Review: 'Torchwood: Miracle Day' - 'The Categories of Life': Heat is on
The season reaches its mid-point in over-the-top fashion
Esther (Alexa Havins) in "Torchwood: Miracle Day."
A quick review of tonight's "Torchwood: Miracle Day" - including thoughts on why I'm likely taking this season out of the review rotation going forward - coming up just as soon as I hear rumors of Phil Collins...
Yeah, I think I'm out at this point. If I have time in the coming weeks, I'll try to stay current on the season and maybe even come back after the finale, but "The Categories of Life" was so sloppy, silly and just plain stupid that any continuation at this point is about brand loyalty.
The character of Maloney, the camp administrator, encapsulated everything that's gone wrong with this show - and most of the weak points in Russell T. Davies' writing, to boot. It's not enough for Davies to make his point; he has to demonize his opponent to do it. The idea of a middle manager being given absolute power and becoming absolutely corrupted as a result could be incredibly compelling. This was not that, though. This was an already corrupt, incompetent, racist, sexist good ol' boy - and one who cares an awful lot about insurance coverage at a time when, in the timespan we've been given, even the healthcare machine would be too overwhelmed to worry about that - and then one who somehow sucks one of the camp's soldiers into helping him find a way to commit murder post-Miracle. That's not drama; that's camp. Blech.
I continue to think there are some good basic ideas here, I like what Bill Pullman and Lauren Ambrose are doing as guest stars, but overall, "Miracle Day" has been a pretty big misfire after "Children of Earth" got so much right.
What did everybody else think?
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August 6, 2011 at 1:24AM EST Reply to CommentI quit after last week. The poisoning jack bit early on was so poorly done that I knew I wouldn't watch the whole thing. Starz seems to be all about maximizing profit over quality. They're the Fox of the cable channels.
sepinwall Given how many of the silly things in this season could be found in the first couple of seasons of Torchwood UK, and in some of Davies' seasons of Doctor Who, I don't know how much, if any, blame I'd be laying on Starz.
August 6, 2011 at 1:32AM EST
Well the one thing that was lost somehow was the entertainment factor. It's playing like a very bad crossover with some law and order spinoff's spinoff. It's just no fun, which has a lot to do with the points you made about americanizing it. I'd say that was probably the studio's big influence, if nothing else.
August 6, 2011 at 9:31PM ESTStarz may not have had a lot to do with it, but it's hard to deny their ability to ruin shows with huge potential. I suppose im just bitter about all the hype theyve never been able to live up to. Its kind of a different beast when a beloved show is on the losing end.
david Children of Earth and a handful of David Tennant Doctor Whos are all I can stand. Davies lacks basic television craft, imo. But then that's much harder to acquire in Britain.
August 7, 2011 at 6:12PM ESTdavid Also I'm beginning to lose count of how often I say "Jane Espenson should know better."
August 7, 2011 at 6:26PM ESTmilaxx
August 6, 2011 at 1:45AM EST Reply to CommentI'm still there. At this point I'm resigned to an uneven season and that RTD is indulging far too much. Perhaps it is brand loyalty but I'm still in. When they are planning and working capers like infiltrating the camps I enjoy the show. I'm still curious about Jilly and Phicors & appreciate Pullman/Ambrose. RTD's villains are caricatures at this point, but actually my biggest quibble is where are the aliens? Overall I think the shortened season of CoE made RTD edit and as much as I love TW I kinda wish he was under the ssme time crunc here.
Vince
August 6, 2011 at 2:01AM EST Reply to CommentTHAT BASTARD BURNED DR. JUAREZ ALIVE!!! Not looking forward to the rest of the seaon. I might not even watch it now.
Tausif Khan Given all of the complex politics they have already introduced I don't think they need to add in a holocaust angle (making people sick and then burning them alive) as well. For me it seemed like a bit much.
