This shouldn’t be as funny as it is.

“Torchwood: Miracle Day”: The Finale Review (SPOILERS GALORE)

by KYLE ANDERSON on SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

So, Torchwood: Miracle Day is over. That happened.

How do Russell T. Davies and Jane Espenson explain everyone on the planet not being able to die? With a massive, vacuous crevice thing running through the middle of the Earth, of course. That’s what we’ve come to; after nine episodes and plot threads and ideas introduced and dropped almost on a whim, we end with a big sucky vagina-pole that balances life.  Thank you? The episode, entitled fittingly “The Blood Line,” is as big, bombastic, and “emotional” as anything we’ve come to expect from RTD, and indeed most ofTorchwood up to this point. Characters die, truths are uncovered, blood flies through the air in poor-looking CGI shots, and yet by episode’s end, it was essentially status quo. The core of Torchwood, Jack and Gwen, ended up just fine. Most of the big changes happened with the new characters introduced this season, but, at this point, I didn’t care enough about any of them to worry one way or the other.  So, truthfully, what did Miracle Dayaccomplish? At any rate, I suppose we ought to start at the beginning.

The episode opens with a pretty good monologue by Gwen about a memory of her father and what a nice and good man he is and that, once they succeed in reversing The Miracle, he’ll die. This is a nice character moment for Gwen, and Eve Myles does a good job as always; however, the moment is almost ruined by the completely out of place music. This is a complaint I’ve had throughout the series; every time there’s a quiet or dramatic moment, Murray Gold’s score comes in way too loud and usually not in keeping with the tone of the action onscreen. I don’t necessarily blame Gold for this, as he has very little to do with the placement of his music or the final sound mix of the episode, but it has been noticeable for me and, fuck it, the series is over so I’m going gripe about it. Really awful choices in both the scoring and the way it was used in all ten episodes.  There is no quicker way to take someone out of the story than by noticing a piece that doesn’t fit, be it music, cinematography, editing, or otherwise.

The bulk of the rest of the episode follows Rex and Esther in Buenos Aires and Jack, Gwen, and Oswald in Shanghai trying to find “The Blessing,” the aforementioned pussy-rod that goes through the center of the planet. It’s a lot easier to find than they expected, given that a drop of Jack’s blood will point them to the exact location of it. Rex says he’s going to need the help of the CIA for this, though Jack asks him not to reveal any info about Torchwood. Shapiro at the CIA is only all-too-eager to help, and mobilizes some Argentine military backup for them. Unfortunately, the Families’ mole, Charlotte Wills, is still doing her best to mess everything up. She gives away their position and a guy working for the Families blows up most of the military as well as all the samples of Jack’s blood. Luckily, Rex and Esther hadn’t gotten into the transport yet, so they decide to use their perceived deadness to go under the radar, a/k/a they shouldn’t have called the CIA in the fucking first place. Shapiro demands they track the Families’ mole in the Agency using fancy new software they just got. Of course, though, Charlotte knows she doesn’t want to get caught, so she plants a bomb that explodes just as Shapiro and that other analyst guy find out she’s the mole. This made me sad, because I actually really liked the Shapiro character, though he did get one of the best death lines of all time.

Back in Shanghai, the two heroes and the horrible child murderer prepare for what they assume will be their inevitable death. Oswald is oddly afraid of his impending death, despite his assertion to the contrary in episode 3. Oswald says he can see within Jack that he’s done very bad things and that his friends, though they love him most of the time, sometimes are afraid of him.  He asks Jack who he really is, and Jack says that he’s from the future, though he can’t see the outcome of their efforts because time is always changing. He also says he wish Oswald could have seen the things he’s seen so that he’d know how small he’s made his life. Oooh, BURN! Now you’ve really hurt the convicted child molesting murderer’s feelings.

Gwen finds the door to the Blessing in a stereotypical Chinese woman’s kitchen/chicken coop. It scares her and she stops to take a call from Rhys, who has gone with PS Andy to see Gwen’s dad before he’s put in the furnaces. Eventually, they go through the door and find The Blessing, as well as Frances Fisher and Jilly Kitzinger. The plan, on both sides of the globe, is to blow up the area where the Blessing is to make sure the Miracle goes on forever. Essentially, they want to be ones controlling who lives or dies, how they live, where they live, etc. They basically want to be gods. Jilly, who for a minute a few episodes back seemed like the most level-headed person on the show, is now all for total world domination if it means clearing away some of the riff-raff. Over in Argentina, Rex and Esther are caught almost immediately by a bald guy we’ve never seen and a channel of communication is open so that everybody can talk to everybody else.

