4.04: Miracle Day - Escape to LA

[Dave]

The fight against PhiCorp takes the Torchwood team to California, where a trap is waiting. Meanwhile, Oswald and Jilly find themselves with a politician leading an anti-undying segregation campaign called "Dead is Dead" that threatens PhiCorps plans.

With no other posts here to reflect on yet, I've found that this blog from the Grauniad has been covering this series well. This week I think it is spot on:

What's been great about Miracle Day is that it's such a tease. Apart from the constant, expositionary detail about the consequences of the miracle, which we have now worked out is the purpose of Dr Vera, nothing particularly bad has happened yet. And that's where episode four comes into play. It's like, "Boston has cholera, but hey, we got to film on Venice Beach!" We know, because we're told by the next week trailer for episode five, that this is the end of the LOLZ for the time being. So with the human race about to leap off from every imaginable tipping point, it's time for some fancy dress. And, ooh, aren't those wide shots of Venice Beach lovely? This is telling. Jack and Gwen get to lark about playing up as a baby-crazy valley couple, infiltrating the Phicorp base like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Meanwhile, the Americans continue with the most unfortunate on-the-job training already. Rex, as a self-regarding dog of a man, at least recognises that family bonds have no place in an inter-planetary polysexual secret-service. He even goes to the trouble of hunting down his vagrant father just to say it out loud, repeatedly. Esther, meanwhile manages to a) get her nieces and nephews taken into care and b) get everyone as near killed as possible in a world without death. She's almost as bad at this sort of thing as poor old Toshiko. Seriously, Torchwood: you're not Rose Tyler, your family aren't going to come off well from any of this. Rhys is different. Rhys is the emasculated buffoon who makes Gwen feasible as a character. And Jesus Christ, no disrespect to Eve Myles, but Gwen desperately needs some feasibility this year.

Actually, regarding the 'fancy dress' I like the comedy aspects of Gwen and Jack posing as a couple to get the bio-security data, but the breaking into PhiCorp was too slick.

A few of the bad guys finally make an appearance this week or at least their henchmen and assassins. There is the intriguing possibility that they don't all toe the 'company' line and may have minds of their own.

And what about the end of Tea Party member Ellis Hartley Monroe? Her getting crushed in the car was almost as good as the 'cutting the neck' sequence from the first episode.

 

[Dave]

Have you all stopped watching this? Really, it isn't that bad, is it? Or maybe on holiday? I will also have to play catch up with several episodes.

I was thinking about 'the caper' this week and Rex's comment that Torchwood are treating it like a joke, but in essence that is a 'caper' story - which is distinguished from the straight crime story by elements of humor, adventure, or unusual cleverness or audacity. Torchwood could be said to have embraced all four elements.

I also got to thinking that what we really have here is another take on the 'Zombie apocalypse' story - the human race is essentially the walking dead; diseases are rife and out of control now because victims can't die.

 

[Lenny]

Sorry, I've been in Italy since last Saturday (woke to late to watch the American episode from the night before, alas).

I didn't think the episode was that bad. Definitely not the worst in the series so far (that title can go to the second episode, I think), but not the peak (which I hope will come in the last few).

The comedy duo of Jack and Gwen was quite cliche, and her accent was awful! At least she realised, though.

Quite a gruesome end to Monroe (though nowhere near as graphic as the neck scene from the first episode). The same goes for that poor (but daft) engineer, too - having an eye removed, or being throttled, etc, becomes so much worse when the victim is shown to be still alive afterwards.

I was right about the people behind the miracle wanting Jack, but not quite in the way I thought - rather than wanting the biological man, they want information. Maybe his journey after Children of Earth is important after all.

Going back to Monroe, I feel a lot more could have been done with her character. The conflict between her camp and Danes' would have added an extra interesting bit of story.

Finally, we're getting closer to knowing who the people/species behind the miracle are. Take note of how the voice at the end described them as "the families". I've got friends on Twitter who have been wondering out loud if it's The Silence. Nice idea, but I seriously doubt the Doctor Who and Torchwood Universes will share any more overlap now that RTD is gone (I'd go as far to say that they've completely branched apart from each other and that nothing we see in either one will affect the other).

Anyway, family. My thoughts were, first of all, the strange green things from the Family of Blood Doctor Who double (I said the current Universes won't overlap ) and then the Slitheen. I doubt either of them are correct, but I've got to put my money somewhere!

On to episode five.

EDIT: Oh yeah, for an analyst, Esther sure knows her way around security systems! Not even her interest in malware should give her such proficiency.