August 6, 2011 at 5:50AM ESTAlso, I was wondering if her death falls into the category of a)minority who dies first b) punished because she had sex. I thought Davies and company (Espenson who wrote the episode) were supposed to be better than this.
webdiva Espenson is now utter crap in my book. This thing is completely off the rails. I want my normal seasons 2 and 3 Torchwood back!! But I don't know how they would bring it back to that level, it's **SO** awful at this point.
August 6, 2011 at 10:28PM ESTNothing follows logically, Jack isn't allowed to be Jack, this nitwit camp bureaucrat and his breakdown come out of nowhere, and none of this is remotely credible. Worse, we are still no closer to knowing what's really going on, or whether the source of all this evil is domestic or extraterrestrial. Not a hint one way or the other, and there should have been by now. This show is like a broken-down, rusted-out AMC Gremlin dragging its age-perforated, hanging-by-a-thread muffler behind it down the street, except that such a wreck would actually create more sparks than this mishigas does.
I have enormous difficulty believing that this is the same show that gave us Children of Earth last year or the mind-blowing season before that. Oh, wait: IT ISN'T. Tt's as if Starz decided to make an American adaptation of the show, and Davies and the remaining cast signed on because the original was gone and they had nothing better to do. THAT's how bad this is.
As for this particular episode: I thought they'd get around to burning bodies only after the True Death returned, which they'd have to do at that point -- and swiftly -- to head off massive epidemics. Silly me: little did I realize they'd reverse the order so that they could smash us over the head with some kind of proto-Nazi solution that came out of nowhere.
I'd rather have reruns of last season, thanks. And if this is all a collaboration with Starz can produce, cancel the contract: it's a misbegotten, epic disaster.
Tausif Khan
August 6, 2011 at 5:47AM EST Reply to CommentI thought the politics were done really well in that it is a really complex set of ideas put together in a recognizable fashion illuminating our current political dilemma. A good deal of these politics were really preachy and took me out of the story. I was particularly annoyed at the scene with Dr. Juarez and the Phicorp bureaucrat. I was annoyed that the situation came down to his incompetency and did not tell us anything more about how Phicorp operates or the larger plans that the organization has for its "patients". It didn't even hint at a larger plan. The only character moments I found touching were Gwen Cooper's thoughts and worried feelings about and for her father and the scene between Alexa Havin and John Barrowman. Havin and Barrowman did some really good acting in the beginning scene.
Also, Rex as the loudest member and homophobe? come on. He has got to be given better writing than this and I would like to see his character fleshed out a bit more.
Johanna Lapp
August 6, 2011 at 5:53AM EST Reply to CommentSo, who's the big bad behind Phicorp? It would have to be someone with advanced medical skills and previous experience with the whole Dead Man Walking phenomenon. This villain would need knowledge of a superscience device that can revive the dead, and access to cosmic energies sufficient to flood the entire planet with the death-stopping ray in an instant. And it would have to be someone who understands the threat that Torchwood poses to their evil plan, someone with intimate knowledge of Torchwood's capabilities and personnel.
On an entirely unrelated note, I sure miss Owen and Toshiko. Too bad they were vaporized at the end of season two. But at least Jack tossed us a entirely random and gratuitous name check in episode one.
Fiscal
August 6, 2011 at 6:28AM EST Reply to CommentAlan, have you been following Falling Skies some more since the first episode? Season finale tomorrow, gonna share som thoughts?
donald
August 6, 2011 at 8:22AM EST Reply to CommentCould someone please explain the "complexity" of the politics to this dead ender?
JustMe62
August 6, 2011 at 8:23AM EST Reply to Commentwhen the two sex scenes just popped out of the blue, it clenched boredom reaching too far for me. I havent watched since.
Other Scott
August 6, 2011 at 9:59AM EST Reply to CommentYeah, I was out last week. Nothing was realistic enough to even begin to relate to emotionally. Nor was it quite interesting enough to be able to engage me intellectually.