Okay, so this is how the Blessing works: It calibrates the average lifespan of everyone on Earth using the average life expectancy of the people in Shanghai and Buenos Aires. When they gave the Blessing Jack’s blood from the 1920s, the Blessing recalibrated it to reflect his immortality and changed the Earth’s morphic field.  This morphic field is apparently also the inverter switch that caused Jack to become mortal.  Okay. So, since he’s mortal, Jack reckons his mortal blood flung into the Blessing will reverse things. Oswald straps himself with bombs to ensure that, whatever happens, Jack’s blood goes into the Blessing’s cavernous hatchet wound.  But, oh, silly rabbit, you’d need mortal blood at both ends of the Blessing for it to work. Since all of Jack’s blood samples got blowed up, you’ve failed entirely. But, wait! Rex cuts his finger and his blood goes flying into the Blessing too! What gives? Well, it appears Esther and Rex gave Rex a complete blood transfusion using Jack’s 90-year old blood samples, just in case something like this happened.

That is some pretty amazing forward thinking. It’s also complete bilge. The flashback depicting this amazing transfer of immortal blood with mortal is Rex lying on a couch with a tube and a bag tied to his arm. Is that all it takes to completely desanguinate someone and put different blood in? Oh, he should have died, but luckily The Miracle kept him alive. Fuck you. Okay, so now there’s mortal blood on each side of the thing. Gwen says she’ll shoot Jack to spill his blood, and Rex will do whatever to spill his. Why don’t the Families people just shoot everybody? Or capture them? I mean, I know Oswald’s got explosives tied to him, but this has all been astoundingly easy. Then the bald guy shoots Esther in the chest and says that if Rex will not stop the Miracle, they’ll fix her up and she won’t die because nobody dies. Why doesn’t the bald guy just fucking tackle him? You can’t shoot him because of the blood, but you can try to incapacitate him. He’s on the ground cradling a dying woman, now would be the perfect time to jump on him and tie him up. It’s like Baldie and Frances are completely immobile and only have their powers of persuasion to make sure their century-old life’s work actually happens.

Gwen, being the hardass she is, says nothing has changed and to continue with the plan. So he does. Gwen shoots Jack in the back and Rex pulls off his bandage and all their blood goes flying out in bad CGI again toward the Blessing. Do they really want us to believe that a single piece of cloth held on by tape is keeping an ancient black hole from sucking all of Rex’s blood out? Oh, it was Scotch tape? Then I stand corrected. Stupid. So then there’s an overly dramatic, past-tense voice-over monologue from Gwen saying that all the dying people in the world got a moment of clarity and then all died simultaneously. The caverns they’re in all start rumbling and Gwen and Jilly make for the service elevator while Oswald grabs Frances Fisher and yells about how excited he is to blow himself up so he can see the girl he murdered again when he gets to Hell.  This didn’t sit well for me for a number of reasons. 1) He’s committing a heroic act he didn’t earn, 2) he’s doing the classic “I’m coming home, Mammy!” speech but about a little girl he murdered, 3) he’s implying that the innocent little girl he raped and murdered is going to be in Hell waiting for him, like it’s his reward, and 4) Frances Fisher looks like she’s in no way being held against her will and could easily escape at any time if it were in the script for her to do so.

But, wait! All hope is not lost. Jack’s immortal again and gasps back to life. Gwen and Jilly get into a fistfight in the elevator about whether to leave or get Jack. Gwen clocks Jilly and retrieves Jack. In Buenos Aires, Rex somehow has enough energy to throw the bald guy into the void despite having just gotten all the blood in his body sucked out of him. He collapses next to Esther just as the Argentine military guys come in to save them.  In Shanghai, Gwen and Jack, followed by Jilly, exit the wherever-they-are. Jilly trips and Gwen yells for her just as the whole place goes boom thanks to Oswald. Jilly’s fine and if Gwen were really concerned, she wouldn’t have let a freshly knocked out woman in high heels fend for herself. And where’s the Chinese lady? I hope she got out.

