes:

Spoiler

• So Jack's blood does have a virtue of its own? There's a reversal on all Torchwood lore; Jack became immortal when Rose used the Time Vortex to bring him back to life. His blood shouldn't enter into it.
  
• The transfusion thing shouldn't have worked; Rex should have died--that's how things work, right? Mortal blood means death for Categories 1s--and serious debilitation for Category 2s.
  
• Speaking of which, why didn't Oswald Danes die? He's presumably still pumped full of deadly chemicals.
  
• Come to think of it, as much as Danes as a character had the potential to be really creepy and interesting, he winds up just being underdeveloped.
  
• Wasted plot-threads...Phicorp, Angelo....
  
• The Family is just boring.

So yeah. The season had some good bits--and at least one nearly-perfect episode--but it's basically ten hours of wasted opportunities. Too bad.

[Tyler]

NBooth, on 10 September 2011 - 11:54 AM, said:

Dislikes:

Spoiler

• So Jack's blood does have a virtue of its own? There's a reversal on all Torchwood lore; Jack became immortal when Rose used the Time Vortex to bring him back to life. His blood shouldn't enter into it.

Yeah, my thoughts once I figured out where they were going: "BOOM goes the continuity."

Even though RTD co-wrote the final episode, it seemed really unaware of the Torchwood/Who tradition.

[NBooth]

Tyler, on 10 September 2011 - 10:15 PM, said:

NBooth, on 10 September 2011 - 11:54 AM, said:

Dislikes:

Spoiler

• So Jack's blood does have a virtue of its own? There's a reversal on all Torchwood lore; Jack became immortal when Rose used the Time Vortex to bring him back to life. His blood shouldn't enter into it.

Yeah, my thoughts once I figured out where they were going: "BOOM goes the continuity."

Even though RTD co-wrote the final episode, it seemed really unaware of the Torchwood/Who tradition.

It seemed really unaware of stuff established two episodes before. Jack's said multiple times that his blood has nothing to do with his immortality. If that's no longer the case, one would think Jack would have taken a moment to register that fact--but no. He just takes it, almost from the start of the episode, as an established fact.

[BethR]

Alan Sepinwall seems to think RTD has developed a pattern of confusing bigger with better (with possible exception of Children of Earth). I suppose we have to blame some of this on Starz:

Quote

The season was too far gone for the finale to do much in the way of redeeming it, but we at least could have gone out on an interesting note. Instead, there were lots of explosions, lots of yelling, and very little that held my attention or made me feel anything in the way that, say, some of the sacrifices in "Children of Earth" did. And the epilogue especially put me off. So it turns out this huge world-changing event was just a "trial run" for an even bigger plan on the part of the bad guys? Does anyone (other than Davies) think that what the series needs is to get even bigger?

Most commenters say they won't be back for more.

[NBooth]

That's a good point, but I can kind of see it the other way, too: compared to all of RTD's work that I've seen, including Who, this season seemed much smaller: instead of a universe-threatening Evil or detailed look at corruption in government, we got a boring plot to take over the world. Say what you will about the planet-stealing stuff from the last Tennant season, it had ambition. 'Miracle Day' has precious little of that.

(Nothing sums up this season's lack of ambition/spine/what have you like the fact that the last few episodes have the Torchwood team partnering with the CIA. I realize that "The Man" can't be the bad guy all the time, but there's something so much more safe in the storytelling there than we've seen in "Children of Earth" or even the first season of Torchwood: the enemy is fully external and the whole thing settles into a comfortable "us" versus "them" routine).

Edited by NBooth, 11 September 2011 - 09:13 PM.

[NBooth]

Shockingly enough (not really) the future of Torchwood is in limbo.

Quote

"If there's a pause button, we've pushed the pause button now because we don't know what's happening", he says. "I would love to do a new series and I will play Captain Jack as long as they want me to play Captain Jack, but it's in limbo at the moment and beyond my control."