And this is someone who stuck with V for both seasons, and actually enjoyed it, particularly the second season that no one watched.
Boricua in Texas
August 6, 2011 at 12:19PM EST Reply to CommentI completely agree, Alan. Maloney was just too much, the heavy-handed characterization, the caricaturization of American society, the stereotypes, are all turnoffs. The storytelling is all over the place, and not much of it makes sense. It's disappointing.
Bruce from Missouri I didn't find it to be a caricature of American society at all. This country is full of intensely stupid people just waiting to be lead by a charasmatic pseudo-religious leader.
August 8, 2011 at 12:54AM ESTC'mon, we all know that if Jesus came back that a certain segment of American Christians would have him right back on the cross.
That said, I still don't buy Pullman's character as that leader, that part has never made any sense.
Klf
August 6, 2011 at 2:58PM EST Reply to CommentI quit ten minutes in to this episode.
Make A Point
August 6, 2011 at 3:21PM EST Reply to CommentYou write like 2 articles per 3 days. I'm sure you're very buse.
Michael
August 6, 2011 at 3:30PM EST Reply to CommentMiracle Day is just truly awful. Vera's death is a huge misstep because up until now the series had proven she was actually smart- no way she'd be so stupid as to threaten that guy with a soldier in the room. A brief moral outburst I'd understand, but several minutes of berating the man while you're in a secret room with absolutely no backup? Please.
And Oswald Danes. No way that a reviled pedophile and child murderer would suddenly be beloved by the world because he professes that humans have become angels. I mean, people in that scene began sobbing they were so overtaken with emotion. And then a pharmaceutical company logo pops up, and no one gets that it's all PR bull? Apparently the true miracle is that the world IQ dropped by about 50 points.
I'm out. Torchwood, you are a shadow of your former self. Tosh, Owen and Ianto would be so ashamed.
Ed I had the same problem with Dr. Juarez. That was too much. She had been portrayed as smarter than that, then all of a sudden she's being a total jerk to the guy. He was no prize peach, but that was, as Alan says, over the top.
August 6, 2011 at 4:25PM ESTI still liked the episode, though, and the twist of the Category 1's being burned alive.
Ugh now im probably going to have to watch it to see just how bad the death was :(
August 6, 2011 at 9:32PM ESTwebdiva Amen, Michael: Tosh, Owen and Ianto should be glad they're not around to see this abortion. There is nothing about this show that reminds me of Torchwood seasons 1-3 -- and if they hadn't kept the name, you'd never make the connection. This is some of the worse writing on a Brit show that I've ever seen. It's like the writers are throwing any random idea that occurs to them at us, including the kitchen sink, and expecting us to connect the dots on our own and believe the crap. At least the much deteriorated True Blood, in comparison, still looks and sounds like True Blood; but **this**?????? There's a complete disconnect and it's not the same show, like seasons 1-3 never existed. Even the patently abominable V remake last year and this year's blooper called Outcasts are markedly better than this. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up from the nightmare and Captain Jack and Gwen will be in a reasonable scenario again, but no: every Friday night, they fall further into absurdity. This now rivals even The Killing's ability to make me angry over its complete stupidity. AAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHH!
August 6, 2011 at 10:44PM ESTwebdiva I meant some of the worst writing ... typo. Sorry.
August 6, 2011 at 10:53PM ESTArchie ED - I don't know if I've just seen a lot of RTD or Battlestar. I did thoroughly enjoy the dark places Children Of Earth went to. So for me, the "burned alive" was a twist I saw a mile away. I'd been expecting it for weeks and was thoroughly surprised when they crushed that politician lady in the car, until I realized it was for the shock value of showing her eyeball in that cube of crushed car.