Later, Jilly finds the Family Agent guy and he asks if she wants to help with Plan B.  There’s a funeral for Esther and all the surviving good guys are in attendance as well as Charlotte “The Mole” Wills. Also there is Esther’s crazy-ass sister and her kids. Now that people can die again, I guess she’s magically a fit mother again. After the service, Gwen wonders why Rex was able to be saved but Esther wasn’t. Just then Rex gets a text about who the mole was, which he explains to everyone in the expositoriest dialogue I’ve ever heard. It’s Charlotte, duh. He calls after her and she shoots him in the chest, and then other guys with guns who are there for some reason shoot Charlotte dead. Without even trying to help him, Jack says that Rex is dead. But then he gasps back to life too and his bullet wound heals! WHAAAAAT??? He should have known. Wouldn’t a big clue to his immortality have happened when he DIDN’T HAVE THAT GIANT OPEN WOUND IN HIS CHEST ANYMORE??? I mean, for fuck’s sake.

“The Blood Line” was unfettered ridiculousness from beginning to end, but weirdly, as dumb as it is, I enjoyed watching it as an episode. It was at least entertaining, something that cannot be said for a lot of the episodes of the series. Also, what was the point of episodes 1-6? There was absolutely nothing in those first episodes that connected to the plot, no shocking realizations made that people watching keenly would have picked up on before anyone else. It was literally six episodes of “What if nobody could die?” scenarios and four episodes of incredibly rushed plot.  Everything happened way too conveniently in the plot and, aside from the loss of Gwen’s dad and Esther, there were no real sacrifices made by any of the characters. And so, what, we’re supposed to believe that all of the de-humanizing and ritual-killing laws the government enacted just magically went away and everything was back to normal? The world they spent six long episodes establishing gets blinked away without any repercussions to anyone? That kind of writing is both lazy and irresponsible.

So, it’s over. I don’t have to watch it anymore, and neither do you. Miracle Day will go down as a sort of return to form for the Torchwood series, having taken the melodramatic elements people seem to like about the first two series and the global dilemma aspect from Children of Earth and put them together.  I like the idea of Torchwood and its component parts a lot more than I like the actual execution of it.  Ultimately, I hoped for more, but sort of got what I paid for.

-Kanderson will sort of miss Torchwood. He’ll get over it if you follow him on TWITTAH

“Doctor Who”: “The Girl Who Waited” Review (SPOILERS)

by KYLE ANDERSON on SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

As I’ve said several times, my favorite Series 5 episode is “Amy’s Choice.” My reason for liking it so much is that it tells a relatively simple, straightforward story, but, within that framework, is able to get to the heart of each one of the show’s three leads, and forces them to hash out their differences and avoid death at the same time. It was, to me, a perfect 45 minutes of science fiction storytelling.  Episode 10 of Series 6 of Doctor Who is called “The Girl Who Waited,” and in many ways it could be called “Amy’s Choice 2,” yet, while they share a lot of basic elements, Tom MacRae’s script goes a step beyond.  It’s not merely whether Amy will choose a life with or without Rory, it’s Amy being forced to live a life without him, and how that changes her view of everything.  And latterly, Rory has to decide if he can live with an Amy he failed to save.

Through a simple pressing of a red button instead of a green one, Amy spends 36 years alone waiting for Rory to save her, which is longer than either of them have been alive. It’s a painful proposition no matter which side you’re on. It’s made even more painful for Rory knowing that, to her, he failed to save her, but to him, he’s in the middle of doing so. He and the Doctor know that they can figure out how to save past-Amy, but that means that present, older Amy won’t have existed, something she does not want to happen.

The central idea of the Two Streams facility is an interesting one: When a plague that kills in 24 hours hits the resort world of Apalapucia, a place that’s incredibly fun to say, they set up a way that the infected can live out an entire life’s worth in a quicker time stream and their loved ones can watch from a slower one.  There are two sides to the argument of this place, as represented by the Doctor and Rory. Rory thinks it would be terrible to watch and not interact with someone you love for their whole life, while the Doctor thinks it’s incredibly kind because at least they aren’t watching them die.  This is the central difference between the Doctor and Rory. The Doctor is detached from that type of emotion after centuries of traveling with people he is inevitably forced to leave behind. Rory, on the other hand, could not imagine having to witness a life and not be a part of it.

It’s this exact question he’s faced with when he meets older Amy, now world-weary and hardened from living nearly 40 years on her own, running from androids that will literally kill her with kindness.  He doesn’t mind that she’s old; he minds that he didn’t get old with her.  He would gladly take that Amy with him, though he’d much rather spare her from having to be alone for so long. Rory is maybe the most kind-hearted person in the history of Doctor Who.  The word “stalwart” comes to mind. But this Amy doesn’t want to disappear; she doesn’t want those experiences of being alone to leave her, which I think is a very interesting dilemma. To get to relive 36 years of loneliness with the person you love at the expense of being who you are now: Would you do it? I can’t say if I would or not. Rory blames the Doctor for not being more careful about where they land, to which the Doctor says that’s not how he travels. Rory then says he’d rather not travel with him anymore.

Ultimately, there can only be one Amy, despite the lie the Doctor told about taking them both on the TARDIS. It would indeed cause a paradox.  The Doctor does what could be considered the cowardly thing and leaves it up to Rory to choose, either HIS Amy, or the Amy who lived without him for so long. To his credit, it’s a harder choice than it might have been.  There’s no doubt he’d love either Amy with all his heart, but it’d certainly be much easier on him if he didn’t have the one he’d failed for so long. By the end, we realize the name of the episode could have been “Rory’s Choice.”

What makes “The Girl Who Waited” great is that, with the exception of Imelda Staunton as the voice of the Interface, and a brief hologram of a hostess, the whole episode is just the three leads.  “Amy’s Choice” had this element as well, but there was still the Dream Lord to act as antagonist. In this, time is the antagonist and the kindness robots are the inevitable end.  It’s nice to know that the characters are so rich and the actors so good that they can sustain an entire episode essentially on their own.  MacRae turns out a powerful character study, somewhat in keeping with his earlier Who effort, the Series 2 two-parter “Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel” which plays with the idea of an alternate universe where Rose was never born and her father didn’t die.  He excels at these “What if?” scenarios, and is able to explore the character relationships more deeply.

Karen Gillan gives her best performance to date as she convincingly portrays the character of Amy Pond both in her 20s and in her late 50s.  There is a definite age behind her mannerisms and physicality that goes far beyond the old-age makeup she’s wearing. The scene where she speaks to herself through the looking glass is truly phenomenal. Nick Hurran’s direction really adds to it as well, with the use of shot/reverse-shot and the slow fading between the two.  Amy Pond as a character needs to be written well to be effective, and this script surely does that. Let it never be said that Karen Gillan isn’t a good actress, because, given the proper material, she’s clearly very good.

Arthur Darvill is likewise very good playing the pain, frustration, and difficulty of Rory’s predicament with aplomb.  As stated before, Rory has really become the heart of this TARDIS crew and has shaken off any of the just-the-boyfriend problems and has become quite the character.  You buy the love between Rory and Amy, even when it seems neither have any reason to.

Matt Smith has the least to do in this episode; however, he’s still at the very tip top of his game.  The Doctor, as old Amy says, is like the voice of God, trapped in the TARDIS to help with the plot but detached from his companions.  However, the reaction shots by Smith convey all the guilt, regret, and sadness the Doctor feels because of his action (or inaction) and masques the trickery and deceit that was needed to get old Amy to help them.  I also really enjoyed his relationship with Rory in this episode. Rory objects to the Doctor trying to make Rory more like him, which in a way is very true. The Doctor has protégés, and Rory flatly does not want to be one.

Like “Amy’s Choice” before it, “The Girl Who Waited” gives viewers a story about the main characters entirely unhampered by a guest cast.  The Doctor and friends can help strangers week after week but they often have the hardest time helping each other. In both stories, we get the very real sense that the Doctor does what he does because he has to, but hates himself because of it.  For all of the Eleventh Doctor’s silliness and cheer, he harbors a real darkness which is maybe most fascinating.  And there was a Twitter reference in it. What more can I say? I dug it.