August 10, 2011 at 8:52AM ESTBurning until you're only ashes is really the only way. Even the person they showed right in the first or second episode, whose head Dr Jaurez severed - even that person, after being so horrifically burnt was still alive.
ed_duffy
August 6, 2011 at 4:21PM EST Reply to CommentWatching this episode all I was picturing in my head was the repeated exchanges between Veronica and her father in Heathers "Will someone tell me why I...." "because you're an idiot" "oh yeah, that's right".
In the first two seasons the camp worked for it in a way which made it a mildly entertaining distraction in the off seasons from Doctor Who. The third I found to be genuinely good. But this season is just painful.
DonBoy
August 6, 2011 at 5:00PM EST Reply to CommentOK, first: for those of you who kept thinking that the soldier/accomplice looked really familiar...he's acted a bunch, but the thing I recognized him from was that he was one of the kids in Kate and Allie, like, 25 years ago. (And you know what that skinny girl Allison Smith looks like now, right? Oh my.)
Anyway...it's especially hard to take the cartoony evil beaurocrat after COE's tragic civil servant. Seems very, very, cheap. Also, just as a pure story-construction matter -- the time between introducing the term "burn unit" and the revelation of what it was is what, 10 seconds? Shouldn't they let it sit for a few minutes so that the reveal is more of a twist? I'm just saying.
Finally, a general point about Danes -- whatever the hell his speech was supposed to mean...SF stories have a recurrent trope of "the cult of weird social reaction to the unprecedented event". You've seen it in FlashForward, V, here, and lots of others. It's supposed to be some kind of knowing, cynical take on human natute and modern media, and it never, ever, rings true to me.
On one hand, I get what you're saying with the whole "give the burn unit comment time to sit". On the other, I feel like it was so painfully obvious what was going on there long before the words "burn unit" were spoken that it really didn't matter.
August 6, 2011 at 5:11PM ESTicerose he wasalso Vern ScHlingers son in OZ
August 6, 2011 at 6:48PM ESTChris
August 6, 2011 at 5:25PM EST Reply to CommentI'm a little baffled by your take on T:MD, Alan. To me, Miracle Day seems far more reminiscent of the first couple of series of the show - instead of comparing MD to CoE, we should maybe be considering CoE an aberration and compare MD to those earlier episodes - in which case, it holds up extremely well.
I'm really enjoying the series so far; yes, its clunky and a little obvious, and RTD has no clue about subtlety at times, but its entertaining and I like it. So there.
webdiva If you really think this massive insult to our intelligence bears any resemblance whatsoever to seasons 1 and 2, you really weren't paying attention then OR now (you must had previous seasons of Torchwood on for background noise while you did something else; only that would explain your reaction).
August 6, 2011 at 11:03PM ESTDavid Some people seem to have convinced themselves that Torchwood seasons 1 and 2 were something special. Season 1 was terrible. Season 2, while much improved, wasn't great. RTD got it right with COE but you could punch gaping holes in that plot if you wanted to. I don't miss Tosh, Owen and Ianto at all. They were morons who did everything Jack told them not to do and imperiled the world as much as they protected it. Other than COE, I've never been a big fan of RTD. Sometimes he's good, sometimes he's a hack.
August 7, 2011 at 7:14AM ESTMorgan Hamilton David then you must not like Gwen very much either. Because while she doesn't follow Jack's orders it's usually because she's beinging a stubborn cow because of course *SHE* knows better than the guy who's been in TW for over a hundred years & usually she's wrong.
August 7, 2011 at 11:43AM ESTSeries 1 & 2 were something special - they were fun, quirky and most importantly, left viewers w/ a sense of hope. Also RTD was to busy w/ DW to do too much harm to that sensibility.
Series 3, while good in it's on way at times, was the product of his getting his greasy mitts all over it. While I enjoyed a fair amount of it the horrid plot holes & the fact that the TW team seemed to be shoehorned into a generic political thriller made for uneven viewing. But what really ticked me off was RTD putting his usual utterly nihilistic stamp on it. And if I thought he was laying it on thick w/ a trowel in CoE what he's managed to do w/ MD is dump whole truckloads of it. That nihilism overkill is what makes series 1 & 2 look so special in comparison.