Next week is Toby Whithouse’s “The God Complex.” It also looks very good.

Doctor Who meets The Shining. Love it.

-Kanderson would rather not wait 36 years for you to follow him in theTWITTERS… but he will.

“Torchwood: Miracle Day” Episodes 8 and 9 Review (SPOILERS)

by KYLE ANDERSON on SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

As I was derelict in my duties as Torchwood: Miracle Day reviewer last week, I’m going to do a double review this week and look at both episode 8, “End of the Road,” and episode 9, “The Gathering.” After the flashback- and characters-heavy “Immortal Sins,” episodes 8 and 9 act as a turning point for the series. The plot kicks into high gear, pieces are set in place, and characters make choices that change their entire lives. Mostly, I think this is because the writers said, “Oh, shit, there’s only three episodes left; we better wrap this fucker up.” Things happen so quickly in these episodes that it’s almost comical. Concepts are brought up again out of nowhere and then dropped again almost as quickly. Still, sloppy progression is better than no progression at all and for the most part, in spite of myself, I actually quite enjoyed these episodes. Why? Well, to quote a popular fad t-shirt from the mid-80s: “Shit Happens.”

At the beginning of “End of the Road,” the four Torchwoods of the Apocalypse are taken back to Angelo Colasanto’s mansion with his granddaughter, played by Nana Visitor.  If you’ll recall, at the end of “Immortal Sins,” she claimed at Angelo was the one person who knows how the Miracle began.  However, when they get to the manor, they see that Angelo is a very, very old and sick man who is connected to life support devices.  He isn’t immortal at all; he’s merely lived a good, healthy life.  His granddaughter tells Torchwood of the three families and how they made a pact in 1927 to become immortal using Jack’s blood, however Jack’s immortality didn’t come from his blood and has nothing to do with it. Still, the Miracle is happening. The families have completely deleted themselves from any record throughout history, effectively making them invisible. In 1998, she says, they discovered something called “The Blessing,” and it was then that things began moving forward.

Just then, a CIA team led by Brian Friedkin (Newman; you remember him) bursts into the mansion and tries to arrest everyone.  Friedkin is working for the Families, if you’ll recall. Little does Friedkin know that Rex, SOMEHOW, knew that he’d try to take them out and called in TNG’s Q, John De Lancie, for backup. De Lancie plays CIA director Allen Shapiro, who knows Friedkin’s a traitor.  But then Friedkin blows himself, Angelo’s granddaughter, and somebody else up because he’s failed the Families. What a tosser.

The Torchwood folk are then made to join the CIA or get deported.  Jack says goodbye to Angelo, whose life support alarm goes off. Jack unplugs it, thinking that it just doesn’t understand the new way of life, but he notices that Angelo has indeed died, making him the only person to have legitimately died since the Miracle began. Jack figures out it has to do with morphic fields (remember those?), and tells Rex and Esther that Angelo has found some alien tech from the destroyed Torchwood Hub that acts as a Null Field, meaning that whatever field the Miracle is emitting to keep people alive, this does the opposite.  Gwen gets deported back to Wales, and Jack tries to escape with his new knowledge, only to get shot by an agent who also sees Esther helping him, and the two must flee.

Elsewhere, Oswald Danes just wants a hug. Having grown accustomed to his new way of life as a public figure, he decides he’d like a woman in his life. A redhead. While this prospect skeeves out Jilly Kitzinger to no end, she does get him a redheaded prostitute for the evening. But he doesn’t want THAT, he just wants to have dinner, something the prostitute wants no part of. She tells him that he’s likely to be made Category 0 soon anyway.  Oswald then demands to know from Jilly what “Category 0” is, and she tells him that all the people who shouldn’t be out in public, like people who were put to death but didn’t die, will be rounded up and put in the modules, effectively carrying out their sentences. Oswald can’t believe Phicorp would abandon him like that (though I can), punches Jilly for her troubles, and runs off.  Jilly gets another visit from the Family agent guy, who informs her she has a CIA spy for an intern, whom he then promptly shoots. He tells her that, if she wants it, there’s a promotion waiting for her.  Oh, and also, Charlotte the CIA analyst we haven’t seen in friggin’ weeks is working for the Families and ratted out the intern, and is giving false info.