Chris Easy there, Webdiva ;)
August 7, 2011 at 9:02PM ESTI'm just saying the MD is more like S1/S2 than it is like CoE, is all - particularly where the tone of the show is concerned. Maybe I'm remembering it differently, but I don't believe so. Regardless, thats all I'm saying ... in which case, its unfair to compare MD to CoE.
webdiva I'd take any of the previous seasons over this one, so bloody awful is this one. Morgan, I don't have your problem with Gwen -- and I think on further examination your charge that Gwen is usually wrong is ludicrous and wouldn't stand up. For one thing, for the first two seasons Gwen was the soul of Torchwood, constantly trying to get Jack and the others to remember that normal people (especially victims) matter and that what Torchwood does has consequences. It's that very quality that Jack appreciates most about Gwen ... because Jack isn't always right, either, and has to be reminded of his own humanity. To the extent that Jack recovers his humanity at all previous to CoE, it's because of Gwen. And then CoE bloodies his hands again.
August 9, 2011 at 1:40AM ESTWhat pisses me of the most, however, is that now what's left of Torchwood has deteriorated **SO** much with this diversion to the U.S. and idiot Rex in charge that I can't see how they can possibly make the transition into the organization that survives into the future to still be there for the Doctor, Rose and Mickey when the Cybermen and the Daleks face off. Whatever else Davies and Moffat now do in their respective shows, the one thing they **won't** do is screw up the Doctor Who story continuity. So how are they going to get from here to there?? I can't see it. In fact, I can't see how Torchwood survives at all, given how badly the writers have botched this season.
Jim Fung Webdiva, the Torchwood with Yvonne, Cybermen, and the Daleks was Torchwood One at Canary Wharf. That was destroyed *before* all the events of Torchwood the TV series. Ianto's girlfriend was there, that's how she became a Cyberwoman. I'm not sure what you're referring to if it's not that. I am watching all the episodes of Miracle Day back to back right now and loving them. The politics is not too heavy handed or implausible to me. People already turn a blind eye to a lot of terrible, terrible things in the real world now.
November 4, 2011 at 12:06AM ESTHwat
August 6, 2011 at 5:45PM EST Reply to Comment"I'm likely taking this season out of the review rotation going forward - coming up just as soon as I hear rumors of Phil Collins... "
I don't think that works (which alas, happens quit a bit) - are you suddenly gifted with precognition? I think it would be better with "coming up just as soon as I have finished listening to these Phil Collins rumors"
What you say? It had nothing to do with Torchwood? You noticed, eh?
We are half way through this and still there is no real progress of any kind - unlike Game of Thrones where you had the feeling of a well plotted course through lands entirely charted, this feels like a drunken bum staggering down a street mumbling about something he scribbled on a napkin earlier in the evening.
Oh well.
Morgan Hamilton I'm not sure if I should get out the brain bleach or just laugh my silly until my head explodes because when I read the 'druken bum' comment I immediately flashed on Rusty doing EXACTLY THAT!
August 6, 2011 at 9:16PM ESTThanks for the best laugh I've had all day.
Morgan
lmao that's just not a fair comparison :D now if you wanted to compare the letdown of camelot to GoT...
August 6, 2011 at 9:34PM ESTTom Galloway
August 6, 2011 at 6:49PM EST Reply to CommentAlso, the whole bit with just about every government in the world going with the "burn people alive in camps" option this quickly is just out of the blue. Along with expecting it to stay a secret for any significant period of time. That's just too strong a meme, given the Holocaust, and too many people involved in too many locations for someone not to be leaking it on the Web big time.
Morgan Hamilton But was the whole world agrees to give 10% of their children on Britian's say-so (which also wasn't leaked to the web) any less out of the blue? It's just another of case of lazy, sloppy writing that RTD like to perpetrate on the viewers.
August 6, 2011 at 9:22PM ESTMorgan
Bryan Rasmussen The burn people alive in camps option is one of the most reasonable things in the show. Government exists to, among various things, perpetuate the current social order. In a world without anyone dieing that becomes very hard to do due to too much resource usage. It's one thing to use resources on category twos - people who have had something that would have killed them normally and that can now recover - and someone who is completely brain dead but still using up resources anyway. They would need to get rid of those people. Not that doing so would take care of the overall problem of resource usage but it might allow the world to keep on for a week or two more than it would otherwise.
August 7, 2011 at 10:49AM ESTicerose
August 6, 2011 at 6:58PM EST Reply to CommentI predicted that burning people would be the only way to kill them on the Starz page when the premis was first announced and from there ovens was a pretty obvious way to go ---I am having very little emotional response to MD -in part the execution but mainly because the charactors really do not draw you in--the only one i was drawn to was Vera and as you say she has gone the way of all interesting TW team members.Ester's poor little CIA agent is just irritating now.Oswald speech should have been a good will he/won't he moment but it ended up being a non event.
I am guessng the point of MD is to show us human falibilty however i recenty read an article called "Can you learn anything from the void " by Adam Kirsch which was actually far more intersting and enlighting than this overly cynical interpretation of human nature.The danger in using such an emotive subject as camps/ovens in what is essentially a block buster sci fi is that if you fail you trivialise and over simplify it.Do agree the incidental charactors are underwritten and lack depth.
And in a world of sci fi why was Rex walking around like a BBC war photographer with a rediculous large camera-- --why not use the lens yet again as i seem to remember in COE they were able to transfer the immages to tape--perhaps this might have been a more useful activity for CJ to have engaged in rather than floating around the stadium like a charactor in search of a scene.
I just feel that the line Torchwwod does not exist said it all--TW is now just a mish mash of charactors who lack the original interaction of the original cast and equally it has lost the suspense and taut story telling of COE
Bryan Rasmussen Gwen lied to Rex and said that the lens was isomorphically locked to her (paraphrasing here) and could not be used by anyone else.
August 7, 2011 at 10:52AM ESTSaraBlue
August 6, 2011 at 10:46PM EST Reply to CommentI agree that this season has been a disappointment coming off the emotional/action/alien powerhouse that was Children of Earth. I've found myself soldiering on through the series more because it's Torchwood and general hope that it will get better than anything else.
I prefer Jack as the alpha rather than playing second to the 2-D Rex.
Like some other commenters all is not lost in the Miracle Day rendition of Torchwood, the capers are great and Jack and Gwen have been getting in some great sass.
And regarding the controversial "death" of Dr. Vera, that's what Torchwood does, they make us love a brilliant character then reminds us that nothing is safe. I give it point for that.
I still have high hopes for Lauren Ambrose's Jilly - She plays it like there's so much more to the character, my fingers are crossed that it will deliver.
fraying
August 6, 2011 at 11:49PM EST Reply to CommentI'm with the angry crowd on this one. No one is acting in any way that makes sense. Juarez, who is there "under cover," who knows that the camp is corrupt, who has people in there depending on her, goes off on the administrator who she knows is a cretin? "I'm going to have you arrested!" What?
And while Pullman is admirably swinging for the fences, his character is never the same guy twice. Why would a crowd be cheering for him at this point? Did anything in his speech make any sense whatsoever? The crowd would have booed him off the stage.
And: Blond-haired, blue-eyed dude in a suit shows up to look ominous and complement Lauren Ambrose, while people burn in ovens? Way, way, way over the top.
Such an interesting premise, so ruined.
Bryan Rasmussen How's this - the families are families of ex-nazis who escaped to South America. They got something from Jack in world war 2 that allowed them to achieve miracle day. And whatever other stuff they have been up to - prob. cloning a la Boys from Brazil.