Cut to two months later. “Really?” I asked incredulously.  The world is now in a depression and everyone’s feeling the hurt.  Gwen is back in Wales stealing medicine from stores and selling it on the black market. They’ve also got her dad, who is still designated Category 1, in a basement hiding place.  Esther and Jack are in Scotland, where he’s apparently mostly all better. Rex and Shapiro are doing their best to track down the Families, but Charlotte keeps effing up their plans. Rex discovers that a short story writer wrote a pulp story about Jack’s blood incident in 1935 and then his family disappeared completely. Jilly, meanwhile, has not enjoyed her new promotion as much as she thought she would, but another appearance by the Family agent tells her that she’s to change her name and go to Shanghai to witness “The Blessing.”

Oswald Danes, on the run for the past two months, is in Wales and, posing as a deliveryman, gets into Gwen’s house with some information. Gwen and Rhys beat the crap out of him before he tells them he wants to see Jack or they get nothing.  So, of course, Jack and Esther come to Wales very quickly and Oswald tells them that while he was snooping around on Jilly’s computer, he discovered a name that keeps coming up over and over: Harry Bosco. Harry Bosco is not actually referring to a person, but a method of spinning news reports from other countries by mistranslation, something Jilly has been doing for awhile.  They find news footage from Shanghai before the Miracle of a man who tried to burn down a hospital, but using Rex’s translation expertise (?), they realize the man was actually talking about “The Blessing.”

In Shanghai, Jilly meets with a big nerd, likely a descendant of the Families. who tells her that throughout history, one family has controlled politics, one finance, and one media. He also tells her that it is now her job to rewrite history, though the actual ins and outs of this are not specified. She goes to a secret area and meets with Frances Fisher, who shows her an enormous THING in the ground with a big crevice down the middle of it that is sucking things into it. This is “The Blessing,” I guess, and it goes all the way through the middle of the earth and comes out on the other side, in Buenos Aires.

The Welsh police finally find Gwen’s dad and take him to likely be exterminated in the modules, despite Gwen’s pleas.  It is because of this that Gwen decides they must go and put a stop to the Miracle once and for all and fix the world.  They figure out that it’s happening in both Shanghai and Buenos Aires, and decide to split up and go to both.  Oswald insists on coming or he’ll either tell someone what they’re doing or allow Rhys to kill him, which wouldn’t be good for anybody. Jack, Gwen, and Oswald head to Shanghai, while Esther meets an off-the-grid Rex in Buenos Aires. Charlotte is keeping tabs on them, of course, so I bet they’re in for a spot of bother.  While in Shanghai, Jack’s bullet wound is getting worse again and a drop of blood on the ground begins to move toward where the Blessing is.

What? Right, I’m there with you too.  So much has happened in these last two episodes that was not set up in the previous 6 episodes that it truly makes me wonder if they had any idea where the story was going at all.  Information is delivered very clumsily and quickly and plot elements are only given the bare minimum of time to unfold.  The morphic fields idea which was reintroduced in episode 8 was completely forgotten about again in episode 9. There’s also a storytelling idea that you’re not supposed to introduce new characters in the third act, that it’s supposed to just be a matter of tying up all the loose ends you have, yet in episode 8 of 10, we get a new ally in the form of John De Lancie and in 9 of 10 we get a new villain in the form of Frances Fisher.  It makes me think back to episodes 5 and 6, and how we wasted so much time getting to know various bad guys who have never shown up again. Complete waste. We could have seen the downfall of Oswald in those two episodes instead of just waiting around for him to have a meltdown and Jilly to rebuke him, all in the blink of an eye.

That all being said, I’m actually now, finally, enjoying the series again.  I’m interested to find out how they’re going to wrap it all up next week.  I’m betting it won’t be satisfactory, but I’m still interested to see it.  We still don’t know why the Families created the Miracle, we don’t know what the Blessing is or what it actually does, and we don’t know how Torchwood are going to be able to fix it.  Lots and lots of questions to answer in only 55 minutes, but there we have it.  One episode left, folks. Then the Miracle Day will be over. I was going to say I can’t wait but I actually can wait, I just won’t have to.

-Kanderson does humorous things pertaining to what he’s just written. Follow him on TWIITER please.