August 7, 2011 at 10:58AM ESTI. S.
August 7, 2011 at 8:19AM EST Reply to CommentRussell T. Davies has more or less always written about politics and social issues - I haven't seen much of Torchwood but it's all there in his early stuff. So nobody can really object to that, because it's part of the package. I agree that the problem is that it is too ham-fisted. The fact that Davies is socially progressive has always worked for him, but the fact that he often presents his ideas in a crass and melodramatic way works against him.
To get the most out of Davies, appreciate that the more OTT material is meant to provoke either laughter or indignation, depending on how sensitive your buttons are. I can see that the reaction might be divisive, but that Davies will probably succeed, both in getting his specific talking points talked about, and in opening to politicization a genre that many viewers only wanted to consume as light entertainment. On the other hand, if it is done at the cost of halving the potential audience, that will be an expensive exercise.
I think Davies is an interesting voice in TV, and I trust that he has somehow worked out how to make the second half of the season more compelling. But if he is going to take on another project like this he would benefit from deeper collaboration with another writer or team of writers who can chisel his ideas into something more engaging.
Morgan Hamilton Sic-Fi has been about social & political commentary from it's early days but it's also about telling a cracking good yarn. And you're right a lot of Sci-Fi fans watch/read it as escapism, which is why it needs to be subtly done and w/ a feeling that there's hope left for the future. That's just not something RTD can do well (if at all) when he is left to his own devices. He needs someone strong enough to stand up to him & tell him to sit down, shut up & to stop being a nihilistic asshat. Unfortunately for us, neither Julie nor Jane can be that person. That's why I think he needs to just go off & do his little Hollywood thing and let someone else run Torchwood from now on.
August 7, 2011 at 12:05PM ESTwebdiva To twist a line taken from another TV character on another channel, mixing ethical dilemmas with politics in sci-fi is fine -- you just have to not suck at it. And Russell Davies and his creww are rrrrreallllllly sucking at it right now. When I think of all the hard sci-fi that excels at mixing ethical dilemmas with politics, this season of Torchwood REEKS in comparison. It'd make Asimov vomit if he were still around. It just makes me think that TV, whether cable or not, is bungling sci-fi so badly again that nobody will be able to sell the networks or studios on any new really good, really ambitious sci-fi shows for the next decade, if not longer.
August 9, 2011 at 1:53AM ESTBen
August 7, 2011 at 12:24PM EST Reply to CommentI agree, it was rubbish. I fast forwarded through a lot of it but knew exactly what was happening. I especially found the Nazi parallel with the complicity of the population and burning people alive part to be very obvious. This over the top rubbish is what ruined the conclusion of Torchwood's third season for me.
Jax
August 7, 2011 at 8:35PM EST Reply to CommentI don't even think he got CoE right. He's a crap writer, always has been, always will be.
sandinacurtin
August 8, 2011 at 10:44AM EST Reply to CommentI miss Tosh, Owen and Ianto
Josh
August 8, 2011 at 5:06PM EST Reply to CommentThis episode pissed me off - I kept waiting for the big reveal that has been promised for weeks that somehow explains a great deal and will make jaws drops and blah blah blah...
I kept waiting for it and it never came! They turned on the flames, which was no great surprise and I kept waiting and it never came! I could not believe the ovens was the reveal...show is over for me.
okayflint
August 9, 2011 at 4:43AM EST Reply to Commentwow, the show lost me at that very same moment. glad i'm not the only one
Jen
August 12, 2011 at 3:17PM EST Reply to CommentI adored the frist three seasons of TW and can say this season SUCKS the big one. Enough over the top crap. Gwen and Jack are not on screen nearly enough, and Rex and Esther are a joke. It's the writing not the acting, because Phifer is better than this. And the burning of people is not a big shocker, not in today's world and not after you fed aliens with children. Just saying.
I don't blame you for not reviewing it anymore either.